Circles Read Online Free Page A

so we could accommodate you,” Mrs. Kronberger said crankily. “I thought your appointment was at four-thirty.”
    “No, it’s at four,” Jennifer said gently.
    “I don’t know why there’s always a bunch of people who have to go to the dentist during rehearsals,” Mrs. Kronberger said even more crankily. “What is it with this generation anyway? I never went to the dentist when I was your age.”
    “So would it be okay to do the end of the scene now?” Jennifer coaxed. “I’ll try to make my appointments later from now on.”
    “No, it’s not okay,” Mrs. Kronberger said savagely. “I just don’t want to rush through this scene. Especially since everybody else is here for a change. Where is your understudy?”
    Beebe stood up immediately. Her legs were trembling, but she stood up. It was going to happen, finally. Now. She was going to stand up there on the stage with Dave, and hold the part in front of her, and pretend to read the lines that she already knew by heart:
     
    “Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
    Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
    For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
    And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.”
     
    And he would take her hand, and he would pull her close to him, and after a while, he would say:
     
    “Then move not, while my prayers’ effect I take.
    Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purg’d.”
     
    And then he would kiss her, and she would ...
    “I really will try, Mrs. Kronberger, to make my appointments later. Honestly, I will. And you know this is only the first time it’s happened,” Jennifer said.
    Mrs. Kronberger mumbled something and waved a hand impatiently. But then she told the others to sit down while Romeo and Juliet went into their big introduction scene.
    Beebe sat down too. She was bitterly disappointed but relieved at the same time. She watched as Jennifer and Dave moved together to the center of the stage. Mrs. Kronberger started to cough, and while she was coughing, the two leading players turned towards each other smiling. Beebe jealously saw how Dave leaned over and put an arm around Jennifer’s shoulder as he whispered something to her. Jennifer moved into the circle of his arm, and settled comfortably against him.
    There was a deep sorrow inside of Beebe as she watched the two of them together—Dave with his handsome, bright, humorous face so close to Jennifer’s long blonde hair. And Jennifer looking up at him, out of her large blue eyes. She was such a pretty girl it hurt Beebe. Such a pretty girl and, yes, such a nice girl too.
    Why did she have to be so pretty and so nice? It wasn’t fair that some people had everything. No wonder they always got the leading parts.
    Mrs. Kronberger stopped coughing. “Well, if you two can separate yourselves and concentrate on the play ...” she said, trying to sound severe but not really succeeding. How could anybody be severe with Dave and Jennifer? “... perhaps we can begin.”
    Beebe leaned forward and listened. The day she had had the crying jag she had said, spitefully, to her mother that Jennifer was a big, stupid girl with a loud voice like a yodeler. As Jennifer read her lines, Beebe knew it wasn’t true. Jennifer was lovely, and not stupid at all. Her voice was rich and clear, and she spoke her lines with a sweetness and a playfulness that penetrated Beebe’s sorrow and made her want to clap her hands. She knew, without wanting to admit it, that Jennifer was much more talented than Dave. When Jennifer spoke her lines Beebe felt as if she were hearing them for the first time.
     
    “My only love sprung from my only hate!
    Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
    Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
    That I must love a loathed enemy.”
     
    Yes, yes, Beebe thought, wrapped up as she was in her knotted feelings for Jennifer. She was—she should be—a loathed enemy because Dave liked her, but yet Beebe couldn’t hate Jennifer just as Juliet