The Trouble With Flirting by Claire LaZebnik Read Free Book Online Page B

Night ? You know—to play Viola and Sebastian.”
    “That would have totally rocked!”
    “No kidding—I’d have definitely gotten the lead then. Charles is my director,” Julia adds, turning to me. “He’s a graduate student at NYU.”
    “I think all the directors are graduate students,” Vanessa says. “And they all did this program back in high school.”
    “Jillian was supposed to be in my cast too,” Julia says. “Our missing fourth roommate.”
    “She still hasn’t shown up?” I say.
    Julia shakes her head and lowers her voice. “Charles saidthere was a sudden death in her family—that’s all he would tell me—and so she’s not coming.”
    “That’s so sad,” I say.
    “I know,” Julia says, and Vanessa nods and we’re all quiet for a moment because it feels like we should be.
    Vanessa breaks the silence. “This may be a heartless question, but does it matter that your cast will be short an actor?”
    “Charles said he’ll figure it out. He said he’d have most of us doubling up on roles anyway—I guess he’ll just have more of that. Oh, there’s Alex.” She waves at her brother, who’s entering the common room side by side with Isabella.
    “I’m so excited!” Isabella says when they reach us. “I love Measure for Measure ! I feel like someone just handed me a gift. And it doesn’t suck that Alex is in my cast.” The two of them bump fists. “Oh—there’s one of my roommates. I have to ask her something. Be right back.” She slides away. Gracefully, of course.
    “Hey, Franny,” Alex says, noticing me now that Isabella’s gone—or at least that’s what it feels like. You only really notice the moon when the sun goes down, right? “What have you been up to?”
    “Not much.” I tilt my head back so I can look up at him. “So you’re in Measure for Measure too? I don’t know anything about it.”
    “It’s an amazing play.” Then he says to Julia, “Shove over.” She makes a face at him, but she and I both slide down so he can squeeze in at the end. He turns back to me. “It’s,like, the coolest Shakespeare play of all, and I’m not just saying that because I’m stuck with it. I wrote a paper on it last year for English.”
    “What’s it about?”
    He describes the story to me, and it’s so noisy in the room now with everyone piling in there that I miss half of what he’s saying, but I don’t care because I’m just enjoying the fact that we’re crammed tightly together on the sofa, our legs pressed against each other, and he’s paying attention to me and me alone.
    I know it’s silly, my getting all swoony and ridiculous over a guy so quickly, but it’s not really a sudden thing. You don’t forget the first guy who gave you a flower (even if it was from his sister’s bouquet and he never said a word about it, just handed it to you and walked away), especially if you already thought he was kind of sweet and dreamy.
    You know those little ducks that imprint on the first thing they see walking by them after they’re born and will just follow that animal around, whatever and whoever it is? I think maybe when I first started noticing boys, Alex was the one I noticed first, and I got a little imprinted on him. And now that I’m seeing him again all these years later, I have to say I had good taste back in eighth grade.
    I realize I have no idea what he’s been saying for the last couple of minutes—I’ve been too busy gazing dreamily into those handsome blue eyes—so I drag my attention back to his words. “. . . but the good characters do some really lousythings in the play and some of the supposedly bad characters are totally likable, so it’s hard to know who to root for. At the end, someone says we should only be judged on our actions, not on our intentions or beliefs—but it’s not clear whether Shakespeare actually believes that or not.”
    “I don’t know,” I say. “It seems like if you shoot at someone and miss, you’re still