chapter 7
3 MONTHS LATER
AUGUST
Marlene likes to think that she’s not a jealous person. She typically isn’t. But for some god forsaken reason, Dorcas Meadowes having a girlfriend makes her skin crawl. It’s just infinitely annoying to her. Mary Morehouse is hot. And witchy-looking. And very, very gay. Not the kind of girl that dates a girl like Dorcas.
“Oh my gosh! How did we forget Xeno.” Lily quickly writes his name and draws a purple line to Pandora. The girls (plus James), are making a map. A graph of connections from person to person. The purple means that the two people are dating.
“Lets not forget,” Marlene takes the purple marker from Lily and draws a small line from Mary Mor. to Dorcas.
“Oh right, I forgot about them.” Mary MacDonald says absentmindedly, drawing a green line from her name to Fabian. Green means they dated in the past.
Mary finally broke up with Fabian. She had been unhappy with him for months now.
The doorbell rings, catching the attention of the four friends.
“Food’s here!” James jumps up and runs down the stairs to Marlene’s front entrance.
“Big back.” Mary mumbles under her breath, causing a small giggle to escape Lily and Marlene.
James returns carrying a large bag, grinning from ear to ear. They abandon the markers and map on the living room floor and walk into the dining room to get their food from James.
Marlene can ignore the weird feeling of jealousy still in the back of her mind in favor of giving her full attention to spending time with her favorite people in the world.
~•~
Marlene pulls up to school for tune-up rehearsal a couple days later. She hasn’t even walked into the school yet and she already wants to go home. School doesn’t start until next week but Mr. Cranson always does a rehearsal the week before for students performing in Opera Scenes. Opera Scenes is a show where students perform single songs or scenes from different operas and musicals, hence the name. Sometimes the scenes are in English, sometimes they aren’t. Marlene’s small group scene is in French. Did she have multiple panic attacks about messing up the language when she was learning it by herself? Yes, she did.
She makes her way up the grand staircase to the second floor. The music hallway is almost empty. Only a few students who got there early like Marlene. Marlene is very punctual when it comes to rehearsal. She shows up late to school everyday but rehearsal? She’s there at least 15 minutes early.
She makes her way into the recital hall and sits her stuff down on the chair next to her in the front of the soprano section. People file in. Some excited (sophomores) and some already wanting to go home (juniors and seniors). Freshmen are not welcome at tune-up week because you can’t tune something that hasn’t been built yet. They already have some talent or else they wouldn’t have been able to get in to the school. However, they haven’t been trained yet so in comparison to a sophomore, a freshman sounds like a dying seagull.
“Grab music off the piano!” Mr. Cranson drops a large pile of sheet music. Students rush over to grab it. Marlene comes up taking the last packet of music. Fervono Amori E Danse. Italian. Marlene’s favorite.
Marlene likes Italian because it’s so similar to Spanish that it’s easy for her to sing. She’s been praised for her ability to pick up languages quickly. French and German aren’t difficult anymore now that she’s started learning.
Mr. Cranson immediately starts playing the piano. It’s fast. Marlene loves a fast chorus piece. She picks up the tempo and begins sight reading the music. Fuck. This is really fast. The song finishes and everyone looks around at each other, slightly dazed. “That was horrible,” Mr. Cranson states. “Let’s get to work.”
~•~
Three hours later, rehearsal is over and the piece is polished. Marlene packs up to go but she wants to talk to Mr. Cranson before she leaves. She walks up to the piano where he’s still sitting.
Someone else is already speaking to him so she leans on the piano and waits. None other than Dorcas and Regulus approach. “Hey, Marlene!” Dorcas exclaims. “How was your summer?”
“Great! How was yours?” Marlene can play nice.
“Good! I see you’ve gone like, full lesbian over the summer! I love that for you!” What the fuck does that mean?
“I mean you’ve gone more lesbian than me!” Marlene has a big, fake smile on her face. “You have a girlfriend.”
“We broke up actually.” Marlene feels some kind of joy? Obviously it’s because she hates Dorcas and Dorcas’s relationship failed.
“Damn. That sucks.”
“Yeah.” Dorcas shrugs. “Did you get a haircut?”
“Yeah. Yesterday.”
“Looks good. I love a wolf cut. I got to go but I’ll see you around!”
“Thanks! Bye!” Marlene waves and spins around to talk to Mr. Cranson.
“I was just wondering when we’re going to run the small scenes.”
“We’re going to do some of them tomorrow. What’s your scene?”
“Lakmé. The Flower Duet.”
“Oh. The French piece.” Mr. Cranson nodded in recognition. “We will probably do that one next Wednesday. In our first class.”
“Ok, great!” What the fuck? Marlene was on the grind learning that music so it was ready for today. Well at least she has it learned. Marlene walks out.
cozy cuties 😘😘
marlene!!: GUYS GUESS WHAT
mary!!: WHAT
marlene!!: Audio Message
Marlene tells the group chat about her interaction with Dorcas.
lily!!: sounds like she was hitting on you.
marlene!!: WHAT
marlene!!: NO SHE WASNT
james!!: i’m with lily
mary!!: ofc you are
james!!: not just because she’s my gf bitch. i actually think dorcas was flirting with marls.
marlene!!: shut up james you don’t know anything
james!!: whatever 🙄