The Fix-It Friends--The Show Must Go On

by Nicole C. Kear

  Ginger handed me the list, and I looked for my name. My heart was thumping so much, I felt like it was an excited chinchilla running around a cage.

  It took me a while to find my name because it was at the very bottom.

  Queen of Hearts—Veronica Conti

  Then my heart felt like a chinchilla doing backflips!

  I read the rest of the list. Camille was playing the White Rabbit. Matthew Sawyer was going to be the Cheshire Cat. Minnie was the musical accompaniment.

  And Liv had gotten the part of Alice!

  I turned to her and gave her a high five. “You did it! Congrats!”

  She nodded, and her blue eyes were twinkling with happiness. But then, all of a sudden, they filled with worry.

  “But how am I going to learn all those lines?” she whispered.

  That’s when I realized four Fix-It Friends are better than one.

  “Call your mom during the break and ask if you can come to my house after rehearsal,” I told Liv. “I know just who to ask for help.”

  Chapter 8

  Improv is the most fun ever. It is short for improvisation, and it means you just make the scenes up as you go along. It is basically the same as just playing pretend. I laughed so much, my belly ached afterward.

  Then Ginger said, “Take five!”

  “Five what?” I asked.

  She laughed her sleigh bells laugh and said, “Five minutes, love. Take a break.”

  Liv went to the office to call her mom, and I went backstage to find Jude and Ezra. Jude was kneeling down, drawing tree shapes on big pieces of cardboard. Ezra was sitting next to him, in the middle of a big mess of colored plastic sheets.

  “I got the part!” I exclaimed.

  “Congrats,” said Jude.

  “Awesome!” said Ezra. He held up a few red plastic sheets.

  “Hey, which is better for your entrance?” asked Ezra. “Crimson? Scarlet? Magenta?”

  “Umm, they all just sort of look like red to me,” I said.

  Then I turned to Jude. “What was your big, brainy idea the other night?”

  “You’ll have to be more specific,” he said. “I have a lot of big, brainy ideas.”

  “The one to help Liv. You were about to tell me at dinner when I told you to can it.”

  “Ahhh, yes. That was a great idea. One of my best.”

  “Well,” I said, very annoyed, “what was it?”

  “Uhhhhh…,” he said. “I don’t remember.”

  “Jude!” I shouted.

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I forgot! It was a few days ago. Do you have any idea how many ideas I get in a day? I can’t possibly keep them all in my brain, or my head would explode.”

  “It’s no big deal,” said Ezra. “We’ll just think up another idea. That’s why they pay the Fix-It Friends the big bucks.”

  “No one pays us anything,” said Jude.

  Ezra chuckled. “Yeah, that’s a shame.”

  Cora walked over then. Her arms were full of purple fur and a pincushion was on her wrist.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “I’m calling an emergency Fix-It meeting after rehearsal today!” I announced.

  “So it appears that we, your wise elders, were right about coming up with a plan?” asked Jude.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” I snapped. “You were right, okay? You were as right as a math test where you get one hundred percent and three gold stars on the front! So can we have the meeting or not?”

  Ezra asked his mom, who is also the principal of our school, and she said sure. Cora was already planning on coming over anyway. All systems go, as my dad says.

  After Drama Club, I introduced Liv to everyone.

  Ezra held blue plastic sheets up to her face to see which shade was best.

  Jude made her stand in front of his cardboard tree to see if it was tall enough.

  Cora talked her ear off about costumes. “I was thinking of sewing you an apron to go over your dress. One question: Do you like sequins?”

  “One answer,” said Liv. “I adore them!”

  When Dad came to pick us up, he said, “Wow. Full house today, huh?”

  But he didn’t mind. Dad always says, “The more the merrier.” He’s a people person, just like me.

  When we got home, Dad let us have some of his favorite powdered doughnuts, washed down with hot apple cider. Apple cider is the number one reason I love the autumn. The number two reason is: I love hiding under huge piles of leaves and doing jump scares at Jude.

  After the snack, we got down to business.

  “Why don’t you just tell Ginger about your trouble reading?” asked Ezra. “That’s what I would do.”

