Falling Fast Read Free Page B

instant I knew why. Juliet was basically saying this incredibly intimate, powerful thing about how her love for Romeo was so huge that she couldn’t get her head round the half
of it. And I was saying the lines as if it was just me and him in the room.
    I immediately raised my voice. Way too loud.
    ‘. . . I cannot sum up half my sum of wealth .’
    Flynn jumped back, startled, presumably, at the sudden rise in volume.
    Everyone else in the room laughed.
    Oh God.
    After that it was hopeless. We tried another scene. I stumbled over the lines, then remembered the stain on my jumper and tried to cover it with my copy of the play.
    By the time I finished, Flynn was staring at me as if I was mad and titters of amusement were floating round the room.
    Mr Nichols got Daisy Walker to read with Flynn, then we all trooped downstairs and back onto the minibus.
    I pretended to be cheerful on the way back to school, but inside I was dying. Emmi kept saying that I’d done fine, but I knew she was just being kind.
    I’d made a complete mess of that second reading.
    Because of Flynn. Because of the way he’d looked at me with those intense green-gold eyes. Because he was a brilliant actor.
    I struggled to put it out of my mind, joining in with Emmi when she teased Grace about Darren, then teasing Emmi myself about how much James Molloy had fancied her.
    Neither of them teased me. Which meant, I knew, that I really, really had made a total idiot of myself.
    My one comfort was that Emmi clearly thought I’d screwed up because I was nervous about getting the part, not for any other reason.
    Two days later the four of us who’d been up for speaking parts got called into Ms Yates’s room. She made a big show of saying how we were representing the school
and how she expected us to maintain the highest standards of behaviour whenever we attended rehearsals.
    Blah, blah, blah.
    And then she gave out the parts.
    Grace was Lady Capulet, Juliet’s mother. Daisy was Lady Montague, Romeo’s mother.
    I held my breath.
    And she said it.
    Emmi was Juliet. I was the Nurse.
    The Nurse. Short. Dumpy. Nice.
    Nice.
    My heart sank.
    You can’t fall in love with nice.

 
3
    Rehearsals began the following Monday.
    I got ready for school that morning very carefully, then examined myself in the long bathroom mirror.
    My grey school sweater didn’t cling snugly like Emmi’s jumpers always managed to. It bulged out unattractively over my boobs, then settled into stiff, ugly folds just below my
waist.
    There was no getting away from it.
    I looked fat. Bulky at the very least.
    God , I really was the perfect choice to play Juliet’s ex-nanny or Nurse or whatever she called herself.
    I sighed and stroked mascara up my eyelashes.
    I’d spent a lot of the weekend thinking about Flynn. Wondering about him. He intrigued me – the way he’d made everyone in the room aware of him just by walking across it, the
weird contrast between how bored he’d looked most of the time and then the intense interest in his green-gold eyes when he’d looked at me, like he really wanted to know who I was.
    That look, on its own, made him unlike any boy I’d ever met.
    I was determined to talk to him later. To find out about him. He must be really into the play to speak his lines as well as he did. I could imagine him sitting in his bedroom, hunched up against
his pillows, reading his way through Romeo and Juliet’s love scenes. Just like I had done.
    He probably read all sorts of books. Maybe even poetry. A shiver slithered down my spine. I knew it wasn’t love I was feeling. I didn’t even really fancy him. I was just . . . well .
. . interested.
    Then Emmi’s pretty, flirtatious face flashed into my head.
    Flynn wasn’t going to notice me. He wasn’t going to see past her – the fake Juliet in front of him.
    I put down my mascara and leaned against the long mirror.
    ‘OY. SWAMPY.’ Stone – my younger brother – was yelling from outside the bathroom.
    I