The twins studied their scripts alone in their own rooms after dinner that night, but the next morning they were so excited and anxious all at once that they fell to talking at the breakfast table.

On the way to the high school, Troy went over some of the things Mr. Sumner had told him and David last night about auditioning.

When the car stopped at Seb, Melissa got out and opened Yolanda's door. "Hurry, you guys. I have to get you to the theater before my math meet," she ordered.

"We can find the theater ourselves, thank you," Yolanda said, stepping past her.

"Yolanda, let her show you where the theater is; you don't want to be late," Heather said from the car.

Yolanda and Troy exchanged a glance and followed Melissa up to Seb's front door.

The theater was relatively easy to find, it was right off the main hall. When they found a set of double doors that was open, Yolanda turned to Melissa. "Okay, we're here. See you later." The last thing she wanted was for them to walk into a high school audition with their little sister tagging along.

"I'll be right back here after my math meet," Melissa spoke carefully, pointing around the area like a police officer in traffic.

"Fine. Bye..." Yolanda slipped through the door, pulling Troy with her.

David and a girl named Kathey Templeman were the only ones there. They sat up on the stage, talking out to Mr. Rome, Jeff, and a girl named Jess, who had also visited their drama class back at E.B. White. The three of them were sitting a few rows up from the stage behind a funny looking table with a pair of short legs and a pair of tall legs. The table had wheels, and it could be rolled over the seats to make a desk.

Yolanda was disappointed they weren't the first ones there. But she was glad to see David. She smothered a smile as Kathy waved and smiled at Troy. From behind, she heard him groan.

Jeff, Jess and Mr. Rome looked. "Hi," said Jeff, "come on down."

"Which ones are you guys?" asked Jess, looking a clipboard.

"Hi, my name's Yolanda and this is my brother, Troy." Even as a young child Yolanda was never too shy to introduce herself and anyone with her, especially Troy, who was too shy.

"That's a pretty long name," said Mr. Rome.

"Ugh," groaned Jess.

"Excuse me?" Yolanda said as Troy snickered. Kathey caught his eye and waved her hand over her head. "Right over her head!" she said.

"She'll get it in a few hours," Troy said, patting Yolanda on the shoulder. She didn't want to shake it off in front of everyone, so she just gave him a look.

"She just has good taste; it was a terrible joke anyway," Mr. Rome said. Out of his director's line of sight, Jeff nodded.

The door opened and Michelle Dena, Kelly Adams and Linda Agee, the other girls in their drama class came in. The director and his assistants turned to greet them.

Yolanda was annoyed. That was her introduction? She figured that David and Kathy got to talk to them a long time. Now Mr. Rome and Jeff were teasing Michelle, Kelly and Linda. They had answered three questions in a row all at the same time, and Mr. Rome said he was going to call them the Three Degrees, after some old singing group. Then Jeff stood and said he supposed they should get started before Yolanda had a chance to think of anything else to say.

"You'll find some chairs on stage, line 'em up and have a seat," Jeff said.

The seventh graders pushed the chairs around the stage to get settled. Michele, Kelly and Linda sat together stage left, and David and Troy drew two chairs together stage right. Kathy and Yolanda each aimed their chairs at the same spot and knocked them into each other. Yolanda looked at Kathy, who smiled back pleasantly enough, but they each knew what the other was doing. They were both trying to sit in the middle.

"Uh-oh! Traffic jam on stage," said Jeff, who was watching this little exchange. In fact, all three of them seemed to be watching everything the seventh graders did. Jess had barely even spoken.

"Sorry," Yolanda mumbled. She pushed her chair stage right and plopped down next to David.

"Hi," he said, smiling.

Yolanda smiled back. "Hello," she said. Troy, who was sitting to David's left, caught her eye and raised his eyebrows with a little smirk. Yolanda knew he had purposely sat on David's other side when he saw where she was going to sit. She turned towards the front, deciding that Kathy being in the middle didn't bother her quite so much.

