Be More Chill Read Free

metal chairs each and bring them on stage.”
    “Wuh?” The girls down in front look confused. (It’s funny how they look confused from behind, with their shoulders bunched up.) Christine is the only one I hear: “How
come we have to get the chairs?”
    “Come come, it’s a trade-off each time,” Mr. Reyes says. “The men will be on chair-fetching tomorrow. Speaking of which, men! Pick a representative to go to the
Teachers’ Lounge and have them microwave my Hot Pocket!”
    “For the whole play?” I ask. I don’t want to get stuck with
that
job.
    “No, Jeremy, just for today. Next time the girls will pick someone to go.”
    “I don’t understand,” Mark says behind me, actually pausing KAP Three. “Could you explain that again, please?”
    “Hugggggh,”
Mr. Reyes says. “On day one the girls will set up the chairs and the
guys
will pick a representative to get my Hot Pocket; on day two the guys will
set up the chairs and the
girls
will pick a representative to get my Hot Pocket; then it repeats.…Does anyone have a question about this?”
    Yes, of course: someone up front has one, and another, and another. When we finally get it all sorted out, this kid Jonah with a lisp fetches the Hot Pocket as the girls lug furniture, and then
Mr. Reyes brings us on stage, where we sit in a circle of chairs (the girls made it a bit small) as if it were time for Duck-Duck-Goose, but really it’s a read-through of
A Midsummer
Night’s Dream
, and really I’m not a little kid; I’m in high school. I have to remember that.

I grab the seat next to Christine’s in the circle.
    “So, uh, congratulations,” I say quietly, speaking to the air in front of me and hoping she’ll notice, “on Puck.”
    “What
is
this crap?” she turns, fierce. Christine has brown eyes with her blond hair. Up close she looks like all the cutest movie starlets, all those ones who haven’t
really been in any movies, but you see them in
Stuff
magazine or wherever, all combined in Photoshop, except that someone checked the Constrain Proportions box so nothing got distorted.
“I can’t believe he’s making us
fetch
him chairs—isn’t that illegal?”
    “Uh, I don’t think so, actually, but it’s very bad—”
    “Oh yeah, whatever. We don’t have any rights under the Constitution about discrimination?”
    “We don’t have any rights under the Constitution at all, because we’re students—”
    “That is such crap!”
    “Yeah…” I drum the head of Shakespeare in my pocket. “I’m Jeremy, by the way.” I reach out to shake her hand, then pull back—I don’t want people
seeing.
    “I know who you are,” Christine says. “You’re in my math, right?”
    “Oh yeah.” I pretend I wasn’t aware of that fact. “But you know, you can be in a class with someone for a long time and never really—”
    “Lysander!” Mr. Reyes snaps. “Speak!”
    “Uh…” I’m Lysander, right?
    “I’m Lysander, right?”
    Mr. Reyes: “Yes.”
    “Yes. Okay, um…‘You have her father’s love, Demetrius; Let me have Hermia’s: do you marry him.’”
    Mr. Reyes: “Thank you, Jeremy.” He sucks in his lips in the angry/disappointed adult way. “Really excellent.”
    Me: “‘Uh, I am, my Lord, as well derived as he, as well possessed—’”
    Christine: “I hate him. His English classes are awful. He can’t teach—”
    Me: “‘And, which is more than all these boasts can be I am beloved of beauteous—’”
    Christine: “I’m seriously thinking about writing a letter about him to the
Metuchen Home News/Tribune
—”
    I can’t tell if Christine likes me or she just hates Mr. Reyes, but one way or another she’s talking, and you can’t beat that. I keep going, and every time I come to a sweet
line in the read-through (and you know Shakespeare—the sweet lines are really sweet), I direct it at her, tilting my head so my sound waves ruffle some molecules on her cheek and she reacts
in some imperceptible way