mermaid 》 alemanda ✔

chapter four.

alesha

School had started back up and I hadn't gotten another chance to speak with Amanda at all in the past week school had been in session. I was almost giddy with excitement with going to the first drama club meeting of the year during the second week we were back in school. I had to get through the school day first before the drama club meeting, which would be directly after school let out. I went into the auditorium and I turned on the piano. There was no piano player hired by the school this year as the woman who had played piano for the chorus and sometimes band, had retired from teaching piano and from playing it for school. I was a little upset by it as I usually did not play the piano during class as I needed to be able to conduct and cue different parts in the songs. I had picked five songs for the chorus to sing, two Christmas songs, a pop song, a traditional song, and one song from Broadway and West End. I had already passed out the music sheets for each voice part and today we were going to start with singing the songs.

I began to warm up my voice as I pressed the keys on the piano, even though I was going to be helping the students with warming up their voices. It was easier on me if I warmed up my voice before school started so I would be ready to get right into the warm up for the students' voices. I had always done this in one of the practice rooms but I knew that they were filled with instruments brought into the rooms over the summer and extra chairs and stand racks. There would be no space for me to be able to turn on one of the pianos in the rooms for me to warm up my voice.

I hummed as I played, gradually starting to sing the warm ups as time passed by. It usually took me about fifteen minutes to do a proper warm up for myself and twenty minutes for students to completely warm up their voices as they tended to talk. I sang out the warm up, getting closer to hitting the higher notes that a soprano could hit but I could never quite get up to it. I would sound like a dying dog if I tried to hit some of the high notes of the soprano parts in the music as I was an alto. The sopranos always had someone that would continue warming up with them after they were warmed up by me so they would be able to hit the high notes.

I sat up straighter on the piano bench as I got closer to the high notes of the scales I was doing. It had always been a habit for me as it would open up my chest so I would sound better as I sang. I sounded close to warmed up so I shut the piano off but I kept it plugged in. I still had fifteen more minutes to wait until the school day was actually supposed to start. I headed back to mine and Simon's office to grab my laptop and I could hear music playing as I walked down the hallway to the band room.

I knew that it was Amanda playing the music as she had done that since the first day of school. She had told me then that it helped her relax to get the day started and it created a calming environment for her students. I could hear Amanda faintly singing along to the show tunes and smiled to myself.

Amanda was quickly becoming one of my friends as we were going to be working with each other often for the drama club because the club did a musical near the end of the autumn term and a musical near the end of the spring term during the last month of school. There was even a play that Amanda would direct by herself at the end of the winter term with a student director, usually a student in their last year of school.

I grabbed my laptop and went back into the auditorium after saying hello to Simon. Simon was actually at work somewhat earlier, contrasting with the fact that he was usually at work five minutes before the bell rang. He was almost always late because of his son making him run late as he had to drop him off at nursery. I just had to make it through today before I would be able to go to the drama club meeting with Amanda and it seemed to be dragging by,

amanda

The first drama meeting was going be be starting in less two hours. The meeting was going to be at the end of the school day as the kids who were trying out were going to show up to get information on how I ran auditions and what the process was going to be like with a different director. I had my planning period as the last period of the day, which also meant that I was in charge of one of the study halls so it was going to be in my classroom.

I had gotten my classroom completely set up by the time that the first day of school had arrived and it looked cute. I had decorated the walls with posters of Broadway and West End musicals and plays and I had placed knick knacks that related to musical theatre on the bookshelves with my copies of the scripts my classes would be reading through during the school year. I had a CD player by my desk so I could play music before school started and so I could listen to the radio while I worked on grading either homework or papers after school. I had purposely assigned no homework to my classes yesterday so I wouldn't have anything to grade after school and have to stay even later because of the drama club meeting. I couldn't wait to get to the meeting as I knew some of the students that had signed up to do drama club this year were also in at least one of my theatre classes. I put on music during the passing time for students while I waited for the students in my study hall to show up in my classroom.

One of the girls that was in my study hall that came in first was also in my first period drama class. She sat down, pushed her glasses up her nose and pulled her laptop out of her backpack. A couple of other girls came in after her and they sat down beside her, striking up a conversation about something. I watched them out of the corner of my eye as I began to take attendance for the class. There wasn't that many students in my study hall so it meant it would hopefully be quiet but the class that I had for sixth period was also small as it was the kids interested in doing drama as their major in university but they were loud, despite only having eight students in the class.

A couple of boys came in the classroom, each one of them heading to desks on the opposite side of the room. One of the boys grinned when he saw the posters on the wall and the scripts on the bookshelf beside him. I called out attendance when the bell rang so I would know each of my students' names. I had never been that good with remembering names but if I could associate something with that person's name, I could remember it easier.

The study hall was pretty much silent, as it had been for the past week but the group of girls did laugh every few minutes about something on their phone or laptops. The boys had plugged themselves into their laptops with their earbuds as they watched videos or T.V. shows. The bell rang at the end of the period. It seemed as though the period had dragged on to me but now I only had my afternoon homeroom at the end of the day before the first drama meeting of the year. One of the guys didn't move to get up when the bell rang, not bothering to pack his stuff up. He was one of the boys in my homeroom and he was silent, except for saying 'here' when I called for attendance.

I had a large homeroom that was eerily quiet but it was mainly because they didn't know me that well as I hadn't told them much about me, except for the bare basics. I had told them I had been teaching for ten years, I had just moved to London a little over a month ago but I didn't say much else. There really wasn't a need to say anything more about me as my students would learn more about me as time would go by.

The homeroom period passed by slowly, like the clock was ticking even slower than usual but it was just because I was excited about directing the drama club in a new school and new environment.

[] hey guys! Amanda and Alesha are both excited about the drama club meeting. What do you think is going to happen next and what did you love about this chapter? Bye until the next chapter!