“Whoa!” JoJo told the mop. Then she scooted next to Nancy on the sofa. “Play that song more. I like it.”
So Nancy did.
Soon JoJo knew some of the words. It was fun having her sing along. Near the end of the lesson, Andy suggested that Nancy and JoJo try clapping four times before every chorus.
“And ask the audience to clap along with you. Remember, it’s not just about playing a song. You want to give the crowd a performance.”
Nancy guessed Andy must know what he was talking about. After all, he was becoming a local celebrity. He played at kids’ birthday parties as well as bar mitzvahs and sweet sixteens. He was probably on YouTube.
Before dinner Nancy did some homework. For tomorrow she had to add information to her map of Wisconsin. First Nancy made a dot for the city of Green Bay. She was drawing a roll of toilet paper by it when she heard her mother cry, “JoJo! Did Nancy tell you it was okay to do this?”
Nancy whipped downstairs.
Sacre bleu! That was French for “Yipes!” Her guitar case was on JoJo’s lap. There were stickers all over it, stickers of Cowgirl Sal; her sidekick, Cowboy Roy; and her pony, Pixie.
Nancy let out a scream and snatched the guitar case. “How could you do this?”
JoJo looked surprised. “I made it look good—like Andy’s.”
“Are you joking?” Nancy shouted. “It doesn’t look like Andy’s. It looks absurd.”
All at once JoJo’s face crumpled and she started crying.
“Nancy, calm down. The stickers will come off.” Her mom bent down and said sternly, “JoJo, I have told you many times about respecting other people’s property. You—”
“That’s right!” Nancy broke in. “Keep your hands off my stuff. Especially my guitar. It’s my most prized possession!”
“Why are you mad?” JoJo said, tears splashing down her cheeks. “It’s nice to do special things for your posse.”
Argh! JoJo was repeating what Cowgirl Sal said at the end of every show.
“It wasn’t nice, and I’m not in your posse.” Then Nancy stormed up to her room.
A few minutes later there was a rap at the door.
“Did the stickers come off?” her mom asked.
Nancy nodded.
“I honestly think JoJo meant to be nice.”
Nancy frowned. “Maybe.” Then she asked, “When I was little, was I as naughty as JoJo?”
Nancy’s mom blew her bangs off her forehead and thought for a moment. “No, you weren’t. Sometimes JoJo can’t seem to help herself. . . . She was just born rambunctious.” Nancy’s mom explained that meant full of mischief but in a fun way.
Nancy didn’t answer. Ordinarily, she loved long and complicated words. But in this case, she couldn’t see how being rambunctious was really any different from being just plain naughty.
On Wednesday Bree took an extra class at Tappy Feet after school. Robert came home with Nancy to rehearse. He brought his lasso and a silver stopwatch with him. “I can tell to a tenth of a second how long it takes us to sing our song.”
“Why? Did Mr. Dudeny say there was a time limit?” Nancy asked.
“No. I got it for my birthday. I like to time stuff.” Robert showed her how the stopwatch worked. Then he showed her what else was in his backpack. Lots of Western stuff for Nancy to borrow! There was a brown suede vest with fringe, a blue-and-white-checked handkerchief for Nancy to tie around her neck, and a red cowboy hat.
“Merci beaucoup, Robert!” Nancy tried everything on. With her jean skirt and pink cowboy boots, her costume was now complete. Nancy tilted the hat a little and stared at herself in the hall mirror. She could almost hear the applause at the end of their number. Performing in The Nifty Fifty was going to be thrilling—the most thrilling moment of her life.
In the kitchen, Nancy offered Robert some refreshments, a plate of cookies and Fruit Roll-Ups. While they were splitting the last cookie, they heard howling outside. It was Frenchy.
Robert followed Nancy out the back door.
Frenchy was in the yard, tied by her leash to a tree. “Ah-woo, ah-woo!” she cried.
Nancy ran to Frenchy, who pawed at her and licked her madly.
“Poor girl! Hold still while I untie you!”
“No! Don’t!”
All at once, from around the side of house, JoJo came riding up on her mop. “I’m Cowgirl Sal. I’m your best pal. And I’m comin’ to the rescue!” she shouted.
