Showstopper

by Lisa Fiedler

  “Sorry I’m late,” Mackenzie said, coming down the aisle, her cheeks brightly flushed, her chest heaving.

  I gaped at her as she took off her backpack and fumbled in it for a bottled water. “You ran here? All the way from Random Farms?”

  Mackenzie took a long sip and nodded.

  “What about Pilates?” I asked, still confused. “And the Dance Warehouse?”

  A strange expression flickered over Kenzie’s face; she didn’t seem to know how to answer me, and for a minute I was afraid she was suffering from heatstroke.

  “Your mom said you were meeting dance friends,” I prompted.

  “She did?” Mackenzie took another gulp from the bottle. “Weird. She must be thinking of the weekend. I told her I had plans to do that on Saturday.” She laughed. “She’s been so busy lately, trying to get me an audition with one of the New York ballet companies, she can’t keep anything straight. I’ll call her when we take a break and clear things up.”

  I frowned. That did not sound like Mrs. Fleisch; Mrs. Fleisch could tell you the time and location of every dance class Mackenzie had ever taken since the age of three, plus the name of every instructor she’d ever studied under, and the current height, weight, and body mass index of every ballerina in the tri-state area who might constitute a threat to Mackenzie’s standing as one of the best dancers in her age group. I knew because I’d heard her do it. But I wasn’t about to point this out to Mackenzie, who was now digging her script out of her backpack.

  “You’re Greek Chorus Number One,” I said, “which means you’ve got the first line. You’re also playing the nymph Calypso. And maybe Charybdis, if Maxie can figure out how to costume a character who is technically just a wild and watery vortex of evil.”

  “Cool.” Mackenzie made her way to the stage and took a seat between Nora and Maddie.

  I looked at Austin.

  He looked at me. “Was that weird?”

  “Very,” I said. I decided to let it go this time, but from now on I was going to have to be more of a stickler about punctuality.

  “Let’s go, Director!” Susan bellowed. “We’re wasting time, and we don’t have a minute to spare. This is an epic, not a one-act, ya know!”

  “Ya think maybe this ‘leader of the gods’ thing is starting to go to her head?” Austin asked with a grin.

  “God or no god,” I said, heading toward the stage. “She’s still my little sister, which means I have absolutely no problem wrestling her to the ground and sitting on her head. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again.”

  Austin smiled. “Good to know.”

  We took our seats in the front row and the read-through began.

  Despite Kenzie’s tardiness, we wound up having a great read-through. The script was well written and totally hilarious! There were a few references that went right over our heads, but thank heavens for Wi-Fi. Every time we came across some mythological-themed joke or pun we didn’t quite understand, Susan would look it up on her iPhone.

  “I am Zeus!” she hollered. “Knower of all things!” Then she held up her smartphone and sang out praises to its power. “I hold in the palm of my godly hand the very secrets of the universe! I hold an iPhone… . I hold the world!”

  “Wow,” said Teddy, who had a few TV commercials on his professional résumé. “Great slogan! You should call Apple’s marketing department and see about becoming their spokesperson.”

  “Spokes-god!” Susan corrected with a haughty snarl.

  “Enough,” I said. “Now put the phone down and go get the sheet music.” Then I added, “Please,” because A) it was polite, and B) I didn’t want her to get any crazy ideas about smiting me with a lightning bolt.

  After our read-through we spent the rest of the day working on the songs.

  At Austin’s suggestion, we started with the ensemble numbers. After a bit of experimentation, Joey managed to get some great sounds out of the lyre, and once again Austin got creative with the prerecorded rhythm selections on the portable keyboard.

  “I’m usually a piano purist,” he confessed with a grin, “but this is fun!”

  We began with the suitors’ song, “Everyone Goes,” which sounded an awful lot like the Cole Porter classic “Anything Goes,” but with enough subtle variations to keep things legal and on the up-and-up. Now that I knew about licensing, I had to assume the Drama-o-Rama songwriters had been extremely careful not to mess with copyrights. According to the sheet music, our song was “inspired by” Mr. Porter’s.

