Much Ado About Anne

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  Across the room, Mr. Goldberg nods vigorously. The camera starts rolling again, and my mother pulls out her cheeriest Mrs. Hawthorne-the-librarian tone of voice. “Continuing our lively discussion here, let’s turn to the concept of kindred spirits,” she says. “I’ve always loved that concept, haven’t you, Lily?”

  “Absolutely,” Mrs. Wong replies. “It’s the very best kind of friendship.”

  “I always wished I had a friend like Diana Barry when I was growing up,” says Mrs. Delaney wistfully. “You girls are all so lucky to have each other.”

  I look over at Becca Chadwick. She is so not a kindred spirit. Whatever the opposite of a kindred spirit is, that’s Becca. She sees me watching her and crosses her eyes. My mother catches her doing it and frowns, shaking her head slightly. Becca has the grace to look embarrassed. She shifts her gaze and takes a sip of tea.

  “You know what I don’t get?” says Cassidy. “The way Anne keeps naming things. ‘The White Way of Delight,’ and the ‘Lake of Shining Waters.’ And that dumb tree, the ‘Snow Queen.’ That is so lame! Who names a tree?”

  I hide a smile behind my napkin, careful not to look in Jess’s direction. I wouldn’t admit it on camera—and certainly not in front of Becca—but Jess and I have been naming things at Half Moon Farm. Anne of Green Gables inspired us. The Delaney’s duck pond is now officially “The Mirror of the Sky,” and the row of birches that line the driveway are “The Silent Guardians.”

  “Actually,” says my mother, flipping through her notebook, “I was reading a biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery in preparation for our meeting today, and it turns out that was something she used to do. Here it is—she said she used to name ‘all the pretty nooks and crannies about the old farm.’ ”

  “I still think it’s dumb,” Cassidy continues, popping an entire cucumber sandwich into her mouth. “And what’s with that invisible friend of hers in the bookcase with the glass doors?”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” her mother whispers.

  Across from me, I see Becca’s cell phone peeking up over the tabletop. She snaps a picture of Cassidy chewing. She sees me watching her and gives me a triumphant little smile. I look away.

  “You mean Katie Maurice?” my mother says. “Well, in the story Anne was just lonely, that’s all. But lots of children have imaginary friends. Maud Montgomery herself did. And so did Emma.”

  I gape at her, horrified. I can’t believe she just said that! And on camera, too! I feel my face getting warm. I can only imagine the hay Becca Chadwick will make with this juicy little factoid. Not that she’ll have to—the whole world will know about it once the show airs. Unless the editor snips it out.

  Mrs. Wong laughs. “Wasn’t his name Waldo?”

  She and my mother both start giggling.

  “Remember that time we decided to take the kids over to Ipswich to Crane’s Beach for the day?” my mother continues. “And we had to turn back because Emma forgot Waldo?”

  Megan’s lips are twitching now too. Cassidy is grinning at me, and so are Mr. Goldberg and even the cameraman. Only Jess isn’t smiling. She gives me a sympathetic look.

  “I was five!” I protest.

  But my mother is caught up in telling the story, and doesn’t hear the panic in my voice. “Emma shrieked for ten minutes straight, until Nick finally relented and turned the car around.”

  It’s stupid, I know, but I can still remember that horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, and how relieved I was when my dad brought me back home to get Waldo. He was very real to me.

  Becca looks over at me and smirks. I close my eyes. I am never going to live this down.

  “I’m sure this is all very entertaining to those of you who were there, but I suggest that we confine our conversation to Anne of Green Gables,” Mrs. Chadwick says sourly.

  “Cut!” cries Mr. Goldberg. He looks weary. “On that note, I think we’ll wrap things up here. We should have enough footage at this point for the tea party scene.”

  The rest of the afternoon passes quickly. Mrs. Sloane organizes us in the kitchen where they film us making tea treats and decorations. I stay as far away as possible from Becca, who is teamed up with Megan. As I watch the two of them together, I begin to wonder if Megan is a kindred spirit after all. She’s not exactly acting like one.

  The phone rings just as we finish filming. Courtney answers it, then passes the receiver to her mother.

  “Uh-huh,” says Mrs. Sloane. “Really? Wow! That would be great.” She hangs up and looks over at us. “You’ll never guess who that was.”

