Stage Fright

by Meg Cabot

  “She must think if Sophie gets sick or something, she’s going to get asked by Mrs. Hunter to take over the part!” Rosemary whispered in disgust.

  I nodded but didn’t say anything. Because the thing was, I had sort of memorized all of Princess Penelope’s lines, too, in case the same thing happened. I mean, Sophie does get sick a lot. I overheard my mom tell my dad that she thinks Sophie’s a little bit of a hypochondriac, which means someone who always thinks she’s coming down with something, but who never actually gets sick.

  But I wasn’t hoping something bad would happen to Sophie, and that I’d have to step into the part of Princess Penelope in her absence…even though I was totally prepared to do so in the event that this happened. I didn’t really want Sophie to get sick. I couldn’t help memorizing the princess’s lines. I’d just heard them so many times, they sort of stuck in my head.

  Cheyenne, though, you could tell, was totally hoping something would happen to Sophie. Talk about evil!

  Cheyenne wasn’t the only one who seemed to have Sophie on the brain.

  “Have you guys noticed that Joey Fields has been acting weird lately?” Sophie asked one day on our way down to morning recess.

  “He’s been barking less than usual,” I said. I should know, since I have to sit next to him all day. Joey has this thing where sometimes he barks and growls like a dog instead of talking. But using Uncle Jay’s theory of positive reinforcement, I’d been rewarding him by not flicking him with rubber bands when he wasn’t doing it, and as a consequence, he’d been doing it a lot less.

  “I don’t mean that,” Sophie said. “I mean, he keeps coming up to me at rehearsal and asking me weird questions. Like if I like candy bars, and what kind. Does he do that to you?”

  “If he did,” Rosemary said, “I’d stuff him in a folding chair.”

  “It sounds like he likes you,” Caroline said, ignoring Rosemary.

  I was surprised to hear this about Joey—that he might like Sophie. A little while ago, Joey had liked me, and had asked me to go with him, even though I had said no. How could he have suddenly switched to liking Sophie? True, he did play the kindly wizard who tries to help Princess Penelope understand about wasteful plastic water bottle usage and find her way to her fairy godmother’s house through the Realm of Recycling, and so he had a scene with her in the play.

  And true, I didn’t like him in that way.

  But it was kind of messed up of him to just go around switching liking girls like that, every other month. Boys are so weird.

  “Ew,” Sophie said. “I hope he doesn’t like me. I don’t like him.”

  “Oh,” Erica said, sounding upset, “Joey’s nice. At least, he’s nicer than all the other boys. Except Lenny Hsu. Joey doesn’t throw things or make rude noises when the principal walks by.”

  “Ew,” Sophie said again. She was obviously still thinking about Joey liking her.

  This was the thing about getting to be the star of the play. All the boys—well, Joey Fields, anyway—fell in love with you. Not that this was something you necessarily wanted, because to tell the truth I’ve been there with Joey, and it’s not actually all that great.

  But still. No one falls in love with the evil queen. No one.

  And no one memorizes the evil queen’s lines in the hopes that she’ll get sick and they can take over her part. No one.

  But Queen Melissa the Maleficent was my part, and I was going to make the best of her. Because that’s what you do in a bad situation. Make the best of it. That’s a rule.

  So on the day of Room 209’s open house, when we were having our first dress rehearsal in the morning, and I brought in my costume that I’d assembled from stuff I’d found in my closet, plus the dress my mom had loaned me, and Dad’s Dracula cape, I wasn’t prepared for the amount of criticism I received because of it.

  Because I really thought my costume looked good. Sure, it wasn’t one of the costumes the parents of the elves and soldiers had all gotten together to hand sew so they’d all look the same. My mom had asked me if I’d wanted help, and I’d said no, that I’d put my costume together myself.

  But that didn’t make it a bad costume. I thought it looked good.

  Sophie didn’t seem to like it, anyway. She seemed kind of mad about it, as a matter of fact.

  “Allie,” she said when I came out of the girls’ room, where we’d all gone to change before rehearsal, “you’re supposed to be evil. An evil queen.”

  “I am evil,” I said, looking down at myself.

