3 MARCH, WEDNESDAY, AFTERNOON
I didn't have to worry about anyone overhearing Henry yelling (at me) outside the Black Box, there wasn't anyone inside. Just Fluffy and EJ, sitting at the back of the audience with their feet hanging over the back of the chairs in front of them. Why were all the guys around me incapable to sitting upright on these auditorium chairs?
"Hoi hoi! You're back!" EJ bounced up immediately, "I was getting bored!"
"Why are you two still here?" I asked before I remembered that EJ and Fluffy wouldn't have parents to meet at the multipurpose hall.
No one to tell them they did great or how proud they were of them. No one who'd be completely biased and think that they were the biggest star on the stage of the best performance of the year.
"You were amazing today!" I declared to my adopted wolves.
Fluffy beamed, "Girls usually only tell me that after...oooff!"
Because Ki hit him, a hard backhanded whack in the stomach, all the while smiling like a flower to the sun, "Thank you, goddess."
"Yes, thank you." Fluffy straightened again.
Henry snorted and then laughed. What?
"I was pretty amazing wasn't I?" EJ seemed to be considering it, and then he made a stupid kissy face and wriggled his butt, "I wonder if all the guys in school have fallen in love with me? Imagine their heartbreak when I find out that the cute redhead in the show was ME?"
And then he burst out laughing as in bounced from one foot to the other, "Do you think they'd all cry their hearts out over me?"
EJ seemed to take great glee in the prospect of breaking the other boys' hearts.
"They'd cry a river over you." Henry smirked sarcastically.
Fluffy smiled, "The girls might realize you're cuter than they are and stop liking you too."
Suddenly EJ stopped bouncing about, his eyes widened dramatically, "WH...WHAT????"
And he dropped to his knees and grabbed his head, "Noooooo....."
EJ could be really dramatic sometimes.
Beta Pete came in at this moment. He took pause at EJ crumpled on his knees in front of the rest of us, "I beg your pardon, alphas. I did not mean to interrupt."
Eh? I looked about. What did he think he was interrupting?
At this moment, Fluffy suddenly dropped to his knees, his face to the floor, "Please punish me too, Pretty Alpha. I was as much at fault as EJ!"
This was true, because neither of them was at fault for anything, except for being clowns.
"NO! It was my fault! Punish me!" EJ immediately jumped up to the spontaneous role play, and then he quickly dropped back down to his knees, "I mean, please punish me, Pretty Alpha!"
I found myself just staring flabbergasted at the two clowns kneeling face to the floor at my feet. I looked about for help, but Henry was laughing so hard he nearly fell off his chair. (That's for leaving your feet hanging from the back of the front seat!). Ki was smiling his usual smile and I couldn't quite read it. I guess he was going to stay neutral until I indicated my intentions.
Beta Pete looked quite horrified at the scene playing out in front of him, but he managed to keep a straight face.
Meanwhile, Fluffy and EJ remained bowed against the ground next to each other. EJ was shaking - it almost look like he was crying to the untrained eye, but to a pup often in mischief, I could tell immediately that he was just stifling his laughter.
The clowns! I should've just punished them - just to teach them a lesson!
But I was really too shocked, and evidently not as good at improvisation as I had thought I was, because I only managed a rather dazed, "It's okay. Just get up."
(Even as I write this, I cannot deny regretting the missed opportunity.)
"Hoi, hoi! Thank you, Pretty Alpha!" EJ jumped up from the ground, suddenly revived, "Let me kiss thy hand!"
"No." My answer was immediate. I also put both of them behind my back, for safe measure.
"Then I'll kiss your feet!" EJ knelt in front of me.
"No!" This time I flared. WTH? Like my shoe? But that's yucky!
"Perhaps we are only worthy to kiss the ground she walks on." Fluffy suggested with his usual smile.
"Okay!" EJ declared.
"NO!!!" I pretty much yelled. Did they not smell the carpet just now? That wasn't a kissable surface. In fact, it was a hundred times yuckier than the bottom of my shoe - having wiped a hundred other shoe bottoms in its lifetime.
At this, the two guys burst out laughing. Henry too. For someone who was upset with his dad and yelling at me not a few minutes ago, he was enjoying himself.
Ki remained standing next to me with his usual smile. Beta Pete was probably the only other person who looked as bewildered as I felt.
WTH? They were messing with me? I seriously flared now, but Henry was done with the joke and had moved on, "Pete, report."
Beta Pete looked surprised at suddenly being called on.
"You're here to report something, right?" Henry prompted impatiently.
"Ah, yes, Alpha." Beta Pete bowed, "The pizza is here, and the recording of the play this morning is ready to play."
Wait, we had a video? I put the two and two together, "We're going to watch our play and eat pizza?"
