Eternally North by Tillie Cole Read Free Book Online

performing arts sessions, where I would meet the three
members of ‘Destiny’s Delinquents’, as I had decided to call
them. Looking at the files, they seemed okay. All fifteen to sixteen,
all pretty, and all brimming with a bitchy attitude.
    When I walked into the
dance studio they were already sitting behind their desks, awaiting
my arrival. As they caught sight of me, I could see faces react in
curious surprise at not having the bald Shakespeare teacher they were
expecting, but me, a curvy brunette dolled up to the nines. Got to
love the impact of a hot-pink peplum dress on any occasion!
    “Are you our new
teacher?” asked one of the Motley Crew.
    “I certainly am,” I
confirmed, “and you are?”
    “I’m Sarah Black,”
she answered proudly.
    “Ah, Sarah, yes. How
are you today?”
    “Okay I suppose.
What’s your name?”
    “I’m Ms. Munro.”
    “Where are you from?
You sound weird,” she laughed, trying her best to be condescending.
    “I’m English,
Sarah. That okay with you?” I asked, glaring at her over the top of
the paperwork I was pretending to fill in.
    “Well, err, yeah. I
suppose,” she mumbled, hunching over the desk and looking at me
warily.
    Hard work? She just
shat herself at my stern voice and Ice Queen cold stare!
    “Okay, so who is
Victoria York?” I asked, looking up at the other two girls.
    A raised hand
identified a thoroughly bored girl who looked like she wished that
she was anywhere but there right then.
    “Right, so that just
leaves Boleyn Jones,” I said, pointing in the final Delinquent’s
direction.
    “Yep, that’s me,”
she said moodily.
    “Boleyn? I love that
name. I’ve never heard it as a forename before. Are you named after
Anne?”
    “Yeah, I think so. I
hate it,” she mumbled.
    “Why? You were named
after one of the most famous royals in English history. The mother to
arguably the best monarch England has ever seen. I got to tell you, I love it. If you have any of the spark that your namesake did, you and
I will get along just fine. And I promise that I won’t
behead you if you do something wrong. How’s that sound?” I
teased, gaining a little smirk and a shrug from her.
    “Right, my little
girl band, jump up and go to the costume closet. You have twenty
minutes to put together the best Lady Gaga outfit I’ve ever seen.
We are going to start with a themed movement class, and if we are
dancing to Gaga you got to have a costume to match.”
    “What?” they
screamed in horrified unison.
    “Off you go. Unless
you want to spend your afternoon parading those outfits throughout
the school...?” I threatened.
    At that, they shot out
of their chairs and to the closet, huffing and puffing all the way.
    This was going to be a piece of
cake!
    Over the first term, my
classes went from strength to strength, and my after-school
performing arts group were gearing up to put on their production of Les Miserables . My Moody Triad were, well, less moody and more
open to all things theatre. Even the timid Boleyn Jones was crawling
out of her shell, and consequently making new friends and becoming a
lovely young lady. She would be 'mainstreamed' in no time.
    I had recruited Mandy
Thomas to help cast the parts for the upcoming challenging musical.
We were the Pop Idol panel of The Calgary School of Excellence, and I
had appointed Mandy as our honorary Simon Cowell, due to her
dangerously high-waisted trousers (power trousers, she called them)
and the fact that when Jonathan from Grade Nine had auditioned with a
rendition of One Direction’s ‘What Makes You Beautiful’, she
had stopped him midway-through and told him he was ‘distinctly
average’ and that he ‘should try a more feminine song to suit his
mousey-type vocals’.
    Cut. Throat. Honesty.
    We were nearly done for
the day, and I was slightly concerned that I had not managed to cast
‘Fantine’, the lead female role. The door to the studio creaked
open as we were packing away our things, and Boleyn