Read Online All the Way by Megan Stine - Free Book Online

toward me, a worried expression on her face. “Oh my God,” she said, plopping down in the seat next to mine. “We should have rented the movie. Guess what?”
    â€œWhat?” I said, although I was already beginning to guess.
    â€œMiss Adelaide isn’t the leading role,” Ariel told me. “I was just talking to Becca Christianson. She’s going out for Miss Adelaide, because she said she knows she doesn’t stand a chance of getting the lead against Natalie and the two other really good singers who are up for it. Sergeant Sarah Brown is the lead.”
    â€œYeah.” I had begun to figure that out. “I learned the wrong songs!”
    â€œMe, too,” Ariel said. “I learned Sarah Brown’s songs!”
    Oh, wow.
    â€œWhat am I going to do?” I whispered desperately. “Now that I’ve read the script, it looks like the part of Miss Adelaide is a joke. She sneezes all the time and sings like she has a cold. Plus she’s been engaged to Nathan Detroit for, like, fourteen years, and he won’t marry her.”
    â€œI know, I know,” Ariel said. “Becca told me. But look at it this way. The competition for the lead is pretty stiff, so maybe it’s better this way. At least maybe you’ll get a part, even if it is a goofy one. And you’ll get to hang around Tyler during rehearsals and everything, even if you don’t get to kiss him.”
    She had a point. A depressing point, but a point.
    I skimmed through the rest of the script, hoping that maybe Miss Adelaide got to kiss Sky Masterson at some point—maybe behind Nathan Detroit’s back?—but no such luck. The story was basically about a bet between Nathan Detroit and Sky Masterson. Nathan bets Sky that he can’t make the next girl he sees fall in love with him, and Sky agrees. The next girl Sky sees is the superuptight, straitlaced Sergeant Sarah Brown, this totally prudish leader of the Salvation Army Mission Band. Sky has to lure her to an overnight trip to Havana, Cuba, or something, and they wind up falling in love.
    Meanwhile, guess what Miss Adelaide does? Nothing. She just sneezes and acts like a loser, begging Nathan to marry her.
    Great.
    Onstage, Mr. Richards was asking each guy to sing “Luck Be a Lady.” A few of the guys were pretty good, but none of them had the voice or charisma Tyler had. As soon as he started to sing, the whole auditorium got quiet. You could feel the chill, like you knew you were in the presence of a star.
    After that, the guys trying out for Nathan Detroit had to sing. Two of them were really funny. I guess it was a comic role, too.
    When the guys were done, Mr. Richards called the girls up one by one, by our numbers. Emily Pendleton went first—this really shy girl who sat in the back of my economics class first semester and never said a word. She was the kind of girl who was pretty if you looked closely, but she didn’t know how to dress, and her hair was sort of dry and shaggy. She stepped to the center of the stage in her baggy gray sweatshirt and screamingly outdated jeans—they totally had the wrong wash—looking like she was afraid she’d fall off the edge or something. She was so totally awkward and uncomfortable, I couldn’t believe she was even auditioning.
    But then Tanya started playing “If I Were a Bell,” and Emily started singing in the most amazingly perfect soprano voice I’d ever heard. Everyone in the auditorium went quiet. We were all dumbstruck. Her voice was just unbelievable—clear, joyous, and pitch perfect.
    When the song was over, though, she turned and practically ran off the stage.
    â€œUh, thank you,” Mr. Richards called to her retreating back. “That was . . . uh . . . lovely.”
    Natalie was next, and she was, as advertised, perfection. Her voice was not quite as good as Emily’s, but she really knew how to sell the song. She paraded up