Falling Fast Read Free

flushed with pleasure. ‘Hey, Riv,’ she breathed. ‘D’you really think so?’
    Mr Nichols reappeared after a few minutes with a tray of plastic cups, a plate of biscuits and a couple of cartons of juice.
    As we each took a drink, he started speaking.
    ‘The standard this evening has been very high.’ He coughed. ‘I will send the full list of girls invited to take non-speaking parts to your headmistress tomorrow, but for now I
would like to see the following people for second readings so that I can assign the main parts: Daisy Walker, Grace Duckworth, Emmi Bains and River Armstrong.’
    Yes . I was up for one of the female speaking parts. But which one would I get? There was Juliet, of course, plus her nurse – sort of like a nanny from when she was a child –
and her and Romeo’s mothers. At least I knew I had one of them.
    One of them.
    One of them wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to be a boring mother or a sensible nurse.
    I had to be Juliet.
    Everyone was chatting again. I glanced across at Emmi. Her lips were pressed firmly together. She wanted it too. I knew she did. More than she’d let on.
    ‘Wow. I can’t believe it,’ Grace squealed, hurling herself at both of us. My plastic cup of orange juice tipped up against my jumper.
    ‘Oh, no,’ I said.
    Grace leaped backwards. ‘Oh, sorry, Riv. I’m really sorry.’ She started dabbing at the dark grey stain on my jumper with her sleeve.
    I wrenched it away. God . Now I was going to have to read with a big clumsy mess down my front.
    ‘D’you want me to show you where the bathroom is?’ James Molloy was back, smiling, his eyes flickering over to Emmi even as he spoke to me.
    I nodded a grateful ‘yes’ and slunk off after him.
    ‘I’ll see you in a minute, River,’ Grace called plaintively after us.
    ‘Great. You can prepare something else to chuck at me when I get back,’ I muttered under my breath.
    James laughed. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said pleasantly. ‘No one’ll notice.’ He paused. ‘Though I suppose you could take off your jumper. Er . . . I mean . .
.’ His face went red and he strode ahead a couple of paces.
    I rolled my eyes at his white-shirted back.
    It took several minutes to reach the girls’ bathroom. James explained, blushing furiously, that there was only one in the whole school – as there weren’t any girl pupils. Then
I took a few more minutes to rinse off my jumper and check my make-up. I wasn’t wearing much. Just a bit of mascara and lipgloss. I tried not to look too closely at my face – I
didn’t need my confidence knocked any further.
    We hurried back to the common room. My hands were shaking again – I didn’t want to be late on top of everything else.
    Mr Nichols, Ms Yates and the girls from my school had been joined by four boys, all standing in a row against the wall beside Mr Nichols. My heart was pounding so hard it was practically bumping
against my ribs. All the boys looked up as I walked in, but I kept my eyes on the floor, then glanced over at Emmi.
    She smiled encouragingly. She looked irritatingly at ease.
    Mr Nichols ran his hand through his slick dark hair and started organising the readings. He got Grace to read Lady Capulet – Juliet’s mother – with a boy with red hair, then
asked her to try the Nurse, with me as Lady Capulet.
    We didn’t read much – just a few lines at a time. Mr Nichols kept switching the boys around and asking each of us to take different female parts – I completely lost track of
who had read what. All I knew was we hadn’t got to Romeo or Juliet yet.
    Then, at last, Mr Nichols called over to a tall, dark-haired boy who’d been lolling against the wall at the end of the row.
    ‘Flynn. Come and read with Emmi,’ he barked.
    The boy loped towards us. Though he didn’t look up, there was something about him that commanded the room, that made you watch him.
    He was Romeo. Had to be.
    ‘Act 2, Scene 6,’ Mr Nichols said with a flourish. ‘Right,