A Castle of Sand(105)

“Right,” I said, folding the script and putting it in my back pocket. He raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t need it?”
“No, I, uh…have a good memory,” I replied, which was true. I also didn’t want him to see how badly my hands were shaking.
“Whenever you’re ready then,” he said, never taking his sharp eyes off me.
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes as the lines flashed through my mind. And then, opening them to face him square on, I started talking.
“You think I’ve ever cared what you are?” I said. I surprised myself; the first line of a monologue was always difficult for me. But here it was, flowing through me. The words just spilled through my mouth, almost as if I had nothing to do with them. “I have never cared what you are or what you look like.”
“And what kind of future do you think we would have?” Liam snapped, as the Beast to my Beauty.
“I don’t care about the future,” I said, meeting his eyes. “I came here, prepared to hate you…but all that’s changed. All of it. I feel things about you that I have never felt before, not with any man. All of a sudden, the world is real. The fairy tales I’m reading are coming true.”
“Are you not frightened?” Suddenly Liam was on his feet, growling at me. “Do you not know what awaits you, if you choose this fate? This life with me?”
“Yes,” I said, holding my ground. “You.”
There was silence, and internally I panicked, wondering if I had forgotten a line. He stared at me for an impossibly long time, and although it made me incredibly uncomfortable, I tried not to break his gaze. Acting was about looks as much as the words that came out of your mouth, and so I continued to meet his eyes with what I thought was love and support; things I thought Beauty would feel for her Beast. No one said anything for quite a while, and then Liam left the table without another word. Everyone watched as he went over to Porsche and whispered something in her ear.
The girl nodded and then crooked a finger, beckoning me over. I went, in the silence, over to her, as Liam passed me, calling “NEXT!” in that gruff bark that was startling to everyone.
“What’s your name?” Porsche asked, when she had taken me out into the hallway. I panicked, thinking I was in trouble, that they had caught me, until I remembered that this was a good thing. Had I actually done well? Out of all the girls who had auditioned so far, he hadn’t sent one of them over here yet.
“Amy,” I said, and spelled my last name for her. She asked a few more details and then scribbled them down as well, making sure my phone number and email were correct. My heart began to sink when she asked for my experience and resume. Of course, having none, I babbled about my work in the kitchens. Maybe all she wanted to know was that I wasn’t a complete spoiled deadbeat teenager who had never had a job? In a last ditch effort, I mentioned my father, and homeschooling, hoping anything I had to offer would help. It was when she asked about my mother’s profession that I shook my head and tried to change the subject. Outside of the house, I never talked about my mother. I was afraid that the very few memories I had of her, a scent, a happy feeling, would disappear, if I exposed her to the public. They were my memories, all I had left.
Up close, Porsche seemed very familiar, and finally, when she bent over to pick up the pen she dropped, it clicked in my mind. “Are you a dancer?” I asked, before I could stop myself. “You are, aren’t you? You’re a ballerina for the Russian National?”
“Yes,” she said, with a smile, but offered me no more information. Instead, she instructed me to stand against the wall, taking my picture with a Polaroid camera.
“But why are you here then? Did you retire, like Liam did?”
“Nope.” The girl was incredibly tight-lipped on information, and it was leading me to believe that she was dating Liam, in secret. “Now Amy, one more question. Do you have any medical conditions?”
“Uh…” My breath caught in my throat. I put myself through all that only to get caught up with this.
“Lying won’t do you any good,” Porsche said. “If we take you as a student and don’t put it on the insurance, we could get in a lot of trouble. It’s not going to affect your chances, we just need to know. What condition do you have?” I was about to lie, but the fact that she asked “what” meant that she already knew, somehow.
“I’m HIV positive,” I said. Porsche stopped at this suddenly, looking at me with an emotion I couldn’t quite read. Judgment? Sympathy? Disgust? “Not from drugs or anything like that. My mom was infected. But I’m fine and I’m healthy and I take all the right pills and the doctor says my chances are good. AIDS isn’t a death sentence anymore and…” She waved her hand with a smile, writing it down.