“No, is there something you want to harass me about?” J.T. asked.
Dean Harlow sat down. She motioned for J.T. to sit and he did.
“Yes, there is. I noticed that you were not in your room when the RD did a bed check.”
“What time was this?”
“Around 10:00.”
“Oh, so you’re not sure what time. As I recall, you have to have an exact time and cause to write me up.”
Dean Harlow pushed her glasses to the end of her nose and stared over them at J.T. “It was 10:18. As I recall, there is a deal going that nine of the Julliard students are to be in their dorm at 10:00, no questions asked until a petition is signed with 75% of the student body’s signatures. And as I recall, a Mr. Jayson Sumtrane is one of those nine students.”
J.T. shoved his hands deep in his jacket pockets and exhaled. He stared out the window.
“Mr. Sumtrane, I am talking to you. You need to look at me when I talk to you.”
J.T. rolled his eyes and looked at Dean Harlow. He got up from the chair and leaned on the desk. “I am not a child and I don’t need to be talked down to. I am an adult and I have a right to stay out as late as I want. If your precious RD would have done his job, he would have told you that I still wasn’t back at 12:00. I had a lot on my mind and I needed to get away from all of this. I have rehearsals that last for a minimum of 3 hours, my classes are piling up, and I’m having some relationship problems. I do not need you to keep track of my every waking moment. I came to Julliard because I thought it would give me opportunities. All it has given me so far is a headache and probation!”
“Mr. Sumtrane, you are out of line!” Dean Harlow yelled.
“No, I’m not.” He stood up and walked over to the door. “I am out of here. I’ve got better things to do than to waste my time talking to a brick wall. Goodbye.” J.T. walked out of her office and slammed the door behind him.
Heidi walked by and saw the scowl on J.T.’s face. She didn’t think this was a good time to talk to him, but she opened her mouth anyway.
“Hi, J.T., what’s going on?” she asked.
J.T. stopped in his tracks. “Look at my face, Heidi. Does it look like anything good is going on?” he snapped.
Heidi’s lip quivered. She was trying not to cry, but her tears failed her. “I’m sorry, J.T. I just thought that maybe you’d like to talk to someone that didn’t make your blood boil every time you saw her.”
J.T. frowned. He motioned for Heidi to come towards him. She walked forward and he hugged her. “I’m sorry, Heidi. All the things I said last night, I didn’t mean for those words to come out that way. I just wanted you to have some fun. You’ve been so stressed out lately and I miss the fun we had. You’re a best friend and I don’t want to watch you turn into the woman that is behind those doors.” He kissed the top of her head.
Heidi wiped her eyes. “So, are we going to work this out?”
“Yeah, I suppose so. But, we are going to have to do it at a long distance.” J.T. let free from the hug and held onto Heidi at an arm’s length. I’m not staying at Julliard anymore. I’ve had enough of the Dean Harlow runaround.”
“No, J.T., you can’t do that. We’ll get the curfew fixed. You can’t just throw away your spot at Julliard.”
“I have other options, Heidi. Did you forget I’m starring in a Broadway play?”
“You can’t leave, J.T,” Heidi pleaded. “I need you here.”
“I don’t want to stay, Heidi. Not if it has to be like this all the time. I practically have a meeting with the dean every day.”
“There is a way you can end those. Its called following the rules.” J.T. let his hands slide down Heidi’s arm until he was no longer holding on to her.
“J.T., you can’t do this.”
“I would be a much happier person.”
“If you go, I go.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Heidi. You have to finish what you started. You can’t leave now.”
“Take your advice,” Heidi snapped. She walked away and left J.T. in the hallway alone.
J.T. rubbed his forehead. He thought he was going to be fine with his decision, but he didn’t think it was going to affect Heidi. His eyes stared down the hallway and his mind wandered off to what he was going to do about his girlfriend.
***
Kelso knocked on the doorjamb at Ashleigh’s dorm. Ashleigh was sitting at her desk working on homework.
“Come in.” She didn’t look up from her homework or ask who was going to enter.
“Hey,” Kelso greeted.
