“Good job,” I told him, yawning as I glanced down at my watch. We’d been at this for two hours. I was always tired, but it was difficult to sleep these days, dreams woke me up all night long. “We can probably break for the day.”
He swiped at his forehead, where beads of sweat dotted the skin, both of us overheated under the bright lights. “When are you going to let me in on who you picked for the female role?”
I hadn’t found the right person to play the kidnapped orphan-turned-princess fighting for her freedom. None of the other girls in our program felt like a good fit, and it had to be someone I was willing to spend dozens of hours working alongside. That alone excluded most people, let alone the handful of good actresses in our program. I’d always struggled to make friends with girls. Hell, I struggled to make friends with anyone, but girls were a difficulty setting on Insanity mode. Aside from Adonis, most of the other students treated me like the resident crazy person who should be avoided at all costs.
Wisps of dark hair fell into my face, and I pushed them away impatiently. My hair refused to stay in the messy bun on my head, no matter how many times I redid it. It had always had a mind of its own, and now it wanted to flow free down my back no matter how much that might get in my way.
Okay, I knew my hair didn’t have sentient thought processes or a will of its own, but still. I’d always been prone to flights of fancy.
“You must have read a lot of Greek myths when you were a kid.” Adonis flipped through the script before casting a sly glance at me. “Although parts of this read more like an erotic fairytale.”
“I like to think of the sexual aspects as subtext,” I replied primly. “Maybe you should keep your mind out of the gutter.”
Adonis jumped off the stage and slumped down into the chair next to me. “The guy is urging her to submit to him while she talks about pleasure and pain. How else am I supposed to read that?”
“Most fairy tales have darker themes than Disney wants you to believe. In the original Rapunzel, the prince gets her pregnant before she escapes from the tower. And you should hear all the Freudian theories about Sleeping Beauty. Issues of consent aside, what kind of prince goes around kissing girls that look dead?”
He grabbed my bun and playfully shook it. “You sure know how to make everything weird. I love that.”
I was weird. Weirder than any of them really knew. I made a point of choosing a college far enough away from where I grew up that nobody here knew my history.
Foster kid who couldn’t remember most of her early years.
Former mental patient with fixed delusions that no medication ever touched.
Girl who honestly believed some of that shit from fairy tales had to be true because most of it felt more real than anything people told her was true.
These days, I’d learned to keep most of that to myself. I took my meds because they were the only thing that allowed me to sleep and kept at least a dull edge on my sanity. But there was something in the way I carried myself or how I talked that let people know I was more than a little off. It used to make me feel broken, but over the years I’d glued most of my pieces back together and only spent time with people who appreciated that I would never be completely whole—if I ever had been.
Adonis turned to me with an expression that was suddenly serious. “You should really consider playing the role yourself. I can’t think of anyone better. You say those lines, and it’s like you’re living them.”
A dark sense of foreboding washed over me. I forced myself to smile and shake my head. “I want to produce, not star. There isn’t a single bone in my body that was meant to act.”
“There goes that false modesty again. It’s only cute until it’s not.”
I swatted at him, and he caught my wrist in his hand, not letting go until I yanked my arm away. “It isn’t false modesty, so stop trying to blow my head up as big as yours is. Besides, acting track students have to perform in the showcase to get credit, so I would just be taking a spot from someone who needs it. I applied for this program to be behind the scenes, and I plan to stay there. Thank you very much.”
“Fine.” He flipped open his script and turned to the first page. “We still have a few more minutes until our time is up. Walk me through this character a little bit. Who is Hades? What does he want?”
“His queen.”
Adonis waggled his eyebrows. “I’ll just bet he does.”
“Oh, shut up.” I refused to make any apologies for the blatant sexuality in the play. This was an art program. If we weren’t pushing boundaries then what was the point?
“How are we going to style him? I’m picturing some king of darkness with pebbled skin and a humpback.”
I shook my head. For reasons I didn’t understand, it was suddenly very important to me that he got this right. “Hades is a god, one of the most beautiful of his kind. He uses that beauty as a weapon to entice young women away from the human realm and trap them in the underworld. Eventually, they wither away as he feeds off their life to sustain his power. Once one is gone, he goes in search of the next.”
Adonis nodded as if enthralled. It wasn’t just the story, he was the type to take his work seriously. If he accepted a role, then he needed to understand everything about the character. “Then what’s all this stuff about asking her to submit? Why not just take her?”
“It has to be fair. The realms of the gods are bound by rules, strict ones. The girl has to agree to give herself to Hades, or else he can’t have her. Gods can deceive, but they can’t outright lie, and they can’t take what doesn’t belong to them without permission. Everyone knows that.”
“Everyone, huh?” He laughed when I glared at him. “Calm down, this is great stuff. No one else at the showcase will have anything like it. Although, I have to say that you have an amazing imagination.”
Writing this play felt pretty close to cheating. I didn’t really believe that it was my amazing imagination. Instead, the scenes I’d written down felt like a forgotten dream that I’d spun out from memory as if I’d watched it happen to someone else.
My rational mind knew it was fantasy, but the delusional part barely held in check of copious amounts of neuroleptic medication refused to believe it.
Shaking off the nonsense thoughts, I frowned at Adonis. “I’m going to ignore everything but the compliment. You have to think of Hades like a dark fantasy come to life. He is too cruel and too beautiful to exist in this world.”
Adonis gave me a wide smile. “The perfect role for me, then.”
“There’s that all important modesty we were talking about.”
Most of the time, I managed not to notice how gorgeous Adonis was. He was the type who became an actor because everyone had been telling him his entire life that he could make it in Hollywood. And it would be a shame for anyone to miss out on seeing that face in high-definition. And just to prove that life was never fair, he also happened to be one of the most talented actors in our program. Incredible looks with talent to match was a potent combination.
He was doing me a favor by starring in my showcase when he literally had his choice of any of them. And I couldn’t think of anyone more fitting for the role, ego included.
Adonis tapped his pencil against his full lips, expression pensive. “I’m still trying to figure out the whole death angle. Hades is the god of death. There is literally nothing attractive about that.”