Anyone Else But You

Chapter 9 - Oh Sister where art thou?

Stevie Nicks - Edge of Seventeen

"I just think it would have been better if she was a lesbian!"

"We are not making Hero a lesbian and she is not getting it on with Beatrice at the end to punish Claudio!" Maddie sighed exasperatedly and banged her head once on the table in front of her. Jasper had been making stupid suggestions about what they should put in their modern Shakespeare, they'd already decided on the basics and just needed to flesh it out a bit. However Jasper was just being silly and crude, offering ideas that were just never going to happen.

"I'm not saying we need a girl on girl scene but maybe a kiss or some sexual tension between the two of them, both know they can't be together but they still long for each other." His eyes had glazed over and Maddie really didn't want to imagine what he was seeing in his mind.

"Weren't they cousins in the original? That is wrong on so many levels." Maddie shivered as jasper frowned at her and the way she kept shooting down all his suggestions.

"Well they aren't cousins in ours." The smile slid from his face when he saw the scowl Maddie had pointed towards him. "Okay, so no lesbian encounters. But I think we need something edgier in our version, what about if Don John was gay and in love with Claudio and that's why he doesn't want him to be with Hero."

"I thought the whole point of this part of the assignment was to show the relevance of the play now, don't you think that means we shouldn't change the story that much?" Maddie turned in her chair to face Jasper; they were sat at his dining room table, books and papers splayed everywhere. They'd been working on their project for the last hour and a half and hadn't gotten any further than where they'd started from.

"It's not fair, you keep shooting down all my ideas and not offering anything of your own. I've done everything on the project so far." Jasper stood up and shoved his chair under the table, causing it to make a horrible screeching noise. "I think it's time you did something."

Maddie stood up herself, pissed off at Jasper. How dare he say she'd done nothing, they'd done everything together. "How dare you say I've done nothing? You know full well that I've done my fair share of the work." She began piling her papers and folders together, she shoved them in her schoolbag and swung it onto her shoulder; narrowly missing an expensive-looking crystal vase holding a bunch of pink roses.

"I'm going home to do some of my own work, if you decide you can work with me again let me know." She stormed out of his kitchen, through the hall and to the front door.

"Well I don't think that's going to be any time soon!" She heard Jasper shout from the kitchen just as she slammed the front door closed behind her. Seething and mumbling to herself under her breath she stomped down his front steps and out of the gate before going into her own house and slamming the door. She leant backwards and growled to herself before dropping her bag to the floor. Looking up to the ceiling she sighed and pushed away from the door.

"Kate I'm back! Jasper is so bloody annoying, I can't believe what he just did!" Maddie carried her bag into the living room and dumped it onto the sofa, she carried on through to the kitchen but it was empty. Strolling back through the lounge she stopped at the bottom of the stairs and called up to her sister.

"Kate! Kate, are you up there?" She waited a few seconds for a reply but didn't get one. "That's strange, I'm sure she didn't say she was going anywhere this morning. Oh well, she must be at a friend's house." Making her way back into the lounge and dropping down onto the big sofa, Maddie pulled her phone out of her pocket and text her sister to see what she wanted for dinner. Their parents had gone away for a few days so the two of them had the house to themselves.