Maeve on the Red Carpet

by Annie Bryant

“Sorry to interrupt,” Dad said, “but I wanted Apollo to see the Boston Common … right over there.”

  “Huh.” Apollo looked kind of bored as he stared out the car window. “I can see why they call it ‘common.’”

  I snapped my head around again and glared at Apollo … not too mad, but mad enough for him to know not to call the Common common. “I’ll have you know, Apollo Aaron, that this just so happens to be the home of the famous swan boats. Ever heard of ’em? Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  Apollo’s mouth hung open for a moment and then he offered, “Okay, but in the winter, no offense, Maeve, the Common just looks like a big fenced-in park.”

  “But, it would be the perfect place for the first kung fu fight of the movie, don’t you think?” mused Lizzie.

  “Should I pull over?” Dad asked.

  I looked back at the kids and imagined trying to do jump kicks in the park in the middle of a cold, winter day. “I vote no. Too cold!”

  The others nodded. “I want to see more Boston!” Apollo burst out.

  “See more Boston! See more Boston!” Sam started chanting and pumping his fist in the air.

  Before I knew what was happening, we were all in sync with Sam, shouting, “See more Boston!” as loud as we could. Dad didn’t mind one bit though. If he didn’t own the Movie House, he would’ve been a truly fabulous tour guide, Maeve thought.

  Dad led us on a crazy drive, one that made the tiny city of Boston seem like the most exciting place in the world. He looped all around the expressway and over the brand new Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge (isn’t that name fantastic?). And the whole way all any of us could do was spill out ideas for Boston Holiday like … like … a big gushing idea fountain.

  We drove past Fenway Park and Apollo had the hilarious thought that Princess Sophia could catch a fly ball in the middle of a Red Sox game while Sufoo fends off Nanny Nuna and the assistant, who are disguised as crazed Red Sox fans. Lizzie and I loved that one. Dad bought us a baseball so we could act it out a little. I insisted on being Princess Sophia. Then when Apollo threw me the ball, I got scared at how fast it was going and instead of catching it, dove to the side and covered my head. Avery would’ve flipped if she’d seen me.

  “Stick to the red carpet and stay far, far away from the Green Monster,” Sam advised from behind the camera.

  “Thanks,” I responded with a tone of sarcasm. I did not enjoy being taped at my most un-glamorous.

  Then when we were walking in Faneuil Hall—a historic tourist spot with shops and restaurants—a big pink tank drove by and started quacking at us. Of course, Dad, Sam, Lizzie, and I knew what was up right away, but Apollo looked totally freaked out. “Whoa, why are all those people quacking at me? Do I have, like, feathers stuck on my coat or something?” He spun around and started batting at the back of his jacket in a furious motion, making me and Sam burst into an uncontrollable fit of Kaplan-Taylor hysterical laughter.

  “Stop, stop,” I gasped, panting for air. “Apollo, those are the Duck Tours! They always quack at the people on the sidewalk … it’s part of the fun!” I said as though it made all the sense in the world. People quacking and honking from a brightly colored tank was totally normal, right?

  “Hey, imagine how funny it would be if Princess Sophia traded in her tiara for a Duck Tour hat and was all into the Duck Tour, quacking and stuff, while Sufoo was dealing with the bad guys hanging off the back of the tank?” I suggested with a little bit of a devilish grin. I demonstrated doing some kung fu chops off the sidewalk, but had a momentary lapse of gracefulness and fell rightsmack on my bum.

  I looked up to see Sam’s horrid camera very close to my blushing face. “Nice one, Sufoo,” Sam jeered.

  “Hey, watch it, paparazzi boy,” I warned. “And that’s Princess Sophia to you, thank you very much.”

  Apollo, in a very gentleman-like way, bent down and helped me get to my feet. (True confession—I just melt when boys are chivalrous—that means gracious as a Knight of the Round Table. I think it’s terribly romantic.) Of course then Apollo popped the mood by saying, “Dude, if we don’t put the Duck Tours into Boston Holiday it would be a big mistake.”

  “Huge,” I agreed.

  “Mammoth,” Lizzie added. Was she a word nerd and a movie nerd? No wonder I liked this girl!

  “There’s one more place we need to see, I think,” Dad remarked, leading us back to the car.