  “Me, too,” agreed Cora.

  “No,” said Liv, shaking her head. “I can handle this. I have a really good memory. In a few days, I’ll have this whole script memorized. I just need to figure out how to make it through the next few days of rehearsal.”

  “Oh, I know!” I exclaimed. “Minnie took a ventriloquism class after school one time. What if she sits at the piano and reads your lines without moving her lips, and then you move your mouth, so it looks like you’re saying them?”

  They all laughed like it was a joke, but I was being serious.

  Then Jude asked to see the script. Liv handed it over. She had doodled little pictures of ballet slippers and cats and stuff on the sides of the pages.

  “Liv, do you have any trouble looking at pictures?” he asked.

  “Nope,” she said, “and I don’t have a hard time with the very little words like the or me, stuff like that.”

  “I know exactly what we can do!” Jude said. He took a fresh piece of paper and wrote down Alice’s first line in his super-neat handwriting: “A rabbit with a pocket watch? How peculiar!” Then he drew little perfect pictures of a bunny and a pocket watch on top of the words. Jude can draw anything—and fast, too.

  When he got to peculiar, he was stumped. So he just drew a lot of question marks and exclamation marks.

  “Ohhhhh, I get it,” said Ezra, looking over Jude’s shoulder. “She can read the pictures instead of the words.”

  Jude nodded and handed the page to Liv. “Try it.”

  Liv cleared her throat and said, “A bunny with a watch?” Then she looked at all the question marks and shouted very loudly, “WHY OH WHY????”

  “It needs a few adjustments,” said Ezra. “But not bad.”

  It took a while for Jude to think up good pictures for the words, so he was able to do only a few scenes. Liv said that was enough for the first rehearsal.

  After he was done, Jude and Ezra went into our bedroom to do homework. I knew I should probably get started on mine, but I just didn’t feel like it.

  I had a better idea. I turned to Cora and Liv with a smile.

  “Death scene, anyone?”

  Chapter 9

  Liv wanted to try a Devoured-by-Barracuda scene. We turned the coffee table upside down, sat on top of it, and pretended it was a canoe that got sucked into the Bermuda Triangle. I don’t know what that is exactly, but I know it’s deadly so I guessed it was filled with barracuda.

  Our howls were so lifelike that Dad came running into the living room, shrieking, “What happened?” He must have been in the middle of changing Pearl because he was holding her under his arm like a football and she wasn’t wearing a diaper.

  Pearl copies everything, so she was shrieking, “What ’appen? What ’appen?”

  A few seconds later, the front door flew open and in ran Mom from her office downstairs, where she sees her clients. She was panting from running, and it looked like one of her shoes had fallen off.

  “WHO’S HURT?” she yelled.

  Two seconds later came my grandparents, who live upstairs.

  First came Nana, who carried a fire extinguisher and shrieked, “What’s-a da matta?” Then came Nonno. He was holding a baseball bat, and he looked ready to attack.

  They all looked really, really funny holding
weird stuff and looking so upset, but I knew better than to laugh.

  “Everything’s fine,” I said.

  “We’re so very sorry,” added Cora, who has perfect manners.

  “We were just being devoured by barracuda,” Liv explained.

  Mom didn’t say anything. She just smoothed her hair and walked back down the stairs in her one shoe.

  “I don’t want to rain on your parade,” said Dad. “But you need to get devoured a lot more quietly. Capisce?”

  That’s how you say “Got it?” in Italian.

  “You-a scared us half-a to-a death!” Nana scolded.

  Nonno added, “You almost gave us a heart attack!”

  So we stopped the death scenes, and we practiced our splits instead. Liv told me the secret to her success. She says she sleeps in a split! I don’t know how she can possibly do that!

  Pearl came in, wearing pants this time, and tried to do a split, too. She lay on her back and stuck one leg up in the air and the other leg out to the side. Then she put her lips together and spit as hard as she could.

  “Pearly Pie!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing?”

  “Spit!” she cried. “I doin’ spits!”

  That made us laugh so hard, Dad had to run in again to see if everything was okay.

