The chaos of the Drama Club's initial week was a dizzying whirlwind of auditions, costume fittings, and the enthusiastic (if sometimes misguided) directives from Ms. Dubois. Mia found herself poring over her script for Hermia, trying to internalize the Elizabethan language, to breathe life into the character's fierce devotion. But the words felt stiff, foreign, refusing to flow naturally from her lips.
"Oh, cross! Too high to be enthrall'd to low!" she muttered to herself in an empty classroom, stumbling over the archaic phrasing. "O, spite! Too old to be engaged to young!" She sighed, frustrated. She needed help. Someone to read lines with, to give her cues, to provide that essential emotional bounce-back.
She looked for James. He was a godsend on the technical team, already knee-deep in schematics for lighting rigs and discussing sound effects with a newfound passion. He seemed completely absorbed, his forehead furrowed in concentration as he analyzed cue sheets. He was busy. Too busy to run lines with her, it seemed.
Mia approached him, clearing her throat. "Hey, James? Any chance you could spare ten minutes? Just to run through this scene with me? I'm tripping over these words like—"
James, not looking up from his intricate diagram, waved a dismissive hand. "Can't, Mia. This lighting board is a beast. If I mess up the gels, we'll have Hermia looking like a Smurf. Ask... uh, ask someone else?"
Mia's shoulders slumped. "Someone else" wasn't James. And "someone else" certainly wasn't Kris. She sighed, feeling a familiar frustration prickling at her. Just her luck. She was going to have to do this alone. Again.
A familiar drawl cut through the air. "Left out again, Princess?"
Mia whipped around to find Kris Windsor lounging in a doorway, a small, knowing smirk playing on his lips. He was in his usual, impossibly expensive casual attire, looking entirely too comfortable for someone who was supposed to be dreading this whole experience. He clearly hadn't bothered to find a private spot to mock her.
"Mind your own business, Windsor," Mia snapped, defensively clutching her script to her chest. "Some of us are actually trying to prepare, unlike those who probably think 'theatre' is just another word for 'nap time'."
He chuckled, a low, irritating sound. "Oh, I'm minding my business. And my business tells me you're struggling. Solo practice? No friend to hold your hand through the scary words?" He pushed off the doorframe, taking a step closer. "Maybe 'Hermia' is a bit too complex for your simple artistic sensibilities after all."
Mia opened her mouth to retort, but before she could unleash her fury, a gaggle of girls, who seemed to materialize out of thin air, descended on Kris. They were the kind of girls who hung around the most popular guys, all fluttering eyelashes and eager smiles.
"Oh my gosh, Kris, you're here!" a girl with an overly sweet voice gushed, practically throwing herself into his personal space. "Are you really auditioning? We heard! You'd be amazing as Demetrius! Or Lysander!"
Another chimed in, "Do you need help with your lines? I'm pretty good at Shakespeare! We could totally practice together!"
They swarmed him, their voices a symphony of fawning compliments and thinly veiled advances. They giggled, they touched his arm, they vied for his attention, completely ignoring Mia, who stood there, script still clutched, watching the absurd spectacle.
Kris, surprisingly, didn't seem to enjoy the attention. A flicker of genuine discomfort crossed his face as they crowded him, their eagerness almost suffocating. He hated being fawned over unless it was strictly on his own terms. But then, his eyes found Mia's, standing a few feet away, her expression a mix of irritation and... something unreadable. And that's when his discomfort morphed into his signature smirk, aimed squarely at her. It was a silent 'look-at-me-and-my-popularity' jab, a taunt in her direction.
"Thanks, ladies, but I'm good," Kris said, his voice smooth, but with an underlying edge that warned them off. He glanced at Mia one last time, his smirk broadening, before turning to dismiss the girls with a practiced ease.
Mia watched him go, her usual bickering response dying in her throat. He didn't like the attention, but he'd used it, wielded it, just to spite her. It was infuriating. And yet... the way he had looked at her, then dismissed them... The lines between genuine annoyance and something else, something subtly charged, blurred a little more. She was pissed, absolutely. But she was also undeniably intrigued. And Kris, for all his public nonchalance, now had a secret project: proving Mia Brown wrong. He had to learn lines. He had to act. And he was going to do it without anyone knowing.