by Mo O'Hara
“Darlings,” she said. She called everybody “darling.” She leaned back in her director’s chair, holding a cup of tea. “Impress me!”
I carefully placed the backpack in the front row, away from Mrs. Flushcowski, and unzipped it a little so Frankie could see us on the stage. I think he deserved to see our big moment. We got out our wooden sticks and started play-fighting with them. We really showed off our jumping and hitting-things skills. Just as we were about to show off our swinging-on-things skills, she stopped us.
“Darlings, you don’t have a song? Or a piece prepared?”
“This is our piece,” I said. “We want to be Merry Men. So we wanted to show we could pretend fight.”
“I need to see that you can ACT,” she said, but said the word ACT in a really weird way like she was saying something important; like the name of the World Computer Games Champion or something. “When I was ‘Woman in Elevator’ on The Days of Our Time, the director said that my every thought was written on my face. Like that. I need to see true ACTING.”
I whispered to Pradeep, “She wants us to act merry, I guess. You know, Merry Men would be merry as they fight.”
“How do you do that?” he asked.
“Follow my lead,” I whispered.
I grabbed the big stick and started to fight with Pradeep again.
“Ho, ho, ho,” I said. “I got you!”
“Huh?”
“Ho, ho, ho,” I said again louder, and then whispered, “I’m being merry!”
“Oh, yeah! Ho, ho, ho,” Pradeep said and banged his stick against mine.
“Darlings, darlings, DARLINGS!” Mrs. Flushcowski had to shout three times to be heard over the sound of the sticks crashing together and the Santa laughing. “That is enough.”
“Do we get the parts, Mrs. Flushcowski?” I asked.
“Do you have nothing prepared that you can recite or sing?” she asked.
Unfortunately, the only song that came into my mind was the Squeaky Clean Toilets advert jingle. I took a deep breath and sang out: “Ah, so clean and fresh … think your guests … with Squeaky Clean Toilets.”
“Um, thank you, Tom,” Mrs. Flushcowski said, but her look either said, “I have no idea why this young man is here” or “I am in awe at this young man’s talent.” The two looks are pretty close.
Then Pradeep opened his mouth and started saying a poem.
“I think that I shall never see,
A poem lovely as a tree,
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts its leafy arms to pray.…”
And he went on.
By the time he finished, I was standing there with my mouth gaping open, Frankie was looking out from his bag with his mouth gaping open and Mrs. Flushcowski was actually crying. She dug in her handbag for tissues and dabbed at her face. Then she ran onstage and hugged Pradeep.
I bet that was not the reaction he was going for with that poem.
“I had to memorize it last year when I played the ginkgo. It just stuck in my head,” he mumbled from somewhere underneath Mrs. Flushcowski.
Mrs. Flushcowski pulled back and stood in front of Pradeep. “You moved me, darling,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” said Pradeep. “You didn’t have to get up.”
“No, you have moved me”—she pointed to her heart—“in here.” Then she hugged him again.
When she had pulled herself together, after she had used up about a pack of tissues re-dabbing her eyes, she said, “Thank you. I’ll post the cast list later today.” And she winked at Pradeep. Then she looked at me and said, “ACTING,” in that same weird way again, and shook her head. Frankie thrashed in his bag so hard that it made the backpack fall off the seat. Somehow I didn’t think my fish was loving Mrs. Flushcowski right now. I jumped down into the front row and grabbed the bag, zipping it up in one swoop. “OK, right, ACTING, sure thing,” I mumbled as we rushed out of the room.
* * *
That afternoon when Pradeep and I went to check the cast list, we saw:
I didn’t even know there was a baker in Robin Hood. I’ve read the book and seen at least two movie versions and a cartoon of it, and none of those had a baker. I turned around to say that to Pradeep, but he was surrounded by other kids from the cast, getting high fives from the Merry Men. I went to do our special celebration high five with Pradeep anyway, because at least he got a good part, but he didn’t even turn around (which made me look like I was fist-bumping with some invisible kid).
Of course I didn’t realize it then, but that is exactly when it happened. At 3.03 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, Pradeep started to change.