  “But.” Sophie glanced over at Erica, Caroline, and Rosemary, as if for support. Only I don’t think she was going to get any from Rosemary, since Rosemary was laughing too hard. She’d started laughing the minute I came out of the bathroom stall. And she couldn’t seem to stop. “I don’t think an evil queen would wear red high-tops,” Sophie said. “And those striped socks.”

  I looked down at my shoes. I’d thought very carefully about my character.

  But I’d also thought about the audience we were going to have at the open house. And the fact that there’d be little kids there. Some of them, the little brothers and sisters of kids in our class and Mrs. Danielson’s class, would be even younger than Kevin. I didn’t want Queen Melissa the Maleficent to be too scary.

  “I think the evil queen would wear these shoes,” I said to Sophie.

  “Well,” Sophie said in a snippy voice, “I don’t think she would. I think she would wear something more glamorous. Also, more evil.”

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t know what evil shoes look like. Anyway, she’s my character, and I say she would wear these shoes. You can dress up your character however you want, but mine wears red high-tops. And striped socks.”

  Sophie looked like she was about to argue some more, but Erica broke in, waving her fairy godmother wand and going, “You guys, let’s not fight. I think you both look beautiful.”

  And Caroline said quickly, when Sophie drew in a deep breath to argue some more, “Yeah, let’s let Mrs. Hunter decide. She’s the director, after all. If she doesn’t like Allie’s costume, Sophie, she’ll say something.”

  Sophie looked doubtful but kept her mouth shut.

  Until she saw Cheyenne’s costume.

  “Wh-what,” Sophie stammered, pointing across the classroom when we all walked back into it, “is she wearing?”

  We soon found out. You could hear Cheyenne bragging away from down the hall practically. She’d gotten her mom to find her an actual store-bought fairy costume (everyone else’s was homemade).

  “She ordered it from a costume shop on the Internet,” Cheyenne said, smoothing the sparkling, multilayered skirt of her gown. Cheyenne said it was made of something called tulle. “All the way from New York City.”

  M and D and the other girls in Room 209 admired Cheyenne’s specially ordered costume and went, “Ooooh.”

  Sophie looked down at her own costume—which her mother had gotten her at Goodwill (it was someone’s old prom dress) and which, if you asked me, was perfectly nice—and went, “But…her costume is nicer than mine!”

  “Your costume is very pretty, Sophie,” Erica said.

  “No, it’s not,” Sophie said. “Look at Cheyenne’s! It’s way sparklier!”

  “Well, Cheyenne’s a fairy queen,” Caroline pointed out. “You’re just a princess.”

  “But.” Sophie looked as if she were about to cry. “I’m the star!”

  Oh, brother.

  “Sophie,” I said, “Princess Penelope isn’t supposed to look that great, anyway. Remember? Her evil stepmother has just thrown her out of the Castle of Plastic Doom. She’s been wandering around the Realm of Recycling for days. It makes sense that her dress wouldn’t be in such terrific shape. Not,” I hurried up to add when I saw her trembling lower lip, “that yours isn’t totally pretty.”

  Sophie was still staring over at Cheyenne. “Look at her tiara!”

  It was true. Cheyenne’s tiara was pretty great. It looked like so
mething the Sugarplum Fairy would have worn in The Nutcracker—if the Sugarplum Fairy had worn a crown with compact fluorescent bulbs sticking out of the top of it.

  Still, Cheyenne’s fairy crown put Sophie’s and my crowns, which were plastic and left over from birthday parties, to shame. Cheyenne’s crown was, like, two feet tall (not counting the lightbulbs) with crystals dangling off the top, like the ones on Brittany Hauser’s mom’s dining room chandelier.

  Cheyenne also had real fairy wings that were almost as big as she was, dripping in fairy dust and not droopy like Erica’s, which were borrowed from Missy from when she’d dressed as an angel one Halloween.

  “It’s not fair,” Sophie said, her eyebrows beginning to slant downward angrily. “I’m the star of the play. I should have the nicest costume. Cheyenne totally did this on purpose to make me look bad.”

  “Oh, I don’t think she did it on purpose,” Erica said, looking distressed.

