MidReal Story
Theater Hearts: Love Behind the Curtains
Scenario: Romance between a high school freshman named Jordan a young boy who is adopted and his next door neighbor a high school sophomore named Rory a young girl who is popular and they both are theater kids
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Mr. Ellis
Jordan's adoptive father and a supportive figure in his life, relationship with Jordan is caring and protective, balding with a kind face, wise and gentle.
Jordan Ellis
high school freshman and theater enthusiast, adopted by the Ellis family, short and lean with curly brown hair, introspective and sensitive.
Rory Thompson
high school sophomore and theater enthusiast, neighbor and friend of Jordan, long blonde hair and blue eyes, outgoing and charismatic.
I was adopted.
It’s not something I like to advertise, but when I moved to a new town in the seventh grade and had to tell my English class that I was adopted, it was kind of hard to keep it a secret.
I remember the looks on my classmates’ faces, and I remember my teacher’s face most of all.
She looked at me with such pity, and I hated it.
I hated looking out at a sea of people who saw me as broken.
The only person who didn’t seem to care was the girl sitting in the back row.
She barely looked up from her notebook when I said it, but she did raise her hand.
When my teacher called on her, she asked me if I knew who my real parents were.
I told her that I did, but that they didn’t want me.
She nodded and went back to writing in her notebook.
I don’t know why that girl’s response stuck with me, but it did.
Maybe it was because she wasn’t looking at me like she felt sorry for me or like she thought I was a freak.
I was adopted when I was born and have never used the word “real” to describe my parents, but I think she meant my biological ones.
That’s the only time I’ve ever cared about the difference.
I’ve been lucky enough to have two sets of parents who love me.
Not everyone is as lucky as I am, and I have to remind myself of that each time I think of my mom and dad.
I remember that English class and how it felt to be up in front of everyone, and I remember how I regretted saying the words as soon as they were out of my mouth.
I didn’t want to tell them, but we were going around the room saying one thing about ourselves.
When it was my turn, I froze up and couldn’t think of anything to say.
One of the girls in the class said that her cousin was adopted, and the teacher went on and on about how she had always wanted to adopt a baby but never got the chance.
I remember shifting my feet and staring at the ground when I finally said it.
I was adopted when I was born, and my parents got divorced when I was six years old.
I live with my dad in a house that used to belong to my mom and my sister.
My mom lives with my sister in a new house closer to where she works now.
When I looked up after saying it, some of the kids were staring at me with their eyes wide.
Their mouths were gaping open, and they were staring at me like I had grown two heads.
One girl even raised her hand like she had a question.
She asked me if I knew who my real parents were, and the teacher glared at her over her glasses like she’d said something bad.
When I told her that I did but that they didn’t want me, she nodded like she understood, and I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
I wanted to sit down at my desk and be invisible like usual so no one would ask me anything else or say anything else about my stupid real parents.
But then everyone started looking at me differently, even the teacher, and I knew that they felt sorry for me.
That’s not what I wanted either.
My parents might not have wanted me, but my family did, and my dad loved me more than anything else in the world.
I didn’t want a bunch of kids at school looking at me like I was some kind of freak show for them to gawk at.
The whispers started as soon as the bell rang, and by lunchtime, everyone knew that I was an adoptee.
In all of my classes after that day, people whispered about it behind their hands or stared at me when they thought I wasn’t looking.
Even some of the kids who hadn’t been in that English class treated me differently after they heard about it from their friends.
My teachers looked at me differently too.
I was too far away to see what she was writing in her notebook, but I saw her glance up from time to time to look at whoever was speaking.
She didn’t seem to care about what I had said when it was my turn to talk or that I was adopted, but she didn’t exactly look happy about it either.
She just stared at people with this blank expression on her face like she was bored or didn’t care about anything at all.
I had never seen someone look that way before, especially not a pretty girl like her who could have any guy she wanted with just a smile or a nod of her head.
I had only been in this school for three days now, but nobody had even talked to me yet except for that one girl in my English class who asked if I knew who my real parents were, and all we had said was our names to each other when we were paired together for this stupid project in Science class on the first day that I was here.
