Just Grace, Star on Stage

by Charise Mericle Harper

  WHAT WE DID

  Ms. Perry gave us all copies of the play, and we read through the first ten pages together.

  My narrator person had a lot to say.

  THE TWO THINGS I WAS RIGHT ABOUT

  The narrator had to say a lot of facts.

  It was not a very fun part.

  My part reminded me a lot of Miss Lois. Just standing in front of people by yourself and doing lots of talking. It wasn’t exciting and excellent.

  MY LAST CHANCE

  I’m Marta’s understudy. An understudy is a person who learns all the lines for a part but only gets to go on stage and do the part in an emergency. I have to study all of Marta’s lines and know them by heart. If Marta gets sick or something happens and she can’t do the play, I’ll get to be the fairy queen. Not a lot of people want to be an understudy, because it’s mostly a lot of work for nothing. Ms. Perry was pretty surprised when I volunteered. She said it was unusual for actors to have two big parts to learn, but I gave her my sad eyes and she finally nodded her head and said okay. She kind of had to—I was the only person who volunteered.

  Only two people have an understudy. Marta has me, and Sammy has Owen 2. I thought I would have one too, but Ms. Perry says if I get sick she’s going to do my part. That’s probably because she knows she’s never going to be able to get anyone else to want to learn all my boring lines.

  WALKING HOME

  I walked home with Max and Sammy. Max was the only happy one out of the three of us. I was grumpy and Sammy was worried.

  After Sammy finished talking I had my own little daydream.

  Would Ms. Perry give me Marta’s part if I was super good at it? I told Sammy not to worry but secretly wondered if Marta was worried about me too.

  BEING HOME

  As soon as I got home I took Mr. Scruffers out to play in the backyard, and then it happened: the most terrible thing that has ever happened in the whole history of my backyard.

  THE TERRIBLE THING

  The terrible thing started when I saw Augustine Dupre watching me from her window. Seeing her brought back all my mad feelings. I was so mad, I ignored her when she waved at me. Augustine Dupre knows me, so she could tell something was wrong. Two minutes after me not waving, she came outside to find out what it was. “What’s wrong, Grace? Are you okay?” she asked. I tried to hold it in, but I couldn’t—it came out. The truth is not a bad thing to say, but what can make it a bad thing is the way you say it.

  After I finished talking I started to cry. Augustine Dupre put her hands up to her mouth. She was super shocked.

  Sometimes when you don’t know what to say and are feeling really uncomfortable, the only thing your body wants to do is escape. That’s probably why as soon as Augustine Dupre said, “Oh, Grace! I’m so sorry!” I dropped Mr. Scruffers’s ball and ran into the house and up to my room. Poor Mr. Scruffers—I didn’t even let her follow me. I left her out in the yard with Augustine Dupre.

  WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

  Mom heard me. She followed me upstairs but then had to go back down again because someone was knocking at the back door. I knew it was Augustine Dupre. Ten seconds later Mr. Scruffers jumped on my bed. It took a lot longer for Mom to come back upstairs, and when she did, she was not happy.

  WHAT MOM WAS MAD ABOUT

  Even after I told Mom about the narrator part, and how I would have for sure gotten the fairy queen part except for Augustine Dupre’s advice, she was still not any less mad. She said, “You asked Augustine Dupre for her advice, but it was your choice to follow it. Plus, I find it hard to believe that you’re so sure you would have gotten that other part.” This was not what I was expecting. Mom patted my shoulder, but I could tell that she was not feeling super sorry for me. “Isn’t the narrator a main part?” she asked. I nodded yes, but said, “It’s not a good one, though.” Mom shook her head. “Well, I don’t know what to say. At the very least you need to apologize to Augustine Dupre.”

  WHAT HAPPENED AFTER MOM LEFT

  I did lots of thinking. Mostly it was thinking of how I had made Augustine Dupre sad. I’m not sure Mom was 100 percent right about not blaming Augustine Dupre, but she was kind of right about the apology part. I had been mean.

  My empathy power was getting tired of me making the same mistake over and over again.

  HOW TO MAKE THE BEST APOLOGY LETTER EVER

  WHAT I WAS GLAD ABOUT

  Mom didn’t ask to see the letter. Usually she’s kind of nosy about stuff like that, but this time she said, “Don’t show me. This is between you and Augustine Dupre.” She didn’t even stop me when I said I wanted to give it to her right away, even though it was dinnertime and all the food was on the table.

  WHAT WAS DIFFERENT

  For the first time ever I felt kind of uncomfortable doing my special knock on Augustine Dupre’s door. I was worried she was mad and would ignore me. But I was wrong. After a few seconds she was there, holding the door open. I couldn’t look at her face—it was too hard to do. I stuck out my hand and offered her the note I had made. It took a lot longer for her to read it than I thought it would. Maybe it was all the colors—the yellow parts were kind of hard to see. Finally, after what seemed like forever, she said, “Oh, Grace, I am so sorry it didn’t work out for you, and thank you for this lovely letter.”