  “Waldo?” whispers Becca from behind me.

  Cassidy steps on her foot.

  “Channel 5 heard about the mother-daughter tea party episode, and they want to do a promotional spot about it on their morning show the day it runs,” her mother tells us.

  “You mean we’re going to be on Hello Boston!?” squeals Becca.

  Mrs. Sloane nods, beaming.

  I have the same horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I did when we drove off years ago without my imaginary friend Waldo. Taping an episode of Cooking with Clementine is one thing. But live TV with Becca Chadwick?

  It’s going to be a disaster.

  Jess

  “What do you do when you meet with an irresistible temptation?”

  —Anne of Green Gables

  Shivering, I kneel in front of my bedroom window and peer out at the darkness. The sky is beginning to lighten over the back pasture, and I can just make out the fringe of trees at its far edge. A brisk wind whips through their tops, then gallops across the pasture and rattles my windowpanes. I pull my quilt closer around me, glad to be indoors on this chilly November morning. Usually I’d be out in the barn by now, milking the goats and feeding the chickens. But since this is a special day, my father said he’d do my chores for me.

  I press my face close to the glass, trying not to fog up the windowpane with my breath. There it is! To the southeast, over the duck pond, just like the Almanac promised. I smile in satisfaction at the pale crescent moon, and slightly above it, bright Venus. I let my thoughts drift for a while, pretending that I’m Anne Shirley, upstairs in her bedroom at Green Gables swooning over nature’s stark beauty.

  “ ‘Don’t you feel as if you just loved the world on a morning like this?’ ” I whisper to myself, quoting Anne.

  I know I’m too old for make-believe—I’m nearly thirteen—but sometimes, when nobody’s around, I still like to pretend things. Since we started reading the Anne books this fall, I’ve been daydreaming about Green Gables a lot—which is kind of surprising because reading is not my favorite thing in the whole world. Now, Emma, she’d rather sit around with a book than do just about anything else. I’d rather be outdoors. But I liked reading Little Women last year, so I was looking forward to book club again this year. Still, I didn’t have a clue how much I would absolutely love Anne of Green Gables. There are parts of it that I read over and over again. Anne Shirley feels the same way I do about everything, especially nature. She notices things—sunsets, trees, flowers, all of it. Just like I do. If she were real, the two of us would definitely be kindred spirits.

  “Jess!” my mother calls, startling me out of my little fantasy. “Are you ready?”

  “Almost, Mom!” I call back. Feeling guilty for dawdling—and nervous all of a sudden—I scramble up off the floor, toss the quilt back on my bed, and get dressed as fast as I can. Mom says it’s not that big a deal, and that an old pro like me doesn’t need to worry so much, but how can I help it? This is a lot different than a middle school play. We’re going to be on Hello Boston! Everybody in the world watches Hello Boston! Well, okay, not everybody, but enough people to make me worry about doing something stupid, especially on live TV, like having hay stuck in my hair or something. Everybody thinks I’m weird enough as it is.

  There’s a tap on my bedroom door and my mother pokes her head in. “We should get going, honey,” she says. She smiles at me. “Yo
u look really pretty.”

  “Thanks.” I’m wearing the same outfit I wore when we filmed the tea party a few weeks ago. It’s a light blue velvet dress with a white lace collar that my dad says makes me look like Alice in Wonderland. He means it as a compliment, but I think of it as my Anne of Green Gables dress, because it has puffed sleeves and Anne Shirley always wanted a dress with puffed sleeves. It’s kind of old-fashioned, but that’s what I like about it. My mom picked it out for me, and her taste in clothes is every bit as good as Mrs. Sloane’s and Megan’s. Not that you’d know it to look at her. Living on our farm, she doesn’t get to dress up much. At least not the way she did when she played Larissa LaRue on HeartBeats last year. When she quit the show she traded in her glamorous soap opera wardrobe for jeans and T-shirts, and instead of fancy hairdos, she mostly just pulls her hair back into a ponytail and sticks it through the back of one of her baseball caps. And who’s going to bother with makeup when there’s nobody to see you but chickens and goats?

