Chapter 14 – The Pretender (2)

Monday.
Week two.

The first person she met outside the dorm wasn’t her friends from the dorm, but Coordinator Carr in her usual leotard and cardigan combo, one hand on her phone and the other on her hip, arresting a thick manila envelope.

With a big smile and a grand gesture, she presented the folder with a flourish. “How did you do it?”

“Do?” Eppie cocked her head.

“This!” The Director sighed. “You passed, Euphemia. Not just passed. You cleared it with flying colours. Highest bands for both Physics and Japanese. Both will be added to your transcript.”

“No more Chemistry and French?”

“No more, my Ariel,” Carr seemed more excited than she was. “To the elements, be free.”

“Thanks, Mrs Carr,” Eppie received the folder with a bow. “You’ve helped me immensely in my endeavours.”

“Eppie!” From the door, Josefina was obviously using her dorm mother’s super hearing to drop in on their conversation. “Physics? And the Japanese, too? Ave María! I knew you were a smart cookie. Congratulations, mija.”

“On a more serious note,” the Director’s eyes sparkled. “What are you going to do with your extra time, Eppie? This is a very rare thing. Spare time at LAPA. That’s two to three hours a day. You understand your advantage, yes? What will you spend it on?”

“I was thinking of picking up an instrument, actually,” Eppie said sheepishly.

“Oh.” Carr studied her. “Yes, that’s certainly possible. You haven’t done the Freshman course, so you can’t join the Sophomores, but we certainly can spare the rooms in the late afternoon. As for your instructor…”

The Director looked up, then had a lightbulb moment. “There are Seniors who tutor instruments across the spectrum. With your scholarship, we can probably negotiate something. Yes. That’s an excellent idea.”

Eppie giggled at her Director’s self-glazing.

“What do you want to play?”

“Guitar, for now. I won’t be able to play classical instruments, not with my level of training. It’ll be a joke.”

“Hmm, true,” Carr nodded. “And you do write songs. That one you wrote still lingers, you know. I hum it sometimes.”

“Our Eppie is a songwriter, too?” Josefina’s chest swelled three sizes. “Truly? Eppie! Are you being humble with me? You did not tell Mama Josefina?”

“I er… hum them,” she backed away from the advancing Latina. “No, seriously. I am instrument blind.”

“Not for long, though.” Carr paced back and forth a few steps to think. “Alright, I think I have a few candidates. What’s your weapon of choice? Parlour? Classic? Hollow-body electric?”

“It’s all French to me…”

Carr laughed. “Do you prefer a male or female colleague?”

“Either—”

“A girl!” Josefina shouted. “Eppie already has a pintor boy she pines for.”

“Please ignore that,” Eppie laughed awkwardly at her Director. “Yes, I don’t mind either.”

“Let’s go with Parlour for now, knowing your preferences,” Carr stated sagely, her eyes measuring the length of her arms. “You’ll need to grow a bit taller to sling a classic full body. I think a parlour’s a good start. They’re easy to learn, intimate sound, lower price point, and are popular with the composing crowd.”

“Please,” Eppie thanked her Op Director. “I’ll be expecting the good news.”

Their morning meeting parted with Josefina beside her, eyes positively glowing with anticipation.

“Concerto later?” her dorm mother grinned.

“Let me…” Eppie couldn’t help but hold back her excitement as well. “Let me learn the guitar first. Then, you experience the real thing.”

In her usual two-piece Kmart garb, she arrived at the Quest Board with her new American Apparel duffle, then immediately realised that people were staring.

They were not outright staring, but inquisitively staring.

It was the kind of stare she was very much accustomed to, because it was always a surreal experience for the public when someone you’d just seen at the Forbes cover on a bus stop stood next to you on Fifth Avenue, ordering a hyped up salted beef bagel from a viral TikTok video.

As a person, she was down to earth like that, but as a broker…

Either way, with or without her main character energy, the Quest Board was a place full of protagonists. As an arts school, it simply came with the territory. After the initial volume of inquisitive stares, people returned to their own lives, and the hall’s high-friction noise swelled to its usual tinnitus-inducing static.

Her eyes skipped past the Jazz announcements and the art show exhibition tags to arrive at the theatre segment. In neatly printed Times New Roman, the notice announced that the Fall Showcase has been decided, and that it will be a series of vignettes from Antigone, with scenes to be announced later in each class, for each student group.

A notice of absolute importance was the dates for the Audition Timelines.

October 23rd for the Vocal and Movement Prelims.
October 24th for the Cold Reads of their yet to be finalised script (available before November!)

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
October 26th for Final Callbacks.

The clock struck the promised hour, and the body of chittering students dispersed.

Her first class was English Honours, as was tradition, and Monday lessons were only 40 minutes. They handed in their homework, and Mrs Kirby grilled the students on their understanding of Antigone.

Sitting ramrod-straight at her desk, her English teacher was directing the lesson with a different air, one that was aimed at Eppie.

Was it because of the competency exams? Or was it because of the MySpace video? Eppie could not know, because her teacher did not ask. Instead, she was tasked with explaining the motivation of the play’s tragic families.

“Eppie,” Mrs Kirby said, her voice cutting through the low murmur of the other children at work. “Antigone chooses to bury her brother, knowing it means her own execution. How does the dilemma fit into our discussion of the Legelian Dialectic?”

It was a question framed around the optional readings, and it was a test.

“Er… Hegel stated that—”

“Legel, Miss Fontaine.”

“Right, right, umm…” She corrected herself, recalling that her alter-world information wasn’t exact. “So, Antigone is the ultimate tragedy because neither Antigone nor Creon are explicitly good or evil. Instead, the tragedy arises from the inability to reconcile the tension between two incompatible forms of ethical power.”