  WHAT WE DID NEXT

  We had a little hug and I cried some more. Augustine Dupre invited me in, but I said I couldn’t. It was dinnertime. As I was walking up the stairs she said, “Am I still invited to the show?” After everything I had said to her, I couldn’t believe that she still wanted to come. I looked at her face and nodded. I was lucky. Augustine Dupre is just like Mimi—good at forgiving.

  WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT

  Mimi and I flashed our lights six times like usual, and then I went to bed. Two seconds after I put my head on the pillow, I fell asleep. It was record fast. I didn’t even have time to think about what I wanted to be dreaming.

  THE FOUR MAIN THINGS I DID SATURDAY AND SUNDAY

  Play catch with Robert.

  Draw comics.

  Play with Mr. Scruffers.

  Go back and forth between my house and Mimi’s house.

  WHAT IS INTERESTING

  I had never tried before, but you can really play catch with a lot of different things. Some work better than others. By the end of Sunday, Robert and I were kind of experts at it.

  THINGS YOU CAN PLAY CATCH WITH

  WHAT I DID NOT DO

  Practice my projecting.

  MONDAY MORNING

  Mimi was at my door fifteen minutes early. I was glad that she came over to get me. I was getting a little tired of all the catch playing, and I’m sure if I had gone to get her, Robert would have thrown something at me.

  Normally Mimi and I walk to school, but today she wanted to run. She could hardly wait to see if her name was on the costume list. I didn’t feel like running, but I didn’t complain. It was my turn to be a good friend for her. When we got to school hardly anyone was on the playground—we were that early. I thought the school might not even be open yet, but we were lucky: it was. This time there wasn’t even one other person at the board. Mimi found her name really easy, and it was just where she wanted it to be.

  WHAT WAS DIFFERENT ON MONDAY MORNING

  Ms. Perry must have had a talk with Miss Lois, because after we finished our math work Miss Lois said we were going to skip spelling and read the play instead. Miss Lois handed everyone a copy of the play. It was the first time that people who were not in the play were seeing it. Everyone was excited. Right away I could tell that this was going to be way more fun than spelling.

  READING THE PLAY

  Miss Lois read all the parts. I thought she was going to let us actors read our own parts, but she said it would be faster if she did it. I think she was wrong about that. She’s not a super-fast reader, plus she kept stopping every couple of minutes to talk about stuff. There were a lot of true facts in the play, and every time Miss Loi
s read one, she stopped reading so we could talk about it.

  A lot of the true facts were narrator parts. I could tell my part was really important, but it was also kind of scary. There was lots of stuff to memorize. Now I was thinking that remembering our regular spelling words would have probably been easier.

  THE STORY OF THE PLAY

  The play is about a king who lives next to a forest. He has a bunch of knights with him and he likes to make them do silly things because he gets bored a lot.

  One day the king decides that he wants his knights to tear down the forest that is next to the castle. He wants to have a view of the mountains that are on the other side of the forest.

  He takes his knights to the forest to start chopping down the trees, and that is where he meets the fairy queen, queen of the forest fairies. She tells him he can’t chop down the forest. The king says yes he can, and he doesn’t care about the forest because it’s just a bunch of plants. Then the lesson part of the play starts. The fairy queen shows the king all the animals that live in the forest and how they work together with the plants to keep the forest healthy. There are some funny parts in there. It is not as boring as I thought it would be.

  In the end, the king decides not to chop down the forest, and instead makes the knights build him a higher bedroom so he can look over the forest and see the mountains.

  THE FUNNY PARTS

  I was glad about the funny parts. It made the learning parts more fun. The king part was the most funny. I could see why Ms. Perry had picked Sammy. If Sammy could dance on stage like a giant baby, he could for sure do all the king stuff.

  THE THREE MOST FUN THINGS SAMMY GETS TO DO

  Throw a pretend seed into the audience and have someone throw it back at him. It’s for the part where the king says he can do what the animals do. Birds take seeds far away and drop them to help new plants grow in new places. The king says he can do this too, so he tries to throw a seed really far, but the wind just throws it back at him. For this part the person in the audience is kind of like the pretend wind. When Sammy throws the seed at them they are supposed to throw the seed back to Sammy. Sammy asked, “How is this going to work?” but Miss Lois said, “Don’t worry,—Ms. Perry knows what she’s doing.”

  Act silly and faint when a talking bear tells him that he helps plants by eating berries and then pooping the seeds out in different places. This one is perfect for Sammy. He loves anything to do with poop.

  Use a pretend slingshot and shoot a seed at a bell to make it ring. This happens at the very end of the play. The forest fairies like bells, and it’s the king’s way of saying thank you to them for making him save the forest. All the boys in class were crazy jealous about the slingshot part.

  Miss Lois made up a new rule right away. She was smart—it was probably an important one.

