Resolutely refusing to let the tumultuous events of his locker room exchange with the gym teacher get to him, Peter stepped with confidence off his sister’s soft fingertips and into the waiting palm of Mrs. Parks, who was grinning so widely at her tiniest cast member’s arrival that her plush dimples seemed in danger of splitting at the cheek.

                “Try not to embarrass yourself too much, twerp,” Erica snarked once her brother was clear of her appendage, quickly snatching hold of her backpack strap and skirting off toward the hallway out of the theatre in order to catch the bus home. Somewhat appalled at the seeming thoughtlessness of this response from the seventeen-year-old, the play director closed her jaw before it had hung open too obviously. Peter, meanwhile, was smiling smugly to himself as he took a seat in Mrs. Parks’ hand, knowing this phrase was only the most loving support his sibling was physically capable of gifting.

                “Well, Peter, I’m… glad you’re here!” the woman remarked cheerily, quickly recovering from the perceived lapse in decorum on the part of the Clark family. Several older students were already filing in past the woman, hardly paying the five-inch student in her palm much more than a glance before dumping their backpacks along a common brick wall and leaping up onstage: clearly veterans of the high school’s productions.

                “Y-Yeah, glad to be here,” he said, mildly mesmerized by the ease with which the other kids seemed to be falling into their niche before the particulars of the play were even figured out beyond the parts, which he understood were doled out on a bulletin board in the morning. “Hey, um… thanks for… coming up to me about all this. The play, I mean. I’m excited.”

                “That’s great. I’m sure you’re going to fit right in,” she reassured, taking a few measured steps down the aisles of the theatre’s seats and made her way toward a small staircase on the sideline that led up onto the impressively scaled stage. “I’m not sure if you’ve been in many theatrical productions before or not, but you’ll see in a minute we like to just get comfortable with one another before we start the work. We’ll have you the best of friends with everyone up here in no time.”

                “A-Awesome,” Peter chuckled, trying not to sound too disbelieving, though at least Calvin seemed to be a positive reflection of the department. If half the students here were as supportive, he’d be on easy street. Just as he made this observation, in fact, the petite art classmate passed by Mrs. Parks, making his way onto the stage. Making eye contact with Peter in the woman’s palm, though, he approached with a friendly smirk.

                “Hey, man!” he piped, still himself drinking in the scale of the space given his equal newness. “Wild, this place, isn’t it?”

                “Oh, yeah. Definitely,” the freshman agreed, taking another winding gander in all directions, hardly able to even make out every corner of the velvet-coated cavern without squinting, save for what was laid behind Mrs. Parks’ towering form. The woman, of course, beamed at this topic.

                “I hope it helps inspire you kids to put your all into every performance. We’re not a high school theatre. We’re a theatre,” she corrected with a wink to both boys.

                “Noted,” Peter chuckled, at last settling his gaze on the students beyond, who were already beginning to form themselves into a circle.

                “Just for right now, while we’re warming up, I can hold you, if that’s all right. I could also go find a chair and have you sit on it up here,” Mrs. Parks uttered more under her breath as Calvin wandered further off into the cluster of students. “It’s your choice.”

                “I can just stay here,” Peter agreed, wanting the best view of everything that was happening. “It… won’t distract you, will it?”

                “Not at all,” she said, finally taking a few more steps that led both her and her handheld newcomer into the warm glow of a central lighting unit that placed a halo around the middle of the jet-black stage, where the gathered young thespians had already begun to congregate, the uninitiated probably following suit of their older and more experienced counterparts. “All right, everyone. Let’s circle up, and limber up.”

                An hour later, Peter’s face ached from laughter, his throat raspy for the same reason. After a brief rundown of names and corresponding roles which the boy was scarcely able to keep up with, the cast had run through a couple dozen breathing and stretching exercises, all of which the boy happily performed on the padded surface of Mrs. Parks’ palm, loosening up his muscles but even more so finding he was able to settle comfortably into the space emotionally. Perhaps faster than any room he’d entered in this whole school, the kids surrounding him, divas and misfits alike of all ages, had stopped gawking. In fact, it was like he wasn’t even present after the first ten minutes of warm-ups had passed, a fact that was almost breathtaking to Peter, especially given that most of them still had to look up to the director for instructions. Their eyes were locked to her with genuine interest in the next step, not to the scientific abnormality perched in her palm. Already he knew he wasn’t going to be eager to leave.

                Next came a read-through of the first three scenes of the play, full of flubbed lines and stumbled wordings as the cast performed a cold reading from the script. Most everyone began sitting cross-legged on the stage but eventually settled onto their stomachs. It was tremendously difficult to sit still during some of the more flurried scenes where fairy tale characters settled into inane arguments involving popular culture and nonsensical misunderstandings, as the jokes came fast and hard, rendering most of the cast at least in giggles, especially as the more seasoned performers were already finding their comic voices to emphasize the punchlines.

                Things were a little tougher for Tom Thumb, which was turning out to be a fairly major character in the play, as Peter had to keep his laughter in check enough to run across the page and find his next cue. Mrs. Parks had gratefully highlighted the boy’s lines in his own book such that he was able to just scurry over to the next colored line of text to read his forthcoming puns from the script’s position on the floor. The woman was also courteous enough to help turn the pages, though had only done so after ensuring the boy didn’t want to do it himself. Small a distinction though it was, it was even more of a confidence boost for the five-inch actor.

