EXTRACT FOR
Amber's Craft
(Ginny Watson)

"Are you serious about the Craft?"

Jackson Deforest chuckled and inverted commas in the air around the word Craft emphasising his derision. "Seriously, that guy thinks he's Sir Laurence, and what has he ever done except for a few crappy stage plays?"

"He's done more than us," Amber replied defensively, "He's done more than you Jack, how many West End plays have you been in?"

Jackson huffed and shook his head, he had no defence against Amber, anyone else would have received either a cleverly worded put-down, or on a particularly bad day a sneered "Go fuck yourself." But Amber was different, she always managed to tie his tongue in knots and drive the sarcastic or caustic rebuttals from his mind.

"He might not be the most famous Thespian that ever existed," Danny added quietly, "But he has got experience, and what he says does make sense, he's right, we have to push ourselves outside of our comfort zones from time to time if we are going to grow."

Jackson gasped theatrically, "What he's done is so far outside comfort zones it's virtually in bloody orbit, I swear the guy's a pervert."

Amber sighed. "It's a test Jack, nothing more, nothing less. A test of our professionalism."

Jackson saw more than his classmates, he saw behind the words and the gloss about professionalism and commitment, he saw something that should never have happened, what he had demanded was beyond inappropriate, what he had demanded was securely within the realms of sick!

"So go on," he turned to Danny, "How far will you go with this charade, are you seriously going to hit her?"

Danny blanched, the character of Alex was complicated, loving husband one moment, sadistic bastard the next.

"If the scene calls for it, then yes, between us we will work something out... almost every play or movie has a fight scene, it's just a case of making it look believable."

"So okay, Amber can ride a punch etcetera, etcetera, you can make it look real while you fake it. But what about those other scenes, the ones he said would sort the actors from the pretenders, are you going to fake those too?"

For the first time Amber flushed. "Like Danny said, we can work something out, and anyway, he can't seriously expect us to..." she paused for a moment; flustered, before adding, "You know, actually do it!"

Jackson sighed ruefully, secretly he wished that Callum had cast him as Alex, he may have had a few qualms about slapping her around... but the other scenes, damn, he could definitely play that part, and he knew there would be very little acting involved, those scenes would have come to him so naturally.

"I still think he's a pervert, what he's done isn't natural or decent." Jackson shrugged again, they could have refused, either of them could have said "No, find someone else for that part." They hadn't, he just wondered how the hell they were going to pull it off.