  Chapter 10

  At lunch on Monday, I sat next to Minnie and Cora. When Cora unzipped her lunch box, she groaned. Minnie peeked inside.

  “Uh-oh,” said Minnie. “Looks like a Loco Lunch Box.”

  That’s what we call it when Cora’s mom tosses in whole tubs and tins of things that don’t really go together. She does it when she runs out of time in the morning, because she is so busy. Mrs. Klein has two different sets of twins. Not just Cora and Camille but also a pair of five-year-old boys, Bo and Lou, who are wilder than a bunch of cheetahs that ate a whole bucket of Halloween candy.

  Cora could just get school lunch, like Camille always does. But Cora is a picky eater, and the one part of school she doesn’t like is school lunch. So she usually just asks me to trade, and I usually do. After all, I am an adventure lover.

  On Monday, when Cora opened her lunch box, she found a half-eaten tub of Marshmallow Fluff, a whole pepperoni, and a butter knife. I love pepperoni, so I traded Cora for some of my bean soup, which Nana calls pasta fagioli. Then I shared my saltine crackers with her, and we put marshmallow fluff on top for dessert. Ta-da! Problem solved!

  We were munching our marshmallow crackers when Liv walked by our table. I waved her over.

  “Did you remember to bring in your picture script?” I asked.

  Liv nodded.

  “Oh, guess what? I’m going to watch your rehearsal today,” Cora said. “Miss Tibbs told me to watch and take measurements.”

  I whispered, “I don’t know how you can stand spending so much time with Miss Tibbs.”

  “She’s so mean,” agreed Minnie. “She’s always nagging me to stop chewing on my braids—which is just an innocent habit. It doesn’t even hurt anyone!”

  “Well, it hurts your hair,” I pointed out, “and probably your stomach, if you get a hair ball.”

  “Miss Tibbs is not that bad once you get to know her,” squeaked Cora.

  Cora likes everyone. Even Matthew Sawyer. Even Bo and Lou, who do hideous things like pull the heads off her Barbies and draw mustaches in permanent marker on her stuffed animals. If she met Snow White’s evil stepmother, Cora would probably say, “Oh, she’s all right. She just likes to look pretty, that’s all.”

  “Of course you like Miss Tibbs! She loves you more than penguins love ice cubes,” I said. Then I imitated Miss Tibbs’s voice: “‘Miss Klein, what a lovely dress you have. Miss Klein, what lovely manners you have.’ But to me, she’s like, ‘Miss Conti, what a big mouth you have!’”

  “Miss Conti,” came a voice right behind me. “I’ll thank you to save the acting for Drama Club.”

  Miss Tibbs had sneaked up on us. I was so embarrassed, I felt my face get red-hot.

  “Miss Oikonomopoulous,” she said, without even getting one part of that name mixed up. “This is not your assigned lunch table, is it?”

  Liv scurried away.

  “Will I see you after school, Miss Klein?”

  “Without a doubt!” Cora squeaked.

  Then Miss Tibbs saw Matthew Sawyer pouring his milk onto his tray and slurping it off with a straw. She ran over to set him straight, as my dad would say.

  For once in my life, I thought, Thank goodness for Matthew Sawyer.

  Chapter 11

  Ginger started Drama Club by teaching us some tongue twisters to warm up our mouths so we wouldn’t get tongue-tied, like I do with Miss Tibbs.

  Ezra was in the auditorium working on the lights, and he did the tongue twisters with us. Because of all his years talking at the speed of light, he was really, really good at them. He could say, “Red leather yellow leather red leather yellow leather” and “She sells seashells by the seashore” at turbo speed, without mixing up any of the sounds!

  Then Ginger said it was time to rehearse the play. Jude was in the wings, painting a gigantic toadstool. I saw him watching Liv nervously to see if his picture script would work.

  Great news! It did.

  “A rabbit with a pocket watch?” she said. “How peculiar!”

  Cora and I were sitting in the front row, and we both gave Liv the thumbs-up sign.

  Camille decided her version of the White Rabbit would act like a very successful businessperson—much too busy to stop and talk to Alice. She said, “I’m late! I’m late,” in a very rude way, and we all giggled.