Nancy set Frenchy free, who bounded off into Mrs. DeVine’s yard next door.
JoJo dropped her mop. “Why’d you do that?”
Nancy’s hands were on her hips. “JoJo, did you tie Frenchy up? You know she hates that!”
“It was only for a minute. I was coming to rescue her!”
“But if you tied her up, then it doesn’t count as a rescue. It was mean what you did. Don’t you understand that?” Nancy realized she was shouting in front of company. “Excusez-moi,” she said to Robert. That meant “Excuse me” in French.
Nancy crossed her arms as her sister rode off. The Cowgirl Sal show was supposed to teach little kids to be kind and helpful. But with JoJo, it was doing the opposite. It was making her naughtier. Nancy wondered why her parents let JoJo keep watching it.
At lunch the next day, Lionel went from table to table asking for jokes about the states. He was The Nifty Fifty master of ceremonies. Emcee for short. He was going to introduce each act.
“I know one,” Grace said. “Where do pencils come from?” She waited a second, then said, “Pennsylvania!”
“Not bad,” said Lionel, and he wrote it down in a notepad.
Clara also had a joke. “Why do people from Maine act so nutty? . . . Because they’re luna—!” Then Clara smacked her forehead. “Oh wait! I goofed. Let me start over. . . . Why do people from Maine act so nutty?” Clara asked again. “Because they’re maniacs.”
“And here’s one for my state,” said Bree. “Where do pianists go for vacation—the Florida Keys!”
Lionel wrote both jokes down.
It turned out that Bree had already finished her state page on Florida. She showed it to Nancy that afternoon after school.
“Sacre bleu! I’ve hardly started!” Nancy exclaimed. “We don’t have to hand them in till next week.”
“I know. But I need tons of time—every spare minute—to rehearse.”
Bree was tying the bows on her tap shoes. Nancy had brought over a pair of old clogs with quarters glued to the soles. So now her shoes clickety-clacked too. Sort of.
They went outside to the wooden deck at the back of Bree’s house.
“I learned a new step yesterday at Tappy Feet. The brush-and-shuffle. I’m adding it to my dance,” Bree said. “Here’s how you do it.”
Nancy tried copying what Bree did. It was hard! Bree’s tap dancing had really improved. In fact, she was looking pretty professional. Yet whenever she made even the teensiest mistake, Bree insisted on starting from the beginning.
“East Side, West Side, all around the town . . . ,” Bree sang over and over. It got monotonous—that meant boring. At one point the quarter on Nancy’s left clog came off. So Nancy stopped dancing and watched Bree.
“You’re good!” Nancy told her. “Your feet got much faster!”
This time Bree made it all the way through to the end. She collapsed in a deck chair, huffing and puffing. “I want to be better than good! I want to be perfect. All I need is practice. Lots of practice.”
An hour later, while Nancy helped get dinner ready, she could still hear the New York song playing from Bree’s deck.
“East Side, West Side, all around the town.”
On Friday afternoon Bree skipped soccer practice. On Saturday she missed tea at Mrs. DeVine’s house. On Sunday Bree wouldn’t go to the movies with Nancy.
“Oh, come on, Bree! The newspaper said it’s really funny. It’s about a princess who runs away so she can be an ordinary girl.”
“No, I can’t. I need to r
ehearse.”
“All Bree does is practice for the show,” Nancy said to her mom while they waited in line for popcorn. “By now she could do the tap dance in her sleep. But she’s so scared of making even one tiny little mistake.”
“That’s because Bree is a perfectionist,” Nancy’s mom said as they took their seats.
“Is that good or bad?” Nancy couldn’t tell from the way her mother had said it.
“Well, it’s good because Bree always wants to do the best she can. She tries super-hard at everything. But making a mistake isn’t the worst thing in the world. Everybody makes mistakes.”
Then they stopped talking. The coming attractions were starting.
The next day JoJo stayed home from preschool because she had a cold. Lots of kids in Nancy’s class were absent too.
