After the lunch break, Josh unglued himself from Stella and headed off for football practice. Ashley also hung back for a while, exchanging smiles with him and, more importantly, with some of his buddies. A new school year required hunting for new prey, I guessed. It would make her late for her own extracurricular activity, but hey, if those were her priorities...

I turned back to mind my business and leave her to hers and was startled at the proximity of a smiling Alex. Call me coward, but as Stella had suggested, I acted as if nothing at all had happened between us.

"Which play do you think we'll pick for this semester?" he asked.

"I hope it's not another Shakespeare. I like the guy, but there's just so many times I can recite his lines before it gets old. What about you?"

"Don't worry. I think Mr. Hedford is done with that Elizabethan frenzy he caught in seventh grade."

"About time!" Stella chimed in. "Took him what, five years?"

"So what's the new fancy?" I asked.

"No idea." Alex opened the door for us girls and then followed to our usual place. "I heard he wanted to do something more... modern."

"Cats!"

Alex and I, no, the whole classroom, turned to look at Stella.

"No. Way." I enunciated slowly to make sure she understood what I felt about her suggestion.

She poked me as soon as everybody's attention slipped back to their own conversations. "You'd be cute with whiskers," she said. "Don't you think, Alex?"

He ducked his head and smiled, poor thing. "Alice's cute in anything she wears."

"What if she doesn't wear anything, then?" She wiggled her eyebrows.

"Guys," I said, a bit more forcefully than I wanted to. "Stop talking like I'm not here."

Both of them said they were sorry. Only one of them looked repentant.

I aimed a kick at Stella's shin under the table and she just giggled.

"Oscar Wilde," a booming voice claimed without preambles, and we turned to see the rest of the theater club members in silence and Mr. Hedford brandishing an old, musty copy of... something.

"What about him?" mumbled Stella.

The professor—doubling as director—sent her a warning glance that somehow managed to catch me as well, even though I had done nothing wrong at all, and then waved his book. Booklet. Whatever.

"This year, the St. Francis theater group will represent one of the most significant works of the acclaimed genius that is Oscar Wilde."

Alex leaned a bit to the side and whispered, "He makes us sound like big shots."

I gave him a mock haughty look. "We are big shots." That got me a smile and damn it, but the guy was considered handsome for a reason. With some effort, I brought myself back to the discussion and forgot about his dimples and pretty, laughing eyes.

"It is the third of his great opuses, but the first for which he gained recognition. Imagine it—he earned more than seven thousand sterling pounds during the first year on stage through royalties! This play, ladies and gentlemen, was a riot. Of course, I know that you would expect any work by Wilde to be ground shaking. I dare say you will not be disappointed." He grabbed a stack of booklets, in way better condition than his own, and handed them over to Ashley. "Ms. Brighton, please give a copy to each of your classmates."

She did, taking her sweet time. When it was our turn, I leafed through, hoping that the title would ring a bell.

Lady Windermere's Fan.

It didn't.

Glancing around, I saw Stella's deep frown and Alex's quizzical expression and breathed a sigh of relief. At least I wasn't alone in my ignorance.

"Professor," said a nice enough girl who always spoke with a dreamy voice impossible to hear from the last row of seats in class, whose name I never could remember. "I'm familiar with this play. Will it be okay for the board's standards?"

The board, or the school council, or whatever name you wanted to give them, called the shots on what could or couldn’t go on stage. They did it because they had the stage and the money to buy the stage props. They didn’t like scandals. They didn’t like original takes on anything. They didn’t like much emotion, either.

I suspected they were behind our continual rehearsals of Romeo and Juliet during our director’s “Elizabethan frenzy.” The play is famous and all, but after four times in five years, I could recite the lines of Juliet in my sleep and that’s too much—no matter how you look at it.

Mr. Hedford looked like he’d been anticipating the question and his eyes gleamed in pure, unadulterated and wicked pleasure.

“Ah, no, it is not merely 'okay'. It is 'a superb choice', as per their own words, and we do have all the permissions needed to bring this drama about infidelity, lies and betrayal under the limelight!”

“How?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it... much less after hearing the succinct pitch line the professor had thrown in.

“Sponsors, my dear Ms. Jones, sponsors,” he replied with an air of mystery about him. The fact that he didn’t scold me for blurting out my thoughts and that he acknowledged my question at all, spoke volumes of his good spirits.

The class fell into a sudden flurry of activity as soon as the words left the professor’s mouth. People were excited. Folks started arguing about which roles they wanted to play. The sound of leafing pages drowned out the usual chatter.

This year’s project had turned cool.

