Rachel's Dilemma

This month's monologue was written by Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend and stars Valerie Gerlock...enjoy!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello there, and welcome to another episode of Shouting in the Evening, brought to you by the Scheit International Theatre Company. This month's monologue was written using the prompt word Bell. Please make yourselves comfortable. The performance is about to begin.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Hello? Wow, I didn't expect Hi, yes. I do realize that the bell for first period rang five minutes ago. I am, yes, I am inside your custodial closet. I wasn't expecting you to open it immediately at the start of the school day. Maybe you could begin somewhere else and then circle back here in 40 minutes. No, I'm not being bullied. Do I look like someone people bully? Because I'm not. I have friends. Good friends, lots of them. Well, enough of them. I mean, I have a lot of acquaintances, but then I also have a few close, really good friends, which is normal. You can't be close with like everybody having a few. No, nobody stuck me in this closet. I'm not being bullied. Stop making that face. I'm telling the truth. I chose to come in here. Because I'm hiding. Because I have English first period, and Dylan Cook is in my English class. No, he's not my bully. I don't have a bully. I promise you. I am a normal, well-adjusted girl with a handful of close friends and a lot of acquaintances and no enemies trying to bully her. Dylan Cook? He's just this guy in my English class. Yes, I can see how you might think it's more than that since I'm hiding in your closet to avoid him, but it isn't. He hasn't done anything wrong. Please don't get him in trouble. Dylan's really nice. He's funny and easy to talk to, and he's cute. Not like in a conventional way, but he's super cute. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not why I'm hiding here. There's no crush. That's kind of the problem, actually. I mean, when you were younger, did you ever know somebody who had a crush on you, but you disliked them as a friend? And what did you do? Oh, well, I can't do that. Because if I tell him, he'll be sad. And I don't want him to be sad. I like him. No, I know I can't skip my English class for the rest of the year, but I thought that maybe today I just need to not see him today. Maria, can I call you Maria? Miss Loris, it is. If I can just avoid him today, I'll be able to face him tomorrow. Future Rachel will be fine. She'll be a whole 24 hours more mature. No, he didn't pressure me into anything. I swear. I promise I would tell you. Well, I wouldn't tell you, I don't know you, but I tell someone. I tell someone I trust. But there's nothing to tell. Dylan is great. I just don't like him like that. But I do like him, and I don't want to lose him, like lose his friendship. When he cornered me at my locker at the end of the day on Friday. Oh no, no, no, no, he didn't actually like corner me. He approached me in a very non-threatening way. But I wasn't prepared. He asked if I wanted to go to the movies the next day, and I didn't have time to think of a response that would let him know that I like him a lot, but not in that way. So I tried to stall for time by asking, what movie? And he said space heist. The one about the robbers that go to space? Yes, you do. There's ads for it everywhere. It's literally everywhere you do. CIA hires bank robbers to go to the International Space Station and steal Russian secrets. Exactly. Yeah, it's literally everywhere. I don't like heist movies, and I don't like space movies, so the last thing I want to spend my Saturday doing is watching a movie about a heist that takes place in space, but I couldn't tell him that. No, I couldn't, Miss Flores. And I couldn't think of a good response to like let him down in a gentle way, so I said Sure! Because there was literally nothing else I could say. No, that would have made him sad. I couldn't. No, just accept. Just accept that I couldn't. So I went to see this movie with him, this god-awful movie about thieves in space, and he grabbed my hand as soon as it started. No, not it wasn't violent. He was holding my hand, he took my hand and like interlaced our fingers and held hands with me the whole movie long. It wasn't like assault, but it was still bad because space heist is almost three full hours long. I know! They don't even leave Earth for the first 90 minutes. No, for real. The whole first half of them is training at NASA to be like competent astronauts. Yeah, it's stupid. And like, why are the Russians even keeping their secrets on the International Space Station? Why would anyone do that? Don't go see this movie, Miss Flores. But he held my hand through the whole thing. The whole thing. And at a certain point, I lost feeling in my fingers. And it was my dominant hand, and I was like, they're gonna have to amputate this. I'm gonna lose my hand from lack of blood flow and have to learn how to write with my left hand at 17 while trying to keep up with my classes and get into a good college. And that's not possible. And I'm not going to get in anywhere, and I'm not going to amount to anything or get to pursue my dreams all because a boy I'm not attracted to held my hand through the entirety of a movie I didn't want to see. No, Miss Flores, I couldn't ask him to let it go. Because then he'd think I don't want to date him. I know I don't want to date him, but I didn't want him to know that while we're on a date, it would not be better in the long run. Honestly, I don't think you remember what it's like being a teenager at all. So, anyway, I sat through this entire abomination of a movie, and by some miracle, after it ended, I regained the use of my right hand. And I was able to dodge Dylan's attempt at kissing me goodbye. He had insisted on driving me, and he was still seat-belted in, so I kind of just popped out of the car when we got to my place. But all this to say that next time I probably won't be so lucky. I will probably end up a girl with only one working hand and Dylan Cook saliva all over her mouth, and I just that's not who I want to be, you know? But I can't tell him that. I can't tell him that, Miss Flores. So I wasn't sure what to say to him in English class today, or how to act, or anything really. And then I saw this closet, and I thought. What if I just deal with all this tomorrow? So I hid. I truly didn't think anyone would open the closet during first period. The day just started. What do you possibly have to clean? Hmm, bonnet. Gross. Where? That's my English class. Who threw up? That sounds like Dylan. The flu! He might be out all week. Miss Flores! This is great! I don't have to worry about what to say to him for days. I feel so much better. Thanks for listening and helping me work through this. You give terrible advice, but just having somebody to talk to is such a big help. Let me get out of your way, though. I've got to get to class.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Thanks go to our esteemed technical wizard Ian for sound manipulation and button wrangling. Join us again next month for another shouting in the evening monologue. Cheerio!