Noah McNichol and the Backstage Ghost

by Martha Freeman

  “Something”—Mike held the script between thumb and forefinger—“is rotten at Plattsfield-Winklebottom!”

  “The script, you mean?” Fig shook his head. “It came direct from Mrs. Winklebottom.”

  “I don’t care if it came from Moses!” Mike said. “It’s an abomination!”

  Mike went on that way for a while, spewing air like an undone balloon.

  When finally he stopped to breathe, Fig was ready. “Feel better? Now let me explain. Opening night is May 8. I may not know much about this play business, but I know about season openers. If you’re gonna be ready, if you’re gonna be a team, if you’re gonna show ’em what you’re made of, you gotta practice, and that means sticking to the schedule. If you can’t see your way clear to help, Mike, that’s your lookout—no harm, no foul. Just let me know now so we can move on. Have I made myself clear?”

  Mike’s arms were crossed over his chest, and his eyes were on his shoes. He mumbled something.

  “What was that?” Fig asked.

  Mike looked up. “You’re absolutely right, Coach. Sorry for being a prima donna. I made a commitment. I’ll stick to it.”

  “Good man,” Fig said. Then he cocked his head, glanced down at his phone, raised a finger. “So sorry, guys. Gotta take this. Champagne Catering? Thanks for calling back.…”

  Mike’s shoulders slumped, and he sighed. For a second I thought he’d forgotten I was there.

  “Uh, Mike?” I said. “So I can keep going?”

  Mike looked up. “Yes, Noah. Continue.”

  I shook myself back into character—I’m a prince, a prince, a gosh-darned prince!—and read the remaining lines, which concluded:

  “ ‘’Tis true, ’tis clear, and we can all agree,

  “ ‘Long-lived and healthy is the way to be.’ ”

  “Oh, dear heaven,” Mike murmured. “Thank you, Noah. Please send in the next actor.”

  “Sure. Uh, so when do we find out who got which part?” I asked.

  Mike was writing on a clipboard. “I’ll post the cast list tomorrow. That will give you time to take a look at your parts before the first read-through.”

  But how did I do? I wanted to ask. Do you want me to try it again—without an interruption?

  But I didn’t ask those questions. They seemed uncool. Maybe the next day everything would be clear.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Thursday, Rehearsal Week One, 43 Days till Performance

  The next day one thing was clear: I didn’t get cast as Hamlet.

  Instead, I was cast as Marcellus, Gravedigger One, Rosencrantz, and Fortinbras, four unimportant characters no one even remembers.

  One lucky thing: The only audience to witness my humiliation in real time was Clive. He and I had run to the auditorium to see the list posted on the door before anybody else.

  “Awww, man,” Clive said. “I am sorry. I thought for sure—”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “Excuse me?” Clive said.

  “Sorry,” I said, and wiped something out of my eye.

  Clive must’ve thought it was a tear, which it certainly was not, because he frowned and got all sympathetic. “Awww, man.”

  “It’s fine,” I said.

  “You can’t quit, man,” Clive said. “We made a pact.”

  “I’m gonna quit anyway,” I said.

  “Aw, come on, man. That’s not like you. I guess it’s pretty humiliating, though, huh?”

  “Way to be my best friend, Clive.”

  “Merely speaking truth.”

  More people were coming up by this time, including Fuli—who had gotten the part of Hamlet instead of me.

  Fuli!

  Seriously?

  How was she supposed to convince an audience she was a Danish prince?

  Like they were happening all at once, I felt the sting of the worst embarrassments of my life—the time I was three and couldn’t hold it anymore and peed my pants in the toothpaste aisle at Duane Reade, the time I tried to dive into the lake and belly flopped instead and had the wind knocked out of me and had to be rescued from drowning by Gillian, the time I barfed on the bus coming back from the field trip to Lake Placid.

  Looked at one way, the life of Noah McNichol was an extended red-faced, cringe-making humiliation.

  Meanwhile, everybody else had gathered, and most people were laughing, jostling, high-fiving—even Lila and Eddie and Brianna, whose parts were as puny as mine.

  The exception was Mia Duffy.

