Read Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath for Free Online

play. M.C. has always been theatrical, but never really into theater. She is not a techie. The techies are a small, fiercely independent tribe at White Day, very alternative, well-pierced, dread-locked, clothed in black. M.C. sometimes comes to school wearing a large straw hat.
She is not a techie
.
    On Tuesday, David doesn’t have practice but M.C. isn’t waiting for us with Carrie in the parking lot. Stranded by herself in the backseat of David’s car, Carrie looks a little lost.
    David is innocent enough to ask, “Where’s M.C.?”
    â€œPainting flats.”
    â€œWhy?” There is no sarcasm in David’s voice. It just isn’t one of those things he would ever volunteer to do.
    â€œFor the play. They’re scenery.” I know that this answer means “Leave me alone.” David, however, doesn’t.
    â€œI know what they are, why is M.C. doing it?”
    Carrie squirms. She has lost a little of her normal confident swagger. She could say she doesn’t know, but we wouldn’t believe her.
    â€œShe’s got it for one of the tech-heads?” David asks with a smile, which is as close as he will get to a wink.
    Carrie nods.
    â€œWhich one?”
    â€œCurtis.”
    David looks at me. I’m trying to make sense out of it too.
    â€œWe have a tech-head named Curtis?” I ask, hoping that someone I don’t know is working crew. Mr. Curtis, our English teacher, is the faculty advisor for the drama club, but …
    â€œ
Mr
. Curtis.”
    This shuts both David and me up. We don’t mention M.C. again for the rest of the ride home. Once home, however, I corner Carrie in the living room. This requires some explanation.
    â€œShe has a crush. You’ve had crushes on teachers.”
    I can’t decide whether the “you” is generic or really me, but since for the last two years I have had the same fairly lurid fantasy about Ms. St. Claire, one of the art teachers, posing nude for class, I don’t contest the accusation.
    â€œBut Curtis?”
    â€œHe’s young, disheveled, he’s got a rugged, intellectual look. Handsome in that sort of way. Nice butt. Sort of M.C.’s type, if you think about it.”
    Is Curtis young? Does he really have a nice butt? I have never thought about Curtis’s butt. I wonder if I have a nice butt. Has anyone ever noticed my rear end?
    â€œBut he’s a … a teacher.”
    â€œVery observant, Mitchell. She has a crush on a teacher. He’s twenty-eight, she’s sixteen. Stranger things have happened.”
    â€œHas something happened?” I am totally disturbed by this idea. I can’t even get around the idea that she would think of Curtis in that way. I’m stunned.
    â€œRelax, Cotton Mather, nothing has happened.” Carrie sounds dismissive, but she looks worried. She isn’t liking this either.
    We don’t discuss it, but it is now on my mind. I go to my room and purposefully don’t fantasize about naked art teachers, and particularly not about Curtis’s butt. M.C. comes over after dinner and I can’t look at her. She and Carrie head off to the mall, and for once I want to gowith them so I can listen to the conversation. This would count as the first time I have ever been interested in their conversation.
    On Wednesday, I make the mistake of asking David.
    I try to just work it into the conversation. Casually, as we walk back from lunch and no one’s around, I ask about his German test, what he thought of the speaker at morning assembly, and whether he thought Mr. Curtis was handsome, you know, in that sort of rugged, intellectual kind of way.
    David looks at me for a long time, like he’s waiting for the punch line. His face remains blank, but I can see what’s working behind that look. He knows that I’ve asked him this because he’s gay, and therefore now an expert on male attractiveness. He knows that my asking is my