Page 71 of The Wrong Prom Date

I thought she was being a little optimistic on that front, but she told me to leave it with her. I wanted to trust that she could fix this, but I left her office feeling completely defeated. No matter what magical rabbit Miss Appleby pulled out of the hat there was no way that rabbit could give even half the performance that Liam would have.

It wasn’t until the end of lunch that I found out who the unlucky replacement for Liam was. Evan hadn’t been in the cafeteria all break, but I caught sight of him leaving Miss Appleby’s office as I headed to class. He was as white as a sheet, and his eyes were wide with fear. It didn’t take a genius to guess he’d been the one hit by a casting bombshell.

I rushed over to him, and it took him several seconds to focus on my face. There was a stunned and fearful look in his eyes that only confirmed I’d guessed correctly. “You’re playing Beast, aren’t you?”

He nodded, at a loss for words for the first time in his life. His eyes flicked toward Miss Appleby’s door, and he pulled me down the corridor a little farther as if he didn’t want her overhearing what he had to say.

“How the hell am I going to learn all of this in a week, Teags?” he hissed. His voice was slightly hysterical, and my fun-loving friend was nowhere to be seen. I’d never seen him freak out this way before, and it didn’t give me much confidence that he could handle taking on the role.

“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,” I tried to tell him.

Evan quickly shook his head though. “If I don’t do it, she’ll ask Todd. I can’t let him get the lead role over me. I’d never hear the end of it.”

“Evan, that’s crazy. So what if Todd gets the role instead? It’s completely reasonable if you think this will be too much for you.”

Evan scoffed. “You clearly don’t understand what it’s like to have an arch nemesis.”

“And you’ve clearly lost your mind if you think that beating Todd is a good reason to take on all this extra work. You don’t have to do this.”

He looked me deep in the eyes as he shook his head once more. “I do, Teags. This play means the world to you. I can’t let you down.”

My heart fluttered at how much he cared, but I couldn’t let him go through with this just because of me. “Evan…”

“Teags,” he replied with a smile.

“You know I’d understand if you didn’t want to do it.”

He took my hand and squeezed it. “I know, but I’ve made up my mind. Just tell me you’ll help me learn the part.”

“Of course, I will. I’ll work with you day and night for the next week if you need it. Don’t worry for one second. If you want to do this, I’m one hundred and ten percent here for you, and we’ll make the play amazing.”

“Good.” His face brightened, and I was glad to see I’d eased some of the tension that had been gripping him since he’d left Miss Appleby’s office. Unfortunately, a little optimism wasn’t going to lessen the big task ahead of us.

“I still can’t believe Liam did this to us,” I said. “I feel so betrayed.”

Evan pulled me under one arm and hugged me. “Sometimes these things just don’t work out, right? He was only ever going to be here for a short time.”

“I know. I just wish he hadn’t left us in such an impossible position with the play.”

“You said yourself it’s going to be amazing,” Evan replied. “And it will be, you’ll see.” Suddenly, he was the voice of optimism and reason, but it was a little hard to believe his words when only moments ago he’d been so worried. We had a lot of work to do in a short amount of time, and until we started rehearsing and I knew how much practice Evan needed, I wasn’t going to be reassured.

25

Teagan

The first rehearsal with Evan playing Beast wasn’t a complete disaster. It wasn’t exactly promising though either. He’d clutched his script the entire time, and I couldn’t stop comparing his performance to Liam’s. I knew it would get better once he’d memorized all of his lines, but I was worried that simply wouldn’t happen in time for our performance. The play was set to open on Wednesday night next week, so we only had a week and a half to get Evan up to speed. It wasn’t nearly long enough.

I worked with Evan every day before and after school. We even ran lines with each other between classes. He planned to be off script by rehearsal on Thursday, which would be just under a week from the opening night. I hoped that once he put his script down we could start to focus Evan’s efforts on developing his character. But, when Thursday came, I began to feel my hopes for the play’s success slipping away. Evan was doing the best that he could without his script, but he still struggled with most of his lines and kept forgetting his entrances.

It didn’t help that we’d had to replace Evan’s role too, so Eli was also struggling with his performance of Gaston. I could barely watch the rehearsals when I wasn’t on stage. Seeing the mess our play had become made me want to cry.

At the end of our Thursday rehearsal, Miss Appleby asked me to stay behind. I had a feeling she was going to deliver the blunt news that the play would have to be canceled. At this point, I wasn’t sure if I even cared. Surely, it would be better to cancel the play than to put on a performance that would only embarrass us?

“What’s up?” I asked Miss Appleby as I came to stand before her.

“I have some bad news,” she said. “The talent scout I told you about isn’t able to make it to our performance next week.”

I waited for disappointment to flare up inside me at the sound of yet another setback, but this had been a week of bad news, and at this point I was almost glad. Given the state our play was in, I wasn’t sure I wanted anyone to see it, let alone a talent scout. It was nowhere near the caliber of performance our class was capable of and even my own acting had become lackluster due to the amount of mistakes in every scene. I didn’t want to blame Evan, because it really wasn’t his fault we were in this mess, but it was hard to do a good job when your costar didn’t know the blocking and kept forgetting their lines.

---