Ashleigh froze. She wasn’t ready to talk. She wasn’t ready to see Kelso. She wasn’t ready to face what had come knocking at her door, literally.
“I brought you something.” Kelso put a yellow rose in front of her nose.
“Yellow?”
“Red is so cliché. I hate being like everybody else.”
Kelso pulled up a stool next to her. “What are you working on?”
“Oh, just Shakespeare stuff. Kind of boring, actually.”
“Boring. The greatest romanticist ever recorded.” Kelso spouted off a line from Romeo and Juliet that made Ashleigh blush. “I knew I’d get you to smile, somehow.”
Ashleigh put her hands on both of her cheeks and noticed the heat. “Probably the first smile I’ve had since last night.”
“Yeah, about last night. If you have questions, you need to let me know. I can answer them. Don’t be afraid.”
Ashleigh got up from her desk and walked across the room. She didn’t look Kelso in the eye. “I know I shouldn’t be afraid, but I am. I mean, I’ve never been in a situation like this before. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” A stream of tears streaked down Ashleigh’s cheek.
Kelso stood up and walked over to his girlfriend. He brushed her arm with his fingers. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, either, Ashleigh. I’m a dead man walking. But, I do know that I want to spend the rest of my time with you. I don’t think I’ve ever had this kind of connection with anyone before. You laugh at my jokes, no matter how stupid they are. You dance with me whenever you feel like it. And, you are the most caring and sensitive person I know.” Kelso wrapped his arms around Ashleigh in a hug. He brushed her hair away from her ear and whispered, “I’m falling in love with you.”
Ashleigh pushed his arms away. “Don’t do this to me, Kelso. Don’t do this right now. I can’t . . .I mean . . . I won’t . . .” Ashleigh took a deep breath. “Don’t make me do this now, Kelso. You can’t bring this on. It’s not fair.”
“Fair? You want me to be fair? I can’t help this, Ash. I didn’t know what I was getting into when J.T. asked me to go on a date with you. I just thought we’d be good friends. I didn’t know I was going to fall in love. I didn’t want to get this close to anybody after I was diagnosed. I cut myself off from the world after my girlfriend died. In fact, I still don’t go out in public much anymore. I don’t even know how I ended up being part of a Broadway play in my condition. I stayed home with the lights out. Just me and my guitar. I cried, Ashleigh. I cried like a baby. Yeah, I know it sounds like I took a few lines out of RENT , but I didn’t. This is my life, and I’d like for you to be a part of it. I don’t care if you cry. I don’t care if you can’t handle it. I just want you to know that I need you in my life.”
Ashleigh looked at her hands. She was so nervous, she was shaking. “What’s going to happen, Kelso? What do I need to know?”
“Sit down.”
Ashleigh walked backwards until she fell onto her bed. Kelso sat beside her. He grabbed her hand. “I’m having some trouble right now. I told the director that I needed an understudy because I’m going through lots of treatments. I don’t feel very well. Kind of between a flu and a cold. Some days, I don’t want to even get out of the bed because I feel so bad.”
“Why did you pick me? I mean, you ha
ve all those other girls around you everyday at rehearsals. I’ve seen them pawing at you. Why did you pick me?”
Kelso smiled. “As I recall, you picked me.”
Ashleigh playfully punched Kelso in the shoulder. “Excuses, excuses.”
“So, are you okay with this?” Kelso asked.
A half-smile crept onto Ashleigh’s face. “I’ll try to be.”
“Good.” He kissed the top of her head, then looked at his watch. “Oh, man, got another rehearsal I’ve got to be at. These two a day rehearsals are going to drive me to an early grave.”
“Hey.”
“Just an expression. Calm down. Hey, why don’t you round up your friends and we can all go out after we get done. I think we are just working on blocking, so it won’t take that long.”
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”
***
“Court, your best friend is about to make the biggest mistake of his life,” Heidi told him over the phone.
“What did J.T. do this time?” Court asked.
“He says he’s going to drop out of Julliard,” Heidi remarked.
“WHAT?!” Court exclaimed. “Where is he? I’ve got to go talk to this boy before he does something stupid.”
“Probably at rehearsal.”