She was my partner for a project about the solar system that was due at the end of next week, and we hadn’t even talked about it yet because she never said anything to me during class.
The guys on my track team back home would have never been able to keep quiet if they saw a hot girl like her sitting all by herself in the back of the classroom without any friends to talk to or flirt with.
They would have asked around to see if she was single and then tried to figure out how to get her phone number so they could text her all night long until she got so annoyed that she finally agreed to go out with one of them just to get them off her back.
But nobody here seemed to care about Rory Thompson at all except for me.
I couldn’t stop watching her while Mr.
Porter talked about how many moons Jupiter had or what an Asteroid Belt was made out of because she just sat there so quiet and still with her chin resting on her hand like she wasn’t even paying attention to what he was saying at all.
I don’t know why she chose me to be her partner for this project when we’d never even talked to each other before or why she didn’t switch partners with anyone else yet so she could work with one of her friends instead.
She must have known that I wasn’t going to do any of the work, and I half-expected her to get an A on the project while I got an F for doing nothing at all.
But then she leaned over and asked me if she could come over to my house after school so we could work on it together, and I said yes because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
I followed her back to our table in the back of the room and sat down across from her while she took out her notebook and opened it in front of her.
I stared at it while she tapped the end of her pen against the paper and waited for her to tell me what she wanted me to do.
But she just sat there looking at me like she was waiting for something too.
When Mr.Porter told us all to be quiet in the back of the room and pay attention, someone who was sitting a few rows in front of me leaned over and turned around in his seat so he could pass a note over his shoulder to someone who was sitting behind him.
Then he turned around and sat back down at his desk with his arms folded across his chest like he was waiting for him to write something back.
I leaned closer to see what it said but then jerked back in my seat again when Mr.Porter started walking over in our direction after he saw me moving around out of the corner of his eye.
“What are you doing over there, Jordan?
I didn’t tell you that you could talk.”
“Sorry, Mr.Porter,” I mumbled as I looked down at my notebook and pretended to be writing something in it so I wouldn’t be tempted to look at the note again while he walked up and down the rows of desks in the classroom so he could make sure no one else was talking either.
The guy who wrote the note held up his hand and pointed his finger at me while he told Rory something under his breath.
And then the girl sitting behind him turned around and looked at Rory too while she repeated whatever it was that he said.
They both started to laugh while they looked at us, and I felt my cheeks flush red with embarrassment.
Rory stopped laughing when she saw me looking at her and turned around in her seat to face the front of the room like she didn’t think anything was funny at all.
The guy and the girl who were sitting in front of us turned back around in their seats too before Mr.Porter walked back to the front of the room like he didn’t even notice that anything was wrong.
I tried to ignore them while I stared down at my notebook and pretended to be taking notes about what the first planet from the sun was called and how many moons it had.
But then I saw Rory’s hand reach out and grab the note while she crumpled it up into a ball and threw it into her backpack.
“Quit being such a jerk, Taylor,” she said under her breath like she was talking to the guy who wrote the note.
“It’s not funny anymore.”
I glanced up and saw the guy who wrote the note lean back in his seat with a self-satisfied smile on his face while he folded his hands behind his head.
“What’s not funny?”
he asked while he raised one eyebrow and stared at her.
Rory crossed her arms across her chest and looked at him with a hard expression on her face.
“I said stop being such a jerk,” she said with a scowl.
“It’s not funny when you make fun of people for no reason at all except that you’re trying to impress all your stupid friends.”
The guy stopped smiling when he saw how serious she was and leaned forward in his seat so he could stare at her more closely.
“I wasn’t trying to be mean,” he said with a frown.
“I was just trying to figure out what he is since he’s adopted and all.
I mean, everybody knows that being adopted is totally weird and abnormal.”
The entire classroom went silent after he said that, and I felt my cheeks flush red with embarrassment while I stared down at my notebook and pretended that I didn’t hear him at all.
Rory cleared her throat and leaned forward across the table before she rested her chin on her hand again.
“So what if he’s adopted?
