CHAPTER 20

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I met Gongchan in the morning for drama club. He commented that I looked really well rested. It was a good possibility that I was. I think Leo discovering my secret had been just what I needed. I felt freed from my lie, even though everyone else still had no idea.

We sat with Hongbin and Hakyeon when we arrived at the stage. Mr. Jung hadn’t arrived yet, so the boys chatted amongst themselves.

“So, I guess you found Leo yesterday,” Hongbin said to me suddenly.

“Oh, yeah. He found me at dinner actually.”

“Do you mind if I ask what was going on? You seemed really flustered when you were looking for him.”

Hongbin couldn’t just forget about it. This was why news spread so fast through camp. The boys were into gossip and getting all the details about everything.

I laughed, trying to give a light feeling to the conversation. Hopefully he would think what Leo and I talked about wasn’t important. “I was just a little panicked. Let my imagination get carried away. At soccer club, the captains were talking about making teams. Leo has been such a good friend and a good teacher. I want to be on his team. I wanted to talk to him about that. I thought maybe we could talk to Minseok and see if we could be put on the same team.”

It wasn’t completely a lie because I was worried about soccer too.

“Did you get a chance to talk to Minseok?”

“Not yet. Leo and I just discussed things. He tried to calm me down,” I chuckled quietly. “He told me that he’d still help me with soccer even if we aren’t on the same team. I guess we’ll just wait and see what happens.”

Hongbin nodded in understanding. “Leo really is such a nice guy.”

Why had I signed up for drama club when almost every second of my time at Camp Alpine was just a big act?

Ms. Jung stepped out onto the stage. It was time for club to start. For a few minutes she lectured about acting theory. It was really interesting. It was so interesting that Hakyeon and Gongchan started playing rock, paper, scissors to pass the time.

“Since you all did so well with the improvisation exercise last time, I thought for our final performance at the end of the season we should do a skit show.”

“I’ve been waiting for this!” Hakyeon cheered. “Goodbye Shakespeare!”

Mr. Jung gave him a disapproving look. “As I was saying. You may work with others and write your own skits. You must take part in at least two skits. We will have the show on Saturday of week five, so you have about three weeks to prepare.”

I glanced at the boys around me. They all looked excited at the prospect that they would be able to write and preform their own material. I thought it sounded nice too. It was better than being forced into a role that you didn’t want to take.

“Alright. Let’s do some acting drills. Later I will give you some time to talk amongst yourselves about ideas for the show.”

We had some acting practice. We were broken into groups and given a script to practice. Each group was assigned a different emotion to focus on while preforming the script. One group got anger, and yelled the entire script at each other. Another was assigned sadness and pretended to cry. My group was assigned surprise, so there was just a lot of gasping and hand waving. I’ll admit, it was much more fun than I thought it would be.

As promised the last five minutes of the club meeting, we were given time to talk about the show.

“I say the four of us work together,” Hakyeon suggested. “We can make two skits together. That’ll be easy.”

Gongchan nodded in agreement. “Plus, I think our dynamic is pretty good together.”

“Do you guys have anything in mind for the skits?” I asked. I was kind of excited for this. “I think something like our improv act would be good, light and comedic.”

“I’m fine with anything, as long as I don’t have to be the girl again,” Hongbin added.

“If someone dresses up as a girl, that would get us so many laughs though,” Gongchan thought aloud.

I could feel his eyes settle on me, and I instantly regretted looking up at him.

“I bet Jisoo would look good as a girl. We could do a funny date scene.”

“I think you’re right,” Hakyeon approved. “I have the perfect idea. I’ll try to write it down for next time and we can discuss it.”

The other two boys gave mumbles of agreement.

Did I not have a say in this? I should be protesting. No boy would want to dress up like a girl. I mean, Hongbin already said that he didn’t want to, and clearly the other two didn’t want to either. Would it blow my cover if I dressed up like a girl?

We were dismissed from club and all walked back to camp together. It was time for lunch. As we walked, I tried to figure out a good excuse to get out of this mess. I couldn’t think of one.