True Confessions of a Heartless Girl
by Martha Brooks

Subjects: Relationships
Genre: Realistic Fiction

Suggested Staging: The narrator stands at a lectern. Lynda stands at a table with a rag in her hand. Noreen sits at a nearby table, head hanging down.  Noreen and Lynda should be near a door, Lynda facing the rest of the class and Noreen sitting sideways to Lynda and the class.

Narrator:  Lynda Bradley is the owner of a cafe in a small Canadian town when a truck pulls up in the pouring rain and a girl gets out and comes inside.  

Lynda:   (addressing the audience directly) "a haunted look could mean anything: alcoholic parents, hunger, an abusive boyfriend, drugs, troubles with the law, the old downward spiral. Fear clung to this girl as well, and this too, was familiar--as though she had done something wrong and was a breath away from being caught. . . Maybe I should call the police." (addressing Noreen) 'Look, I've got a real bad headache and the feeling that you are in some kind of trouble. So I'll just cut to the chase here and ask straight out . Are you? In some kind of trouble?' ”.  

Noreen:  (give a little sickened movement of your head; keep it down and keep glancing toward the door as if you're ready to flee)

Lynda: (addressing the audience directly) I "knew right then that there was trouble, knew it with a feeling that told me if I was smart I'd just let this kid get back in the truck and get swallowed up by the storm...Nobody had to do anything; it wasn't a requirement in this life that you burden yourself with somebody else's baggage.  It wasn't necessary to lay yourself open for more trouble than you already owned.  (Take a deep, long breath and let  it out with a sigh - addressing Noreen reluctantly) "So, why don't you tell me about it."

Narrator:  Noreen Stall is that 17-year-old girl who arrives in a small Canadian town looking like trouble and she is.  Every move she makes, every attempted good deed she tries ends in disaster, doggy illness, fires, and demolition.  Will this walking disaster finally get her life on track and become the heroine for those in town? To find out read True Confessions of a Heartless Girl by Martha Brooks

Reader's Theater Script prepared by Janice Bailey, East Central High Librarian