“Oh, shoot. I forgot I’m supposed to be there, too. I’m trying out to be Kelso’s understudy. Listen, let me get my stuff together and I’ll meet you outside your dorm. Sound good?”
“Yeah, I’ll be waiting outside.”
“See you in about ten minutes. Bye.”
Heidi hung up her phone, grabbed her purse, and went towards the foyer in her dorm. On her way, she ran into Dashelle and Brady.
“What’s up with you two?” Heidi asked.
“Brady got in trouble,” Dashelle said.
“So, what kind of time did you get?” Heidi asked Brady.
“I have to teach art classes to a group of old biddies at a nursing home.”
“Oh, that’ll be fun,” Heidi retorted sarcastically.
“Yeah, you’re telling me. The dean said that if any of us screwed up again, she would have us on so strict a probation that we would be on lock down for the rest of our years at Julliard.”
“Well, then, we don’t have a chance, Brady. Thanks for screwing things up. I really appreciate how considerate you were to get caught.”
“Heidi, lighten up,” Dashelle snapped. “The whole world does not revolve around what you’ve been trying to do. We’ve made some mistakes, but the weeks almost up and we can get things worked out. Chill out!”
Court walked into the dorm. “Ready, Heidi?”
“Yeah, I guess,” she sighed.
“Whoa, mopey. If you are going to try to convince J.T. to stay, that is not the way to do it,” Court remarked.
“Where’s he going?” Brady asked.
“He told me he was going to drop out,” Heidi said.
“That’s insane. We’re going with you,” Dashelle said. She grabbed Brady’s arm and pulled him out of the dorm with Court and Heidi in tow.
Court hailed a cab for the crew and the crammed into the backseat. Heidi would not talk to Brady or Dashelle. She was mad at them for causing yet another problem in her plan to get things better for the entire student body. Court was going over lines out loud. He got mad when he couldn’t remember the next line. Every once in awhile, Heidi offered the forgotten line.
The cab pulled up in front of the Madrid. The gang pooled their money together and paid the cabbie. The cabbie scowled when he noticed the small tip he received. The gang walked off as quickly as they could. They felt bad about not having enough money to give the cabbie a good tip.
Court walked in first and scoped the room for his best friend. J.T. looked up from his script and saw his friends in the back of the room. He jumped off the stage and walked to the back of the theater.
“Hey, what’s going on?” J.T. asked.
“A little bird told us that you are going to drop out of Julliard and we came by to tell you that you are making a big mistake,” Court remarked.
“How would you know? You’re not me,” J.T. remarked.
“Do you remember how hard you worked to get yourself here, Jayson? This wasn’t just a pipe dream. You have the talent and the know how. Don’t bail on us just because the dean is driving you mad.”
“Court, I can make decisions on my own. I’m an adult. If I choose to quit Julliard, I choose to quit. There is nothing anyone can say or do to get me to change my mind.”
“Okay, well, what’s going to happen when this little gig of yours is over?” Brady asked.
“Find another one. If I got this one, I’m pretty positive I can get another.” J.T. crossed his arms. “Now, are you people going to stay here and support me or are you going to turn your backs and walk out on me.”
“We’ll stay,” Heidi started, “but, not because we agree with what you’re doing.” Heidi plopped down in a seat and crossed her arms.
J.T. kissed her cheek. “I knew you’d understand.” He turned around and ran back onstage. Court followed after him.
“What is going on with you, man? It’s like you’ve changed into a whole different person since we started Julliard. I can tell you right now that you’re tortured soul act isn’t going to work with me.”
“I’m just tired of butting heads with that lady. I came here because she asked me to and now all she does is give me grief.”
“Did you forget that she also let you come a day later than everyone else and she’s been willing to work around this rehearsal schedule you have going.”
J.T. shook his head. “You don’t get it, Court. Just let me do things my way.” J.T. hopped onto the stage.
Court shook his head. He was going to get his friend to stay no matter what it took. He also knew that he had an army of friends behind him if he needed it. He looked to the back of the theater, held up his hands and shrugged his shoulders. Heidi shook her head, too.
Kelso and Ashleigh walked in.
