Hitching A Ride

On the opening day for the play, a crowd of students and parents had filled the whole auditorium. In particular, Shawn's clique of friends decided to come and watch the play together. They were intrigued as to how different Shawn was in real life, compared to when he was acting. The answer? He was a complete 180 from his normal self. The current Shawn had fully embodied the male lead, Robert. His emotions came out from within as if he himself had come from a complicated family background.

There were even times in the play, like Act 1 Scene 3, where some of the girls in their clique had started tearing up from watching the scene unfold. Shawn had enraptured the audience into his palm. Even the other Drama teachers who were watching it officially for the first time, were absolutely stunned by his performance. Originally, they had thought that the female lead, played by Jessica Bialik, would steal the show. As the surname suggested, Jessica was Mr Bialik's oldest daughter. She was also in year 9 and her talents in Drama was up there.

Jessica had even acted before in a Hollywood film when she was a young child. Pairing together Jessica and Shawn for Act 2 Scene 1, their acting was so convincing that it made everyone's heart act when Shawn kneeled on the ground to beg for forgiveness. After the play, the teachers confronted Mr Bialik to ask about their synergy, and that was when they heard about the most surprising part. Both Jessica and Shawn never hung out outside of practice. Even though they were in the same year level, they were surprisingly never in the same class. In addition, Shawn was extremely awkward to talk to and Jessica never tried to approach him. Such a weird relationship dynamic and yet, the pair was able to create such a great scene.

When the first play was over, a thundering round of applause was given to the cast members. Shawn who was the centre of the limelight, felt his heart beating quickly for the first time tonight. During the entire play, he wasn't nervous at all. It was only when he stepped out of character, he realised that he had just performed in front of a full auditorium.

The play had finished and Shawn changed out of his costume. When he got outside, his clique had been waiting for him the whole time. Shawn spoke with a surprised face, "What are you guys doing here?"

"Huh? Dude, we literally message you on the chat that we were coming to watch the play. Did you not see it?" Julian answered for everyone.

"No. I didn't."

"Wow, then you must've at least heard us shouting out your name, right?" This time it was Kenny that asked the question.

"No, I didn't hear anything. It was too loud on the inside." Such a reply left everyone speechless, but at the end of the day, that was the Shawn that they knew. Other than the fact that his acting skills was superb, Shawn was the same listless and sleepy boy that everyone knew.

"Kenny, Misako and Cynthia will be taking my car home, you wanna hitch a ride too?" Alli came from a very prestigious family in China. Surprisingly, many of the people in the Asian clique lived in the city centre and so, Alli's driver would normally give anyone a ride back home from school. For Shawn's case, he didn't do that since he wasn't as close to Alli as others were. However, just for today, he accepted the invited.

"Thank you, Alli."

The group of five headed back home together. On the way, there were all discussing and talking about famous food places in Shanghai. Once every two weeks, typically the people staying together (Kenny, Misako, Cynthia and Alli), would go out for a meal together, exploring Shanghai. It was their standard practice.

"Hey Shawn, do you want to come with us to this café in Puxi next Saturday?" Alli invited Shawn this time round.

In all honesty, ever since Shawn had started eating lunch with them, he rarely spoke out and so, not many people were close with him. Since the guy was on the car now, Alli decided she might as well invite him to come with them.

This time, the ball was passed into Shawn's hand. He could either say yes, which was the polite thing to say since he had never once gone out with his group of friends for a meal in the three years that he had lived in Shanghai. Or he could decline them again and just play League of Legends at home with Julian. Although he was leaning more to the 'no' side of things, Shawn accepted the invitation. He should at least go out with them at least once.

The first person to be let off was Misako and Kenny, followed by Shawn. When they got into the compound grounds, it was already 10pm at night. This was the first time Shawn had ever come home so late by himself. He had already prepared an excuse that he was doing a school project at Julian's house, but what he had forgotten to do had costed him his cover.

"Hey, how come you are wearing make-up on your face?" Jane asked inquisitively. Cold sweat started to role down his back as he was stuck between a rock and a hard place.