  “Excuse me!” she said. “Excuse me? Stage manager? I don’t want to be stage manager! I want to be Ophelia!”

  “I wanted to be Ophelia, too,” Emma said. “But I would never whine about it. My mother says whining is always unattractive.”

  Madeline had been cast as Ophelia. She said, “My mom used to be a manager at Denny’s.”

  Marley said, “Don’t be sad, Mia. It makes a lot of sense. My brother was stage manager. He says you get to boss everyone around.”

  Mia looked surprised. “Really?”

  Marley nodded. “You tell the cast where to be when. You say raise the curtain and lower it. You tell the tech crew when to bring up the lights. No stage manager, no show.”

  The frown line between Mia’s eyebrows deepened, which might’ve meant she was thinking.

  Meanwhile, Clive was smiling, which I first thought was disloyal. Hey! I, his best friend, had suffered colossal, humiliating, horrible disappointment!

  Then I realized that he, my best friend, had just gotten exactly the part he wanted: Claudius, the villain. And I hadn’t even said props.

  So who was disloyal?

  And who was threatening to go back on a deal?

  Some things are worse than failing to get what you want. Like being a jerk to your best friend. Like being uncool.

  If I quit, everybody would know I was upset, crushed, devastated, a weakling… a wuss.

  Truth? I was all those things and angry, too. What did this Mike guy know? Where did he even come from? If Miss Magnus were here, she would have cast me, and I’d be playing Hamlet, and the solar system and the galaxy and all the stars would be in order.

  I wanted to kick something, punch something, scream at the sky.

  Put my full jerkhood on display, in other words.

  I could do that.

  Or… I could do some acting for real.

  I took a breath. I gulped. I wasn’t going to forget this humiliation. I wasn’t going to forget that I was angry. But I was a Plattsfield-Winklebottom Memorial Sixth-Grade Player. I wasn’t going to quit, either.

  “Hey, Fuli, congratulations,” I said. “You must’ve read really well because, uh… I read really well.”

  Fuli had been staring at the cast list. Now she turned, looked straight at me, and raised one eyebrow, like she couldn’t decide if I meant what I was saying.

  Which made sense. I couldn’t decide if I meant what I was saying.

  Finally, I must’ve passed the sincerity test. “Thank you, Noah. I guess I did.” Then she smiled, which made her look even less like a melancholy Dane than usual. It also made it hard to be mad at her.

  “Hey, man.” I punched Clive’s arm. “Good going. I mean it. I guess I don’t have to be Hamlet.”

  Taped to the auditorium door, the full cast and crew list looked like this:

  Hamlet—Fuli Tenzing

  Claudius—Clive Desmond

  Gertrude—Sarah Monti

  Polonius—Emma Jessel

  Horatio—Diego Arcati

  Ophelia—Madeline Howard

  Laertes—Marley Jacobs

  The Ghost, Guildenstern, Osric—Eddie Muir

  Marcellus, Gravedigger One, Rosencrantz, Fortinbras—Noah McNichol

  Cornelius, Gravedigger Two, Francisco—Brianna Larkin

  Barnardo, Voltimand, Reynaldo—Lila Moseley

  Stage Manager—Mia Duffy

  The Plattsfield-Winklebottom Memorial Sixth-Grade Players didn’t use stagehands. Cast me
mbers would be opening and closing the main curtain and moving scenery around. There was one other crew job, light and sound board operator, which meant sitting on a stool in the booth above the house, moving switches and faders. That person hadn’t been picked yet. Fig would have to recruit someone.

  Clive was looking at me. “So… you’re not gonna quit?”

  “I’m not gonna quit,” I said. “But I do have a question. Who is Fortinbras anyway?”

  Clive shrugged. “Heck if I know. He must come in at the party scene at the end.”

  (SCENE: Dining room, early evening the same day. NOAH, DAD, and MOM are eating dinner.)

  DAD: The gravedigger’s a good part, Noah. Funny. The byplay between you and Hamlet—it’s like a comedy routine.

  MOM: And when you think of it, all those parts together? They probably add up to more lines than even Hamlet has.

  DAD: I bet that mysterious director fellow saw you as versatile. Giving you different parts, it’s a compliment really.