  And of course, the melody made me think of the incredible tap dancing done by the great Patti LuPone, who performed as Reno Sweeney at the 1988 Tony Awards (thank you, YouTube!). I could almost hear the syncopated gunfire sounds of eighteen pairs of tap shoes!

  I mentioned this to Maxie; it took her exactly four seconds to come up with the concept of using grosgrain ribbon criss-crossed around the dancers’ calves to turn their tap shoes into gladiator sandals! She made a few very impressive sketches.

  “How are we doing with the six-headed monster costume?” I asked.

  “Working on it,” said Maxie, chewing the end of her pencil. “Although I’m thinking it might be more of a casting and blocking concern than a costuming one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve got some ideas, but they’re kind of hard to explain.” Her eyes sparkled with mystery. “I’ll work on some drawings tonight and show you tomorrow.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. We made a plan to sit down with all her artwork—tear sheets, mood boards, and renderings—tomorrow after the bake sale. Deon would join us to discuss his end of the production, although I wasn’t sure if he should be focusing on designs for this theater or our own. The safe bet was for him to plan for both, which I knew would be a lot more work for him. But what could we do?

  When Austin was satisfied with our rendition of the Porteresque “Everyone Goes” we moved on to “It’s All Greek to Me,” then “Gotta See a Man About a Horse.”

  I couldn’t believe how awesome the songs were, and how quickly the cast was picking them up.

  And before I knew it, rehearsal was over.

  “See you all back here tomorrow,” I said as the actors gathered up their things. “Start memorizing your lines. We should all be off book by next Monday. And don’t forget: have your moms or dads drop off your baked goods at my house sometime during the day tomorrow. We’ll all head back there after rehearsal for the sale.”

  Everyone began to file out of the auditorium. A few of the cast, including my sister, had packed towels and bathing suits and were going to stay and use the indoor pool. I shouted out a reminder for them to shower first, thinking Mrs. Crandall would want it that way.

  “Hey, Kenz,” I called just before she slipped out the door. “Do you want a ride home? My papa’s picking me up, and Susan’s seat is open, since she’s sticking around to swim.”

  “That’s okay,” said Mackenzie. “I’ve got a ride. I’m meeting my mom at … um, in town.”

  That seemed kind of silly to me. Why would she walk all the way to town to get picked up when she could simply come home in our car and save her mother a trip? But I decided not to question it. Maybe Mrs. Fleisch had errands to run or something.

  “Okay,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Oh, and Anya, I’m sorry but I won’t be able to contribute anything to the bake sale. I can help with the selling, but, well, my mom isn’t much of a baker, and we don’t have cupcake tins or anything.”

  “That’s all right,” I said, laughing. “I’m sure between Gracie’s baklava and Nora’s lemon squares, we’ll have plenty.”

  Mackenzie gave me a weird look, like maybe there was more she wanted to say. But she didn’t; she just waved and hurried on her way.

  Austin and I went around the entire auditorium to check that the place was as neat and clean as it had been when we’d arrived. I sent Deon and Maxie backstage to do the same. They found some bubble-gum wrappers (Maddie!) and
Travis’s script. Deon said he’d have his mom swing by Trav’s house on their way home and drop it off … along with a stern reminder about taking better care of his theatrical materials. When we were satisfied that nothing else had been left behind, we got our stuff, turned off the lights, and headed out of the theater toward the main entrance.

  In the lobby, Maxie veered off toward the gym to wait for her little brother to finish basketball camp.

  Outside, Deon’s mom was already waiting by the curb.

  “I’ll work on some design elements tonight,” D promised, getting into the car. “I’m thinking of bringing in a smoke machine for the Olympus scenes. Ya know, to create a kind of misty, nebulous effect.”

  “Nebulous,” I said, waving to Mrs. Becker. “I like it!”

  When Deon was gone, Austin turned to me, a huge smile on his face. “I think we’ve got a hit on our hands,” he declared.