“Quiet!” Mr. Hedford called out, clapping his hands. “Silence! We must discuss the essence of the play before rushing into pointless details such as who is who.”

Collective groan. Only a Lit professor could decide that waxing poetic about the whys and hows of a play was somehow more important than landing the leading roles.

The shy girl raised her hand again and asked without waiting for a prompt, “Professor? Who are the sponsors?”

And how did we get them?

Mr. Hedford sighed and let his booklet flop onto the table. He smiled, a fake façade of resignation when he burned with the need to tell us the one thing we wanted to hear.

Gossip.

“Private funding from an outstanding family of our community,” he started, looking smug. “A representative of Mr. Nightray’s approached me regarding the possibility of having this very play produced. At first, of course, I was reticent. Such sponsorship was unheard of, and we are a proud theater group that has never allowed anyone to choose our representations before.” No one except the school board, he meant. “But I’ll admit that the idea of Lady Windermere’s Fan resonated with me, and as I gave it more thought in the following days, I decided to contact our benefactor again about his support. This play offers some risqué ideas mixed with the comedy and drama, as you’ll find out when you read your booklets, and its potential was huge... More so”—and this, I realized, was exactly what he’d wanted to say from the beginning—“when the creative freedom knows no bounds!”

“So... the council won’t ban us, no matter what?” said someone in the front of the class.

“They most certainly won’t. When Lady Windermere takes the stage, there will be a generous donation toward the improvement of the school grounds.”

“Shouldn’t that money be for us, for the play?” said Stella, always pragmatic.

“What would we want it for?” Here it was—Mr. Hedford’s coup de grace...

“I don’t know. Stage props? Costumes? The kind of things the council usually holds over our head?”

“We shall not be needing props this time. No decor, no fake furniture...” the professor said with a smile.

“Are we turning to modernism?” My voice rang with skepticism.

“No, we are using real decorations. Real clothing with all due arrangements. Real Victorian ambiance.”

If you’d dropped a pin in the room, you’d have heard it. Mr. Hedford looked pleased and smug. “All of it, genuine from Mr. Nightray’s own mansion.”

The idea quickly caught on. This could be the best play in our history! Judging by the excitement running amok in the room, and by the way people tried to read their booklets with renewed interest, everyone was already thinking of how to make it unique.

“There’s a ball!” shouted Jacob, the only other senior guy besides Alex. “Will we have to learn the waltz?”

Ashley, who sat by his side, smacked his head with the booklet. “Of course you’ll have to dance, idiot! Everybody could dance in Victorian society!” Then she gave a small squeak. “Dance! Ball! Music!”

She sounded breathless, and we all turned to look at her, professor included.

“Yes, Miss Brighton? Excellent proof of 'association of ideas' and 'stream of consciousness', but did you have a point?”

“Yes, I did! We could have our own original, live music written for the play! It’d be the thing! What other theater group could say that?”

There was whispering in the class. Lots of it. I clasped Stella's hand and grinned so wide that my face was about to split. That would be the epitome of cool!

“I wasn’t aware of your musical talent, Miss Brighton.”

Ashley waved her hand. “Not me. None of us can really play or anything here. But there’s someone in school who can!”

That got Mr. Hedford’s attention. “Who, if I might ask?”

“Trevor Bennett!” And with those words, all merriment flew from me. Confusion marked the faces around me.

“What? That freak?” a voice whispered to my right.

“He won a regional prize or something back in primary school, before he decided that he was too good to take classes,” she insisted. I was surprised she knew. “I’m sure he still plays or remembers how to do it.”

“Besides, he doesn’t need a wig! I’m sure we could talk him out of the crappy streaks and into bleaching his head. Isn’t white hair trendy in Victorian times?” said Jacob, warming up to the idea.

“That’s the France of Louis XVI. Do you even listen in class?” Ashley shut him down and turned to the professor again with a wide eager smile. “Can’t we ask him? If you do professor, I'm sure he'll agree. And we’d have our own unique soundtrack, and it’d add a touch of originality to our version! A smidgen of the 21st century blending perfectly with the 19th.”

And that sold the idea. The words “original version.” Everyone wanted our play to stand out, and if having the resident freak, emo, goth, or whatever he was as part of the cast would help, then Trevor would be received with open arms.

“I shall ask him tomorrow,” said Mr. Hedford, and the class cheered and prepared to go home.

I stole a couple furtive glances at Ashley. She grinned and skipped around, sharing the general enthusiasm. I should be grateful for her idea, because it meant I’d get to listen to that beautiful music not only in my nightly marauding, but at school, but… I didn’t like it. There was something else to the whole project. Ashley was hiding something.

I should know the symptoms. I had been hiding Trevor for years, after all.

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