by Sophie Bell
The next day, in the back of the auditorium, Iris pulled up the list she’d scribbled on her tablet, and slid down in her seat. Which had recycled hemp cushions, because Chronic Prep was a very eco-conscious school. Beside Iris in the dimly lit theater, Cheri and Darth did the same. Cher scanned the computer’s screen:
YAY!
We r superheroes.
We have secret powers and a cool super-group name.
And a swella cute skunk mascot.
And an awesome clubhouse!!!
Candace has our back.
Iris + Sebastian = tru luv 4evs?
MEH . . .
Opaline = still on dark side.
Opaline = leading evil threesome w/LAME name.
Ice-cream intervention = #epicfail.
BeauTek = scary mutant factory, WTV?!
Black Swans spying on us!
Someone sabotajing FLab—why?!
Midterm exams in 2 weeks, ugh.
Can never tell Sebastian my tru identity.
“Hmmm,” Cheri hmmed. Even negating the Sebastian points—which didn’t quite belong on ALL the Ultra Violets’ lists of pros and cons—things did not line up. “I hate when the odds are never in our favor,” she said.
“Me too!” Iris put the tablet back in her messenger bag and passed a black cherry lollipop to Cher. “That’s why I think we have to double-down now, with a two-pronged approach.”
“That’s a lot of twos for the three of us,” Cheri counted. “What do you mean?”
Iris propped her wedge sandals on the seatback in front of her. “One,” she said in a low voice, unwrapping a blueberry lolly for herself, “we catch the Black Swans in the act and find out what their deal is with BeauTek.”
“Totes,” Cher agreed.
“And two,” Iris continued, “we figure out what is up with Opaline and the birthday party.”
“That we’re not invited to.” It had been a couple of days now since that newsflash, but Cheri was still not over the dis.
Iris turned to Cher. In the shadowy auditorium, Cheri thought she saw an ultraviolet twinkle in her eye.
“Just because we’re not invited,” Iris whispered with a smile, “doesn’t mean we can’t go.”
“Oh!” Cheri breathed, surprised. “UV party crashers?!” She smiled back. Iris had been a bit wobbly recently, stressed out as she was over Sebastian. And Cher still believed in love against the odds, even be it of the supergirl–clueless boy variety. But she decided now was NOT the moment to tell Iris that she and Scar had given Sebastian her number that afternoon in Chrysalis Park, after she had run away on the verge of rainbowing. To see Iris back in take-charge mode made Cheri feel more confident, too. She didn’t want to do anything to upset the equilibrium (which is a mathy word for “balance”).
Instead, Cheri began imagining their party-crasher outfits. They would be way more glam than the spy boys’ bland black business suits if she had anything to say about it!
Sumting smelz rotten . . .
Darth had scampered up to Cheri’s shoulder and was sniffing the air.
“Huh,” Cheri said, “I think Darth is picking up a scent.”
Smelz sad, he told Cheri.
“Hey.” Iris nudged her. “Speak of the Opal.”
Opaline had just entered the auditorium. Trailing behind her, as usual, was BellaBritney, looking typically hip-hip-booray, and K-Liz, whose reptilian eyes widened as they adjusted to the dim light. Opal and K-Liz slipped into seats toward the front. BellaBritney cartwheeled out of sight.
“Do you think she saw us?” Cheri asked. “Should you go camo, blend in with the hemp?”
“Nah,” Iris said. “We have just as much right to be here as she does. And remember what Candace said: Unless it’s an emergency, no busting out our powers in public.”
“Right,” Cheri said with a single nod. She sometimes forgot, since all her superpowers were hidden in her head, anyway. “Let’s just observe them.”
P.U. Darth thought, covering his nose with his paws.
Just then the drama teacher, Ms. von Smith, strode across the stage in a cloud of gauzy scarves and billowing skirts. (Ms. von Smith was also the art teacher, and Iris’s favorite.) She handed a sheet of paper to a boy sitting at the piano, who placed it on the easel above the keys. Then she walked to the front of the stage. Tucked her clipboard under one arm. Lifted her skirts as if she were about to jump over a puddle. And jumped off the stage instead. She could have just walked down the three steps to the side. But hopping off Poppins-style was definitely more dramatic. Ms. von Smith was all about the drama. Whether an audience was watching or not.
