Free Top 8 by Katie Finn Page B

wardrobe and makeup and was one of the sweetest, most even-tempered people I knew. Until she got drunk, that is, on nonalcoholic beer at every cast party.
    â€œOmg Mad,” she said in a stage whisper, appropriately enough. “Are you okay? Everyone is saying you had a breakdown or something. Do you think you can still do the show? Because Sarah was saying you probably couldn’t —”
    â€œNo,” I said, trying not to get frustrated with Ginger. Even though she could be a little bit annoying sometimes and way too chatty, I couldn’t alienate her. She was my closest theater friend.
    The theater kids were nice, but they had far too much of a tendency to start breaking into soulful renditions of Jason Robert Brown songs—in public—for me to be super tight with most of them. And I almost never sat at the theater table at lunch, unless I really felt like joining in on a Sondheim medley. Of course, I’d told my friends and Ginger and maybe some other people my real feelings about the theater kids, but I would never tell them . They were way too emo to handle it.
    â€œI’m fine,” I told Ginger as I dropped my bag in the corner of the green room and fished around for my script. “My Friendverse got hacked, that’s all. I didn’t write any of that stuff.”
    â€œOh,” she said, sitting on the floor next to me. “So did Schuyler Watson really get a nose job? Because I totally thought so, and everyone’s wondering.”
    â€œUm, I’m not sure,” I stalled as I flipped through my script, realizing just how many lines I had and how few of them I’d learned. “I’m actually late for my scene, so —”
    â€œOh that’s okay, I think Sarah’s handling it,” she said cheerfully.
    Great. That was what I had been afraid of. “But I —”
    â€œHi Ginger ,” Mark Rothmann said pointedly as he passed us on his way out the door, not acknowledging me at all.
    â€œWhat was that about?” I whispered to Ginger as soon as he was out of earshot.
    â€œWell,” she said, leaning forward, “you kind of wrote a lot of mean stuff about the theater kids in your Friendverse profile.”
    â€œWhat?” I asked, horrified by how far this hacker’s reach had gone.
    â€œYeah,” she said. “You wrote a blog making fun of the whole emo, black-wearing, reading-Chekhov-for-fun thing. You know, the kind of stuff you’ve told me before. When I saw it on Friendverse, I thought it was kind of strange, but if you were hacked, I guess it makes sense….”
    I tuned Ginger out and looked around the green room (which was actually beige). Sure enough, most of the heavily eyelinered eyes, both guys’ and girls’, were narrowed at me.
    â€œBut I didn’t write any of that stuff!” I protested. “This whole thing is a misunderstanding!”
    â€œI believe you, Mad,” Ginger said. “But do you still think you’ll be able to do the show? Because Sarah said —”
    â€œFelia!” the assistant stage manager called, sticking her head in the classroom.
    â€œHere,” I said, scrambling to my feet.
    â€œWe need you onstage,” she said.
    â€œRight,” I said, grabbing my script and heading to the blackbox, my head spinning.
    This hacker had clearly done their research. Since I didn’t really hang out socially with the theater kids, not everyone knew that I was even involved in all the plays. When I’d told Justin on one of our first dates that I was a thespian, he’d misunderstood me and there had been a lot of confusion that didn’t get cleared up until our makeout session later that night.
    I walked through the lightlock and onstage, where, luckily, my scene hadn’t started yet. Sarah Donner, sitting in the front row in her “rehearsal clothes” — overalls and character shoes — with her long brown hair