Who: Aisha and Coach B What: A revelation When: Friday night Where: Auditorium Rating: SFW
Somehow, it never went away, that tiny sliver of hope when she got an email from her parents. When she'd opened her inbox to see new mail from them, she'd actually hoped for a moment that they'd somehow heard about RENT, that it was going to say they'd been wrong about her... It didn't. Not at all. She read the email twice, and then sat there staring at it for a long time, hardly aware that her eyes were filling with tears. It wasn't until the first tear dripped onto her leg that she seemed to be galvanised; she leapt up, almost knocking her chair over in the process, slammed her laptop shut violently, and ran for the door. Five minutes later, and she was in her car, driving well over the speed limit and praying there weren't cops around to stop her. She was still crying. When she headed into the auditorium, though, she'd got herself under control enough to wipe her eyes and hold herself steady. Her voice still shook, though. "Coach?" she called, looking around.
Coach, as always these last days before performance, was there. But he was surprised to hear Aisha's voice. He looked up from under a platform of the set he was fixing after the night's rehearsal, surprised. "Aisha?" He walked better into the work lights on the lip of the stage. "The other cast's rehearsal's over, if that's what you wanted to see." When he caught a glimpse of her face though, Jack began to seriously doubt that was the case. "What's wrong?"
She swallowed around the lump in her throat, and opened her mouth to tell him it was nothing, stupid. Why had she even thought coming here was a good idea? He was just another dickhead, it wasn't like he'd help... So she opened up her mouth to make some kind of excuse, but all that came out was a sob, and she collapsed up against the stage, hand over her eyes and tears trickling down her cheeks again.
"Woah." Jack had had his fair share of teenage angst falling at his feet in his tenure at this school, so it wasn't completely alien territory for him to jump down from the stage surface beside her and touch her shoulder gently. "Are you okay? No, scratch that, obviously you're not..."
Aisha gasped in a shaky breath, letting out a low, bitter laugh. "Fuck," she whispered, vehemently. "I just fucking... fuck." She bit down hard on her lip, trying to get herself under control. "I'm fucked. I'm just so shittin' fucked."