  NOAH (embarrassed, shaking head): Okay, parentals. Enough with the mushy-gushy. You win at being supportive. But after I had time to think, you know what really made me feel better?

  MOM and DAD (together): What?

  NOAH: Since Fuli’s playing the lead, there for sure will be dumplings at rehearsals.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Monday, Rehearsal Week Two, 39 Days till Performance

  That Monday, like every Monday, Mom shook me awake, and I said, “Five more minutes,” and she said, “Get up or we’ll be late,” and I said, “Two more minutes,” never opening my eyes.

  Mom went away.

  But then I remembered that the first read-through was that afternoon. And even though I wasn’t playing Hamlet, I was excited. So I opened my eyes and saw—like I did every morning—the poster of Obi-Wan Kenobi autographed by Alec Guinness, the actor who played him in the original movies. “Help me, Obi-Wan,” I said.

  And then I closed my eyes and counted to ten and rolled out of bed—Ta-da! It is I, Fortinbras!

  Fortinbras, it turns out, is a Norwegian prince, so even though it’s not the main prince, I still got to play a prince. And isn’t Norway bigger than Denmark?

  School happened. There might have been a quiz on Asian capitals. I might not have done that well.

  But never mind because at 3:15 p.m., Clive and I and Fuli and Mia and Madeline and Emma and Diego and all the other Plattsfield-Winklebottom Memorial Sixth-Grade Players shoved and squealed our way into the auditorium with our scripts, ready to go, ready to read, ready to start rehearsals for real.

  “ ‘Come sit down, every mother’s son, and rehearse your parts,’ ” Mike said, which I guess was his way to say hey, hi, come on in.

  “Excuse me?” Mia said. “What about the daughters?”

  “It’s from another Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Madeline said. “Act one.”

  “Oh,” Mia said.

  Onstage, fifteen folding chairs were set up in a circle. I took a spot next to Clive. Emma came up, smiled a big friendly smile, and took the chair on the other side. Emma was not known to be the friendliest person, so this was a little weird, but I didn’t think that much about it.

  “Where’s Coach Fig?” Mia asked.

  Mike looked puzzled. “Coach who?” he said. “Ah.” He got it. “Coach Newton is meeting with the mother of the bride, I believe. He will check in later. As for us, there is no time to waste. Go ahead and get out your scripts, please. Miss Duffy? Most productions relegate the stage manager to the tech booth, but given the size of our operation, I’m going to ask you to stay backstage the night of the performance. Meanwhile, I have some things for you—the two items without which no stage manager can do her job: a clipboard for taking notes and a stopwatch for keeping time.”

  He presented them, and Mia grinned, delighted.

  “As stage manager,” Mike continued, “you will be expected to set the scene prior to each rehearsal—the place and time, in other words. Start the stopwatch running first, and then please proceed.”

  Mia touched the watch to start it, then sat up straight. “The scene is Elsinore, a castle in Denmark. The time is shortly after midnight.”

  “Just so,” Mike said. “Miss Moseley—Lila? You are playing Barnardo, a guard on overnight duty at the castle. He and his fellow sentry, Marcellus, believe they have seen a ghost the previous couple of nights. Now Barnardo is wondering if the ghost will appear again.”

  “Oka-a-ay, so, like, you want me to start now?” Lila said.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Mike said.

  Lila bobbed her head. “Oka-a-ay. So, like, here I go. ‘Sit down awhile, and let us once again assail your ears, that are so fortified against our story, what we have two nights seen.’ ”

  Diego, playing Horatio, had the next line. But instead of speaking, he tugged the hat he was wearing, adjusted his round glasses, and stared down at his script.

  “Mr. Arcati—Diego?” Mike said. “You’re up.”

  “I know, but…”

  “The language is not what you’re used to,” Mike said, “but in time you’ll get the hang of it. ‘Sit we down, and let us hear Barnardo speak of this.’ Go ahead. Dig in and inhabit the character. You are Horatio, Hamlet’s best friend, a young man very eager to know the truth about the ghost.”