CHAPTER 3
NO SMALL PARTS, ONLY SMALL GOLDFISH
I followed Pradeep and the rest of the cast to the first rehearsal and we all lined up and got our scripts. Frankie was still in my backpack. He’d been pretty good today, apart from that hypno-incident with Kevin this morning. I just had to get through the hour of rehearsal without Frankie zombifying anyone and we’d be fine.
Pradeep sat on a chair with the other “main cast” kids, and I sat on the floor with the rest of the “supporting cast.” You know, Rich Travelers One, Two, and Three. Guards One, Two, and Three. Ladies-in-Waiting One, Two, and Three, and Merry Men One, Two, and Three. I was the only supporting-cast person without a number.
But they still all had more lines than me.
I had one line: “Robin, there is no bread.”
Pradeep had pages of stuff to learn. Loads of lines, a song with Maid Marian, and a big escape number with the Merry Men. And he had loads of fight scenes. The baker didn’t even get to throw bread rolls at anyone. Pradeep got to fire arrows and fight with sticks and pretend to swing across the stage (which he couldn’t do for real in the play for insurance reasons after the school’s Peter Pan ended up in the hospital one year with a flying-related injury).
I went up to Pradeep at the end of rehearsal.
“Hey, Pradeep, do you want to come back to my place and start to build the ‘Supremely Secret Message Chute’ between our bedrooms? I’ve got the notebook with the drawings and…”
But Pradeep hardly looked up. “I can’t today. We’ve got an extra rehearsal for the leads. I don’t really have time for that kind of thing anymore.” He grabbed his stuff and headed out with the rest of the main cast kids.
I slung the backpack with Frankie in it over my shoulder and shuffled toward the doors. “Come on, Frankie, let’s go,” I said. “At least you’ve got time for that kind of thing.” As I trudged down the front steps of school, Mark swooshed past me on his skateboard, his white Evil Scientist lab coat flapping behind him. I jumped back just in time to avoid being run over.
“Ha, loser,” Mark mumbled as he skidded to a stop. “Talking to yourself! Pathetic.”
Frankie thrashed hard in the backpack, trying to fling himself at Mark. “Wait! Were you talking to the moron fish in your backpack? That’s even worse! So, so sad.”
“Leave us alone, Mark!” I yelled. I unzipped Frankie from the backpack and he glared at Mark.
“Looks like your moron friend Pradeep has got a life and dumped you.” Mark smirked. “Who can blame him? I mean, everyone has a bigger part in that play than you. They even asked a couple of the eighth graders to do the lights and stuff. Didn’t trust you morons not to mess it up for Mrs. Flushcowski’s special guest.”
“What special guest?” I asked, trying to stop Frankie from hurling himself at Mark.
“I guess they didn’t think you were important enough to tell.” Mark jumped back on his skateboard and sped off down the road.
I looked at Frankie. “Mark’s not right, you know,” I said, this time looking around to see if anyone could see me talking to my backpack. “Pradeep hasn’t stopped being my friend. You’ll see. It’ll be better tomorrow.”
But the next day, and every day after that, it got worse. Pradeep had dance practice, then fight practice, then song practice … or maybe “make your best frie
nd feel like a total waste of space” practice? OK, so that last one wasn’t real, but Pradeep wouldn’t have needed any help doing that anyway. He was getting it just fine.
There was always some kind of practice or rehearsal with just the main cast kids. Especially with the girl playing Maid Marian, Katie Plefka. She was always hanging on to Pradeep like a picture hangs on a wall or like a monkey hangs on a tree or like an annoying girl hangs on your best friend.
The following Monday, having not seen Pradeep all weekend, I went over to him as he was getting his coat. Frankie had come along with me in my backpack for moral support. I thought maybe I could get him to zombify Katie into not being so clingy with Pradeep, or maybe even zombify Pradeep to go back to being normal, but Frankie wasn’t in a zombifying mood.
“Hey, Pradeep, are you coming over tonight for MONDAY ZOMBIE GAMES MADNESS?” I did it in the movie-announcer voice that Pradeep and I always use when we say “Monday Zombie Games Madness.” It just doesn’t sound right if you say it in a normal voice.
