Read Online Can True Love Survive High School? by Natalie Standiford - Free Book Online Page B

soon as she could. She smiled and nodded to let them know she was on their side. Jane turned away.
    From the beginning, Jane had been aloof. Mads was starting to think Jane would never confide anything to her. But if she didn't, Mads was putting herself through this torture for nothing, and that was too terrible to think about.
    “I want to be free—as a butterfly.” This time Audrey whispered the end of the sentence.
    “Um, okay, let's take a fifteen-minute break,” Charles said.
    The cast noisily pushed their chairs from the table. M.C. came up to Mads and Audrey and hugged them. “Isn't this is exciting? It's so exciting! People are actually speaking the words that I wrote! I can't stand it!”
    She ran after Charles to ask him something. The grin on her face looked tense and frozen.
    “Bet you twenty bucks she cracks by opening night,” Mads said.
    “You're on,” Audrey said. “Mama!” she called, running after M.C. Both M.C. and Kendall turned around.
    “So that's your little sister, huh,” Damien said.
    “Yep,” Mads said.
    “And M.C.'s your mom?”
    “That's what it says on my birth certificate.”
    “They're cool. So what happened to you?” Mads was startled for a second—who was he to insult her? He hardly knew her. But the grin on his face told her he was just joking around. “Guess you take after your dad.”
    “At least my parents didn't name me after a psycho,” Mads teased, thinking of an old movie she once saw about a crazed kid named Damien.
    “No, they just named you after a president. Or an avenue. Or a basketball arena in New York.”
    “What's wrong with that?”
    “Better watch out,” Damien said. “They named me Damien for a reason.” He made a face and pretended to grab at her neck. Instead he tickled her, and Mads laughed.
    “You all ready for our big lip-lock, Teen Mariah?” he asked. Damien was cute, a college freshman, but he could pass for younger. So he was playing both Teen Buck and Grown-up Buck. Mads would have to kiss him at the end of Act I. Looking him over, she decided not to mind.
    “I'm ready, but can you handle it, Buck?” she said.
    “Don't worry about me. I've got the kissing thing
down
,” Damien said.
    “Madison?” Jane came over to them. “Don't take offense but I think your mother is losing it already.”
    She pointed into the wings, where M.C. was hyperventilating and Charles was helping her sit down. M.C. leaned against the curtain, breathing easier now.
    “Is everything all right?” Jane said.
    “She's just the anxious type,” Mads said.
    “I'll say,” Jane said. “And what's with your sister? Act much?”
    Jane clearly had no fear of offending Mads anymore. Mads decided to take it as a sign of confidence in her. Straight talk.
    “She's a big ham. We're just lucky the theater isn't doing a musical.
Annie
would be especially deadly,” Mads said.
    “I know the type,” Jane said. “My boyfriend is a big show-off. He'll do almost anything for attention.”
    Aha. This was what Mads had signed on for. Although she already knew Sean liked attention. But it was interesting to hear Jane say it this way. Almost as if she were putting him down. Just a little.
    “Really?” Mads said, as if she didn't know.
    “Oh yeah. He's got copies of every video his mother ever shot of him, lined up in chronological order on his bookcase. If you go to his house he makes you watch them. It's pretty funny. Here's little Sean getting potty-trained, here's little Sean learning to swim, here's little Sean modeling his new school clothes …”
    “Talk about ego,” Damien said.
    “He's not embarrassed about it at all,” Jane said. “I mean, he has no sense of irony. It's endearing, in a way.”
    “Till you get tired of it,” Damien said.
    “And he's superstitious,” Jane said. “Do you know that on the day of a swim meet he
has
to wear these goofy boxer shorts with candy canes on them? Because he wore them the day he won some big meet. If he can't