Chapter 1
I have always believed that writers are a strange kind of people.
We spend our days creating people who do not exist, giving them names they will never answer to, homes they will never return to, childhoods they never lived, fears they never had, and hearts we break with nothing more than the movement of a pen.
We make them fall in love.
We make them hate.
We make them leave.
Sometimes, we even kill them.
Then we close our notebooks and go about our lives as though we have not just spent three hours destroying somebody who existed only because we decided they should.
I suppose that is what made me so excited about Theatre Workshop.
For once, I would not have to create a character and leave her trapped between the pages.
I could become her.
The thought alone made me smile.
I was a first year English major, which sounded far more impressive when I said it in my head than it probably sounded to anyone else.
English.
Literature.
Words.
Characters.
Stories.
Everything I loved seemed to live inside those four walls, even when the walls were only imaginary.
I was not the kind of student who knew everybody in her class.
I knew faces.
I knew names.
I knew who always came late.
I knew who borrowed notes and never returned them.
I knew who laughed too loudly at the lecturer’s jokes.
I knew who sat by the window every Tuesday and who always chose the seat closest to the door.
Those were the kinds of friendships university had given me.
Observations.
Small conversations.
Familiar faces that disappeared the moment the lecture ended.
Then there was her.
My friend.
My one real friend.
The person I could send a ridiculous message to at two in the morning and expect a response from by two-oh-five.
She was the only person in university who knew how many unfinished stories lived inside my head.
She knew about the characters I had abandoned because I hated their endings.
She knew which fictional men I had fallen in love with and which ones I would have personally pushed off a cliff if they were real.
She knew that I sometimes wrote because I was happy.
She knew that I wrote even more when I was not.
And I have only known her for one semester.
The rest of the people in my life were somewhere between classmates and acquaintances, which was perfectly fine with me.
I had never been particularly good at belonging to crowds.
I preferred corners.
Quiet libraries.
Empty lecture halls.
The back pages of my notebook.
Places where nobody expected me to perform.
Which was ironic, considering how excited I was to perform.
The first time I heard the words Theatre Workshop, something inside me had awakened.
I remember the exact feeling.
It was not the kind of excitement that made you jump out of your seat.
It was quieter than that.
It settled somewhere beneath my ribs and stayed there.
Because writing a character was one thing.
Bringing her to life was another.
I wanted to know what it felt like to stand beneath lights and become someone else.
To borrow another person’s sorrow for a few minutes.
To speak words that had once existed only in my imagination.
To make an audience believe that a woman who had never lived had a heartbeat.
I wanted that.
More than I could explain.
So when we reached the end of the theoretical part of the course, I was already counting down to the practical sessions.
That afternoon, I sat in my usual seat with my notebook open in front of me, although I had stopped taking notes several minutes earlier.
Our lecturer was talking about the transition from theory to practice.
I was listening.
Or at least, I was trying to.
Then he said something that made me finally put my pen down.
“We will be moving into the practical aspect of the course soon.”
The room changed.
It was subtle.
A few students sat straighter.
Someone at the back whispered something to the person beside them.
I smiled without realizing it.
The lecturer continued.
“And for the practical sessions, the department will be bringing in two directors to work with you.”
Two directors.
My heart gave a strange little jump.
Two professionals.
Two people who actually directed theatre.
Two people who would look at us and say, You are going to play this character.
I could already imagine it.
The rehearsal room.
The scripts.
The costumes.
The lights.
The stage.
The transformation.
I had spent so much of my life giving fictional characters voices.
Now, for the first time, I was going to lend mine to one.
I did not know their names yet.
I did not know what they would ask of us.
I did not know what kind of roles we would be given.
But I was so excited.