The teacher took a seat in the center of the very first row.
Auditions for the school musical were about to begin.
Iris and Cheri sat mostly patiently, slouched down in their chairs, sometimes texting or making half-hearted attempts to read their history homework while one student after another came out on the stage. Some kids were really talented, with strong voices. Others were decent dancers. The girls felt like they were behind-the-scenes judges of a singing competition, and they made a game of rating the performances in fake British accents. Until one name made them inch up in their seats.
And it wasn’t the name they were waiting for.
“BellaBritney Bettenscourt,” Ms. von Smith called in her high soprano. “You’re next.”
“She’s auditioning?” Cheri muttered, astonished.
“For how many roles?” Iris wondered.
The girls giggled, waiting for BellaBritney to take the stage. Down in front, Ms. von Smith was waiting, too. She tapped her long fingernails on her clipboard. “BellaBritney Bettenscourt!” she spoke-sung again.
All the way back in their seats, Iris and Cheri could hear whispering from backstage. It sounded like two girls having a heated argument with each other. Or make that one girl having a heated argument with herself. At last Cheer B appeared, single pompom in hand, dragging her other half along. Goth B pulled the green velvet curtain with her, all the way out to the middle of the stage.
Ms. von Smith eyed the odd scene of the cheerleader clutching the curtain. She didn’t say anything, just made a note on her clipboard. Then she nodded to the boy at the piano. “Okay, Sam,” she said.
And he began to play.
Hearing her cue, Cheer Britney opened her mouth to sing.
“The sun’ll come out,” she began, in what really was more of a shout. “Gimme a T! Gimme an O! Gimme an M-O-R-R-O-W!”
“Bet your bottom dollar that it won’t,” came a surly voice from behind the curtain.
“Just thinkin’ about,” Cheer Britney carried on with a shake of her solitary pompom, “T-O-M-ORROW!”
“Fills my head with cobwebs and completely crushes my soul,” Goth Bella deadpanned, peering out at last. She was wearing half a black turtleneck and half a black beret. Cheri thought it might make a whole good party-crasher costume. But for the role of Little Orphan Annie?
“Fashion disaster,” she murmured to Iris.
“I hope Scar’s not so nervous that she’s not watching,” Iris murmured back. “Because this is totally her kind of train wreck.”
“Er, thank you, BellaBritney!” Ms. von Smith clapped briskly, putting an early end to the confused audition. “A very, ah, unique take on the role of Little Orphan Annie. Very, ah . . .” The teacher searched for the right word. “Deconstructionist!” she declared, relieved to have found it. “The way you pushed past Annie’s surface optimism to expose the real pain at the heart of her life as a poor street urchin. Bravo! I applaud your artistic bravery.” And she clapped briskly again.
“Does that mean I got the P-A-R-T?” Cheer B asked, half of her bouncing with excitement.
“Oh swell no,” Ms. von Smith said bluntly.
&nb
sp; “Boo,” Cheer B pouted, her lonely pompom drooping in disappointment. “Told ya,” Goth B snarked. “Gimme an L and what does it spell? Loser!”
BellaBritney exited the stage, her cheer half ripping the beret off her goth half, her goth half pulling Cheer’s single ponytail.
Watching from behind, Iris saw Ms. von Smith’s shoulders shudder, which set off a chain reaction of tremors through her gauzy scarves. The teacher flipped up the page on her clipboard, then held it out under the lights as if she couldn’t trust her eyes.
“Also auditioning for the role of Little Orphan Annie,” she read out at last, “Scarlet Louise Jones?”
“Here!”
