Sophomoric by Rebecca Paine Lucas Page B

double As and put a hand on her hip. I think she was trying to borrow Dev’s spotlight and strike a pose. She didn’t have a butt or hips to stick out, which I think defeated the point. Instead, her silhouette was angular, all straight lines and sharp corners.
    “He’s young and strong.” The third girl’s dark hair, which probably weighed more than her body, swayed as she took a step. “There’s kisses for us all.”
    My eyes narrowed at their backs, wishing I could remind them that this was only acting class. It was only for a second. He was now free to distribute his kisses generously among the female student population, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it except to prove to him that I didn’t care.
    Even though we seemed over, the rumors were still going strong. Even my counselor had called me in for a chat about my nonexistent sex life.
    Again, if I’m going to get yelled at for having sex, I’d like to at least shed the scarlet V.
    From what the seniors were now saying about the redhead, I had a feeling the only scarlet thing she had was her hair. That just made me worry more when I saw her talking to Dev all the time. It also didn’t help that she was now walking toward him as he slouched and smirked and watched her approach. Red had decided to follow the stage directions to “lick her lips,” more like the Vampy Vixens Alec and Dev probably had in their room than the vampire in the script.
    The script said that Harker was supposed to stumble and fall back before the sucky-bis approached. Instead, before Dev could move Red had dropped to her knees on the dusty stage in front of him. The senior guys behind me were high-fiving and cheering. Our theatre teacher was probably crying in the tech booth, waiting for appropriate mood lighting. I stared at Dev and couldn’t help wondering what he was thinking as she looked up at him. Wondering if I looked like that. Wondering who else had looked like that or if this freshman would ever look like that. I couldn’t see her face.
    If this had been a novel, his eyes would have met mine over her head and he would have laughed to reassure me, but he didn’t. Instead, he just sat on the box that was supposed to be tripping him, leaning back on his hands, looking down at Red.

14.
    “Are we there yet?” You would think Cleo knew the way to her own house. Evidently not. I couldn’t blame her for wanting the car ride to be over, though. The fields out every window took monochromatic monotony to new heights. The Midwest in the fall is boring, dull and dying. It is stretches of flat brown all the way to a gray horizon and ramshackle houses and concrete silos every few miles.
    Amie had turned the volume on her iPod all the way up half an hour ago. The guys had elected to go in a separate car, so there was nothing to break the individualized storm clouds hanging over synthetic seats that held the tangy smell of stale smoke and a dingy interior covered in dirt and dust. Lane lines ticked off the miles disappearing under the wheels moving far above the speed limit, weaving around semis and minivans and the occasional SUV.
    “Forty minutes, Cleo.” Cleo’s twenty-one-year-old brother, Evan, was our babysitter for the weekend, something I’d conveniently forgotten to tell my parents. When they had finally gotten in touch with Cleo’s parents, it had been a two-minute conversation as Mr. and Ms. ran out the door to a cocktail party. I think the whole thing had just stunned my parents. Fortunately, they were still willing to send their permission, provided there was an adult to sign me out. I also hadn’t mentioned that the age requirement was twenty-one. Evan’s state university was between our school and their beach house, so after he had signed everyone out, we had piled into his Mustang for the two-hour drive.
    We passed brief bursts of civilization before returning to the flatness of agro-off-season. An artist might find something to ponder, but I was reduced to