  When Liv fell down the rabbit hole, Minnie played dramatic music on the piano. She really pounded on the keys. It was so exciting that it gave me goose bumps.

  Ginger kept saying stuff like “Smashing!” and “Brilliant!” Everything was perfect … until Liv got to the part where Alice finds the “Eat Me” cake.

  Suddenly, she stopped talking. She looked really closely at the script, squinting her eyes.

  I looked at my script, too. She was supposed to say, “Well, I’ll eat it! If it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key. And if it makes me grow smaller, I can sneak under the door. So either way, I’ll get into the garden!”

  Instead, she said, “Well, I’ll eat it! And if it burns, I’ll swing from a vine. And if it disappears, I’ll drive a bulldozer! So yay! I’ll get into the dungeon!”

  I was very confused. Jude stopped painting sets. Ezra stopped looking through colors for the lights.

  Liv gulped loudly. She gave me a look that said, Yikes! What now?

  I didn’t know what to do, so I passed the look over to Jude, who passed the look to Ezra, who passed the look to Cora.

  Thankfully, Cora is great at thinking on her feet. She came up with a fast fix.

  She jumped out of her seat and ran up onstage, with her long yellow measuring tape hung over her shoulder like a scarf.

  “Won’t you please excuse me?” she said oh-so-politely to Ginger. “Miss Tibbs told me I absolutely must get Alice’s measurements.”

  “Right now, love?” Ginger asked. “Can’t it wait till the end of the scene?”

  Cora opened her big brown eyes extra wide.

  “I wish it could wait,” she said, her face looking regretful. “But Miss Tibbs said ASAP.”

  “That means ‘as soon as possible,’” I explained.

  Ginger closed her script. “All right; it’s nearly time for our break anyway. Take five!”

  Cora dashed over to Liv and led her into the wings, where she made a big show of measuring her. Jude and Ezra and I walked over.

  “What happened with the script?” Jude asked.

  “Orange juice happened!” Liv exclaimed, and she handed it to us. Sure enough, something had spilled on the page with the “Eat Me” scene, and the spill had made the pictures all smudged. They weren’t pictures anymore, just big blobs. No wonder Liv was talking about vines and bulldozers and dungeons!


  “I’ll just make another one,” Jude offered.

  Liv shook her head. “It’ll take too long.”

  “I know!” I piped up. “Jude and I will create a distraction. We’ll pretend to have a big fight. Jude will call me a rotten lying nincompoop, and then I’ll slug him, and then he can kick me in the shins.”

  Everyone shook their heads and said, “No, no way. Forget it.”

  Ezra piped up then, talking even faster than usual. “You don’t have any trouble learning the words to songs, right? Like, you just hear the words and you repeat them, until you know them by heart, right?”

  Liv nodded.

  “Okay, cool. So that’s what we’ll do. I’ll record someone reading Alice’s lines onto my laptop. I brought it with me to work on the lights. Then I’ll send the recording to your mom, and you can listen until you have it memorized.”

  “Can you really do that?” asked Liv, with wide eyes.

  “Are you kidding?” I cried. “Ezra is a computer genius! He’s recorded practically my whole demo album!”

  Ginger called to us, “Are you about through? We’ve got to get back to it.”

  We all nodded.

  “It’s a great idea, Ez,” said Jude. “But right now, she’s got to go back to rehearsal, so—”

  “I’ve got to tell Ginger what’s going on,” said Liv.

  “Yep,” said sensible Jude.

  I sighed. He was right, of course. Every so often, Mr. Know-It-All actually knows something, after all.

  Chapter 12

  While Liv talked to Ginger, Cora took my measurements.

  “I’d like a floor-length gown,” I told Cora as she wrapped the measuring tape around my waist and then down my arms and legs. “It should be made of blood-red velvet. Let’s put white lace hearts on the front and the sleeves. A velvet cloak with a high collar, too. One that will twirl when I spin around. And of course, I’ll need a crown. Fourteen-karat gold would be the best, but if you can only find gold plated, that will probably be okay.”