  NEW RULE

  WHAT WAS A SURPRISE

  The fairy queen part is not so different from my part. She has to say a lot of learning stuff too, but she doesn’t do her talking all by herself. She gets to talk to the other fairies and the king. Plus, even though I don’t know what her costume is, I bet it’s better than the narrator costume.

  THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

  Miss Lois said we are going to study plants in class and make displays about what we learn, so that on the night of the show our parents can come into the classroom and see what we have been doing. I thought that was going to be it, but she had more to say. She said that every afternoon from now until the play we are going to work on play stuff instead of regular school stuff. Nobody was sad about that.

  Instead of coming back to the classroom after lunch, everyone will go to their special room to work on the play. My special room is the auditorium. Mimi’s special room is the lunchroom. It’s too bad we can’t be together.

  LUNCHTIME

  Mimi was kind of disappointed that the lunchroom looked the same as normal. She was hoping it would have all sorts of costume stuff in it, but it didn’t. For the whole lunchtime she wanted to stay where we could see the lunchroom door, just in case anything exciting was going to happen. Finally when lunch was almost over we saw two school workers and lady go in there with a bunch of boxes. “That’s probably the costume lady,” said Mimi. “She looks nice, doesn’t she?” I nodded. It made Mimi happy. I was glad when the bell rang. It’s not much fun to stand around looking at a door.

  THE PRACTICE

  I’ve decided something new. I like my part! Ms. Perry said I should show emotion and project as much as I can. At first I didn’t understand what she was talking about, but then she showed me how to do it. It’s not at all like being Miss Lois. I was wrong about that. It’s much better!

  I was hoping to find out what my costume looked like, but Ms. Perry said it was too soon for that. She did tell me two things about it though:

  I get to hold a stick and point to stuff.

  I get to hold a book that has all my lines in it, and some of them I don’t even have to memorize. I can just read them.

  This was a big relief. I smiled super big when Ms. Perry gave me the book. She noticed because she said, “That’s how I like my actors—happy.”

  THE OTHER GOOD THING ABOUT MY PART

  I get to stand at the side of the stage and watch everyone do their parts. Ms. Perry said, “It’s a lot of standing around for you,” so she gave me my own special chair. Nobody else gets a chair—it’s so cool. From watching everyone practice I can tell that Marta is better at her part than Sammy is at his. This was not a surprise to me, but for some reason it was a surprise to Marta.

  Ms. Perry told Sammy not to feel bad, because it was still just the first day and lots of people were doing stuff wrong.

  WHAT IS NOT THE BEST THING

  The people who are helpers with the play get to go home at the normal time, but the people who are actors have to stay an extra hour. This means that I don’t get to walk home with Mimi for almost two whole weeks!

  Today, after practice I walked home with Sammy. Max had already gone home, because people with small parts were allowed to leave at the regular time too.

  What Sammy said surprised me, but it was a good idea. It was a good way for me to learn Marta’s part. I didn’t tell Sammy this, but when the play first started I had a secret wish.

  I was glad that my secret wish was slowly being less true. It’s not comfortable having a wish that hopes that something bad happens.

  Sammy and I practiced his part and Marta’s part all the way home. He was definitely getting better. I don’t know if I should have told him this, but I did. I think it made him happy. Plus it was true.

  WHAT HAPPENED WHEN I GOT HOME

  After taking Mr. Scruffers for a walk, I went over to Mimi’s house. Robert tried to surprise me by throwing a stuffed penguin at my head, but I was ready for him. Robert was getting better at catching, and I was getting better at having a conversation while playing catch. It was a win for both of us.

  WHAT I WAS NOT HAPPY TO FIND OUT

  What Mimi said was not good news, but for some reason it didn’t make me cry. Maybe I was getting used to being disappointed about the play, I couldn’t tell, but I was glad I didn’t burst into tears.

  A GREAT THING ABOUT THE PLAY

  Miss Lois is not giving us any homework until the play is over. It was so nice to have lots of free time; I studied my play lines and then drew a comic. Even though practicing the lines for my part was kind of like studying, it was different and better than schoolwork.

  WHAT HAPPENED AT NIGHT

  Mimi and I have a new flash sign. It’s seven flashes—each flash is for one letter of YAY PLAY. We are going to do it right up until the night of the play.

  WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW

  Sometimes when you are working really hard the time goes by faster than normal.

  This is how the whole rest of the week was. Only two unusual things happened all week.

  UNUSUAL THING NUMBER ONE

  On Wednesday, Marta was back to being grumpy,
even though Sammy was doing a really good job with his king part. She was so grumpy that Ms. Perry finally had to have a private talk with her. Of course everyone wanted to know what was going on, but Ms. Perry took her to the little room at the back of the auditorium. It’s impossible to hear what’s being said in there if the door is closed, and she closed the door. After about three minutes Ms. Perry stuck her head out and called my name. Everyone looked at me like I was going to get into trouble. Even though I didn’t do anything wrong, I kind of felt like maybe they were right. Walking to that little room felt like walking to the principal’s office. I was nervous.