D Is for Drama

by Jo Whittemore

  “For one thing, it’s an evening gown,” she said.

  “But it would look nice on you,” he said.

  Janice blushed. “I’ll save it for the dance number.”

  I put a hand on Anne Marie’s shoulder. “You know what you’re looking for, right?”

  She nodded and smirked. “Blah blah black.”

  Wendy, who was playing the headmistress, had already put on a costume and was trying in vain to raise her arms above her head.

  “I can barely move,” she said.

  “Perfect!” someone called.

  “Not nice!” I called back. I smiled at Wendy. “But . . . yeah, I think that works.”

  “Sunny!” Derek was standing by the guy’s clothes, holding out the pair of pants.

  “Right!” I waved my stapler. “Hold them still.”

  Bree came forward to watch. “Why don’t we use the budget money to get the pants tailored?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “We’ll probably need it for all kinds of last-minute stuff.”

  “But—”

  “Bree, relax,” I said. “I’ve got everything under control.”

  I punched in staples all along the bottom of the trousers. While I worked, Anne Marie wandered over.

  “All this green reminds me,” she said, “I need to have green skin.”

  I squinted thoughtfully. “I think there should be a makeup kit in the wardrobe room,” I said.

  Bree made a disgusted face. “Couldn’t we just buy some new stuff?”

  “From where?” I asked. “Halloween’s been over for months. Besides, we need the money for other things.”

  “Like scenery?” asked Anne Marie, glancing around.

  I snapped my fingers. “Exactly! I need to order some scenery. Bree, show Anne Marie where the makeup in the wardrobe room is.”

  Bree sighed and walked off with Anne Marie in tow.

  I put the final staple in Derek’s trousers and held them up.

  “There!” I said. “Perfect.”

  “Yeah,” said Derek, “as long as I don’t go through any metal detectors.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Go try them on, please?”

  Derek hurried offstage and I moved on to see who else I could help. After a few minutes, I heard Bree calling my name.

  “Sunny, I think Anne Marie’s allergic to the makeup.” Bree pulled her onstage. Anne Marie’s face was green and swollen to twice its size, her frightened eyes peeking out.

  “Augh!” everyone screamed.

  “Sunny, I’m not fat enough for these.” Derek trotted onstage, holding his pants up by the waist. When he saw Anne Marie, his hands flew up to cover his mouth.

  Then his pants fell off.

  “Augh!” everyone screamed again.

  I sighed. “I am so glad this happened after Ms. Elliott’s visit.”

  “And I think I know what we’re spending our budget on,” said Bree, rubbing Anne Marie’s shoulder.

  I glanced at her. “A trip to the emergency room?”

  She nodded. “I’ll get the nurse.”

  SEVENTEEN

  THERE’S NOTHING QUITE LIKE EXPLAINING to an ambulance driver that a girl’s green skin is perfectly normal. Or explaining to a crowd of Mary Pops In actors that they won’t catch “puffy gangrene.”

  At least I’d made up with the Melodramatics and gotten everyone their costumes, even if they didn’t fit properly. And when I saw Ilana watching us from across the theater, I decided it was time to take care of something else.

  “We need to talk,” I told her.

  Ilana crossed her arms. “Why? So you can yell and threaten to hurt me?”

  I shook my head. “No yelling. No threats. If I say I’m going to hurt you, I really will. I promise.” I tried for a smile, and after a hesitant moment, Ilana tried too.

  “All right,” she said, stepping closer. “Where should we go? The control booth?”

  I shook my head. “It probably still smells like farts.”

  Ilana wrinkled her forehead. “Huh?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “How about the wardrobe room? I need costumes from there anyway.”

  A guilty look washed over Ilana’s face.

  “Sure,” she said, leading the way.

  “Chase told me about your mom,” I said as we walked. “Is she okay? Other than the arm, I mean.”

  Ilana nodded. “The car’s a mess, though. The trunk won’t open, and we had to tape plastic over one of the back windows.” She got quiet. “It’s really embarrassing.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond. The one time my dad had been in a car accident, he’d had the car fixed that week and rented a nice one while he waited.

