Read Online Now You See Her by Jacquelyn Mitchard - Free Book Online Page A

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    Alyssa Lyn was one, and there were three seniors.
    And me.
    When I came back into the hall, Brook Emerson sat me down. He said, “I don’t think I ever saw that scene played that way. Who told you to do it that way?”
    I said no one. I just thought about her really being my age—I had just turned fifteen—and how fifteen-year-old girls really act, which is like they have the world by the . . . I almost said “balls” but said “tail” in time—especially if they’re cute and have a boy they love.
    He said, “You remind me of the young Gwyneth Paltrow, except for the hair. Or Natalie Portman. With a
    little Drew Barrymore and maybe Anne Hathaway.” Those weren’t the actors you saw on People magazine covers. They were actors in real movies. They were kind of old, but they were still beautiful.
    I was about to jump out of my skin. I couldn’t believe he saw that! It was true, but nobody else ever saw that before but me.
    The four other girls read. He thanked them and he said he would post his final choices on the board outside in the morning. He said that callbacks for Lady Capulet and the Nurse and such would be the next night.
    He asked everyone else to leave. I didn’t know what was going on, because this was so unlike any other audi- tion I ever did.
    I could see Alyssa Lyn looking at me like she wished I would catch on fire. But when she read with Logan, it just didn’t go snap, crackle, pop. She sounded limp, like she was already dead. And she sort of looked dead too, when the lights were on her. Pale is great for makeup, but not so much when you don’t have it on. I could see Brook scribbling in his notebook. He kept asking her to go over the same scene again and again. I started praying to Catholic saints. Finally he told her she could sit down. And then he had me and Logan read the scene where Romeo and Juliet are secretly married and they slept together, but he has to run away the next morning for
    killing the guy in the street fight, and Juliet says, “Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day. It was the nightin- gale, and not the lark. . . .” I let myself go, and my teeth started chattering and chattering. I was stuttering like you would if you were in a panic. “‘Yon light is not d-d- day-light, I know it; I. It is some meteor... .’” And then I screamed when I said, “‘Thou need’st not to be gone!’”
    And Logan sort of grabbed me and said, in this way that was almost angry and totally sexy, “‘Let me be ta’en, let me be put to death, I am content, so thou wilt have it so.’”
    We basically forgot Brook was there. We got so into it we were standing there, and Logan was putting his hands all over my neck and my bare arms, and kissing my throat when I put my head back.
    Finally Brook said, “Jesus Christ. Tone it down. I’ll get arrested.”
    I looked out at him, and it was like waking up from a dream.
    “You’ve got it,” he said like someone had hit him. “I couldn’t let anyone else be Juliet, or I would be untrue to myself. I’m going to catch hell for it, though, because you’re just a kid, so you’d better not let me down, or I’ll kick your ass.” I promised I wouldn’t let him down. “Alyssa Lyn can do one of the school shows. Jesus! I never saw chemistry like this on a first read.”
    Logan said, “It’s been there all along, since the first time I saw her.”
    I felt like I was flying.
    Brook got up and said, “I think we have our star- crossed lovers.” He took off his glasses and said to Logan, “I know you can handle it. But she’s a sophomore, Logan.”
    Logan said, “She’s been doing this longer than most of the girls here.”
    Brook got up and shut off the lights on the stage then, and said to us, “Go out the back way. If you run into any faculty, I’m going to have to explain this, and I just don’t feel like it right now. I have to make about fifty phone calls tonight. To my agent and whoever.” Logan told him that he could