  “Me too,” I agreed. “The read-through was better than I’d expected, and the songs are incredible. So tomorrow we’ll start blocking. Wednesday we can work on fight choreography with Becky and—”

  I stopped short when I saw Mackenzie exiting through one of the community center’s side doors. She must have made a stop in the ladies’ locker room because she’d changed out of her running shorts and T-shirt and into a black leotard and pink tights. Her hair, which had been in a ponytail during rehearsal, was now secured in a flawless ballerina’s bun.

  As I watched her jog gracefully across the grass and through the parking lot, I realized she wasn’t walking toward town at all. She was heading in the complete opposite direction, in fact.

  She was heading toward her dance studio.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Just before dinner, Susan knocked on my bedroom door. Her damp hair still smelled of chlorine from her swim at the community center pool, but I barely noticed it because the whole house was filled with fabulous aromas of melting butter, warm vanilla, and brown sugar.

  “Smells like Nana’s started baking,” said Susan, inhaling deeply and making a beeline downstairs to the kitchen. I was hot on her heels.

  At the counter, an apron-clad Nana was expertly dropping heaping teaspoons of cookie dough onto a baking sheet. Papa stood beside her, whistling as he reached stealthily for the wooden spoon propped in the mixing bowl.

  “Don’t you dare lick that spoon, Harold Wallach!” Nana warned, swatting his hand away without looking up from the methodical arrangement of chocolate-studded blobs on the sheet. “There are raw eggs in there! You’ll get salmonella or trichinosis or a tapeworm or something.”

  “Or malaria!” Susan added, helping herself to a handful of tiny candy Kisses. “Or the bubonic plague!”

  “Or whooping cough!” Papa joked, sneaking a fully baked cookie off the cooling rack and taking a bite.

  “Well, now we know where Susan gets her sense of humor,” I said with a grin. “Not to mention her appetite.” I took the opened bag of chocolate morsels and moved them deliberately to the far side of the counter, where my sister couldn’t reach.

  “Now, you girls know Papa and I won’t be here for your bake sale, right?”

  “We know, Nana,” I said. “Tuesday is your hair appointment.”

  “And how was rehearsal?” asked Nana, sliding the cookie pan into the oven.

  “Awesome!” said Susan. “I’m Zeus!”

  “Wonderful!” said Nana. “I’ll whip you up a nice batch of ambrosia as soon as I’m done with these cookies.”

  “Thanks for doing all this, Nana,” I said, sinking into a kitchen chair. “The bake sale is going to be a big moneymaker.”

  “Speaking of money … this arrived for you, Anya,” said Papa, tearing himself away from the cooling rack. He handed me a large manila envelope that jingled a bit. “Sounds like coins. A lad in overalls dropped it off earlier.”

  “That’d be Matt,” I said, pinching the little clasp open and pouring about twelve quarters onto the kitchen table. A bunch of paper money followed, fluttering out like giant confetti.

  “I’ll count that!” cried Susan as she gleefully joined me at the table and began digging into the pile of bills and change.

  I pulled a sheet of paper out of the envelope.

  “What have you got there, Anya?” Papa asked. “Looks awfully official.”

  “It is,” I assured him. “It’s an ad for our program. This boy, Matt Witten, is promoting his lawn-cutting business.”

  “He’s also a major investor,” said Susan.

  “I’ll say he is!” Papa eyed the bills, clearly surprised at the sum of money. “Seems this young man has a future in big business. You should snap him up, Anya! You two have a lot in common. The two of you could take over the world!”

  “Papa!” I said, my face flushing.

  “Oh, Anya won’t be snapping up Matt Witten,” said Susan, carefully separating the twenties from the tens. “She already likes someone else.”

  Papa smiled. “She does?”

  I frowned. “I do?”

  Susan looked up from her stacks of cash. “Duh, Anya. You like Austin.”

  “I do not.”

  “You do, too.”

  “I do not! He’s my business partner. And my friend.”

  “Fine.” Susan rolled her eyes and started piling the quarters into little pillars of four. “Whatever. Let’s see the ad.”

  Relieved that the topic had shifted, I placed Matt’s advertisement in the middle of the table for all of us to admire.

