Can True Love Survive High School? Read Free Page A

of “Little Mariah's” lines memorized.
    “Maybe it won't be so bad.” Stephen got up and pulled Mads to her feet. It was nearly dinnertime, time to go home. “It might be fun to be in a play.”
    “Stephen, you don't know what this play is like. It's not exactly Eugene O'Neill. It's not even
Cats
.”
    “Poor Mads, the reluctant actress.” His arm around her, he pulled her toward his car, a red Mini Cooper. “Just tell your mother you don't want to do it. Say you're too busy with school or something.”
    “I've tried!” Mads said. “I've begged and pleaded and cried. I've threatened to run away and join a cult. She doesn't care. She thinks Audrey and I will learn to get along better if we're in this play together. And it's her dream to see her daughters playing her on stage. She's on some kind of wack ego trip.”
    “Sounds like it.” They got into the car and drove through the narrow streets of Carlton Bay, a small, pretty waterfront town that stretched across a row of gentle hills to a green valley. Stephen dropped her off at her house. “See you at school tomorrow. Hope so, anyway.” She turned toward him. He pulled her close and gave her a long, slow kiss. She wrapped her arms around his neck. Any lingering thoughts of Sean disappeared like soap bubbles. Her first real boyfriend! It was better than a daydream.
    The warm feeling Stephen gave her dissipated as soon as she opened the front door to her house. “Oh, Mama, I can't live on a farm in Minnesota forever,” Audrey recited, quoting one of her lines from the play. “I must be near the ocean. I have to see the sea before I die!”
    As a girl, M.C. had been Mary Claire Olmsted, third child of Minnesota dairy farmers. The play was about her childhood and her rebellious decision to leave the farm at seventeen to go to college at Berkeley in California and be a hippie.
    Instead of her usual Bratz Doll/Britney-on-tour wear, Audrey was dressed in her best approximation of a Minnesota farm girl's outfit: white puffy-sleeved blouse, red gingham jumper, hair in two strawberry-blond braids. On her feet were a pair of shiny red shoes. Typical Audrey to have such a Hollywood-fake vision of Minnesota.
    “Who are you supposed to be, Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz
?” Mads said.
    “I'm trying to stay in character as much as possible before my audition,” Audrey said. “Haven't you ever heard of Stanislavsky's Method of Acting, you ignoramus?”
    “Cram it,” Mads muttered, brushing past Audrey and hoping to escape into her room. Where did she get that Stanislavsky stuff? She was usually more Powerpuff Girl than Russian intellectual.
    “Girls, dinner's ready,” M.C. called from the kitchen. Mads veered right and headed for the kitchen. Good thing she was hungry, because she couldn't think of another good reason to suffer through a meal with these people.
    Her father, Russell, pulled a tray of whole wheat biscuits out of the oven. M.C. set a hot vegetable-and-cheese casserole on the table. “Ho, Madison!” Russell cried in his jolly voice, nabbing Mads on her way to her seat and kissing the top of her head.
    “Hi, Dad.” Her father was the only sensible person in the family. Or maybe he just seemed that way because he generally kept his mouth shut while his wife and daughters expressed every thought that popped into their heads.
    Audrey sat down. M.C. poured them ice water.
    “Papa, please pass the corn and them sweet, sweet tomaters,” Audrey said in a fake hick voice. She and Mads never called their parents “Papa” or “Mama.” That came from the play.
    “You don't have to be in character all the time, you know, Audrey,” Russell said. “We're out of corn and tomaters. Have some ratatouille. It's got cheese in it.”
    “And anyway, I never talked like that,” M.C. said. “I certainly never said ‘tomaters.’”
    “I'm doing the Method!” Audrey snapped. “I have to become Little Mariah—
my
version of her. You people have no respect for