  “That must suck,” I finally said, and opened the door to the wardrobe room.

  It didn’t smell as bad as I’d imagined. Like mothballs and plastic from all the synthetic costumes. I pulled out a pair of colonial-style breeches, and with it came a huge spider.

  “Augh!” Ilana and I both screamed. I stomped on the spider, but Ilana took the pants and hurled them across the room.

  “Hey, I’m gonna need those!” I protested. “We just got our budget cut.”

  Ilana blushed. “Sorry.”

  “About throwing the pants?” I asked, retrieving them. “Or telling Ms. Elliott to cut our budget?”

  Ilana didn’t answer.

  “At least tell me this,” I said. “Why are you so bent on bringing me down?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not. This was never about you. I just really need this show to go perfectly.”

  “Ugh! You keep—!” I stopped when I realized I was yelling. “Sorry. You keep saying that. Why?”

  Ilana sighed. “Because I can’t go to the STARS program unless it does.”

  I wrinkled my forehead in confusion. “You’ve already been accepted.”

  Ilana shook her head again. “It’s not the admission. It’s . . . the tuition.” She dropped down to the floor. “I don’t have the money to get in, but if the STARS people find out, they’ll give my spot to someone else.”

  I sat on the floor beside her. “So why have them in the audience at all?”

  “They offer an award,” she said, “to a certain number of kids they think are outstanding in their field . . . acting, directing, music, or dance. And with the award, they give free tuition.”

  Now all the pieces were starting to fit together. Ilana needed to be in the best play as the best actress so she could win the STARS award. But nobody could know how badly she needed the money or she’d be out of the program.

  “Wow,” I said. “That is a lot of pressure.”

  She snorted. “You’re telling me.”

  I gave her a pained look. “But did it have to come at my expense? Or anyone else’s?”

  Ilana held out her hands, palms up. “I don’t have another option. You can afford coaches and your parents are connected. This is just a school play to you, but it means everything to me.” Ilana stared at her lap.

  As twisted as her logic was, I couldn’t be entirely mad at her anymore. I also couldn’t let her keep ruining things for me.

  But I could let her make my show even better.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “Because clearly, we need help in the makeup department, and you need money.”

  Ilana perked up a little. “Yeah?”

  I did some quick math in my head.

  “If you stop ruining my show,” I said, “and do our makeup for dress rehearsal and opening night, I’ll pay you five hundred dollars.”

  “Eep!” Ilana clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a scream.

  “But you have to really do a good job,” I said.

  Without warning, Ilana threw her arms around me and squeezed.

  “Thank you, Sunny! I’m so sorry!” She pulled back, and tears were spilling down her cheeks. “And I’m going to make you guys look like superstars, I promise!”

  “Good,” I said with a genuine smile. Finally, I seemed t
o be making progress.

  But over the course of the week, new worries started to creep into my mind.

  If it wasn’t bad enough that I’d blown my budget on makeup and that my actors might drop trou in their hand-stapled costumes, there were still no special effects for the show.

  Unless I could find a human-sized hamster ball, I wouldn’t be dropping from the sky in a bubble, and for the winged monkeys to fly, I’d need million-dollar jetpacks. A bit difficult to come by with a budget of pocket lint.

  A week before dress rehearsal, I asked Mom to supervise the cast while I put my artistic talent to work creating special effects.

  The only problem? I had no artistic talent.

  But I did have a list of the special effects I’d need to make a passable theater academy version of Wicked.

  1. Flying monkeys!

  2. Nessarose’s wheelchair moves by itself!

  3. The Oz machine!

  4. Flying Elphaba!

  5. Glinda’s bubble!

  6. Green skin for Elphaba!

  7. Goat horns for Max!

  8. Green everything for Emerald City!

  9. Caged lion cub!

  “This’ll be easy!” I told myself as I walked to the art room. “I can do anything!”