  “Aw, really? But I’m hungry,” Sam griped, “and my shoulder is killing me.” No wonder Sam’s shoulder was hurting—he’d been in paparazzi mode 24/7!

  “Then stop videotaping me and all my embarrassing moments!” I demanded with my hands on my hips.

  Sam turned on the video and pointed it at me. “Hey, it’s not my fault you’re embarrassing.”

  I fumed for a few seconds but decided I’d had enough of fighting with Sam. I was actually having too much fun. “Where are we going Dad?” I was dying to know.

  “It’s a surprise,” Dad replied.

  “Ooh, surprises are the greatest,” Lizzie cried, giddy with excitement.

  “Not me,” Sam blurted. “I want to know NOW!”

  “Me too,” I admitted. Sam and I were having one of those moments where it was obvious how we were related … absolutely no patience whatsoever.

  Dad shook his head and continued to drive through the busy Boston traffic. I think he enjoyed torturing his kids, or at least teasing us a little.

  Apollo turned his Dodgers hat backward and shrugged. “It’s all new to me.” He seemed very relaxed. I wondered if it was his laid-back California attitude coming out.

  “See, Maeve and Sam. You gotta be more like Apollo. Go with the flow, dude,” Dad uttered in a fake-surfer voice. “How am I doing, Apollo?”

  Lizzie giggled as Sam shook his head and I buried mine in my hands. But Apollo made a fist and held it up for Dad to tap. “Right on, dude,” Apollo said with an approving nod.

  “Whoa, dude, what do you know? We’re already here,” Dad announced in the same goofy way. I was about to die of embarrassment. Then it occurred to me where Dad had taken us, and all at once I forgave him for all his strange dad behavior.

  “Chinatown!” I breathed and gazed up at the green shelled rooftop of the tall gate, decorated with gold Chinese characters. “Dad, you are a complete genius!”

  “I know,” he answered. “I figured a little kung fu inspiration couldn’t hurt. Along with … moo shu pork and scallion pancakes?”

  “Mr. Taylor, you’re the man!” Apollo exclaimed.

  “Yeah, Dad, you’re the man!” Sam echoed.

  As we strolled through the streets of Chinatown, I was completely wowed by the store windows. I loved how all the outfits were such vibrant shades of color and embroidered with gold. “Probably at the end of the movie Sufoo should get a cool kung fu costume,” I thought out loud, then added. “A discount one, of course.”

  The rich smells of Chinese food cooking in fryers wafted up from a little basement restaurant—The Dragon Hop. “This has the best egg drop soup in the city,” Dad explained.

  As we sat down at a table and started to read our Chinese horoscopes, Lizzie looked like a light bulb had suddenly blinked on over her head. She got out her notebook and started scribbling.

  “What?” I asked.

  She continued scribbling and scrawling until finally she dropped the pencil and collapsed back in her seat. “Okay, I’ve got it. Sufoo lives in Chinatown and is trying to be a clothing designer. But her day job is being a maid at the Taj, where she picks up on the styles of the rich and famous.” Lizzie spoke quietly even though we were the only guests in the dimly lit restaurant. It felt very official that way.

  “I really like where you’re going with this, Lizzie,” Apollo encouraged.

  “So she’s putting mints on the pillow in the hotel when she overhears the nanny plotting with the evil assistant. Turns out they know kung fu and have been secretly training in Boston for months! But here’s the ca
tch—Sufoo has been training too.”

  “With her gorgeous kung fu instructor!” I added.

  “Exactly!” Lizzie answered with a wide smile.

  “Name?” Apollo asked.

  I tapped my chin. “Well, in the movie he was played by Gregory Peck, so how about …” I waved my hand in the air and said dramatically, “Grego.”

  “Grego … I like it,” Apollo decided. “Short, sweet, and simple.”

  “So Sufoo brings Grego with her and pretends he is a reporter, when really he’s there to protect the princess. But then he ends up falling in love with her, and Sufoo saves the day! What do you think?”

  Just then, the waiter came over with a three-tiered pu-pu platter. I grabbed an egg roll and took a bite. “I love it,” I started to say, but then realized how hot the food was and had to spit it out into my napkin. Ick! Definitely not my best Princess Sophia moment. And even worse—Sam had the camera rolling again.

