Chapter 2
Two
THE ROYAL LONDON SCHOOL of Dramatic Arts.
Although we called it the White Elephant.
A mighty beast felled between two tower blocks, a strip club and Marylebone Road.
It had been constructed two hundred years earlier as a refuge for performers, a safehouse to cosset their craft.
Four towers (the legs) contained the beast, while the theatre huddled in its belly.
Over time, more and more sections had been added to its hulking facade: a red-brick building tacked to the left, a Modernist cube dumped to the right.
With each century the creature had grown and grown, a hodgepodge of fashions, an ungainly chimera.
I stood before it, awed by its ugliness, cowed by its majesty.
The ground shuddered below me. Later I came to recognize the sound as a train hurtling beneath my feet, but just then, I could’ve sworn it came from the beast, a low rumble, a warning.
I LAY ON MY unmade bed in the halls of residence. The room was small. A bed, a desk, three drawers and a closet. A bluebottle climbed the window. In the courtyard below me was a circle of weatherworn benches. In the bedroom above me was the cast of STOMP.
I knew I should unpack, but the task seemed too arduous to contemplate.
I couldn’t be bothered sliding the cardboard out from never-slept-in sheets or clipping the plastic ties off the many utensils Mum – going overboard as usual – had got me from the homewares section of Wilko.
But then I felt the familiar sting of guilt my parents always seemed to inspire in me.
She’d tried, bless her. They both had. I mean, they’d said yes when I begged them to drive down and move me in the first day my room became available.
They’d wanted to make a moment of it; go for coffee, tour the area with me, and size up the school’s grand exterior.
But, impatient to begin my new life, I’d made excuses – a headache, exhaustion – bundled them into the car and waved them off.
I got up and pulled back the sheer curtain.
It was nearly seven o’clock. The chimney tops were bathed in an orange glow.
Rose-coloured clouds daubed the sky. I opened the window its regulation six centimetres (to prevent overwrought freshmen from hurling themselves to their deaths), sat at the desk and opened my laptop.
Facebook pinged. Someone had left a comment beneath my Leavers’ Day photo.
Laura Stead
Haha good times. Keep in touch Shannon u star ★
I selected her profile and clicked Unfriend. We wouldn’t keep in touch. I didn’t want to. I wanted to discard the girl I’d been and build someone new.
I then clicked onto the group I’d been invited to a few weeks before, >RLSDA Actors 09. Although I knew them by memory, I read through the comments again.
Obi Njoku posted 1 hour ago
Did anyone get their books second-hand?
2 comments
Jolly McAndrew posted 2 days ago
OMG this reading list is KILLING ME
18 comments
Stefano Bianchi posted 5 days ago
Have any of the guys actually bought a dance belt?
3 comments
Archie Melling posted 7 days ago
Me and my band are doing a gig in Reading this weekend if anyone wants to meet up before term starts? X
No one has commented yet
Maddy McAuley posted 9 days ago
Which audition speech did you guys do to get in btw? ;) xx
12 comments
Hettie Walker-Grant posted 14 days ago
Just got my leotard home aaaaaaand it doesn’t fit . . . X
No one has commented yet
I scrolled down to the bottom of the page.
Jolly McAndrew posted 3 weeks ago
Hey gang, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Jacob McAndrew but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE just call me Jolly. I’ve set up this group so we can chat/meet/get to know each other before term begins. So excited to get started and meet y’all in the flesh! Wooo! Xxx
12 comments
I hadn’t posted anything yet; I hadn’t commented. Instead, I hovered like a ghost, absorbing what the others were up to, gathering information, plotting how I would present myself before them. These people were vibrant; they were interesting. I wasn’t. Not yet.
My laptop pinged again. A new notification winked in the corner.
Victoria Parker-Tilley posted just now
I’m bored. Anyone in London yet – drink?
Victoria, like me, hadn’t posted or commented before.
I clicked on her profile. It was private. Her picture was black and white, her face turned away from the camera. Beneath the image lay a single word. Actor.
She looked like the sort of girl I’d never dare to approach back home, the sort of girl who knew how to find and wear vintage clothing without looking stupid, the sort of girl who didn’t need makeup to look pretty, the sort of girl who was bound to ignore me.
I gazed out at the pink-orange sky.
But maybe things were different now. Perhaps here, in London, we’d be friends. Perhaps I could be someone else.
I began typing.
Shannon Bell commented just now
I’m here. Tell me when and where. X