A Town Called Prairie: Chapter Six

Chapter Six:

Nosebleeds and Golden Fields

Drama Unlimited usually met on the weekdays, so when Monday came around I was at Ms Riley’s after the half day at school was over. This time, instead of meeting in the living room inside the house, the garage was open, revealing a carpet clad stage and garage, with a patchwork of carpet squares all over the floor, ceiling and walls. The soft room reminded me of a psychiatric ward at a hospital.

Surprisingly, I was the first to arrive, Ms. Riley wasn’t even around, but I could hear loud music coming from the house. I sat on the carpeted floor and the next thing I knew, Ms. Riley was asking me if I was ok.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I yawned, “I must have fallen asleep.”

“You do realize that the younger kids don’t get out of school for another hour yet, right?”

“Oh,” I forgot about that, although the high school section had a minimum day, the elementary kids were still in school until 2:30.

I got to my feet and got my backpack and binder together, “Sorry,”

“No, no it’s ok Fl-Lauren.” she corrected herself, “would you like to come inside? I just took a new batch of cookie brownies out of the oven…”

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My grandmother and Ms. Riley were fairly good friends, they used to live right next to each other until Ms. Riley moved a few blocks away, across town, when her husband died and she couldn’t afford to keep her Victorian farmhouse. The town did a fundraiser to help her move, but that was back in the old days when there were 300 people in town and no economic crash.

Ms. Riley’s daughter was actually the person my grandpa wanted my dad to marry, a smart girl who was going to take over the family business, wheat farming. He had high hopes for the two of them, until my dad ran off with the ‘girl from George’s Creek’. I guess Ms. Riley’s daughter really had feelings for my dad because the day of the wedding, she shot herself in the middle of the wheat field.

I heard Ms. Riley was devastated, running out of the church once she heard the news and locking herself in her house for a few weeks. Some people said months even. She eventually came out of it, but once she did, her husband died in a car crash while driving to George’s Creek.

That time she barricaded herself in her house for two weeks.

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All of that took place a really long time ago though, and since then, she’s become the non-official acting teacher in town and replaced my grandmother’s role as ‘everyone’s mom’. If you ever needed help, you could drop by her house any time, day or night and she would take care of you until you went on your way to wherever it was you were going.

She was a really helpful person, and I discovered that when I told her about my plans to audition for a play at the grand theater in George’s Creek.

“it’ll be a lot of work, but if you’re in, I’m in.”

I nodded, “bring it.”

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Lets just say Ms. Riley is a very determined and committed teacher.

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She gave me a short bit of a script (a dialogue, she called it) to read off of and practice with. She started me off with pronunciation.

“Every good actress starts out with pronunciation. You want to o-ver-pro-nun-ci-ate.” She said expressively, waving her hands about. “Got it?”

I nodded and glanced at the script. It was a bit of dialogue from Romeo and Juliet. Of course.

“row-mee-o, row-mee-o…”

“ok, don’t say it like a rapper, from the top.”

I tried rolling the r’s instead.

“Somewhere between rapper and Spanish Señorita, Lauren. Again.”

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Eventually I got it down, the pronunciation and the proper pauses at ends of sentences. At this point, a few of the kids began arriving, sitting on the floor and watching me work on the scrap of dialogue.

Edward showed up with a few little kids who I assumed were his brothers and sister, from the looks of their tanned skin and brown hair. He smiled when he saw me on the stage and just to show off a bit, I walked across the stage, tossing in some overdramatic facial expressions. It was all fun and games.

That is, until I fell off the stage and got a bloody nose.

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I stayed for the rest of Drama Unlimited but spent most of it in the bathroom trying to stem the bleeding. Edward came in and offered to help, but I told him I was ok.

Wow, how embarrassing, falling off a carpeted stage and practically breaking my nose, geez. Despite whom I pretend to be, I am always, and will forever be, klutzy, weak Florentine.

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I went straight up to the attic when I got home and opened the window. It took a lot of effort since it hadn’t been open for quite some time and the rust had just about overcome the hinges, but it eventually wrested open. A cool breeze brought a few of the last fall leaves into the attic, stirring them around in the dust. I stuck my head out the window, feeling my cheeks blush from the cold. Looking around, I could feel chills spreading through me, spilling from my brain into the rest of my body. Everything was cold like the unseasonably icy autumn air. The empty wheat field spread out before me and I missed the golden waves that looked like an ocean of gold every summer.

I leaned on the windowsill and felt the breeze. I was freezing cold, at a point where I should close the window, but I kept it open. I could have sworn I could hear the wheat swooshing in the wind and its plant smell.

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Nothing gold can stay.