  “I’m going to march over there,” Sophie said, “and give her a piece of my—”

  Fortunately, at that moment Mrs. Hunter came into Room 209, clapped her hands, and said, “Class, I have an exciting announcement to make. For our first dress rehearsal, we’re actually going to have an audience. The morning kindergarten class is going to come in to watch our performance. Isn’t that exciting? So let’s try to put on an extra-good show. Okay? So places, everybody!”

  This was fantastic! We were going to be doing our show in front of actual human beings for the first time!

  And, okay, one of them was going to be Kevin. But that was all right.

  “Oh,” Erica cried. “I’m so nervous!”

  “It’ll be okay,” I said. Although the truth was, I was nervous now, too. What if Sophie was right, and my red high-tops were all wrong for the part?

  We all filed downstairs to the auditorium and went backstage, where I immediately had to break up a cardboard sword fight between Patrick Day and Stuart Maxwell, then show Patrick how to write his lines down on his sword so he wouldn’t forget them.

  That’s when we heard all the kindergartners coming in. It was hard not to start feeling even more nervous. Although they were just kindergartners, we still wanted to put on a good show for them. At least, I did.

  “Oh, my goodness.” Sophie looked especially delicate in the dark shadows backstage. “I think I’m going to be sick. Do I feel feverish to you?”

  “If you need to go to the nurse’s office,” Cheyenne whispered as Erica felt Sophie’s forehead to see if it was hot, “I can take over your part.”

  “No,” Sophie said, eyeing Cheyenne with distaste. “I’ll be fine, thanks, Cheyenne.”

  Then Sophie turned to me and asked, sounding a little annoyed, “Allie, you’re not really going out in those shoes, are you?”

  I looked down at my red high-tops, which I was still wearing.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I am. Why?”

  “I just really don’t think they’re right for the part.” Sophie seemed upset. “They’re so—”

  But Sophie never got to finish what she was going to say. Because it was time for the play to begin!

  Princess Penelope had the first few lines (about her dad dying). Then I came on. I waited in the wings, which is the backstage area, for my cue, which is the line Sophie was supposed to say that was my signal to come out onstage. I could see all the kindergartners sitting on the floor of the auditorium slash gym slash cafeteria, looking up at the stage. I couldn’t see Kevin, though. My heart was beating kind of hard, even though I told myself it didn’t matter, because it was just kindergartners. It still mattered, because I wanted to do a good job. Why didn’t Cheyenne see it that way?

  Then Sophie said my cue, and I felt a huge swoop of nervousness come up from my stomach and into my throat. I thought I might even be having a heart attack.

  Then I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be me, Allie Finkle, anymore. I was supposed to be Queen Melissa the Maleficent, who hated recycling and hated Princess Penelope even more. She would never be nervous about speaking in front of kindergartners, or anyone, really. Because she was a queen.

  So I went out onstage, using my big, loud, evil queen voice.

  And everyone started laughing. I could hear Kevin laughing loudest of all. I could see him sitting in the midst of all the kindergartners, laughing his head off and pointing at me, going, “That’s her! That’s my sister!”

  And I stopped being nervous and started having fun being Queen Melissa, the spoiled, bratty queen who was used to getting everything her way, because her mother always gave her every single thing she ever wanted, even the amethyst earrings she saw in the mall and just wanted on a whim. No one ever said no to her, even when she was rude and told her own mother to shut up.

  And that’s why she’s so evil. She just didn’t know better, really.

  But the thing was, Cheyenne didn’t even notice I was basing my performance on her! I knew she didn’t notice because she didn’t say anything about it to me. In fact, Cheyenne was so caught up in showing off her fabulous costume, she even forgot about pretending she didn’t know how to act. She put on a fantastic performance as the compact fluorescent bulb fairy queen for the kindergartners. She didn’t do her robot voice, and even pirouetted around the stage a little in her fancy pink fairy slippers (some of the kindergarten girls actually gasped when Cheyenne came out onstage, she looked so pretty, which I’m sure helped her ego a little). She tossed her bouncy hair and flitted around, shaking her wings. She was perfect!