“We were looking for you guys,” Ashleigh said. “Kelso was going to invite you all to go out after they got finished with this rehearsal.”
“Well, we might be helping J.T. pack if he doesn’t get a grip,” Heidi snapped.
Ashleigh scrunched her face up. “Huh?”
“Jayson has decided he is going to quit Julliard.”
“Oh, no he isn’t,” Ashleigh said. “He went through too much to get here and he’s not going to screw it up now.”
“So, what are you going to do about it, Ashleigh?”
“Has Court talked to him?” Ashleigh asked.
“Um, yeah. It looked like he was talking to a brick wall,” Brady said.
“Hey, why don’t I try,” Kelso said. “I mean I’m a neutral party. Maybe I can get him to change his mind.”
“Go for it,” Heidi grumbled.
“I will.” Kelso headed for the stage. Before he could talk to J.T., Greg called everyone to the stage to go over the events of the evening rehearsal. They had to do some critical blocking tonight and rehearse a couple of songs that the choreography had been amended. He said it was going to be at least an hour and a half before anyone would be able to leave. Finally, he announced the night of the first performance. It was going to be the first week of next month. This day was only three weeks away. Greg also reminded everyone that there were going to be two rehearsals every day from now until the performance date: one in the morning and one in the evening. He was not going to take any excuses for not showing up.
“Well, there goes my social life,” Kelso sighed.
J.T. raised his eyebrow. Kelso must have been able to talk to Ashleigh he thought. Either that or he was in the hunt to find someone else. He looked out to the back of the theater and saw Ashleigh. He changed his answer to the former and not the latter.
“So, gang, let’s get started. Kelso and J.T., let’s go
ahead and run through “Dying in America. We made a few changes to the choreography. Watch Kayla.”
Kelso and J.T. watched the new steps that Kayla went over. When she was finished, they ran through the song.
“Great, you two. Take five,” Greg told the guys.
Kelso and J.T. walked off the stage and into the back of the theater where the whole crew was.
“So, J.T., I hear you’re skipping out of Julliard,” Kelso remarked.
“What are you going to do about it?” J.T. asked.
“Well, your friends are trying to stop you from making the biggest mistake of your life. Man, you’ve got all you’ve ever wanted and you’re willing to throw it away, just like that.” Kelso snapped his fingers at the end of his statement.
“You can’t change my mind, Kelso. Everyone else has tried and failed.”
“Yes, but they just don’t want you to leave them at school all alone. I’m not part of that crowd. I’m part of the crowd that sees you when you’re not running from class to class. I’m part of the crowd that sees you as a professional. You’re working your butt off just to keep this part and to still be in school. In my book, that takes one guy with cajones. Don’t act like a spoiled brat, just because you don’t always get your way. Stay.”
“Well, Kelso, thanks for that wonderful after school special speech. I’ll take that into consideration while I’m packing.”
“You can’t go,” Heidi interjected. Kelso and J.T. had made it to the gang of friends in the back of the room.
“You of all people should want me to go after the way I treated you,” J.T. said.
“You didn’t treat me different than anybody else I know. They’ve all said those things that you said. I just needed to hear it from someone who knows best. But, apparently, you don’t know best if you’re going to skip out on us now.”
“Why is it so important that I stay?” J.T. whined to the group.
“I’ll take this one,” Court said. He pulled a piece of paper from his back pocket. “I believe this was written in 5th grade.” He cleared his throat. “When I get older, I want to go to Julliard so I can be famous. I want to perform on Broadway with lots of famous people like John Travolta and Brook Shields. Of course, if I don’t make it into Julliard, I’ll just go to Broadway with just some clothes on my back and audition for everything that is available. Then, when I make it to Broadway, I’m going to invite all my friends to come watch my show every night. I’ll even get them free tickets. Of course, I’ll have a girlfriend by then and I’ll propose to her on opening night. But, enough about girls. I want to get good grades and do really well in all my classes so I can make it to Julliard first. I think this is the most important thing if I want to make it to Broadway. I’m not going to let anything stop me including any people that say I can’t do it or think that I am too outgoing to stay in a very prestigious school.” Court looked up from what he was reading and peered at J.T. “Do I need to go on?”