  I started with the flying monkeys. All I really needed was a dozen cutouts that I could string up and swing from the ceiling. Yes, it would look tacky, but it might distract people from Suresh mouthing his lines while cheap karaoke music played along.

  “This’ll be easy!” I said again as I printed out a side profile of a monkey from the Internet. “I can do anything!”

  I traced the image onto white paper and cut it out, taping a jagged wing to its back. I held it up to survey the completed work.

  My flying monkey looked like a flaming squirrel taking a poop.

  With a frustrated sigh, I crumpled it and tried again. This time I simply cut out the picture from the printout and taped on a wing.

  “Not bad!” I said, punching a hole in the monkey’s head.

  I laced a piece of string through and held the final product in the air, pulling the string from side to side. Instead of fluttering gracefully, the thin paper flapped and flipped so the monkey seemed to be spiraling out of control.

  “Oh, come on,” I said in exasperation. “Fly already!”

  Thinking it might be more like a kite, I gave a running start so a breeze could carry it into the air. Unfortunately, I was so focused on the monkey, I didn’t notice the storage rack of paper in my path until I smashed into it face-first.

  And the rack happened to have built-in cutting teeth.

  “Ow, ow, ow,” I whimpered, bringing my hand to my cheek. I pulled it away, and saw a lot of blood.

  The monkey cutout slipped from my fingers, and I dropped to the floor, clutching my slashed face. The door clicked open, and to add more insult to my injury, Ammo stepped through the door.

  “This room is off-limits to theater geeks,” he snarled. “What are you doing in here?”

  There was no fight left in me.

  “Bleeding to death on your floor,” I whispered. “I ran into the paper holder.”

  “What?” The sneer on his face disappeared, and he walked over. “Let me see.”

  I blinked up at him. “Why? So you can rub your thumb in it?”

  “Shut up.” He took my hand away from my face.

  “Careful, it’s shockingly gruesome!” I warned.

  Ammo’s eyebrows pushed together as he studied my cheek, and after a second he got up.

  “The blood makes it look worse than it is,” he said. “You just need alcohol and a Band-Aid.”

  I glanced around and picked up the monkey cutout. “How about spit and some paper?”

  Ammo actually laughed. “You could do that. Or I have a first aid kit.”

  He grabbed it out of a cupboard and popped it open.

  “Why do you have one of those?” I asked.

  “In case strange girls run headfirst into the paper holder,” he said, grabbing a swab of rubbing alcohol and a Band-Aid. “A better question is . . . why did you do that?”

  In answer, I held up the monkey cutout.

  “It won’t fly,” I said pitifully.

  Ammo just stared. “It’s a piece of paper. Of course it won’t fly.”

  “It’s a monkey!” I yelled.

  Ammo’s eyes widened. “Fine, it’s a monkey. But those don’t fly either. Hold still.” He cupped my chin in one hand and swabbed the alcohol across my cheek.

  I jammed my eyes shut and held back a scream as the alcohol seared my skin.

  “Almost done,” he said, applying the Band-Aid. “There.”

  “Thank you,” I said, cradling my cheek. “And I know monkeys don’t fly. But I have to make a dozen of them do it anyway.” I thrust my to-do list in his face. “And then I have to paint a town green and a person green and break into the zoo and steal a lion cub!”

  My rant was wasted on Ammo. He’d stopped listening and was smoothing out my crumpled cutout. “This is way too small.”

  I glowered at him as I wiped the blood off my hands. “The monkey isn’t to scale, genius. It’s from a picture.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “Actually, genius, I meant it’s too small to see from the audience.” He walked away, holding the wrinkled cutout in the air. “Tell me when it stops looking like a monkey.”

  “It never looked like a monkey,” I said miserably.

  But I knew what he meant. The farther away he got, the more it became just a shapeless blob. He crumpled it up and threw it in the garbage.

  “You need to draw it bigger,” he said. “Like . . . ten times bigger. And mount it on cardboard.”