With a flying leap, Scarlet bounded from the wings. She was carrying a tin bucket in one hand, and she sprung so high she just missed knocking out a spotlight with the mop in the other. She landed in a plié, then straightened up and straightened out her tutu. To make her audition more believable, she was wearing a white shirt collar on top of her rock-n-roll T-shirt—Iris had crafted it from a clean coffee filter using ribbon and scissors and glue. Cher and Iris had also spent the half hour before in the girls’ room, coiling up Scarlet’s licorice-stick strands with a curling iron. She might have looked like an especially tough Little Orphan Annie, except that BellaBritney had already claimed the title of Most Strange.
“Good energy there, Scarlet,” Ms. von Smith said. “And I like the props. But let’s wait for the music before we start dancing, shall we?”
Scarlet just nodded, gripping the bucket handle so tight that her knuckles turned white.
“You can do it, Scar!” Iris whispered, way in the back of the auditorium, where only Cheri could hear her. Cher and Darth sent Scarlet their most positive thoughts, too.
Ms. von Smith sized up the small girl before her on the stage. Scarlet Jones was known more for pounding bullies than pounding the boards. But school plays were excellent places for spirited children to channel their impulses, and the arts teacher totally believed in the therapeutic power of “the theatre.” (If you could have heard her think it, you would have heard her pronounce it with an extra syllable and trill the R, like thee-ay-tarr! Most dramatically!)
The teacher gathered up her gauzy scarves and tossed them over her shoulder.
“The second song, is it, Scarlet?” she asked, settling back in her seat.
Scarlet nodded vigorously again, her black curls already coming loose.
“All right then, break a leg!” Ms. von Smith said.
“Whose?” Scarlet asked. She scanned the near-empty auditorium. Opaline sat with her arms folded a few rows behind the teacher. K-Liz flicked her forked tongue out at her.
“No, no, no,” Ms. von Smith said hurriedly, “that’s just an old thespian expression.” Without explaining any further, she pointed to Sam at the piano. He flipped over the sheet music, then tinkled the keys.
Iris and Cheri linked pinkie fingers in anticipation. Scarlet had made them pinkie swear NOT to clap or cheer or scream or whoot or do anything that might distract her. So they both just held their breath and held up their smartphones. The screens scintillated with a sparkler app.
Scarlet’s throat felt dry. That leg-breaking saying had broken her concentration, and she could see Opaline glowering in the audience. The piano introduction came and went, and the auditorium fell silent.
“Play it again, Sam,” Ms. von Smith instructed.
And he did.
And this time Scarlet found her voice.
“It’s the hard-knock life,” she began quietly, “for us . . .”
Ms. von Smith smiled, surprised at how clear and pure she sounded. Scarlet saw that smile and raised her voice a little louder.
“It’s the hard-knock life, for us!”
Iris and Cheri jumped to their feet and waved their phones.
“Steada treated,” Scarlet sung out, loud enough to reach the rafters, “we get tricked!” She stomped her mop on the stage. It broke through the floorboards.
“Steada kisses, we get kicked!” She booted the bucket for effect. Her foot bent right through the tin, leaving a sneaker-shaped dent.
But Scarlet didn’t really notice this. There on the stage, with the piano playing and the drama teacher toe-tapping along, Scarlet forgot everything else—her nervousness and silly hair and, of course, her superstrength, which she was always forgetting anyway. She burst into a viomazing hip-hop dance solo, creating her own rhythm section with the bucket and broomstick.
“I’m from the school of the hard knocks, I must not,” she sang, suddenly switching to the rap version of the song, “let mutants violate our blocks . . .” The piano player got into it, too. He bounced up from his bench to beatbox along.
Sulking in the audience, Opaline began to shoot bolts above Scarlet’s head. With each stage light she hit, the bulb would pop and shower down sparks. Still Scarlet sang, dancing between the electric raindrops, sweeping them up with her prop mop, spinning so fast that just maybe she was creating sparks of her own. MC-ing, freestyling, slapping the bucket like a bongo, she owned that stage. As she reached the end of the song—
“It’s!”—she tossed the bucket to one side, and it soared all the way up into the balcony.
“The!”—she threw the mop to the other, and it speared through the green curtain, pinning it against the wall.
