Cameron's first period class today was English with Ms. Barnes. Even though it was still a bit early, Cam made his way over to Ms. Barnes' classroom anyway. His own teacher teacher, a cool but somewhat quirky young woman in her late 20s or early 30s, was already at her desk, getting things ready for class.
"Good morning, Cameron," she said when he walked in, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
"Hi Ms. Barnes," Cam said as he plopped himself down in his seat. Since no one else was there yet, he rested his head on his desk, still feeling a little tired from waking up so early. He watched as his classmates slowly began to trickle into the room. He knew a lot of them he knew well enough, but he wasn't really friends with any of them. Well, except for...
"Hi Cam," a cheery voice greeted him.
Cam sat up and looked over his shoulder at the girl taking her seat at the desk behind his, her shoulder-length light brown hair pulled back into a ponytail as usual and a warm smile on her face. She was wearing a fitted pink t-shirt, light blue skinny jeans, and white sneakers.
"Hi Amy," Cam greeted the girl, smiling back at her. She had become someone he always looked forward to seeing ever since were paired together for an in-class assignment a couple of weeks ago.
Cam had never liked assignments where they got to choose partners in English class because he had no friends to partner up with and he was routinely overlooked by his classmates. Because neither of them managed to find a partner for that particular assignment, Ms. Barnes had paired him with Amy Townsend, the girl who sat behind him.
Cam didn't know Amy very well at the time. All that he really knew was that she had moved to town three years ago and hadn't really made any friends since as she was rather shy and socially awkward. She did seem nice the few times Cam had talked with her, though, and he found her easy to get along with once they got to work on their assignment.
In the time since, the two had become fast friends. Despite her feminine and girly exterior, Amy was a bit of a tomboy who liked a lot of the same video games and movies that Cam did. She had apparently been having a really hard time making friends since her family had moved to town and Cam was the first person she'd really clicked with since then. That did make him feel a bit bad that he hadn't tried to get to know her sooner, but better late than never.
"How are you today?" Amy asked, adjusting her ponytail.
"I'm fine, how about you?" Cam replied.
"I'm great," Amy said cheerfully.
As the rest of their classmates filtered into the room, Amy told Cam about her latest Minecraft project. As soon as the bell rang, though, Ms. Barnes quieted everyone down and got class started. The class had just finished reading through Romeo and Juliet and they were going to be discussing the final few scenes, which they had been assigned to read last class. Cam wasn't particularly interested and only slightly listened as they went over the guided reading questions.
"Alright, I've got a little assignment for next class," Ms. Barnes announced toward the end of class. "You'll be breaking yourselves up into groups of two to four and you will be given a scene to practice and act out for the class," she explained as she distributed a handout detailing the grading criteria.
The students began murmuring as they began talking about who they wanted to work with. For once, Cam's heart didn't sink at the notion of picking groups. He glanced back at Amy and asked, "Want to partner up?"
"Yeah, of course," Amy said, flashing him a wide smile.
Once all the groups were finalized, Ms. Barnes assigned each group their scenes based on how many people were in the group.
"Cool," Amy said once they had all the details. "Wanna meet up later and start planning this out?"
"Sure," Cam nodded back.
As class wrapped up, the two of them made a plan to meet up after school and head over to Amy's house to work on the assignment. The rest of Cam's day at school went by rather uneventfully and before he knew it, the day was over. After his last class was finished, he briefly stopped by his locker, then met up with Amy in front of the school.
"Hey," Amy said, walking up to Cam when she saw him. "Ready to go?"
"Yeah," Cam nodded. "Lead the way."
With that the pair headed on their way. After a relatively short walk to Amy's house, which was spent discussing which upcoming video games they were most excited about, they arrived at their destination.
"Well here we are," Amy said as she led Cam inside. "My parents won't be back till later and my sister said she was going to hang out with her boyfriend, so we should have some peace and quiet for a bit."
"Cool," Cam said as he glanced around. "So should we get to work?"
"Yeah, that's probably a good idea."
They set their backpacks down and took a seat on the couch with their copies of the book. To start off, they did a dry read of the script just to get a feel for the scene they'd been assigned. That being the scene at the end of Act I where Romeo and Juliet first meet at the feast. Overall it wasn't very long since they were only reading the interaction between the two titular characters and not the full scene.
From the second read onward, they started to act the scene a bit. However, it was when they began attempting to memorize and recite their lines without the book that problems started to arise.
"Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer," Amy recited dramatically as they made yet another attempt. She seemed to have a natural talent for this, but that was not the case for Cam, who found himself getting distracted and forgetting his lines.
"O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do," he recited the next line. As he looked over at Amy, Cam soon found himself distracted by the thought that he wouldn't mind kissing her for real instead of just pretending. He admired her cute face, completely forgetting he had another line.
"What are you doing?" Amy asked, giggling. "You have another line."
Cam's face went red as he realized what happened. "Uhhh, sorry," he said. "Don't you need to say 'Saints do not move' first?"
"No, silly," Amy replied, playfully bonking Cam over the head with her copy of Romeo and Juliet. "How is it you can remember my lines and not yours?" she giggled.
Cam shrugged sheepishly, still blushing slightly. He didn't want to admit what had happened and he was starting to get annoyed by his own forgetfulness.
"Remember," Amy continued. "The rest of your line is 'They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.'"
"If you know my lines so well, why don't you read them then?" Cam said in frustration.
"You know, that's not a bad idea," Amy said. "The handout Ms. Barnes passed out with the grading criteria said thinking outside the box will get us more points."
"What are you getting at?" Cam asked.
Amy smirked mischievously. "I'm saying you should be Juliet and I should be Romeo."
"You've got to be joking."
"C'mon, you know this will get us more points. And you're having trouble with Romeo's lines anyway, so maybe you'll have an easier time with Juliet's. Can't we at least try?"
"Okay fine," Cam said. "But if it doesn't work out, then we switch back."
"Deal!" Amy said a bit too enthusiastically for Cam's liking. "Now, shall we begin, Juliet?" she teased.
"Whatever."
"Alright," Amy said, tenderly taking Cam's hand. "If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this," she recited Romeo's lines with a bluster that made his heart flutter for some reason. "My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss."
"Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much," Cam said Juliet's line effortlessly, somehow recalling it perfectly.
And from there, the scene went off without a hitch. For whatever reason, Cam was able to recall all the lines he was supposed to say.
"Well that went way better than expected," Amy said when they had finished.
"Yeah, wow," Cam said, unsure what to make of the situation.
"Good job, you're a natural Juliet," Amy teased with a wink, giving him a pat on the back.
"Shut up," Cam said, blushing once again. He wasn't sure what to feel about that notion.
"That was a compliment," Amy said, flashing a reassuring smile. "Now let's take it from the top."
And with that, they took up their position and prepared to rehearse the scene again.
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