Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen by Dyan Sheldon

was really going on, but she wasn’t a fool. Act Three featured Mrs Higgins. By now all of us knew that the only way you could get Carla to shut up when I was on stage and she wasn’t, was to change the scene.
    You could hear a sigh that was half relief and half frustration ripple through the auditorium.
    “Jesus, we’re going to have to start rehearsing our scenes in secret,” Professor Higgins muttered as Carla got out of her seat.
    Colonel Pickering snorted.
    Personally, I wouldn’t have minded rehearsing every scene in secret, especially the ones where Carla and I appeared together. When we were on together, she did everything in her power to throw me off or steal my scene. She’d change lines, she’d forget to cue me, she’d stand in such a way that the only thing anyone in the audience could see was the top of my head.
    Both Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering smiled as though their dearest wish had just come true when Carla pranced on to the stage. Nobody said anything to Carla’s face that wasn’t a compliment. Not and lived to tell the tale.
    It’s true that – except for Carla, who addressed me stiffly, as if I was sitting on her coat or something – everyone in the cast was friendly towards me from then on, but outside rehearsals the Big Freeze continued for weeks. Only in maths, where Sam Creek made a point of talking to me at great length about the intricacies of the internal combustion engine, was there any kind of real warmth.
    Ella and I were getting oddly used to the Big Freeze, to tell you the truth. In fact, Ella said that she almost enjoyed it because it took all the stress and strain out of having to be interested and friendly to people you felt neither interested in nor particularly friendly towards. Since I have never felt the same obligation as Ella to be nice to absolutely everybody, I didn’t feel the same relief, but I actually didn’t mind it either.
    And then, as suddenly as the explosion of a terrorist bomb, things changed.
    We were walking to our first class, and Tina Cherry smiled at us as she passed with a pack of her lesser friends. Because Tina smiled, the rest of them smiled, too.
    Again, this doesn’t sound like a big deal. So some girl you’ve seen practically every school day for the last year smiles at you, so what? So something had happened, that’s so what. Tina did what Carla Santini did, or what Carla Santini told her to do. If Tina was smiling, something was up.
    “I wonder what brought that on,” I mused, glancing over my shoulder to make sure that Tina wasn’t sneaking up behind us, brandishing a knife. I’d read my Shakespeare. I knew all about the daggers in men’s smiles.
    “I don’t know, but I don’t like it,” said Ella.
    We turned the corner and walked into Marcia Conroy and her boyfriend of the week. Carla Santini and her friends go through guys the way someone with a bad cold goes through tissues. What gets me is that even though everybody knows this, there’s always another guy right behind the last one, waiting to be picked up and dumped in almost one swift movement.
    “Lola,” purred Marcia. “Ella.” She stretched her mouth in a mirthless kind of way.
    We strode past her without a glance.
    “Something’s definitely up,” said Ella. “I just wish we knew what.”
    “I’m sure we’ll find out soon,” I assured her. “Carla, like God, may work in mysterious ways, but she doesn’t have God’s patience.”
    An observation that turned out to be prophetic.
    Carla decided to sit near us at lunch.
    “I’ve been looking all over for you two,” she boomed, catching the attention of anyone who could hear. She dumped her stuff on the table behind us.
    Ella froze in mid-bite, gazing at Carla over her forkful of pasta salad. Everyone else was gazing at Carla, too, but with curiosity, not horror.
    I looked up. “Haven’t you heard?” I asked sweetly. “You’re not supposed to talk to us.”
    You have to hand it to Carla, she has