  In fact, everyone was perfect. Patrick didn’t forget his two lines (he read them off his sword), and Caroline pranced perfectly (her unicorn horn didn’t fall off once), and Erica was a perfect motherly fairy godmother. I got tons of laughs and applause during my big death scene, which I stretched out as long as possible, dying in the most dramatic way I knew how. I even heard the boys from Room 209 laughing backstage. I made sure when I was dead that my mom’s dress was pulled up so my striped socks and red high-tops showed.

  That got the biggest laugh of all from the kindergartners. Also, a big cheer.

  Which meant I had done a good job. Because if people aren’t happy when the bad guy dies, it means the character actor playing the bad guy didn’t play the bad guy right.

  When the performance was over, and we all came out to take our bows, the kindergartners actually stood up to clap!

  And okay, they’re just kindergartners…

  …but that was a good sign that our play didn’t stink. Which was good because we had worked really hard on it.

  I was super excited about the kindergartners loving our play. So were Erica and Caroline and Rosemary. We were jumping around the stage, hugging each other, along with Elizabeth Pukowski and Shamira and some other girls. Which was why I was kind of surprised when Sophie turned to me when I tried to hug her and said in an angry voice, “Get away from me, Allie. Don’t you know you ruined the whole play?”

  Really, nothing could have shocked me more. Unless maybe Sophie had told me she was leaving Pine Heights Elementary School to go star with the Jonas Brothers in their next movie.

  “What?” I looked around, all shocked, to see if anyone else felt this way. But Erica and Caroline and Rosemary and everyone just looked back at me blankly, as confused as I was.

  “How did I ruin the whole play?” I asked.

  “With those shoes,” Sophie said, pointing accusingly at my high-tops. “When you came out onstage, everyone laughed!”

  I knew everyone had laughed when I came out onstage. I’d wanted everyone to laugh at my costume. That had been my intention. Hearing them laugh like that had felt good.

  “It’s nice to make people laugh, Sophie,” I said. I didn’t understand why she was so mad.

  “But the evil queen is supposed to be evil,” Sophie said. “That’s why she’s called the evil queen! You’re supposed to be scary, not funny. And when you die, it’s not supposed to be funny. But everyone laughed! They laughed! And at the end, people clap
ped more for you than they did for me! But I’m supposed to be the star! Princess Penelope!”

  I looked over from Sophie to Caroline, who gave me a shrug. She didn’t know what to make of Sophie’s temper tantrum, either. Neither, I could tell, could Erica. Or Rosemary.

  I didn’t know what to do. Or say. I could tell Sophie was upset.

  But if you ask me, she was acting a little bit like a spoiled princess.

  “I’m sorry, Sophie,” I said. “But people didn’t clap more for me than they did for you—”

  “Yes, they did!” Sophie yelled. “They did!”

  “That’s because Allie’s brother was in the audience, Sophie,” Caroline explained. “That’s all.”

  Sophie made fists out of both her hands, rolled her eyes, and yelled, “I’m the star of this play, Allie! Me! Not you! Why won’t anyone remember that? Ugh, I hate you!”

  The unfortunate part for Sophie, though, was that she yelled this right in front of Mrs. Hunter, who’d come up to see what all the yelling was about.

  Mrs. Hunter, looking very shocked, cried, “Sophie Abramowitz! Come see me in the hallway immediately, please.”

  Sophie, the minute she heard Mrs. Hunter’s voice, looked very sorry for her outburst. Her cheeks began to burn bright red, and her eyes filled with tears as she slowly climbed down from the stage to follow Mrs. Hunter from the gym.

  “This,” I said, looking down at my high-tops and feeling a big lump forming in my throat, “is all my fault.”

  “No, it’s not,” said Erica, who was always trying to see the bright side of things. “I’m sure Sophie only said that because she’s super nervous about the big performance tonight. Mrs. Hunter will have a talk with her, and everything will be all right. You’ll see.”

  Except it wasn’t. Because when Sophie got back from her talk with Mrs. Hunter, she was crying hysterically.

  “You g-guys,” she said, wiping her tears away with the backs of her wrists. “Mrs. Hunter says I c-can’t play Princess Penelope t-tonight! I’m out of the p-play!”