Free Dramarama by E. Lockhart

the same time, which ended in disgustingness.
    Theater folk are like this, I realized. Physical right away. Kissy, huggy. Not like my family at all. Theater people will act like your oldest friend when you’ve just met. And they do it even while they’re competing with you.
    That night, there was a dance in the black box theater: sweaty, dark, a blur. Demi got filled with testosterone as soon as he heard “My Humps,” and chased Blake all night. He was surprisingly unslick in his adoration. He pulled Blake outside to look at the “incredible moon” and gyrated next to him with ridiculous abandon. As if he were marking his territory. All the gay boys were eyeing the two of them, as well as the girls who were thus far clueless as to their orientation.
    I danced, and danced, and danced. After the agonies and excitements of the day, I just moved, letting the music go through me. I danced with Demi, Lyle, Iz, Nanette, Candie, and even Blake. I danced by myself when other people got tired.
    I didn’t dance with Theo, though. When I finally spotted him, he was holed up in one corner, talking intently to a girl named Bec. A Kristinish brunette with a turned-up nose.
    Bleh.
    Iz, Nanette, and I convened in the girls’ bathroom.
    “You should ask him to dance,” Iz advised. “Guys like it when you ask them. I asked Wolf to dance at a club; did I tell you that’s how we met?” She reached over and picked up my lip gloss, spreading it on her wide mouth without asking. “My skin is like, so broken out,” she moaned, shoving her face up to the mirror. “It always breaks out when I have auditions.”
    Nanette pulled out gold glitter mascara and put some on her eyelashes, then handed it to me like of course I was going to use it. “We can’t be dancing with the gay boys all night,” she announced. “It’s already been going on too long. If you ask Theo the piano player, Sadye, I’ll ask that guy in the Rent T-shirt.”
    “What makes you sure he’s not gay?” asked Iz.
    “I’ve got no idea. But I’ll find out, won’t I?”
    “I don’t understand why Theo’s all over her now,” I said, going back to the subject of Bec. “One second he’s walking me back to my dorm and practically barging his way in, the next second he’s forgotten I exist.”
    “He’s distracted, that’s all,” said Iz. “Straight guys here get an enormous amount of play. If you want him, Sadye, you’ve got to pounce.”
    “But I pounced earlier today. I shouldn’t have to do all the pouncing. He should pounce me back.”
    “He did pounce you, he tried to come into the dorm room.”
    “But he’s not pouncing now.”
    “Now he’s pouncing Bec,” Nanette put in. “So you have to repounce.”
    I took a deep breath. “I’ll repounce if everyone pounces. Nanette, you do the Rent shirt guy. And Iz, you ask someone, too.”
    “Okay.” Iz was surprisingly open for someone madly in love with Wolf. “I’ll pounce that crew-cut guy with freckles, did you see him?”
    “With the pierced ears?”
    “Yeah.”
    We looked at ourselves in the mirror: Nanette, under five feet and dressed in white jeans and a white shirt, tons of makeup, and a swarm of strawberry hair curling in the humidity; Iz, curvy and broad-shouldered, wearing a red cotton sundress with a black bra peeking out; me, tall, a little androgynous, a lot glittery, in a green T-shirt that said “Natural Blonde” and my brown suede miniskirt. “We look fabulous,” I said. “Let’s pounce.”
    Theo was talking to a different girl from the one before. Well, that was encouraging. At least he hadn’t proposed immediate marriage to Bec. Nanette gave me a slight shove in his direction, and I marched up and tapped his shoulder. “Come dance with me!”
    “Hey, Sadye.” Theo smiled. “Give me a minute.”
    “Okay.”
    He didn’t introduce me to the girl.
    He hadn’t said no. Right? He’d basically said yes.
    But what was I supposed to do? Stand there waiting?
    For how