                Certainly he knew he could use one, especially after hearing the voice talent of his compatriots, even without seeing them in action. Most of them seemed to have at least some experience with acting, including the newbies, and if they didn’t, they’d definitely fooled their tiny castmate. Calvin, as it turned out, was playing Jack of the titular Beanstalk: a fitting choice, Peter, decided, just as much as he was suited to Tom. The others seemed to have been similarly chosen. If nothing else, Mrs. Parks had an eye for casting, but given how kindly she’d been treating him without assuming he was made of glass paper, Peter guessed it was more than something else.

                For the final half-hour, the cast was split off into smaller groups to get acquainted with characters with whom they spent a significant amount of time in the script, if only to start developing chemistry. Peter, it turned out, was something of an outsider, bopping between several cast members, though by far, it turned out, he spent the majority of his time with the character of Rapunzel, who happened to be played by Bluebell Hathaway, the quiet and lanky girl from his art class with short locks and wild socks.

                Given the volume of scenes they held together, it turned out it would be necessary for his dark-haired costar to be well-practiced in holding Tom Thumb. Once the abridged script reading was completed, he was given the chance to scramble back into Mrs. Parks’ hand, and introduced to the girl, who gave him a soft smile that immediately put him at ease.

                Ordinarily Peter saw some real hesitance when being passed off into a new pair of hands for the first time, with Lisa especially leaping to mind in recent memory, but this wasn’t the case with Bluebell. Neither though did her eyes flash with that hungry curiosity he’d seen in Sharon and company. His presence in her hand was simply accepted but clearly taken very seriously, as she braced her opposite palm underneath her elbow to keep steady.

                “I’m not that heavy, am I?” Peter joked, hoping to break the ice as Mrs. Parks helped guide Bluebell by the shoulders down to a seated position before shambling quietly off to check in with the other groups.

                Blurting with a single giggle, Bluebell shook her head, easing her palm in nearer to her face and propping her arm against her knee. It seemed much closer than was necessary to hear him given the breadth of space available onstage, but Peter didn’t mind. Now with far more of the girl’s face to engage with, in fact, the boy’s gaze couldn’t help but move to her ear, where he noticed a small piece of translucent plastic embedded in the opening, and suddenly it made a little more sense.

                “It’s… good to meet you,” Peter said, opening his mouth wider to speak and hoping he didn’t look too foolish by practically yelling at his castmate, whom he now realized was hearing-impaired. He extended his hand out eagerly.

                Bluebell cracked another smile. She reached in with her index finger and placed it gingerly into Peter’s palm, shaking his arm softly before relenting again and blinking several times in quick succession, squinting intently at the subject in her thin palm.

                “You don’t have to yell,” she said, her lip still curved in the corner. The words were rounded softly, as though she’d melded the syllables of each word, though they were conscientiously divided nonetheless. She’d clearly had nearly a lifetime of practice. “It doesn’t make much difference.”

                “Oh. S-Sorry,” Peter muttered, immediately embarrassed.

                “It’s okay,” she said quickly. “I read lips. Usually. Yours are a little harder.”

                “I understand that,” he said, trying not to think too consciously now about how his miniature mouth formed the letters. “Anything I can do to make it easier?”

                “If it’s okay with you, if you want me to know what you said, you probably need to just make sure you’re looking right at me,” she explained coolly, flashing him another reassuring smile as a promise that he hadn’t shattered some social etiquette paradigm. “Otherwise I’ll have to guess.”

                “I’m pretty sure anything you guess would sound better than whatever I said, but sure thing,” he snickered back. He straightened his back, peering up squarely at her face. “Is this better?”

                “Much. Thank you.”

                “Of course, um… Bluebell, isn’t it?”

                “Only my mom calls me that. Everyone else uses Blue.”

                “Blue. I like it.”
                “So do I. Anything’s better than Bluebell, though.”

                “It’s nice, though!”

                “Uh-huh. Come on. I’m deaf, not stupid.”

                Peter shared a guilty yet ice-breaking chortle with his castmate, noting that her hand seemed to tremble slightly under his feet when she spoke, but also realized she corrected for it as much as possible with her opposite hand positioned beneath her forearm. Even without the perfect balance of someone like Lisa, she clearly had his stability in mind. More than that, though, despite the fact that Peter couldn’t quite imagine losing his hearing just as much as he was sure Blue couldn’t imagine standing at the height of someone’s ankle, he realized an easy rapport had developed almost instantly with this girl who clearly didn’t shy away from the idea of her difference, even if others might’ve. It was inspiring, really.

                “So you’re Rapunzel,” he said, raising an eyebrow at her especially short haircut. “If you’re planning on growing it out, you might want to start soon.”
                “I’ll get right on that,” she chuckled. Blue ran her fingers through her low tresses, pinching them in the soft crevices. “A wig might be easier.”

                “Probably.”
                “So you’re Tom Thumb,” she said, repeating his phrasing. “Feeling typecast?”

                “A little bit,” he said, shaking his head. “I guess I can’t complain. I’m not quite cut out for the giant.”

                “Oh, I don’t know about that. I think you could pull it off,” Blue said, and despite the giggle on the end of her comment, it was clear in her tone that, for perhaps the first time since they’d met, she wasn’t making a joke.