"Alright my thespians, break into your troupes and get to work on your 10 minutes," Mrs. Permala instructs the class.

I have no idea what any of that means, and when Mrs. Permala turns around, she must see the confusion in my face. She rests her hand on my shoulder as if to tell me not to worry. "Allow me to grab you a syllabus," she says. "Follow me."

I follow her up the stairs and into her office, which happens to be the control booth above the audience. Inside the booth is a cluttered wooden desk and pictures of past students who went on to acting careers. They smile big, cheesy grins in black and white portraits with their names across the bottom. As she shuffles through her piles of paper, my eyes are drawn to a specific picture on the wall.

"Oh my god, how do you have a signed picture of Grant O'Reilly?" I ask.

Grant O'Reilly is the star of my favorite show A Call from Midnight, which is about hacker detectives who investigate cyber bullying after victims call their hotline. It's kind of a stupid premise, but Grant O'Reilly plays the main character Vick Midnight who is tortured and beautiful and has the best one-liners.

"I taught him in this very theater," Mrs. Permala says. "Although, back then his name was Gary Ratlidge. Such a great student. Did you hear him thank me last year at the Teen Choice Awards?"

"No," I say. "I thought it was just a rumor that he went here."

She stops digging through her papers to look over her shoulder at me. "In his acceptance speech he said I was the reason he was on that stage." She beams, then returns to her pile of papers. "Of course, he received the award for best on-screen kiss with that girl he co-stars with--"

"--Tara Lyons."

"Right, so I'm not entirely sure how appropriate it was to thank me," she says, laughing to herself. "Thank me in your Oscar speech, not your best on-screen kiss speech."

She has a point, and I let myself laugh for the first time all morning.

"Okay, here is our syllabus." She finally pulls the syllabus out from the middle of the pile and hands it to me. "Read this over, and let me know if you have any questions. Many of your fellow thespians have been with me since freshman year, but Mrs. Thomas suggested you skip into 'Theater: Level 4' to keep you with thespians your age. Don't you worry, I will help you find a troupe who can guide you in finding your voice in this class. When you've finished, join us on the stage to meet your new compatriots."

"Okay," I respond and she leaves me alone in the booth. I do my best to read over the syllabus, trying not to feel anxious as I think about all the new things I'm going to have to learn or all the performing I'm going to have to do. I've never, ever performed in my life, and my heart races just thinking about speaking in front of all those people. What if I make a mistake? What if I forget what I'm supposed to do and I freeze?

All of these thoughts do nothing to help my brain focus on the words, and that's how it's always been, the root of the matter and the real reason my grades are the way they are. I struggle with reading, everyone knows that, but when I start to think about it, then I panic. Then I really start to struggle and my brain jumbles the words even more than it already does. Letters become disjointed and out of order, and anything unknown becomes a word scramble. Words I know, I can guess, because I know their basic shape and formation. Anything else, I stumble over.

I've never told anyone that my brain does this, not even my family. I'm way too embarrassed. I also know that there's a name for this, but I've never acknowledged it. The second I do, it may become real, and I don't want to be different. I don't want that attention on me.

Focus, I tell myself, though I'm not in any hurry to join my "compatriots" on stage. As soon as I'm out there, I'll have to start acting. I take my time to read through the syllabus, both to give the words more time to make sense to me and to stall. When I have finally given myself the time I need, I see that it reads as follows:

"Dear thespians: Welcome to Theater Level 4. You have all worked so hard to get to this moment, and just think--next year you will be performing in the evening theater shows for the community. But first, we have a bit more performing and learning to do.

"Week 1: Review of the basics and beginning the ten-minute plays. This includes the choosing a troupe, identifying the areas of the stage, using the theater library to find scripts, and starting to rehearse your ten-minute plays.

"Weeks 2-3: Blocking and rehearsing ten-minute plays with a partner within your troupe.

"Week 4: Ten-minute play performances.

"Weeks 5-8: Choosing, blocking, and rehearsing your one act play with your troupe.

"Week 9: Performing your one act plays and viewing your fellow thespians' one act plays. Final grades will be determined based on this final performance."

The final grade will be a performance?

I want to quit now. This won't help that horrible mess of letters on my report card. I want to stand up and leave before Mrs. Permala sees me and before I am part of anyone's "troupe." I can't do this.

Then there's a knock at the open door that startles me out of my panic. I look up, and in the doorway is a short girl about my height with crazy, frizzy blonde curls hanging down past her shoulders. She wears a headband to keep the frizz back, but it's no match for her mane and the headband puffs up in a bump on the top of her head. She wears tan circular glasses and bright red lipstick. Her face is speckled with freckles and pimples, and somehow her blue eyes don't squint when she smiles. She's wearing a white dress with red poppy flowers on the pattern, and to cover her legs and feet from the cold, she wears black stockings and red shoes.

"Hi, I'm Patricia Weiner. Spelled almost like 'wiener,' but pronounced like 'whiner.' Most people just call me Patti, though. Like Patti LuPone," she says, and this time her eyes squint when she smiles. I have no idea who that is, and when I don't respond with any sort of recognition, she continues talking. "Mrs. Permala asked that I take you under my wing. I'm kind of like her assistant around here. She also put you in my troupe, because we didn't have enough people. I have a really nice troupe, though. You'll like it."

