Pull at my Heartstrings

We Get Our First Audience

Dirk and I spent the weekend like normal. We seem to completely ignore that we both know we both like each other. Come Monday morning, of course I hadn’t told him I don’t like him, nor do I plan to request a new dance partner!

I say, Marie can just back off herself.

I place my stuff in my locker, but Dirk isn’t here yet. So I lean against the lockers and scroll through something on my phone.

Someone takes my phone from my hand and throws it on the ground.

It doesn’t shatter or anything. It’s indestructible. But that was kind of annoying. I slowly look over to see Marie.

“Did you tell him?”

“No. And I don’t plan on it.”

She looks angry, and, I didn’t even see it, but she slaps me hard across the face.

It burns horribly, and I look at her in surprise. She’s smirking, happy with herself. I’m most surprised she did that. Usually, people are afraid of me.

I narrow my eyes, lunging forward and grabbing Marie by the collar of her shirt. Instead of hitting her, I yank on her shirt and force her against the lockers. She hits them with a loud thud.

Some people turn their heads to look. Some stay to watch, other’s leaving quickly.

Marie grits her teeth and meets my gaze. She grabs a fist full of my hair and pulls hard, making me yelp. While I’m ‘down’, she kicks at one of my legs, missing by a lot.

I grab her wrist, sinking my finger nails into her skin until she lets go of my hair. They remain in her skin as I maneuver myself. I kick the back of her legs, causing her knees to bend, and making her fall forward. I let go of her wrist, drawing blood.

I grab my phone from the ground, and turn my head to see that Dirk was just walking in. The first thing he sees is Marie on the ground, defeated. Then he sees me standing next to her. His jaw drops.

I’m worried he’s going to be mad at me, and I’m ready to explain what happened.

He rushes up to me, “Oh my god, what happened?!”

“Well, she slapped me, so I did that in self-defense! It’s not much! I could’ve hurt her way worse if I really wanted to—”

He’s hugging me?

“You’ve never been more attractive…” He whispers. I’m blushing and blinking in surprise.

“… What did you just say?”

He pulls away and looks at me, his face slowly heating. “U-um… I said, ‘you’ve never been more attractive’…?”

I can’t tell what he’s looking at because of those shades, but before I can reply, his hand gingerly touches my cheek, the one that had been slapped.

“Did she do this?”

I flinch at his touch, and he pulls away. “Yeah.” I can tell he changed the subject.

He takes a look at Marie, who is just now standing. She scowls at me and heads for the bathroom. Dirk looks at me, then smiles, a smile that only I get to see, a smile that’s only for me.

“You did good.”

“I did?”

“Well, yeah! She threw the first punch.”

The ten minute bells rings.

Oh ****, I gotta put my stuff away.”

I follow him, or well, next to him.

“Oh yeah, why were you so late?”

“My older brother was being weird and stalled my getting here.”

I laugh, “You have an older brother?”

“Yeah.”

“Does he go to school here?”

“Oh, no. He’s way older than me. I call him ‘Bro’. He raised me.”

“Oh. Were your parents too busy?”

“I don’t know what the heck my parents were busy doing, but I never knew them. Bro is the only parent I’ve ever known.” He closes his locker and turns to me. I feel bad for bringing it up.

“O-oh, I’m sorry—”

“Nah, it’s fine. C’mon. Let’s go.”

We walk to class, and every time Dirk looks at me, I see a big red mark against my pale cheek. Battle scars.

When we get there, the one-minute bell rings. I see Marie sitting in her seat talking to some girls. She catches sight of me. I smirk and wave, she just looks away.

We sit in our seats, and Mrs. Crum is standing excitedly in front of the class.

“All right, today we start with the second song. Dirk, Amber?”

She motions for us to come forward. We stand from out seats and meet her at the front.

“Yeah?” I ask.

Would you two like to go practice out on stage?”

I nod while Dirk gives her a thumbs up. She hands us two CDs, one to watch, another with just the sound on it.

We walk out on stage and see the Drama class sitting in the audience again.

“Um, we are going to be starting from scratch today.” I say.

“Oh~! Even better!” The teacher says simply.

I grumble. Dirk pats me on the shoulder, and I turn to him. “They’re going to distract me…” I whisper.

He looks like he’s thinking about something, looking around the stage.

“We could close the curtains,” he whispers.

“I guess that’s better…”

“Then let’s do it.”

“WHAT ARE YOU WHISPERING ABOUT?” Someone yells. I facepalm.

Dirk and I walk back to the classroom; Mrs. Crum sees up and walks over to ask what’s wrong.

“There’s a class out there. They want to watch us but it’s distracting. Can we close the curtains?” I ask.

She nods with a smile and presses a button on a nearby control panel. I look out on stage and see that the curtains are closing. I skip out there.

“All right, Dirk. Let’s watch that video.”

* * * * * *

After watching the video a couple times, we actually begin trying. I can still hear the class out there, but they can’t see us so that’s better.

We have to wait an entire ten seconds before the singing actually starts in this song. Though it’s not nearly as complicated as the first song’s ten second break is.

The chorus is really fun, that’s for sure.

We manage to get up to the chorus before we have any trouble.

In this song, the boys wear sexy hats and shades like Dirk wears as props. Mrs. Crum had made sure there was a hat out here for Dirk.

Where we are, I have to take his hat, walk behind him and put it on, then look at him mockingly. That’s when he takes it back, and continues to walk to the side of the stage away from me.

Right now, I take the hat off his head, and instead of lip syncing and doing what I’m supposed to, I burst into laughter.

“What?” He asks.

“Hat hair!”

“Oh, ****, really?!” He reaches up to fix his hair, making me laugh more.

We manage to get to the line, “We come together, state of the art.”

At that point, we have to run up from both sides of the stage to each other, he grabs me by the waist and picks me up into the air above him. He does a cliché spin and puts me down.

Although, when Dirk picks me up, I spread out my arms and yell, “I’M THE KING OF THE WORLD!”

This time, Dirk bursts into laughter, putting me down.

We get a lot done, and a lot of joking around as well.