Katie Plefka started giggling. “What is that?”
“Pradeep and I do it every Monday night.” I smiled at Pradeep. “It’s zombie computer games and it’s … MADNESS!” I said madness again in the announcer voice, expecting Pradeep to join in like he always did. But he didn’t. He just looked at me funny, then turned to Katie and said, “It’s not like it’s every Monday night or anything.” He picked up his coat from the chair.
“Yeah, it is,” I said.
“No, it’s not, Tom. Anyway, I’m heading back with some of the other actors later. We’re gonna run through the big end scene again.” (He had started saying actors in the same way Mrs. Flushcowski did.)
“But … you can’t miss Monday Zombie Games Madness,” I said, not bothering with the movie-announcer voice this time. “You didn’t even miss it when you had chicken pox and you had to play by walkie-talkie from your room.”
Katie giggled again.
“Well, I’m missing it today,” Pradeep said, shoving his arm into his coat sleeve.
“Just so you can rehearse for a stupid play!” I shouted.
Other kids were watching us now and Frankie started thrashing around in my backpack too. I don’t think he liked us shouting at each other.
“It’s not stupid. You’re stupid!” Pradeep yelled back.
“You’re super-stupid!” I shouted back.
“And you’re stupid to the power of stupid zillion!” Pradeep shouted again. That was the first thing he’d said to me in days that sounded like the real Pradeep. My friend Pradeep, not the “Oh, I’m so important, I’m Robin Hood, I’m an ACTOR” Pradeep that I was fighting with.
On my walk home, I thought of twenty funny put-downs that I could have come back with.
All I’d thought to say at the time was, “Fine, I’ll have MONDAY ZOMBIE GAMES MADNESS on my own.” And I did the movie-announcer voice again too, just to bug him. “It’ll be way better anyway.”
But it wasn’t.
* * *
After that I ended up bringing Frankie to all the rehearsals with me. He was good company. I think even the numbered-part kids thought that it was below them to hang out with me, and Pradeep hadn’t talked to me since the day we had the fight. I taught Frankie some of the games that Pradeep and I used to play when we got bored. He couldn’t do Rock, Paper, Scissors, but he could do Splat, Splosh, Grrr, which are the three sounds that Frankie can make. A Splat beats a Splosh, but gets trumped by a Grrr. Grrr wins against Splat but loses to Splosh, and a Splosh gets trounced by Splat but smacks down a Grrr. He got pretty good at it too, but then again, we had a lot of time to practice.
When I had to be onstage, he just swam around in his bag, hidden inside my backpack. He thrashed about a bit when Mrs. Flushcowski spoke, especially if she was shouting at someone. But when Katie Plefka sang her Maid Marian solo, he looked as if he was actually dancing with joy in the water. Most of the time she was really giggly and kinda annoying, but when she sang, I had to admit, it was OK. It really seemed to chill Frankie out, and he is very critical when it comes to singing. She did sing “Greensleeves” though, so I guess that is a zombie goldfish–friendly song (being about green sleeves and all).
The only chance I had to talk to Pradeep was when Mrs. Flushcowski made me help him learn his lines.
“Tom, darling,” she said, “can you take a moment and run lines with Pradeep? He has ever so many to get under his belt before tomorrow.”
I mumbled under my breath, “He’s not even wearing a belt!”
“What, darling?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I moaned. I walked over to Mrs. Flushcowski, carrying Frankie in the backpack.
I guess I hadn’t zipped it all the way up because she said, “Darling, why do you have a goldfish in a plastic bag in rehearsal?”
Pradeep grabbed the backpack. “He’s mine, Mrs. Flushcowski. He’s kind of a good-luck charm for the show.”
She smiled at Pradeep. “You know, I heard that Laurence Olivier was very taken with goldfish as well.”
I stomped over to a couple of chairs with Pradeep. As soon as we sat down, I grabbed the backpack back off him. “You might have everyone else in this school on your side, but you don’t have Frankie!” I said. Frankie’s eyes darted back and forth between Pradeep and me. I couldn’t look at him so I zipped up the bag.