"So here we are," Mr. Rome said when they settled down. "Let's get know a little more about you. Speak, tell me things."

The seventh graders looked at each other. They were expecting to read from scripts. No one else was saying anything, so Yolanda decided to take the chance she didn't have before. "Well, what do you want to know?" she called out.

"Ah, a sign of life," said Mr. Rome. Jeff winked at her and Jess looked up at Yolanda as if she had never seen her before.

"I understand this drama class of yours has a very unusual history. Let's hear about that."

Kathy found her tongue. "Well, they put us in this study hall..."

"Projection!" said Mr. Rome.

"Excuse me?" said Kathy.

"This is theater, we need to hear every line, every syllable, every whisper from the back rows," he said, pointing backwards over his head, "Speak from your diaphram, like this, Well what do you want to know?" Mr. Rome said in a loud, yet oddly conversational voice.

Yolanda looked down to hide another grin. He used what she said as his example.

"Oh," said Kathy. She repeated in a louder voice, "Well they put us in this study hall when they found out that our teacher Mr. Dale was going to be out sick longer than they thought."

"Better," said Mr. Rome. "Go on."

"So we had to go to the library to do homework during sixth period. We started out doing homework, but then we got home our parents would say, "Where's your homework?" and not believe us when we said we were done, so we quit doing it after awhile, then somebody," she glared at David, "let his dad find his paper football and told him he made it in study hall and got us in trouble," said Kathy.

David rolled his eyes and slouched down in his chair.

"Mmm-hmm," said Mr. Rome. "And how'd you get your class started without Mr. Dale?"

Kathy started to answer and Mr. Rome held up a hand, "Someone else."

Everyone looked around, waiting for another speaker.

"Don't wait to be called on, just go for it," Mr. Rome said.

"We didn't want to take home ec and shop," Linda Agee blurted out.

"That wasn't the reason," Michele said.

"Well that's what started it," Yolanda said, "See, by the time the parents and school figured out what to do with us it was too late to get us into regular classes. So they were just going to stick all the girls in home ec and the guys in shop. In this day and age, do you believe that?" Yolanda and Linda nodded at each other.

"What's wrong with home ec and shop?" Mr. Rome said with a little smile. Jeff and Jess exchanged a glance.

"That's what I said, we all have to take one or the other sometime," Michele said.

"Not me," said Troy. "My brother and all his dumb jock friends took shop, no thank you."

"Amen," said David.

"Besides," Kathy said, straightening up, "I'm an actress, what good is home ec going to do me?"

"You can learn very important stuff like learning how to bake cookies at Christmas," David said sarcastically.

"Oooo," cried Troy.

"I know how to bake cookies," answered Kathy.

"Good for you," snapped Michele, "I wasn't talking about cookies, I was talking about electives."

"Forget the cookies!" Yolanda said, "The point is that we signed up to take drama, and they were going to make us take other stuff, so we were like, let's make up our own class. That was Troy's idea," Yolanda nodded at her brother.

Mr. Rome, Jeff and Jess turned to look at him with interest. Troy swallowed. "Yeah, I brought it up and he," Troy jerked his thumb at David, " of course took me totally seriously because his family's always writing their Congressman and stuff like that. And it went from there."

"Hippies," Kathy said, smiling at David to show that she was just kidding.

"Smack her Yolanda," David, who may not have been kidding, said.

"People called his family hippies in elementary school, but that's just because they do different stuff," Yolanda explained instead.

"I thought hippies were those people in the sixties that smoked pot on farms and had sex with everybody and didn't ever shower," Michele said. "Oh, I don't mean that your mom and dad..." she said quickly to David, who was frowning.

"Hey! I was there, and we did shower," laughed Mr. Rome.

"I was just saying what I heard, I don't think..." Michele said.

"It's okay, the rest of that is pretty accurate," said Mr. Rome. "Ahh..." he sighed, looking around the room.