  Today she looks as glamorous as she ever did on HeartBeats, though. She’s wearing slim black velvet pants, high heels, and a white satin blouse. Her dark hair is twisted up into a French braid, and she’s got these really gorgeous pearl earrings on and lipstick and everything. I wonder if I’ll be as pretty as my mom when I grow up. I squint at myself in the mirror, trying to imagine myself ten years from now. It doesn’t work. All I see is Jess, but blurry because I’m squinting.

  “We’d better get a move on—we’re supposed to be at Clementine’s soon,” my mother reminds me. As if I could forget. She sees the look on my face and laughs. “Relax, honey, it’s going to be fine. You’ll hardly notice the cameras. Just try and think of it as a fun party.”

  Is she kidding me? I’m going to be on live TV with Becca Chadwick! That hardly qualifies as a party. Filming the Cooking with Clementine episode was bad enough. Cassidy says by the time the editors cut out all of Mrs. Chadwick’s snarky comments and Becca’s shenanigans, there was hardly any tea party left at all. Plus, since Becca kept calling Emma “Waldo” and “Porky” under her breath, she made Emma so miserable that in the final cut Emma looks like she’s at a funeral instead of a festive holiday party. It was too late to film it over again, though, Mr. Goldberg said, so they had to go with it. Cassidy says it’s not that noticeable, but I suspect she just doesn’t want to hurt Emma’s feelings.

  “I’ll meet you downstairs,” my mother says.

  After she leaves I open my top dresser drawer, take out something I put there last night, and slip it into my pocket. I look at myself in the mirror and smile. Miss Queen Bee Becca is in for a surprise this morning.

  “Ta-da!” cries my father from the foot of the stairs. “My beautiful girls!”

  My mother twirls around the front hall, showing off her outfit. Sugar and Spice do their best to twirl too, running in circles chasing their tails and barking in excitement. My mom and dad both laugh. It’s good to see my parents happy. They’ve been looking so serious lately.

  My father sweeps his arm toward the front door. “Ladies,” he announces in a fake British accent, “your chariot awaits.”

  Our “chariot” turns out to be the farm truck. While I’m waiting for my brothers to pile into the narrow backseat, I look up at the dawn sky again. There’s a Leonid meteor shower predicted for next week, and my father has promised to get up with me to watch it. He likes astronomy too. When it’s my turn to climb up into the cab, I settle in between my parents in the front seat. My father turns on the heater.

  “Winter is just around the corner,” he says cheerfully, and starts to sing “Over the river and through the woods . . .”

  We all join in. I gaze at Half Moon Farm as he backs out of the driveway. I forgot to turn the light off in my bedroom, and its warm glow lights up my window like a beacon, making our house look like something you’d see on a postcard. Sometimes I love our home so much it almost hurts. If I never had to leave it again I’d be perfectly happy. It’s the place I feel safest and most content in all the world—especially now that our family is together again.

  It’s only a short drive to the Sloanes’, and we barely finish the song before we’re pulling up in front of their house. There are a lot of cars parked on both sides of the street, and the Channel 5 van is already in the driveway. My heart starts thumping wildly in my chest, like a caged animal trying to escape. This is really happening. I’m going to be on Hello Boston!

  “Give me a shout when you’re done, and I’ll come get you,” my dad calls to us as my mom and I climb out of the truck. He and the twins are heading home to watch the show. My mother said absolutely no way was she going to risk having the boys underfoot during a live TV taping. “A disaster waiting to happen,” she called it. We wave to them and they drive off.

  The Sloanes’ front door flies open and Emma and Cassidy tumble out onto the front porch. “What took you so long?” Emma demands. “We’re starting in half an hour.”

  “My fault, girls,” says my mom. “I couldn’t pry the twins out of bed.”

  The two of us follow them inside and hang up our coats. My mom heads for the kitchen while Emma and Cassidy and I linger in the hall, inspecting each other. Cassidy is fairly presentable for once, in black velvet pants like my mom’s and a black sort of tunic sweater with a bright pattern on it that looks like maybe it’s from Sweden or Norway or someplace. Her face is clean and she’s even brushed her short red hair, but she’s tucked it back behind her ears, which her mom hates and will try and fix the minute she spots it. Emma said she was never going to wear her snowman sweater again, not after what Becca Chadwick said about it, so today she’s wearing a frilly lavender shirt and a gray skirt. Her socks have slipped down, revealing bruises on her knees and Band-Aids on both of her shins. Emma started taking figure-skating lessons a few weeks ago. She’s not very good yet.