“Tamar, Joel, Nola, Olivia, and Lionel,” Nancy told her parents that evening, ticking their names off on her fingers. “Lionel is the master of ceremonies. He has to be back by Friday for The Nifty Fifty!”
Dinnertime was very quiet without JoJo at the table.
Later, Nancy’s dad brought some soup upstairs for her on a tray. Nancy stood with her guitar by the door to her sister’s room. “Want me to play the Texas song for you?” she asked.
JoJo coughed and nodded. She looked so little and sad in her bed. Not rambunctious at all. It made Nancy want to hug her sister, except JoJo was too germy.
At school on Tuesday, there was a run-through of the show. Lionel was still absent so Mr. D took his place as emcee. It was the first time Nancy got to see many of the other songs and dances.
For the grand finale—the very last act—the whole third grade got up onstage. They marched around with signs that said either Hooray for the USA! or The Nifty Fifty and sang “This Land Is Your Land.” Nancy loved the song. It was about how everybody in America was part of one big family, “from California to the New York island.”
After the run-through, Bree kept on her tap shoes. At lunch, she tap-danced down the cafeteria line. Clickety-clack-clack. She tap-danced to their table under the poster of the five food groups. And when she was finished eating, she tap-danced over to the garbage bins to throw her sandwich bag away. The clicking sound was starting to drive Nancy nuts! Nancy ate fast and ran outside for recess.
“I’ll be right out,” Bree called to her. “I just need to use the lavatory.” And away she tapped.
“Want to jump rope with us?” Tamar asked Nancy in the yard. She had already rounded up a bunch of girls.
“Sure,” Nancy said. “I’ll be one of the turners.”
Then Tamar asked, “Where’s Bree?” Except for Grace, Bree was best at double Dutch.
“Oh, Bree’s tap-dancing over to the girls’ room.” Nancy rolled her eyes. “Tap, tap, tap. All she does is tap dance! I’m sick of it. She’s—she’s too much of a perfectionist!”
A funny expression came over Tamar’s face. Her eyes were looking past Nancy.
Nancy spun around. There was Bree. Her lips started to tremble. She blinked a couple of times.
“Well, excuse me for wanting to do a good job!” she finally said. Then Bree turned and stormed off into the school building.
“It’s—it’s true what I said!” Nancy stammered to all the girls. But she wished the words could fly back in her mouth. She felt horrible. Nobody said anything. They looked embarrassed.
In the hallway, Nancy caught up with Bree.
“I’m so sorry!” Nancy said. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“Yes you did! Some best friend you are!” Bree’s voice sounded wobbly.
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings!” Nancy’s voice got wobbly too. “I feel awful! I don’t know why I said that stuff!”
“Leave me alone!”
Nancy could tell that Bree meant it.
Bree ignored Nancy for the rest of the day. When school was over, she hurried ahead of Nancy to the bike rack and rode home by herself.
That night Bree didn’t answer any of the messages of apology that Nancy sent in their Top-Secret Special Delivery mail basket. She refused to come to the phone when Nancy called.
The next day in school, Bree was still giving Nancy the silent treatment. When the third-grade girls were changing backstage for the dress rehearsal, Nancy saw Bree in her costume for the first time.
“You look so chic!” Nancy told her. In French that meant stylish.
Bree had on a short flouncy skirt, a T-shirt that said I ♥ NY and a green foam rubber crown with points, a souvenir from when Bree’s family had visited the Statue of Liberty.
Without even glancing at Nancy, Bree tapped off. Clickety-click-click.
Bree did not have a forgiving nature. When she got mad, she stayed mad. But by now Nancy had hoped they’d be friends again. With a heavy heart, Nancy pulled on her cowboy boots, grabbed her guitar, and walked out onstage.
“Hey! No fair!” Grace said the second she laid eyes on Nancy. “You copied me!” She was trying to shout, only her voice cracked.
Nancy did a double-take. She and Grace looked almost like mirror images of each other. Even their cowboy boots were the same color pink.
“Mr. D, tell her to change!” Grace said. “I’m the star of the Oklahoma number. I have to look—” Grace stopped to sneeze. “I have to look special.”