"You kids were born too late," Jeff and Jess said together.

"Gee have we talked about this before?" Mr. Rome said.

"One or two times," Jeff said.

"Anyway!" Mr. Rome said up to the seventh graders. "How'd we get the illustrious group of thespians we see today?"

Troy didn't know what illustrious meant, but it sounded better than they looked. David, who always got mad when people made fun on his parents, was still frowning at the floor. Yolanda was totally wrapped up in trying to get him to look at her. Kathy was watching them, and to her left Michele and Kelly were whispering to a sad looking Michele. He felt they were going downhill fast, talking about cookies and people having sex and not showering. Somebody had better say something before Mr. Rome says "Thank you!" before they even got to read the script.

"Well Kathy made us that thing, right? What was it?" Troy said. Everyone looked over at him and he shot them the look he and Yolanda gave each other when one of them was about to get in trouble. Shape up! It said.

Yolanda recognized the look. "Oh yeah," she turned to Kathy. "That schedule."

"Oh, the syllabus! Yeah."

"No one could remember her big fancy college word," Troy said aside to Mr. Rome, Jeff and Jess. They nodded.

"Whatever," Kathy waved him away. "All I was saying was we needed a plan or they weren't going to think we were serious. So we decided to pick our own play."

"We even gave ourselves homework," Yolanda chimed in. Kathy nodded, so she went on. "Everyone had to read and pick a play they wanted to do then we were going to vote on what we wanted."

"Meanwhile, we..." Troy pointed to himself and David, "had to talk his Dad into it, because his dad is on the PTA and could talk the other parents into stuff."

"So we had to make it look really good, which is why the reports and the syllabus," David said.

"See, he could say it!" cried Kathy.

"Then the parents had a meeting and Mr. Sumner made me and David go and talk about it. So we made Kathy and Yolanda go to."

At this point Michele, Kelly and Linda were quiet.

"Did the Three Degrees perform as well?" Mr. Rome asked.

"No," said Kelly softly, "nobody called us, we had to hear about it the next day." It was the first thing she had said, and it produced the biggest reaction. Kathy, David, Troy and Yolanda all struggled to talk at once.

"Aw man," said David, "we told you guys what happened. It was just going to be me and Troy, but Yolanda lives in the same house with Troy, so of course she's going to hear about it."

"What about Kathy?" said Kelly.

David shrugged. "She was the one with the syllabus."

"We didn't have your numbers anyway," explained Kathy.

"Besides, who cares now, we got the class didn't we?" David said.

"Yeah, I guess you did," Kelly said.

David looked incredulous. "You guys picked out what play we were gonna do for our assignment!"

"That's true," said Linda, patting Kelly's shoulder. Kelly ignored her.

"Well!" Jess said at this point. She got up briskly and picked up a stack of scripts. "Now you're all in this class together, right?"

"Mmm-hmm," the seventh graders mumbled reluctantly onstage.

"Yeah I guess," Kelly finally said.

"Right!" said Jess. "Because we need you to study these two scenes and come back in and read it together. She got up on the stage and gave them each a copy of the script. "There's a scene from Act one and Act two. The highlighted lines are the part you are reading right now. Keep in mind we're just getting some ideas and this may not be the part you actually try out for. Let's see..." she stopped in front of the boys.

"Lou and Lennie," she said. Troy and David exchanged a grin-those were the two parts they had practiced the most at David's house the afternoon before. Lou was a class clown type and Lennie was somewhat of a sidekick, perfect for them.

Jess held out the two scripts. "Your choice," she said to the boys.

"I'll be Lou," said David. They had mostly practiced that way.

"Lennie," said Troy.

Yolanda was a girl named Carole, who seemed kind of bossy. No problem, she would just pretend she was Kathy or Michelle. She had seen the way Michelle told the other two girls what to do all the time.

"Okay," said Mr. Rome, "get out and come back brilliant."