A Castle of Sand(101)

It was like an addiction, seeing the classes run, watching the rehearsals. I had read the symptoms of addiction for a course last year and it all fit—dependency, need to lie, first thing you think about when you wake up, etc. But it could be worse. I could be doing drugs. Illegal ones, I thought to myself with a little laugh as I cut up a red pepper into the shape of a star. Legal ones, I’d been doing since birth. HIV positive patients had enough drugs prescribed to them to run a small pharmacy.
When the clock struck 10:15, I stopped and headed to the back to take off my apron, gloves and hairnet. “Going for coffee!” I called to Adam, who nodded at me, absorbed in his work. I could probably go to the moon and he wouldn’t have noticed, as long as I got the vegetables done.
Pulling my hair into a bun and trying to repair the damage the hairnet had caused, I zipped up my jacket so as to not look so obviously like a chef. The students around me wore an array of colors, except for the senior ones who were currently in rehearsal week for physical theater. They were required to wear all black, all the time, and you could always spot them in the crowd.
I was heading toward room 3C, a huge lecture hall, in order to catch a lecture on Kabuki theater, when I was distracted by a girl’s bright yellow poodle skirt. Suddenly I felt my body connect with someone else’s. The force of it made me stumble back a little and I narrowly missed the lockers.
I knew instantly whom I’d walked into. It wasn’t hard to recognize him after all these years. Always surrounded by a cloud of staff, as if he was too good to even brush elbows with the students, stood Liam Swift. He glanced back at me quickly as he continued walking, and our eyes met, just once, before his entourage continued to sweep him away.
Liam Swift. Sarah and I practically had a heart attack when he rose to Hollywood fame. He was insanely gorgeous, probably one of the best looking men I had ever seen, with piercing light grey eyes, and dark, almost black hair kept a little too long, so that soft strands were almost touching his eyes. With pale skin, and a lean, muscular body, he was enough to make any girl fall over and do his bidding. Still, despite being stunning, he was one of many Hollywood actors we obsessed over.
At the peak of his career, Sarah had unearthed the fact that his grandfather, Peter, ran a theater school—this school. This discovery alone was enough to draw me here more often than usual. But three years ago, in a flurry of media announcements that had me glued to the local news, Liam had come to our town.
Hollywood Superstar Liam Swift , just twenty-three years old and already on Forbes rich list, announces that he will be taking over the role of headmaster at Leopard Academy, a prestigious theater school founded by his grandfather, Peter Smith. Liam will begin his new duties in September of this year, officially retiring from filmmaking.
I could still hear the newscaster’s voice in my ears as she made that announcement. My heart was pounding and I could hardly believe it.
The media had gone crazy, covering every event, attempting to get a glimpse of their favorite star. But now, it had pretty much died down, letting the school function as normal. In fact, the only one who seemed not to function as normal was this egotistic stuck-up headmaster, who never said a kind word to anyone. He always traveled with an entourage of other teachers and I hadn’t ever seen a student approach him.
His classes were small and protected, as they were mostly the junior and senior ones, so I had never attended any of them. But while I was curious about his technique, I could study it by watching his movies a million times. His personality, up close, didn’t seem worth chasing after. But those eyes … perhaps those eyes would change my mind.
I shook myself out of my own thoughts, opening the door to the lecture hall and going to sit in the back row. No one noticed. As usual, the class was full of energy and excitement, even though it was just a lecture.
For the next ten minutes, I floated on the professors words, watching image after image of Kabuki style theater float by on the big screen, listening to the techniques each type of actor would apply.
I didn’t have my notebook with me, but I took notes on my phone, until it buzzed, reminding me to get back to the kitchen. With a sigh, I waited until the professor changed slides and then slipped out, hurrying back to the vegetables.
“Amy, call your father,” Adam said, the second I slipped back in. I reached to pull out my phone and dialed home, while trying to pull my hair net back on with the other hand.
“Amy?” Dad asked, the moment he picked up.
“Yes, I’m fine. Just had first break,” I said, as I tied the apron with difficulty. “I’m cutting vegetables all day, nothing I can’t handle.”