"Yes, goddess." Ki nodded, "Pete and I have organized a little after-party for the students. I remembered some of my fondest memories from my high school days included the theater production after parties, and I thought it would be a meaningful event to include. Officially, it's the production debrief though. I packed some chocolate eclairs in your lunch box for you to share with your friends."
Oh. Ki was THE BEST!
"Ki you're the best!" I told him. I could feel my grin stretch across my face.
"She said we were amazing, but Ki is still the best." Fluffy sighed sadly to EJ.
"You two are still a hundred years too early to compete with me." Ki informed them with his usual smile. The guys laughed again and then Fluffy and EJ were sent to the school gate to collect the pizza.
After that, the other kids got back from meeting their parents. Jasmine's littlest sister had come too because she was still too little to go to school. Jasmine showed us the picture her sister drew for her. It was very abstract and yellow because that was her favorite color - her sister's not Jasmine's.
"Is it a cloud?" Fluffy asked.
"No, it's obviously the back of Fluffy's bedhead!" EJ announced.
"A pile of hay?" Marcus hazarded.
I think the guys were giving the two-year-old too much credit here. Jasmine, however, turned her paper over to consider the artwork with a new perspective, "It kind of looks like a yellow hill."
A yellow hill...
{They would kiss upon the rolling hills of gold.} Boo prompted.
And of course, I remembered, and I flushed red.
"Are you okay, Sam?" Jasmine looked concerned,"You looked flushed."
"The room's getting too warm." Henry complained, "Someone go turn down the thermostat! It's already Spring, you know."
Yeah. That was exactly it. The thermostat was turned too high was all.
Excepting this momentary bout of secret embarrassment, the after party was now my new favorite memory of my time in Winderhill. It was fun. We ate pizza and watched the video recording of our play. I had no idea our play was so fun to watch - but mostly because every time one of us stepped out on stage for the first time, the rest of us would cheer and clap. It was also funny because when Horneo took out his phone to indulge in a private moment, I told the guys he should have been called Porneo and they all laughed. EJ laughed till he fell off his chair and onto the aisle. Which was totally funny in itself because this part of the play wasn't supposed to be funny. So the entire Black Box laughed at EJ.
Speaking of EJ, I was really surprised. I mean, I knew Nerd was monkeying behind Bulliet every time my back was turned, but I had no idea how funny it all was until I watched it happen. EJ was hilarious and a perfect foil for Bulliet's angsty emo parts.
At the climax when I flared, the whole Black Box went, "Wooooohhhhhh."
Yup, they were that impressed.
And then they all laughed at the soprano screamer. Henry had nicknamed her "the shrieker". No one could figure out who she was, although it was wildly speculated that it might have been Madam Principal herself.
When the play was over, we gave ourselves a standing ovation, and then someone at the back started chanting, "Encore!"
Ki went up and threatened to really play the video for us all over again. Beta Pete promised to send us a link to download it if we filled in our email address on the clipboard he would leave on the side of the Black Box stage.
After that, Ki got us all to sit in a circle on the stage and share something we learned. Mr D had come in by now, and he stood in the wing, arms folded to supervise the "production debrief."
I learned so much, I had no idea what I could say in just a few words - I mean, was that why "a few words" took so many words for Madam Silvia and Mr D to say?
Henry, whose bad mood had long flown out the window, actually volunteered to go first, "I usually only watch theater from the box seat, so this experience afforded me a glimpse behind the scenes. Blah, blah, blah..."
It was a very correct and theater kind of answer.
I ended up saying that I just felt really lucky to be part of this production and I learned a lot.
I think most of my friends said similar to varying degrees. I mean, how many high school kids "usually watch theater from the box seat"?
But this was a nice feeling, that we managed to pull something like this off by working together.
Ki thanked everyone and summarized all our learning points in his usual charming way, and then invited us to help finish up the pizza and hang out over card games. It was the last hour before the end of the school day anyway. We all cheered.
So I found myself playing "Heart Attack" with my usual gang. Jasmine would scream at every heart attack - sometimes even at the false alarms. She clearly wasn't the shrieker, but my ears started pinging again, but I was getting so used to it, that I tuned it out and forgot about it.
I overheard some of our seniors saying how this was the best after-party they ever had, so I guess I was lucky that the only after-party I've been to happened to be the best one. It also proved my hearing was still intact. Haha.
I was never a "theater person". Unless you counted the skits we did in school and camps, or Savy's Kindergarten production, I've never even been to a real play. But the collective feeling of pride and satisfaction in what was, in our opinion, a highly successful show was just so fulfilling. I guess I was a "let's do something wonderful together" person.
I've always said I wanted to protect my pack's happiness as their Alpha, and I've figured out that it wasn't just about me shielding them from bad things. Today, I am starting to think that it was also about us doing something wonderful together - the personal and collective feelings of the pride and satisfaction in what we learned, accomplished, and developed together was a very happy feeling.