“Hard-knock life!”—she flung her arms wide open and slid forward on her knees just as Opal blew out the last of the stage lights. Its yellow embers twinkled down through Scarlet’s fingers like falling fireworks.
From the back of the auditorium, Iris made a quickie exception to Candace’s no-powers-in-public rule. She busted out a glitter-dusted beam, shining a cool lavender spotlight on Scarlet. She and Cher didn’t have roses to sling at the stage. But Darth busted out his superpower, too, spraying the air with the sweet, powdery scent of violets.
Up in front, Ms. von Smith watched, rapt, as Scarlet sprang to her feet and gave her a crisp curtsy. The teacher was suddenly overcome by the heady smell of flowers. Perhaps she’d overdone it with her perfume that morning? It must have been making her giddy now. Because it appeared as if Scarlet Louise Jones’s glossy black hair glowed with a halo of deep, dark purple.
What’s the Deal?
SCARLET WAS STILL HUMMING TO HERSELF AS IRIS AND Cheri joined her backstage. She was still dancing, too. But then again, Scarlet was always dancing.
“OMV, Scar, you were so good!” Cheri gushed.
“Viomazing!” Iris declared. “Even dancing in the dark!” She spun around herself, violet curls flying, as the girls left the auditorium. “You’d make the most awesome Annie ever!”
Scarlet didn’t know what to do with all the compliments. She searched the hallway for a bully to beat on, but they’d all already gone home. She considered giving Cher a friendly shove in the shoulder, then resisted the urge. She slapped her own shoulder instead.
“Owie,” she laughed as they reached their lockers.
“What did you do that for?” Cheri asked, laughing too, while taking a cautionary step to the side.
“IDK.” Scarlet shrugged, wrestling her history textbook out of her locker and cramming it into her backpack. “I just . . .” How could she explain this? “You know how people say, ‘Pinch me, I must be dreaming’?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s like that,” Scarlet said. “But supersized. I have a lot of energy, I guess.”
Iris reached over to rub Scar’s shoulder where she’d smacked it. “Well, I bet you get the lead, and then you’ll have to rehearse so much you’ll be exhausted!”
“Hope so.” Scarlet bowed her head to hide her smile. By now her hair was back to stick-straight and licorice-black. “Because most of the time it seems like . . .” She looked up from under her long bangs, first to Iris, then to Cheri. “Like the more energy I burn, the more energy I have.�
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“Oh totally,” Cheri said, rummaging in her tote bag for her lip gloss, which was hidden beneath Darth’s soft, snoozing belly. “Energy begets energy. Aha!” She dug out the tube of glittery plum and had begun to twist off its cap when she realized Scarlet and Iris were staring at her. “Energy equals mass times speed squared times the constant one half?” she tried. As if that were any clearer! “No? Okay, how about: A body in motion stays in motion,” she attempted. “Scarlet, once your body is in motion, you’re pure energy!”
Iris started twirling around them again. “You mean once she gets started, she can’t, she won’t, and she don’t stop!” she exclaimed, grasping it.
“She’s kinetic,” Cheri stated, rolling the gloss over the bow of her lip, then dotting it on the bottom.
Scarlet shut her locker and the girls continued toward Chronic Prep’s revolving doors, chatting and laughing, spinning and explaining energy equations. But suddenly Iris held up a hand, and all three girls came to a halt. A few classrooms ahead, a shadow had darkened their path. They heard a door swing open, and as it did a wedge of conversation slipped out into the corridor. A funny jumble of a phrase:
“Five card draw, high hand wins.”
Iris tucked a ringlet behind one ear and cocked her head to the side, listening. Curious, she took another step forward. That’s when all three of them saw K-Liz slither across the hallway, her scaly tail swaying behind her as she snuck into . . .
“The boys’ room?!” Scarlet gasped, clamping a hand over her mouth. Cheri made an automatic ick-face.
“Wow.” Iris stuck out her tongue in an ick-face of her own. “I knew Karyn had gone mutant, but I didn’t think she’d changed that much.”
“Oh swell no,” Scarlet said through her fingers, shaking her head.
