Standing for Weirdo

Chapter 4

After the lunch break, Josh unglued himself from Stella and headed off for football practice. Ashley also hung back for a while, exchanging smiles with him and, more importantly, with some of his buddies. A new school year required hunting for new prey, I guessed. It would make her late for her own extracurricular activity, but hey, if those were her priorities...

I turned back to mind my business and leave her to hers and was startled at the proximity of a smiling Alex. Call me coward, but as Stella had suggested, I acted as if nothing at all had happened between us.

"Which play do you think we'll pick for this semester?" he asked.

"I hope it's not another Shakespeare. I like the guy, but there's just so many times I can recite his lines before it gets old. What about you?"

"Don't worry. I think Mr. Hedford is done with that Elizabethan frenzy he caught in seventh grade."

"About time!" Stella chimed in. "Took him what, five years?"

"So what's the new fancy?" I asked.

"No idea." Alex opened the door for us girls and then followed to our usual place. "I heard he wanted to do something more... modern."

"Cats!"

Alex and I, no, the whole classroom, turned to look at Stella.

"No. Way." I enunciated slowly to make sure she understood what I felt about her suggestion.

She poked me as soon as everybody's attention slipped back to their own conversations. "You'd be cute with whiskers," she said. "Don't you think, Alex?"

He ducked his head and smiled, poor thing. "Alice's cute in anything she wears."

"What if she doesn't wear anything, then?" She wiggled her eyebrows.

"Guys," I said, a bit more forcefully than I wanted to. "Stop talking like I'm not here."

Both of them said they were sorry. Only one of them looked repentant.

I aimed a kick at Stella's shin under the table and she just giggled.

"Oscar Wilde," a booming voice claimed without preambles, and we turned to see the rest of the theater club members in silence and Mr. Hedford brandishing an old, musty copy of... something.

"What about him?" mumbled Stella.

The professor—doubling as director—sent her a warning glance that somehow managed to catch me as well, even though I had done nothing wrong at all, and then waved his book. Booklet. Whatever.

"This year, the St. Francis theater group will represent one of the most significant works of the acclaimed genius that is Oscar Wilde."

Alex leaned a bit to the side and whispered, "He makes us sound like big shots."

I gave him a mock haughty look. "We are big shots." That got me a smile and damn it, but the guy was considered handsome for a reason. With some effort, I brought myself back to the discussion and forgot about his dimples and pretty, laughing eyes.

"It is the third of his great opuses, but the first for which he gained recognition. Imagine it—he earned more than seven thousand sterling pounds during the first year on stage through royalties! This play, ladies and gentlemen, was a riot. Of course, I know that you would expect any work by Wilde to be ground shaking. I dare say you will not be disappointed." He grabbed a stack of booklets, in way better condition than his own, and handed them over to Ashley. "Ms. Brighton, please give a copy to each of your classmates."

She did, taking her sweet time. When it was our turn, I leafed through, hoping that the title would ring a bell.

Lady Windermere's Fan.