1. He's perfect for the part
2. You're my obsession
3. A question of morality
4. Could I really love a man who could do something like this?
5. A problem and a solution
6. A favor for a friend
7. The grace period
8. Trying to make things right again
9. The sort of spiritual experience eternal companions should share

• (character chart)
• (caution/disclaimer)

1. Young Women's
2. Youth Conference
3. Saturday's Warrior
4. Brigham Young University
• Gratuitous Love Scene
5. Polygamist
6. Temple Wedding
7. Orem High
8. Bordeaux Mission
9. Exmo Conference

During rehearsals over the course of the next few weeks, I had at least some individual attention from Walter essentially every time. I couldn't really be sure that that meant I was making progress with him, though, since he seemed to take time out to talk to each of the girls in turn during each rehearsal. Basically whenever he wasn't actively rehearsing a scene, he would go find some girl or other to flirt with.

Walter seemed interested in Charlene most of all, but Laura and Linda each got their allotted attention from him, plus he had several favorites among the girls in the chorus. He even sometimes appeared to be flirting with Pinky or with Jake's mom. I figured that it must just be that his regular personality was like that.

One thing that was clear was that he didn't have one particular exclusive girlfriend. It was probably just because he was about to set off on his mission, so he didn't want to get too attached to any one girl only to have her dump him while he was away like what happened to his character in the play. That was fine with me since it was really no problem for me to wait until he got back from his mission before starting a serious relationship. After he got back I would still only be seventeen.

Meanwhile it looked like Rex was starting to develop an interest in Laura. He would hang out and watch her perform her scenes and then chat with her whenever she wasn't chatting with Walter.

The funny thing in my mind was how he would specifically seek out Laura and not Linda. Now that they had started doing their hair alike for the play, I could barely see any difference between them at all, and as far as I could tell they both had the same personality as well. So it wasn't clear to me why Rex would prefer one over the other. To be funny sometimes Laura and Linda would try to trick him as to which one was which, but he was very good at telling them apart so they never succeeded.

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All this time I was still kind of half-heartedly trying to convince myself not to be in love with Walter. After all, I knew in that in reality there was no chance I would ever be his favorite. I wasn't as pretty as Charlene nor did I have big breasts like her. I didn't know if the latter was a consideration for him, but it was something I had noticed myself. Still, the fact that he paid attention to me so sweetly when we talked and the fact that I was treated to this attention at least twice a week made it difficult if not impossible for me to put him completely out of my mind.

Between rehearsals I would think of him constantly, particularly when I was doing my gardening job at Sister Sanderson's house. It was a solitary task, so I had plenty of opportunity to go over all of the adorable things he said to me and analyze them in my mind and plan other conversations to have with him. I thought of him during the day at home too and particularly at night.

At rehearsals I allowed myself to get into this bad habit of always keeping one eye on where Walter was and what he was doing, even when it was flirting with other girls, which was most of the time. One fateful Tuesday, however, he wandered off and I kind of lost track of him. As soon as the scene I was working on broke up, I walked around the building to see if I could find him.

When I got to the second foyer of the building which was on the side that I didn't normally go in by, I found him. He was asleep on the couch with his head on his folded jacket. His legs were bent as the couch wasn't long enough for him. Some light was coming in through the glass doors, but it was still somber because we weren't on the sunny side of the building.

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