"Yeah, wait, what is that?"

"A troupe?"

"Yeah."

"It's a group of actors, really. Mrs. Permala asks that we each have four actors in our troupe, but we only had three before you came, so it kind of worked out perfectly, like you were meant to be here."

"Yeah, I don't know about that," I say.

She blinks a few times without speaking or moving otherwise, then says, "Anyway, do you have any questions about the syllabus?"

"How are we graded exactly? It says the final performance is our final grade, right?"

She laughs. "How should I know? Mrs. Permala has a system."

"Oh."

"Don't worry, though. Everyone gets an A," Patti assures me. "As long as you're doing your best, you're following directions, and you're not afraid to get up on stage and make a fool of yourself, you're golden. Trust me. Some of the people down there are, like, really bad. Like, super bad. Well, for my standards. Maybe not for Riverside High standards, but... anyways, don't worry. Even though it's your first theater class, I bet you can do better than some of them."

"I don't know. I've never done anything like this. I don't even talk in my normal classes."

"You'll be fine. Are you ready to come meet the rest of our troupe?"

I take a deep breath as Patti grabs me by the arm and pulls me out of Mrs. Permala's office and down the stairs toward a pair of boys at the back of the stage.

I follow her past where one of the most popular girls in 10th grade's troupe stands. Layla Monroe. I don't really pay much mind to the high school hierarchy system, since Gina and I are pretty much loners, but there are certain people you can't ignore in high school. Layla is one of them. She's on the morning announcements, she's a cheerleader, she's in one of my classes, and she's on student council. She's everywhere.

In the farthest back corner of the stage where even the lights barely reach is a pair of boys, my fellow troupe members, I guess.

The one boy I recognize from last year's English class, Thatcher Gorsky. He reminds me a lot of Gumby, that green, claymation thing from old TV shows and movies. Tall and gawky, with a tendency to lean. His face is plain. Pale skin, brown eyes, brown hair. Typical haircut. No defining features except for his height. All in all, he's an entirely forgettable person if I hadn't been in English with him last year.

We read Romeo and Juliet at the end of the year, and our teacher took us outside one day to perform the final death scene on the quad. Thatcher volunteered to play Romeo, and I swear, his last speech as Romeo almost made me cry. I actually had to look away and pretend like the sun was bothering my eyes so that no one would notice me tearing up. It was like Romeo was real, and we were all just flies on the tomb wall, watching him suffer. I remember thinking, how can a freshman in high school be so convincing as Romeo? But I guess that's why he's in theater.

Even though he's not at all popular or anything, the memory of his performance makes me feel even smaller than I normally would in his presence.

Patti introduces us. "Thatch, this is Janie. Janie, this is Thatcher."

I'm not sure if we're supposed to shake hands or not until Patti laughs, grabs our hands for us and puts them together. His palm is cold and clammy in mine.

"I know you, actually," he says. "Last year in English class." His voice is deeper than I remember.

"Oh really?" I say so as not to give away that I have a clear memory of him that's stuck with me all this time.

"Yeah," he says. "Nice to have class with you again."

He's such a liar, I think. Why would it be nice to have a class with me again? I never said anything in English. In fact, I refused to speak or read ever, especially during our Romeo and Juliet unit. The teacher yelled at me one day because of it. "You're going to have to participate one day unless you want to fail," he had told me. I still didn't open my mouth.

"You too," I tell Thatcher.

"And this," Patti says, pushing through our hands and guiding me to the other boy, "is Timothy Boone, but everyone calls him Moth. I'm not sure why."

I know why, I think. I know of this guy too. His nickname is partly because his name is Timothy, but it's mostly because of the phrase "like a moth to a flame." I heard a group of stoners talking about it in study hall one day late last year. Any time he was near them--at the same party, in the same house, in the same neighborhood--and they lit up a joint, he would magically appear to join them. "Like a moth to a flame," they said.

I'm not thrilled about being in the same troupe as Moth. I don't want to be associated with those kinds of people, but it's class and Patti said as long as I do my best, I'll get an A. So I do my best to greet Moth.

I reach out my hand to shake his, which is the opposite of Thatcher's: rough, hot, and dry. Even his appearance makes him look like a stoner, I think. Ripped jeans, a tie dye shirt, and long hair pulled back into a man bun. Moth is a walking stereotype, and all I can think is that if he just cleaned himself up, he would be a really cute guy. Like, really cute. He smiles and deep dimples appear in his cheeks around his lips. His eyes are some crazy shade of blue-green, like an ocean, and his skin is clear. But then he opens his mouth: "Hey dude, what up? I'm Moth."

Not cute. "Not much," I say through my teeth. "But it's Janie, not dude."

He laughs a stupid chuckle. "Oh, man, I'm sorry."

"Also not a man, but okay."

Patti does her weird blinking but not moving thing, and Thatcher smirks.

"We're off to an awesome start," Moth says, completely genuine from what I can tell, because the dimples are back in his cheeks.

Oh goodness, I think, here we are: The Misfit Theater Company.