Mr. Dudeny said, “Grace, it’s perfectly fine if you both are dressed like cowgirls.” Then he clapped his hands for silence. “Ready, everyone! Emcee, where are you?”
Today was Lionel’s first day back in school. His costume looked great. He was dressed up like Uncle Sam in a top hat, blue jacket, and red-and-white-striped pants. But he had to keep blowing his nose between jokes. And his voice sounded hoarse. There was something wrong with Grace’s voice too. Before she started the Oklahoma song, she blasted her throat with a can of throat spray.
“Oklahoma! Where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain!” Grace’s voice kept cracking. It sounded like a chicken squawking.
“I want to start over,” Grace croaked to the teachers. She ran for the throat spray. But after the opening line, Mr. Dudeny made her stop. “Grace, trying to sing is hurting your throat. My advice is to give it a rest for now.”
“But I’m not sick! Honest!” Grace said. She was blinking really hard. And her mouth was clamped shut in a tight line. Nancy was stunned. Grace looked as if she was about to cry.
Mr. Dudeny went over to Grace and said something that Nancy couldn’t hear but that made Grace stomp off the stage. “It’s not fair. I feel abso—” Grace started coughing before she could finish the sentence.
The dress rehearsal was the last time on Thursday anyone in 3D saw Grace.
“Grace had to go home early,” Olivia told Nancy on the phone that evening. “She’s sick. She’s going to miss The Nifty Fifty! Mr. D called each of us in the Oklahoma number. We all know the song, so we’re going to do it without her.”
“Poor Grace,” Nancy said. She couldn’t remember ever feeling sorry for Grace before. But she did now. Really and truly sorry. Grace’s big moment in The Nifty Fifty had been snatched away from her!
After saying good-bye to Olivia, Nancy called Grace. “I’m sorry you can’t be in the show,” she told her. “I feel really bad for you.”
“You do?” Grace rasped.
“Yes. It’s not fair you got sick.”
“It sure isn’t. Well—lookit. I hope you and Robert do okay.” Then Grace told Nancy her throat hurt too much to talk anymore.
After hanging up, Nancy plopped onto her bed and stared over at Bree’s window. The light was on in her room, but there was no sign of her. Was Bree nervous? Was she excited? Was Bree wondering if Nancy was nervous and excited?
Nancy’s father poked his head in her room. “Feeling a little jittery?” he asked.
Nancy shrugged. “I guess.”
Her dad sat down beside her on the bed. “You know the old trick for staying calm, don’t you?”
“No. What?”
“Right before you start, you look out at the audience and pretend that everyone is in their underwear!”
Nancy wrinkled her nose. “Eww. Daddy, I don’t want to picture the parents undressed!” Then all of a sudden Nancy turned to her dad and blurted out what was really bothering her. “Bree and I are in a fight. I—I said stuff behind her back. It was mean.”
Her father looked surprised. “Why? Were you angry for a reason?”
“No, Daddy. I have no excuse. I made fun of how much she’s practicing. Now I don’t even care about The Nifty Fifty. Being in the show won’t be any fun if Bree and me aren’t speaking.”
Her father was nodding. “You need to make things right.”
“I’ve tried, Dad! Honest! She won’t accept my apology.”
“Try one more time.”
“It won’t do any good,” Nancy insisted.
“Maybe not. But if you don’t give it a shot, you definitely won’t get anywhere.”
“Hmm. I see your point.” Nancy hauled herself off the bed. “I guess I could go over to her house and wait at the front door. I’ll say I’m not leaving until Bree forgives me. I’ll say I’m prepared to stand outside all night if I have to.”
“Sounds like a plan. Hope you’re back before dawn!”
Before she could change her mind, Nancy took the stairs two at a time and burst out the back door. She almost ran smack into Bree.
They both jumped back a step and looked at each other, startled.
“Where are you going?” Bree said.
“Over to your house. To beg your forgiveness.” Then Nancy looked puzzled. “Why are you here?”
The expression on Bree’s face was hard to read. It was halfway between a frown and a smile. Then she threw up her arms and said, “Because I can’t stand being in a fight anymore! I want to be friends again. Apology accepted!”
Nancy Clancy, Star of Stage and Screen Page 2
