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Screenplay Excerpt by Sophia S
(SIX MONTHS LATER, lights on to CASSIUS and KIARA standing in a school hallway. CASSIUS still wears his color.)
CASSIUS: Hey, we need to talk.
KIARA: I can’t, I have class—
CASSIUS: Class isn’t for another fifteen minutes. This won’t take long. Just tell me, why are you so busy?
KIARA: School.
CASSIUS: Why haven’t you been talking to me, or texting me?
KIARA: I don’t know.
CASSIUS: What do you mean, ‘I don’t know?’
KIARA: I mean I don’t know.
(CASSIUS grabs her hand.)
CASSIUS: You can’t just stop talking to me and not have a reason.
KIARA: I swear to God I don’t I just—
CASSIUS: Just what?
KIARA: ...it doesn’t matter.
(CASSIUS cups KIARA’s face. She knocks his hand away.)
CASSIUS: Of course it matters, Kiara, everything you say matters.
KIARA: Don’t say things like that!
CASSIUS: I’m just telling you the truth. Why can’t you do the same?
KIARA: Because you won’t like the truth.
CASSIUS: Just, tell me, please. Kiara.
KIARA: …I can’t do this anymore.
CASSIUS: …What?
KIARA: I mean, I’m just not ready.
CASSIUS: But—you’ve been so—
KIARA: I thought I was and I thought you were cute and so I came up to you that night at the party because I really did think I was prepared and then you were just so, so—
CASSIUS: So what?
KIARA: I don’t know! All I know is that it's too much, too fast, and it’s not you, it’s me.
(She turns away and hurries off stage right. CASSIUS turns to the audience. He takes off his color.)
CASSIUS: The rest of that year, whenever I passed her in the hall, I felt like a piece of broken glass, an overexposed photo, a dead moth pinned to a collector’s wall. The school year after was uneventful, the ghost of Kiara the only thing left. I graduated and went to college, where I studied english. I got my degree. I started working on a novel. I hoped it would be better than the ones I read in college. I went to cafés and bars with coworkers and friends, went to libraries and bookstores by myself. I took myself out to dinner, I went to concerts, I started to enjoy life. I found meaning to it all. It felt like I was finally at home in my skin. Then I saw her again.
(CASSIUS walks off stage left. BLACKOUT.)
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