  “Can you not?” I begged. “How am I ever going to be the princess, if all the tape shows is me acting like a total slob?”

  “You know,” Apollo began, digging into a chicken finger, “I think Sufoo is a way cooler part than the princess.”

  I gave him a look. “Puh-leease.”

  “No really,” Apollo insisted. “Think about it—you’d get to fight, and wear cool costumes, and be the hero in the end. Plus it would be, like, totally hilarious.”

  Lizzie nodded. “If I was good at acting, I’d definitely want the Sufoo part. It’s so original!”

  “But Sufoo doesn’t get to fall in love,” I pointed out. “Not very romantic.”

  “Blah!” Sam frowned. “Romance is gross, dude.” He looked up at Apollo, probably hoping that Apollo would agree.

  Apollo put his fist out and tapped Sam’s. “Gross for kids.” He laughed and then looked back at me, suddenly seeming very serious. “Maeve, if you want to have fun, you should really think about trying out for Sufoo.”

  “No one could do it like you,” Lizzie added.

  I felt a little uncomfortable. It was weird—why was everyone trying to talk me out of the princess part? Did they think I was not in the same league as Maddie? I had to prove that I was talented enough to be the lead in this film. “No way. I’m trying out for Princess Sophia,” I insisted as the waiter plopped a plate of crackling, glistening scallion pancakes in the middle of our table. I stabbed one with my fork and added, “Period, final, the end!” and took a huge bite. “OUCH!” I cried.

  “Hot?” asked Dad with a smirk.

  “Uh-huh.” I reached into my water glass to grab a handful of ice.

  “Wow. You are going to be one awesome princess,” Sam teased, patting my shoulder. Then he neatly cut a piece of pancake, blew on it, and took a long, satisfied crunch. I glared at Sam, who looked back with a huge smile and pronounced, “Dee-lish.”

  CHAPTER

  13

  Downward-Facing Dog

  Be online, be online!” I pleaded out loud as I clicked the enter key over and over again. Seriously, I adored the Internet, but why was it that whenever I really wanted to get on, it seemed to take forever? I had yoga class in fifteen minutes and there was something really important I had to talk to my friends about. “Come on, BSG, you’ve got to be online!”

  Finally the computer made a chortling noise and my buddy list popped up. I was overjoyed. The very top of my list said “Chat Room BSG (5/5).” But then … the tragic reality: everyone had put up away messages. Life was too cruel sometimes.

  “Oh, Izzy, I miss you too!” I sighed as I stared at the front page of my notebook. I’d written a note to myself on it and the very sight of it made me feel positively nauseous. “Write sceens 1 and 2—hotel and runing away.” I chewed on my thumb. How was I supposed to write an outline of the first two scenes tonight? Apollo was going to do 3 and 4, and Lizzie was going to do 5 and 6. It seemed simple enough, except for one thing: I was probably the worst speller in the history of the world.

  At first, I was really excited to start this project after our exciting field trip around the city. But then there was the conversation about the outline I had with Apollo and Lizzie.

  “Can we do it on the computer?” I’d asked Apollo.

  “Nah … just scribble down what we talked about today in a notebook,” Apollo said. “This is a really rough draft.”

  Lizzie agreed. “I’m still in total pencil mode. At least ’til we talk it over with Artemia.”

  But what they didn’t understand was that pencil mode for me was pretty much impossible. An impossible nightmare. I looked down at my notes again: “Write sceens 1 and 2—hotel and runing away.” Ew. Terrible. I shuddered. I knew that couldn’t be right.

  Lizzie was super-organized, which was definitely a plus, because I was the exact opposite. She made a list of all the places we saw, and all the crazy ideas we had. Why did I have to be dyslexic? It was so unfair.

  Thank goodness I was allowed to bring my laptop into school with me. Without my spell-checker, I’d be totally lost. But out in the real world, did I really have to abandon my trusty computer and go back to being Maeve the terrible speller? Just when Apollo was finally starting to think I was smart (after a little bit of a bumpy start with Maddie), did I really want to go back to feeling stupid? No way.