  I goggled at him. “That’s insane. First, I don’t know how to draw a monkey. Second, it’ll take way too much paper. Third, once they’re on cardboard, they’ll be giant safety hazards dangling above people’s heads.”

  Ammo frowned, and it struck me that the meanest kid in school was trying to help.

  “Sorry,” I said. “But—”

  “Shadow puppets,” he said. “Make shadow puppets.”

  I gave him a strange look but lifted my hands and tried to form them into a flying monkey shape.

  Ammo rolled his eyes. “Not with your hands. With paper!”

  I pointed at the garbage can. “Help yourself to my latest masterpiece.”

  “I’m talking about shadow plays.” Ammo sat in front of the computer and did a quick search. “In China people make these elaborate cutout puppets and move them in front of a lamp. People in the audience can see the shadows against a backdrop.”

  He scooted sideways so I could see the images.

  My eyebrows rose. “Wow. Those are amazing!” I said. Then I looked at Ammo. “How do you know about art from China?”

  “I’m an artist,” he said. “Thanks for noticing.”

  I frowned. “I’ve noticed. Remember your fancy place cards with the mean things written on them?”

  Ammo turned back to the computer. “You had it coming for being a snob.”

  I gasped in indignation. “I had it coming?! I’m not the one who started this. You’ve been picking on us since I cast your brother . . . oh, my God.” I trailed off. “Please don’t tell me that’s what this is all about.”

  Ammo hammered on the keyboard with his fingers. “We do everything together. I didn’t think he’d take this theater crap so seriously.”

  “Fine, I get that,” I said. “But you didn’t have to call people names. Or draw mean pictures.” I cleared my throat. “Or make slant eyes at them.”

  There was nothing from Ammo but silence. He stared at the computer screen, unmoving. The only thing that blinked was the cursor.

  “I didn’t mean it as a race thing,” he finally said. “It was just an easy way to make fun of you.” He turned toward me. “I don’t have a problem with Asians. Personally, I love fried rice.”

  A smile accidentally formed on my
lips. “I’m glad. But there’s nothing wrong with the other kids either.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know . . . that kid with the big eyes creeps me out.”

  “Tim’s harmless,” I said. “He actually adopted a whole bunch of kittens and . . . ” I gasped and clapped my hands together.

  Ammo watched me in alarm. “What? He’s going to eat them?”

  “No, I just had a brilliant idea!” I exclaimed. “I’ll borrow one of Tim’s kittens for the lion cub!”

  I reached for my to-do list and scribbled a note. “One task down!” I cheered. “And if I can get the shadow puppet thing to work, that’s another one!”

  Ammo glanced at the list. “Make that three. If you put a green lens over the spotlight, it’ll turn everything on stage green, and you’ll have your Emerald City.”

  I almost snapped my pencil in two, writing like mad. “You are a genius! Now, that green lens thingy: Can I buy one for free?”

  Again, Ammo was ignoring me, staring intently at the list. “You know, you can move the wheelchair by tying heavy-duty fishing line to it and pulling it from offstage.”

  “Oh! Good one!” I started to write, but Ammo grabbed the list from me and paced the room, chewing his bottom lip.

  “The bubble, though, that’s tricky,” he said.

  “Especially since I have to float down from the ceiling,” I said.

  Ammo shook his head. “Won’t work. You’re too heavy.”

  “Hey!” I frowned at him.

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re too heavy for what I’m thinking,” he corrected. “A papier-mâché half bubble.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Why not a whole bubble?”

  Ammo flipped to a clean page in my notebook and started sketching. “Because a half bubble will give the illusion that you’re in a bubble but people will still be able to see you.” He shaded a few spots and held up his finished work.

  The sketch was of a female figure standing in the center of a half dome, her hands clutching the curved sides while her feet poked out of the bottom.

  “That looks like something Lady Gaga would wear,” I said.

  “You have to use your imagination,” said Ammo. “A little fog on the ground while you glide forward with the bubble around you . . .”

  I tilted my head to one side and squinted at the image. “Maybe.”