Read Online The Juliet Spell by Douglas Rees - Free Book Online Page B

said. “You learn fast.”
    “He does. He’s already not the same boy he was this morning.”
    Edmund beamed. “If there’s one thing being a player will teach ye, it is how to acquire new knowledge swiftly. Come, sister. Let me show ye what I’ve kenned today.”
    “Sister.” Oh, no, no, no, no. Got to do something about that.
    “Follow me unto the waiting stage,” I said. “But don’t call me sister. People around here know I’m an only child.”
    “Ah, ye’re right,” Edmund said. “I must call ye cuz, then.”
    Better than sister at least.
    The walk across campus amazed him. He stared at the
    thousand students coming and going, laughing and shouting, heading for cars or buses, heading home on foot.
    “There are so many of ye, boys and girls together, and so many different kinds and colors. ’Tis as if all Europe, Africa and the Indies have congregated here. There’s been nothing like it since the world began, I vow.”
    “That’s basically what’s happened,” I said. “Plus, we’ve got a few other kinds you haven’t heard of yet.”
    “And the girls are so lovely. Ye all have all your teeth.”
    I laughed because what he said surprised me. But I had no.ticed that Edmund was missing a tooth or two. Fortunately, they were not involved in his smile.
    “Lovely,” he said. “Ye are all lovely.”
    “Careful, Edmund. Or you’ll have half the school hitting on you. Some of the guys, too.”
    “Hitting me? For praising their beauty?” Edmund said.
    “Hitting on you. You know—trying to get to know you way better. As in, carnally.”
    “It is like London, then,” Edmund said. He smiled, and I wished for a second that his smile did have a few teeth miss.ing where they showed.
    We crossed the lobby and entered the sweet darkness of the theater. I saw Drew and Bobby down front, and a couple of other guys that I didn’t already know. There were some new girls there, too. I hoped they were not there to read for Juliet, or that if they were, that at least they couldn’t speak English. Anyway, we had some new blood for Gillinger to shed.
    Tanya Blair, the plump blonde senior who was Gillinger’s assistant director, came toward us with her clipboard. “Here. Fill this out quick,” she said, handing Edmund a tryout sheet. Then she leaned her face into mine. “Gorgeous. If he tries to leave, tackle him.”
    “Right,” I said.
    I handed Edmund my pen and showed him how to click the little button to make the point appear.
    He gasped when he touched the pen to the paper and the ink flowed. “If Will had had one of these he’d likely have written six folios.”
    But even if Edmund’s pen was modern, his writing was as old-school as it gets. I watched as he filled out the form in a style that went back more than four hundred years.
    NAME: Edmund Shakeshaft.
    AGE: Sixteen, near seventeen.
    EDUCATION: I did attend the grammar school at Strat.
    ford.
    HEIGHT: near six feet.
    WEIGHT: Ten stone and two pound.
    HAIR: Yes.
    “They mean, ‘What color?’” I whispered.
    Edmund added, “Of a reddish hue.”
    SKIN:
    “What should I put down here?” he asked me.
    “Say, ‘Ruddy’,” I told him.
    PREVIOUS CREDITS:
    “And what does that mean?”
    “What other parts have you played?”
    So, next to PREVIOUS CREDITS, Edmund wrote “I did enact the part of Wagner in a Doctor Faustus which the Lord Admiral’s Men did present privily to divers gentlemen of worship Martinmas last. I did perform also First Citizen, a Welsh Lord and Second Assassin in Ye Tragedy of Caratacys. Not long ago, I perform’d Doctor Pinch in Ye Comedy of Errors, and smaller parts, as well.” He went on and listed about fifty plays. Toward the end he put “The Tragedy of Ro.meo and Juliet, in which I did enact Juliet. That is all I can recall now, but there have been more.”
    “You know Gillinger is never going to believe you,” I said. “No one would believe you.”
    “And what is a Gillinger?”
    “The