  AFFORDABLE AND RELIABLE LAWN CARE SERVING THE RANDOM FARMS NEIGHBORHOOD MOWING WEEDING GENERAL LANDSCAPING CALL MATTHEW J. WITTEN

  (917) 555-7158

  REFERENCES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

  “Not bad,” said Papa. “Short and sweet. Simple and to the point.”

  “I would have gone with some clip art,” said Susan. “A little cartoon lawn mower in the corner would have been cool, or maybe a Weedwacker. Even a rake. Something to spice it up a bit.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “It gets the message across.”

  As I examined Matt’s message, it occurred to me that there was nothing stopping us from taking this ad idea to the next level by creating a whole advertising section in our program!

  Numbers began to appear in my head. Prices for full-and half-page ads, rates for black-and-white or color. Selling ad space could bring in a fair amount of profit with a relatively small amount of work. It was just a matter of approaching potential sponsors and convincing them to promote their businesses in our program. How hard could that be? Even with her added responsibilities as Zeus, I was sure Susan could handle the sales component.

  But who would we sell ad space to? Other than Matt and myself, I didn’t know any other kids who were currently operating their own businesses (unless you wanted to count little Hannah Petrova, who sporadically ran a lemonade stand down the street, setting up shop on really hot days, but only if her mother happened to have extra plastic cups in the pantry).

  So perhaps I would have to revise my “kids only” thinking to allow for grown-up sponsors. Like Mrs. Taylor, who lived three streets over and marketed herself as an interior design consultant (I knew this because she’d helped Becky’s mom redecorate their dining room last winter). Maybe the coffee shop would buy a quarter-page ad. The ice cream parlor, the pizza place … They’d been nice enough to let us put posters in their windows; maybe they’d go the extra mile and advertise with us, too.

  And then a thought came to me. Mr. Krause, who owned the gas station and mini-mart! As it happened, we shared a mutual business connection. My heart raced because I knew that selling a full-pager to Krause’s would accomplish two very significant things:

  1) Ka-ching! Ka-ching! And …

  2) I’d get to talk to Matt again, sooner than later.

  This second point made me suddenly realize that Susan’s theory about my liking Austin was completely off the mark.

  I did like someone.

  But it wasn’t
Austin.

  It was Matt.

  I used the number from the ad to text Matt. Correction: Matthew J. Witten.

  Flopping onto my bed with my iPhone, I began typing. My first attempt was clunky, to say the least.

  Hey, Matt, it’s Anya. I need a favor.

  My finger hovered over send as I evaluated the message. It seemed a little pushy, maybe even needy. And technically business transactions weren’t favors; they were business transactions. But I wasn’t conducting business with Matt. I was imposing upon him to approach Mr. Krause on my behalf, so that was a favor.

  I hit send. A couple of seconds later, my phone dinged.

  Hey, Anya. How’s it goin’?

  I felt a shiver go up my spine. He texted me back! Like, immediately. That had to be a good sign. Hands trembling, I repositioned my fingers on the touch screen and typed:

  You mentioned you do a lot of business with Mr.

  Krause.

  Ding.

  Yep. Why? Is your little sis craving a slushee?

  Ding.

  LOL.

  Okay, now what? Explaining about beefing up the ad section of our program and the fee schedule for different-size advertisements was going to require an awful lot of typing. It would be so much easier just to tell him about it. So I mustered up my courage and typed:

  Would you mind if I call you?

  I bit my lip, hit send, and then waited for his response.

  Ding.

  Wouldn’t mind at all, LOL. I’d like that.

  My eyes went round as I gaped at the glowing screen. He’d like that?

  He’d like that!

  It wasn’t until Susan came bursting through my door in a panic that I realized I’d screamed.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, her eyes darting around the room.

  “Nothing.”

  “Jeesh, I thought there was a fire. Or maybe you were trapped under some immovable object or something.”

  “Well, I’m not. Sorry I scared you. Now get out.”

  Susan gave me a look but didn’t argue. She strode out and shut the door behind her.

  Smiling, I took a deep breath.

  And I called Matthew J. Witten.