The Fall Musical Read Free Page B

go from there.”
    â€œBars?” asked Rose Wentworth, a sophomore, peeking over his shoulder.
    â€œMs. Gunderson goes to bars?” someone else asked. There’s always a comedian.
    â€œBars,” Harrison repeated. “Measures. The music between the vertical lines on the page of sheet music.”
    â€œWe’re supposed to have sheet music?”
    It was relentless. And it happened every time. You’d think that at a school like Ridgeport, where half these kids could probably be comfortable on a professional stage, they would know this stuff. Instead of needing to whine, whine, whine:
    â€œNo one ever told us that!”
    â€œCan’t we just, like, sing?”
    â€œCan we rap?”
    â€œThere’s no rap in Godspell , dork! Wait. Is there?”
    â€œDo we have to listen to each other’s auditions?”
    â€œI have to be out of here by four-fifteen for a cello lesson!”
    One . . . two . . . three . . . Harrison counted to calm himself down. “No rapping. You won’t listen to each other—you wait in the hall. And no problem, you can sing a cappella.” Noticing a few blank responses, he added, “That means without sheet music, without accompaniment. All by yourself.”
    He felt a firm pinch on his butt, and then Reese draped her arms around him from behind. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re hot when you’re angry?” she whispered.
    â€œI’m. Not. Angry.” Which was true. He was not angry at that moment. He was other things, like frustrated. And . . . something else. Something that always came over him when Reese pulled stuff like this in public. Because Reese, in fact, was hot, especially when she put her hands on his chest from behind and breathed in his ear, forcing Harrison out of fear of embarrassment to discreetly place the sign-up clipboard in front of his pants.
    â€œCould have fooled me,” she whispered, her breath sweet-scented and warm. He cringed as she ran her fingers through his hair, which was way too thick and never returned to its shape if you messed it up and probably now looked like a brown haystack. “You know, these are normal questions, Harrison. Not everyone is a genius like you. Now calm those fiery black eyes and be cool. You never know where it may lead.”
    She gave his butt a quick pat (to a chorus of dorky “Oooooh”s from the crowd), then slunk up the aisle to an empty spot in the carpeted row between the orchestra and mezzanine seats. There, as if nothing had just happened, she began to stretch.
    â€œThey’re not black, they’re brown ,” Harrison muttered, matting his hair back into shape and trying not to look like an idiot. He did not let himself look at her. Looking at Reese meant trying to figure out what she wanted , and that was too confusing. They had hooked up once during sophomore year. Tame tongues-and-braces stuff at a party. Didn’t talk about it the rest of the year. But Reese had lost the braces and gained oh-so-much-more, and she seemed to want to make up for lost time.
    For show, for real—with Reese these days, who knew? And who had time to think about it when the auditorium was in chaos—dancing and singing in the aisles, push-ups and jumping jacks, loud conversations. Darci, her face twisted into either ecstasy or pain, was yodeling (or something) into a distant corner, right next to Ethan Smith and Corbin Smythe from the a cappella group, who were singing a duet, while Lori the opera singer kept repeating “Bbbbbrrrrrrreeeeee!” in a high-pitched voice, sounding like a sparrow on speed.
    Taming the masses was Brianna’s job. She was good at it.
    Beep. A voice message on his cell phone. Harrison quickly glanced at the screen, which showed the familiar cell number of his dad. Gus Michaels, otherwise known as Kostas Michalakis—patriarch of the Michaels family; renowned proprietor of Kostas Korner: A Gathering Place