Under The Spotlight

“This is absolute hell,” Nate mumbled under his breath, shivering, as he sat on a wooden bench pressed up against the brick wall of the school in the courtyard. He scrolled through old instagram posts of the girls in his grade, completely bored out of his mind, and he pulled the hood of his navy blue hoodie tightly around his face in an attempt to block out the cold december wind from chilling him to the bone. Not like he wasn’t freezing already. Like most of the boys at his high school (except the nerds who actually wore ties), he wasn’t dressed properly for the weather, and he was in a hoodie, a tee shirt, gray sweatpants, and dirty sneakers. After hitting snooze four times before realising he was going to be seriously late for the bus if he didn’t get a move on, Nate had completely forgotten the concepts of color coordinating his clothing and using a hair brush.  

Sliding down the side of the bench, he pushed himself into a nook in between the two benches the closest to him as far up the chilly bricks as his larger form would allow, nate shoved his phone into the oversized pockets on the front of his sweater, and he watched the version of kickball that the football kids had started playing when they got tired of sitting around watching their fingers turn blue. They called it kickball for the teacher’s sake, but really, it was aggressive swearing and a bunch of idiots slamming into each other. Nate wasn’t really welcome to play, but he hadn’t really wanted to to begin with, preferring to keep his skull intact.

His sister was late. Again. Considering she was new to the school and was in only grade ten when the year had started (while her sorry excuse of a brother was in grade twelve), Nate had offered to keep her company during her first year. Had he known that ‘keeping her company’ meant hanging out with her and her geeky friends twenty four seven, he was sure he would have bitten his tongue. They weren’t exactly the type of kids that a cool highschool kid would hang out with, but heck, Nate loved his sister, and she had basically kept him alive the year before when Nate had been diagnosed with severe depression. 

Severe was one word for it. Mostly though, when people cared enough to ask him about it, Nate mostly explained that it was the period of his life where he wouldn’t get out of bed unless someone had left a party sized bag of ketchup chips at the bedroom door or the TV was playing reruns of cheesy (not to mention bad) rom-coms. His sister, Mae, had been with him through it all, coming home everyday with several bottles of pepsi and a bag of doritos for their daily sobbing sessions. Well, for Nate’s daily sobbing session. Mae always kept herself together. There were, however, days where she would stay at home to watch the worst rom-coms with him, but no one ever made the connection between her sick days and tests that she didn’t study for. So the least he could do was sit here freezing in a tiny ball while he waited for her and her nerdy friends to show up to take him to whatever nerdy club she had signed them up for today. 

“Nate!” Mae’s cheery voice filled his ears as he looked up to see his sister standing rosy-cheeked at his feet. She extended a hand to help him to his feet, and he desperately wished for the dark fleece lined parka with a fur lined hood as Mae frowned at him, hand on hip. “Why are you alone? You look freezing! Where’s your jacket? It’s almost minus thirty out here? Why aren’t you playing aggressive swearing with all the idiots slamming into each other over there? Are they-'' She slapped her chest with her open palm dramatically, earning giggles from the three girls with her. “Excluding you?!” then she grew serious and the smile on her face was replaced with a straight line. “Because if they are, I am in a bad mood and if they are, I am willing to go kick their loser butts.” Nate chuckled.

“Naw, it’s fine. I wanted to be alone, anyway.” he lied, feeling guilty that Mae was again filling the protective older sibling position, the role that he should be playing. “So, where are we headed today?” he asked. With a glint in her eyes, Mae grabbed his arm and led him and her friends in the general direction of the door. 

“You’ll see. But I’ll give you a hint. Me and Vicky were working on a project we were assigned for it last night. You know, when she came over with the box labeled ‘costumes’, and we were singing and acting all dramatic? Rebeca and Moxie were working on their project, too. Mrs. Rachel gave us a deadline for today, so you can just watch for now, but I think this might be the club that we stick with-” Nate cut her off.

“That was way more than one hint,” He said, mentioning that he knew the drama teacher’s name, and he knew that acting and singing meant drama club. They entered the school, the girls laughing at the constant teasing between the siblings, and they all flung their backpacks in their lockers (which were conveniently located right beside each other), and the group headed for the auditorium, where Mrs. Rachel was standing in the doorway, greeting students as they entered the classroom, buzzing with excitement and positive energy. Upon seeing him, she did a double take and slid her glasses up her nose. Nate squirmed shyly under her gaze.

“Nate McJesson? The same Nate McJesson who broke out crying in the middle of my health class last year to avoid a test? I knew you would show up here one day!” She winked. “You have some mad acting skills, young man!” Nate shrugged and saw no use in trying to explain that he wasn’t acting and he had actually been dying inside. Mrs. Rachel was, after all, the drama teacher, and drama teachers always try to find the most dramatic way to explain a student’s behavior. So instead, Nate faked a grin and went all extra with a really girly wink before rolling his eyes at Mae and going back into the classroom, the girls on his heels, as they looked for seats together in the packed room.

He sunk into a plastic blue chair, more bored and depressed than ever. Nate got like this sometimes when he was in his sister’s perfect life. She had it all; he had a class full of idiots slamming into each other.

Mrs. Rachel came into the room, clapping her hands gleefully to capture the attention of the drama kids. Excitedly, she introduced herself and forced everyone to do the same, even if they were ‘named Nate McJesson and they were simply too good for anything semi-decent’. Then, she explained the project she had assigned them with the day before, and told Mae’s group to go present their’s on the stage. Vicky squealed and grabbed Mae’s hand to pull her up to her feet. Before Mae could get ripped away from him, she grabbed Nate’s hand, and the three of them took off up the stage stairs and up behind the curtain. Running a hand through his messy hair, Nate reminded his sister that he had no idea what he was doing, and Mae slapped him playfully on the shoulder.

“I know, doofus. But me and Vicky wrote the screenplay for you, so I thought you might want a front row seat.” Vicky fumbled through her backpack and handed a script to Mae, who took a deep breath, grabbed a microphone off the wall, and she and her friend jogged on stage for a round of applause. They took the stage (and the audience) in their hands and rocked the world. Their play was lovely, following Nate’s previous year from Mae’s eyes, giving every bit of truth a hilarious twist. It was super kind of his sister, but most of it was hocus-pocus until Mae’s speech at the end. 

“My brother is here. He is alive. And I love him with every single bit of me. I almost lost him, and even now, sometimes he isn’t completely with us. He doesn’t always play the role of ‘big brother’, but he does stay with and support me. So now, I am going to install a plot twist in the rest of his story. He has the choice of how his story ends.” She extended a hand to him. “Nate come here.” he walked over and shoved his hands in his pockets, squirming under the eyes of the whole drama club. “Will you stay with me, here, and be happy?”

Nate didn’t need to think. With his sister, on stage, under the spotlight, he saw the truth: he was at home. He was happy. 

“Yes. Yes, I will. With only the occasional cheesy rom-com and pepsi days.” Nate was already finding his place; out of the darkness and into the light. And the truth was, in fact, he was mentally okay with his sister by his side.