  I went over to my desk and stared at my face in the mirror. “Hair, A-plus,” I said in my most confident voice, twisting a silky red ringlet around my pencil. “Skin … A,” I decided. Some girls weren’t crazy about a few little freckles on their noses like I had, but I happened to like my freckles. My mom and dad said they gave me character. “But spelling … ugh. D-minus.”

  I rested my chin in my hand and blinked back the tears that were clouding my A-plus-pluses. What was it that Dad said about my eyes? Then I remembered it with a weak smile: “Those baby blues speak for themselves.” He was always so nice and encouraging and made me feel tons better when no one else could. I sniffled, picked up my cell phone, and dialed Dad’s number. He would know the perfect thing to say.

  After only two rings Dad picked up. “Hi, Maeve.”

  “Hey, Dad,” I sniffled.

  “Sweetie? Is something wrong?”

  I gulped. “Well …”

  “Maeve … talk to me, kiddo,” Dad encouraged me just a little. He always had so much love and patience that I stopped trying to hold back my tears, and let them drip down my cheeks in a steady drizzle. “Sweetie, what is it?” Dad asked again.

  “I—I—I …” I sputtered. “I’m supposed to write this outline for the movie, and we aren’t allowed to use a computer, and I have to do it in a notebook, and I know that when I do it’s going to be just awful, and Lizzie and Apollo are going to know what a terrible writer I am, and they’ll think I’m totally stupid. Oh, Dad, this is horrible! I might as well quit right now. I know—I’ll just be a mime.”

  “Maeve!” Dad sounded shocked.

  I glared at my reflection in the mirror and miserably added, “They’ll probably WISH they had Madeline Von Krupcake in their group instead of me. Dad, believe me … I can’t do this.”

  “I’m sorry, may I ask who’s calling?” Dad asked. “This must be some kind of prank, because the Maeve Kaplan-Taylor I know is probably the most talented, creative person in all of Massachusetts. No, in all of the United States of America.”

  Dad was so obviously just trying to make me feel better with his huge exaggeration that I giggled unexpectedly and it came out as a loud snort. “Was that … laughter?” Dad prompted.

  “Actually it’s called a sniggle … technically speaking,” I said, dabbing the saltiness out of my long eyelashes.

  “Maeve, what do you suppose would happen if you came in tomorrow with an outline that you made on the computer?” Dad asked.

  I considered that for a sec. “Probably Lizzie and Apollo would think I was too dumb to write without a spell-checker,” I moped.

  “Sweetie, did you ever think that maybe Apollo and Lizzie would
be really impressed that you went above and beyond on the outline?”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “Well, a computer printout is much easier to read … and much more organized. And if that’s how you feel most comfortable presenting your ideas, I think it’s absolutely fine. Kiddo, I know you’re self-conscious about having to use your laptop to organize ideas, but the truth is, it’s the end result that matters. When everyone sees all your cool ideas, I promise they’ll be impressed.”

  I got up from my desk, wedged the phone beneath my ear, and started my pre-yoga stretches. It was important to warm up before my lesson. Plus, I was suddenly feeling a little bit brighter. “Really?”

  “Absolutely. They’re going to think that you’re a super hard worker … and they already know how talented you are.”

  “Wow, Dad, thanks.” I began doing one of my favorite yoga poses—the tree. It was when I bent one leg and placed my foot on my knee with my hands pressed together above my head. It was very good for improving balance.

  “There’s one more thing,” Dad added. “Maeve, remember, perseverance is what it’s all about.”

  It was hard to answer while I was standing in “tree” but I managed to admit, “Yeah … I guess.”

  “Maeve …” Dad warned.

  “All right, all right. I’m getting to work.”

  “Balderdash,” Dad scolded. “I’m not convinced. You can do better than that. Now say it again, but this time, make me believe it.”

  I sighed, put the phone on speaker, and placed it on the floor as I transferred my yoga position to downwardfacing dog. Red curls toppled onto my pink rug and I felt my cheeks warm as the blood rushed to my head. “I can do this!” I shouted.

  “And what does ‘smart’ rhyme with?” Dad asked.

  When the word popped into my head I was appalled. “Daddy!” I gasped.

  Dad laughed. “I was thinking ‘heart.’”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “So repeat after me. I’ve got heart.”

  “I’VE GOT HEART!”

  “And acting is my art.”