Out of the Woods | ✓

01 | jensen rhodes is (not) ready for her close up

If Jensen Rhodes had to hear someone sing Tomorrow from Annie one more time, she was going to cancel the school musical entirely.

The school production wasn't even Annie—it was 9 to 5. And by God, she hadn't heard any renditions of Backwoods Barbie at all. She'd avoided listening to the official cast recording to brace herself for it. She was almost looking forward to it. Disappointing. Jensen would've even accepted Heart to Hart.

Her heart was already set on the perfect Roz anyway. Auditions were formalities. Was that bad? Probably. Had she done it any way? Not officially. Officially, it was after an hour of listening to auditions. To that fucking Tomorrow song.

A new face walked to centre stage. Smiling too wide, Jensen recognized her student almost instantly. She'd been in Jensen's drama classes since her first year at Northside.

Jensen looked down at her audition sheet and marked the girl down. "Who are you auditioning for and what will you be singing this afternoon?" she asked as she looked up from her papers.

"I'm auditioning for Doralee." The girl smiled. Her tinny braces reflected the stage lights like a disco ball. "And my song is Tomorrow from Annie."

Jensen almost groaned. At least this cover was half decent. She might've got up and left if she heard another voice crack. But she didn't. Because if someone ever did that to her, she'd cry. Last thing she wanted was to do that to a high schooler.

When Jensen did leave, however, it was because she had work to do downtown and staying at the high school any longer would've made her late. She left auditions humming anything that would get the idea of tomorrow out of her head. Both the song and her actual tomorrow. Because tomorrow meant auditions. Again. Not simply for the school play. Jensen had her own to worry about and she would not be doing a dramatic monologue of Tomorrow, that was for certain.

The weather was having trouble deciding if it was autumn still or winter yet, so Jensen tugged her thin hoodie around her waist and pulled the hood over the mountain of curls on her head. She swore she'd worn aviators to shield her eyes from the sun that morning, but now she could see her breath disappear into the cold air. Weather liked to change hourly in Vancouver.

The place where it was summer in the morning, winter at night. All in the middle of October when it was supposed to be neither. The weather could span all four seasons in a day, or spend months locked in spring showers mode even when it wasn't April. Most of the time the rain didn't bring any flowers, either. Just annoyed Vancouverites who spent most of their days complaining about the weather. Jensen was one of those Vancouverites. She was woman enough to admit that while also simultaneously complaining about people complaining about the weather.

Vancouver wasn't all bad. Sure, it rained a lot. But it also had a good entertainment district, which Jensen was headed straight to the moment she'd buckled her seatbelt in her piece of shit car.

Vancouver was TV land—where wannabe actors came to prosper and dreams only lived in those who didn't want Hollywood. Such as it was for Jensen Rhodes who was happy as a high school teacher. Acting helped pay her portion of rent in her too expensive apartment.

Acting was never the be all, end all for Jensen. It never had been. Was it ever the be all, end all for anyone? Surely not. Some people ended up there because they weren't prepared to do anything else. That's why they graced glossy magazine covers and attended events with too many flashing cameras—to be seen, to be focused on. To be justified.

But the glitz and glam wasn't really what they wanted. Right?

For Jensen, the answer was right. And that was all she cared about.