“Let’s just get on with this,” Pradeep said, looking at his script. It was covered in green highlighter pen.
My script had my one line circled in pencil.
“If you read from page twenty-seven, ‘I’ll never surrender…’” Pradeep said. “You can test me on that bit.”
Normally, I would have made a joke with Pradeep about never surrendering to zombies or Evil Scientist brothers, but no jokes came.
We just ran the lines.
* * *
Finally it was the day of the play. We were having the dress rehearsal in the afternoon and the performance that night. Mrs. Kumar, Pradeep’s mom, had come in to help out with costumes. My costume was on the list as “general peasant’s clothes,” which meant I got to wear whatever leftover trousers and shirts were in the back of the costume cupboard, rolled in dirt, plus an oversize baker’s hat. I didn’t even get to do the rolling in dirt bit with the clothes on. They did that before. Total con!
Mrs. Kumar was straightening Pradeep’s tunic and cape. “I’m done, Mom. They need me onstage now. I am Robin Hood, after all—you know, the star of the show?” Pradeep squirmed away from his mom’s fussing.
“Oh, someone is getting a big head for a little man,” Mrs. Kumar said.
She hiked up his tights in a way that just couldn’t be comfortable, handed him his hat, and said, “Now you are done. You can go.”
CHAPTER 4
DRESS-REHEARSAL DRAMA
Once we were all made-up and in our costumes, we had to wait on the stage for our pep talk with Mrs. Flushcowski. Pradeep somehow managed to look cool in his green tunic and hat with a feather in it. OK, so he had to wear tights, but still.
Mrs. Kumar beamed up at us from the front row. Sami, Pradeep’s three-year-old sister, was there too. She was watching Frankie for me while we rehearsed, playing with him at the back of the hall.
We all sat on the stage in our costumes and waited. Then Mrs. Flushcowski entered the room. And she made “an entrance,” as she was always telling us kids to do. She flounced in and stood in front of us all, pacing up and down the stage for ages before she said anything. Then she took a deep breath and spoke very seriously.
“I have a very important announcement,” she said. “We are having a special visitor attend tonight’s performance.”
Then she did one of her really long pauses again. This must have been the person Mark was talking about.
“I worked with him when I appeared as ‘Nurse in Hallway’ on Emergency Hospital, and he’s always remembered me. He is in town and has said he will come to see the rising talent that this school has to offer.
He is none other than the acclaimed judge of Talent or No Talent—Solomon Caldwell!”
The whole cast gasped. I didn’t see what the big deal was. What was Solomon Caldwell going to say to me—“Wow, that walking baker’s hat’s got talent?” I didn’t think so.
“Everything must be PERFECT for tonight. Do you understand?” Mrs. Flushcowski looked at me in particular. “Oh yes, one more thing—this will be the first time that the eighth-grade boys will be helping us as stage crew. I’ve asked them to come in to make sure the special effects and lighting will be just right. Remember that they are doing this to be helpful, so please, be helpful to them.” A group of eighth-graders dressed in black T-shirts stepped out from backstage.
“Hello,” Mark said, striding across the stage with a smoke machine. He put it in its position offstage right. “That’s right, we’re gonna be really helpful.” He grinned.
Oh no! Of all the boys she could get, why did it have to be my Evil Scientist big brother? He was dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans. No evil scientist lab coat today. Maybe that was a sign that he wasn’t going to be evil. Maybe he really was just going to work on the show and that was it.
Mark walked over to me and spoke in a low whisper: “They said I had to take off my white lab coat. Gotta be all in black so no one can see me in the dark. It gets pretty dark backstage, moron.” Then he did his Evil Scientist laugh, “Mwhahahaha,” and smiled.
Mrs. Flushcowski turned around, “Very impressive evil laugh, young man. I had to do a laugh like that when I played ‘Female Head in Jar’ in the Evil Scientist classic Help! I’ve Created a Monster. It’s not as good as mine, but it’s good,” she added.
As soon as she turned to go Mark hissed, “Hey, moron, break a leg! That’s what they say in the theater, right?” and he got that creepy smile again.