  Diego didn’t look convinced but nodded and read Horatio’s line. Then Barnardo spoke, then me as Marcellus: “ ‘Peace! Break thee off! Look, where it comes again.’ ”

  Inhabit the character, I thought, and I tried to sound like a guy who’d just seen a ghost—surprised I mean, which wasn’t that hard because I really was surprised: Something weird was going on.

  Leave it to Mia to comment first.

  “Excuse me!” she said.

  Mike looked up. “Yes? Miss Duffy?”

  Mia brandished her script. “I read this over the weekend. I made notes even. And now the words are different.”

  Marley said, “Also the print got smaller.”

  Sarah said, “Also there are more pages.”

  Brianna said, “This is totally freaking me out.”

  “May I?” Mike took Mia’s script, squinted at it, flipped through the pages, looked at Mia. “Are these your notations in the margins? Purple ink?”

  “That’s my handwriting, but…” Mia’s voice trailed off.

  Mike handed back the script. “Then I think we can all agree it must be your script.”

  “Heck yeah!” Diego said.

  Everybody looked at Diego, whose hat—the beret kind from France, a little like a Frisbee if you ask me—was turquoise that day. He must have a whole collection of those hats.

  “Did you even read the play?” Mia asked Diego.

  “Quite a bit of it. A page at least,” Diego said.

  I didn’t know what was going on, either, but it felt awkward. Like someone was making a joke, and maybe the joke was on us.

  Then Madeline said, “ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ ”

  Mike looked pleased. “Act one, and very appropriate, Miss Howard. Hamlet is speaking to his friend after he’s met the ghost. What do you suppose he means? Anyone?”

  “That the world is complicated?” Fuli tried.

  “Indeed,” Mike said. “And remember that Horatio is a student. So Hamlet is saying the world is larger, contains more mysteries, than those you learn about in school. Now”—Mike looked around at each of us—“what if we choose to view this vastly improved script as that kind of a mystery, something beyond mere human understanding?”

  Mia frowned. “So should I pause the stopwatch or what?”

  Emma said, “My mother says there’s a reasonable explanation for everything.”

  Marley said, “Depends on your definition of reason, I guess.”

  Brianna said, “I’m still freaking out.”

  “All good responses,” Mike said, “and all, at present, pale
before one imperative: The show must go on! And for that to happen, we must stick to the schedule. I’m sure, Miss Duffy, you agree?”

  Mia looked down at her watch. “We’re way behind already.”

  “Miss Moseley?” Mike said, “I believe the next line is yours.”

  The read-through continued. We only had ninety minutes. The way they talked in Shakespeare’s time isn’t the way we talk now. We had to stop a lot for translation. Still, we made it through the parts where Hamlet stabs Polonius to death by accident and, after that, Ophelia is so sad she goes crazy and drowns herself.

  I didn’t know what had happened to our scripts, whether Mike had pulled some kind of trick or what, but by the end of the read-through, I didn’t care that much. This Hamlet was way better than the other one! Just like Madeline had promised, it was intense! And I couldn’t wait to see what happened in the end.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dad had a department meeting that afternoon. Since I knew he’d be late picking me up, I stayed and helped Mike fold chairs and put them away backstage.

  Here was my chance to ask why he hadn’t cast me as Hamlet, and I was ready, but before I could open my mouth, he said, “How do you think that went, Noah? I don’t have much experience with your age group. The kids seemed attentive enough, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Sure,” I said, because what else would I say? “That was weird about the scripts, though.”

  “But I handled it all right?”

  “Sure. Only I’m not sure Mrs. Winklebottom would like the new script very much. I can imagine her saying, ‘Inappropriate for children!’ ”

  “And is it inappropriate? What do you think?” Mike stood in the middle of the stage, holding the last chair.

  I had one last chair, too. I set it down. “I’ve seen scarier things. But the words are hard. A lot of them I don’t know. Maybe Emma or somebody smart does, but not me.”

  Mike grinned. “Are you up to the challenge?”

  So far I had the idea that Mike was a serious person. But when he grinned, you had to grin back. “Sure. Yes. Only—” And then I was going to ask him about not casting me, but a door opened backstage, I heard footsteps, and Coach Fig came in through the wings.