Free Dramarama by E. Lockhart Page A

long? And how far away from where he was talking to the other girl?
    I waited for a minute, about five feet away, but Theo and the girl kept talking. And kept talking. So I started dancing, on the edge of the crowd, figuring Theo could find me when he was free. But before I’d been there twenty seconds, Demi came up and started doing some ridiculous shimmy thing at me, dragging me into the center of the crowd. I shimmied back, and then we did the bump, and when I looked back for Theo—he was gone.
    Later, I saw him talking to yet another girl, and another, and another, and it was pretty clear that he was realizing how few attractive straight boys there were at Wildewood, and that he really had his pick of the litter—and didn’t have to settle for gawky, geektastic me.
    * * *

I STEPPED OUTSIDE to get some air. And there, leaning against a tree, was James/Kenickie.
    We hadn’t been introduced. Iz said he’d come by our dorm, like she’d asked him to, but I had been in Lyle’s room so we never met.
    “That’s a joke, right?” he said, pointing to my T-shirt.
    “Natural blonde?”
    “You’re not really.”
    I shook my head.
    James smiled. “I thought maybe you dyed it or something.”
    “No. I’m as brunette as they come.”
    “I saw you dancing inside.”
    “I’m Sadye—roommates with Iz. She said you were Kenickie last year.”
    He nodded. “They called me Greased Lightnin’ all summer.”
    “I don’t think that’s so bad.”
    “Not as bad as the guy they called Jesus.”
    “From Godspell ?”
    “No, that was the year before. Jesus Christ Superstar . He got into the part a little too much, know what I mean?”
    “I can guess.”
    There was a lull in the conversation.
    “Where are you from?” I finally asked.
    “Somewhere I’d rather not go back to,” he said.
    “I know what you mean,” I answered. “I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours and I feel like I’d die if I had to go back.”
    James chuckled. “There’s not a lot of places like Wildewood.”
    “There’s New York City,” I said optimistically. “There’s Broadway.”
    He looked at me, up and down. Like he was deciding whether I was attractive or not. And then he pounced. “Do you want to dance?”
    “I always want to dance,” I said.
    And so we did, until the lights came up and one of the teachers barked that there were only five minutes until curfew.
    T HE NEXT morning was the Meat Market—otherwise known as Summer Institute Preliminary Monologues and Songs, otherwise known as auditions. They took place in the Kaufman Theater, and Nanette, Demi, and I got there early. We were each given a large paper number and a pin so we could attach it to our shirts. Farrell, Demi’s hall counselor and a voice major at Carnegie Mellon, stood by the door with a clipboard and made sure that our names and numbers matched up properly. “Keep your number through tomorrow!” he barked loudly. “You’re going to need it! Don’t throw it away or you’ll have to have a makeshift one and everyone will know you lost it!”
    When we had all assembled, Tamar taught the whole school an easy jazz combo, and then had us come up in groups of twenty to perform it four times, each time sending the front line to the back so new people could step up. Nanette was number fourteen, Demi was fifteen, and I was sixteen—so we were in the first group.
    Nanette was good. I couldn’t see her much out of the corner of my eye, but I could tell she had years of lessons behind her.
    Demi was his usual ridiculous self, sticking his butt out and wiggling it like a lunatic when he messed up the steps.
    I nailed it—if I do say so myself. We took our seats again, flush with the thrill of dancing to Kander and Ebb (the song was “All That Jazz”) in front of more than a hundred people—and glad to have gone early because now we could watch the meat.
    Blake from Boston was in the next group, and he looked ridiculous.
    “Oh, I have to shut my eyes!”