  “Did you bring it?” whispers Cassidy.

  I nod, and Cassidy and Emma start to giggle. Of course that has to be right when Mrs. Chadwick walks in. She sees us and frowns.

  “What are you girls up to?” she demands.

  “Nothing,” we chorus.

  “Where’s Becca?”

  Cassidy points upstairs. “In Courtney’s room with Megan. My sister’s doing their makeup.”

  Emma’s smile fades. It’s kind of awkward now that Megan is friends again with Becca Chadwick. It’s not like she ignores us—she doesn’t. She’s still friends with us, too. But it’s pretty uncomfortable sometimes, especially in the cafeteria at lunch. Megan never quite looks like she knows where to sit. Sometimes she sits with us, and sometimes she sits with the Fab Three. Emma and Cassidy and I can’t bring ourselves to call them the Fab Four again the way we used to, though. We’re too afraid we’ll jinx things if we do. We keep hoping Megan will wake up and realize who her real friends are.

  Just as Mrs. Chadwick starts up the stairs, Megan and Becca appear at the top. Megan is wearing a new red silk dress she sewed herself. The color goes perfectly with her ivory skin and shiny dark hair.

  “Hey, Megs,” I call up to her. “You look nice.”

  “Thanks,” she says, flashing me a smile. “So do you. I was hoping you’d wear that dress again.”

  “Stop dillydallying, girls!” booms Mrs. Chadwick. “Mrs. Sloane wants to talk to us all. We’ll be starting soon.”

  The two of them clatter downstairs and we follow Mrs. Chadwick to the kitchen. She’s wearing an emerald green outfit made of some stiff embroidered fabric that makes her look kind of like a sofa. Not that I’d ever tell her that. My mom lectured me about being respectful of my elders. No more jokes about Mrs. Chadwick’s size, especially now that she’s taking yoga and trying to turn over a new leaf, she says. We’re supposed to be supportive of her efforts.

  My stomach does a flip-flop as we near the kitchen. This is worse than the stage fright I had last year right before Beauty and the Beast. It’s not like I even have to say anything—we rehearsed last night and mostly Mr
s. Sloane will do all the talking with the show’s host. We’re just supposed to sit there politely sipping tea and smiling and looking excited and happy so people will want to watch our Cooking with Clementine episode when it’s broadcast later today. Still, I’m really jittery. My hand slips into my pocket again, and it occurs to me that I might be feeling nervous because of what’s in there.

  I grab Cassidy and Emma and hold them back for a moment just outside the kitchen door. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” I whisper.

  “Yeah,” Emma whispers back. “I’m kind of anxious about it too.”

  Cassidy looks at us in disgust. “You two are such babies!” She holds out her hand. “Gimme it.”

  I look over at Emma. She shrugs. Reluctantly, I pass the contents of my pocket to Cassidy.

  She grins. “Trust me, it’s gonna be awesome.”

  The Sloanes’ kitchen is crammed with people. My stomach does another flip-flop when I spot Darcy lounging against the refrigerator. Beside him, Stewart Chadwick is standing on one leg like a crane, gawking at the trays of food that the staff of Cooking with Clementine has prepared. Some of it is for our Hello Boston! taping and some of it is for the camera crew and the dads and everybody else who’s come over to watch.

  Cassidy’s house is always in an uproar these days. There are cables that we’re always tripping over running through most of the rooms and hallways, plus floodlights and camera equipment everywhere. Poor Cassidy took a shower the other day and came out of the bathroom with nothing but her towel wrapped around her to find she’d accidentally walked into the middle of a shot! The camera crew thought it was a riot, but she was mad as heck. She told them if they tried to put it on a blooper reel, she’d sue.

  You never quite know which season it is at the Sloanes’, either. Last month, the same week we filmed our holiday tea party, they also filmed Mother’s Day brunch, and Cassidy’s house went from winter to spring in a matter of days.

  There is one benefit to having your mom in charge of a cooking show, though, Cassidy says, and that’s the food. She never buys lunch in the cafeteria at school anymore, and there’s always tons of good stuff around when Emma and Megan and I come over to hang out.