Curtain Up

by Lisa Fiedler

  “Anyway,” I continued, “I just wanted to tell you that we’re going to list you as dance captain in the program.”

  “That’s awesome. Thanks.”

  We walked a little farther, enjoying the early evening quiet that had settled over the neighborhood. But there was a question nagging at the back of my mind, and when we reached the end of her driveway, I blurted it out.

  “Don’t you like pizza?”

  She looked at me strangely. “I love it.”

  “So . . . why did you give your piece to Maxie?”

  Mackenzie’s eyes darted quickly to the front door of her house, then back to me. “I like pizza a lot. And cheeseburgers and cupcakes and banana splits . . . but ballerinas tend to stay away from foods like that.”

  She laughed, although I wasn’t sure why. Passing up banana splits didn’t seem at all humorous to me. I loved banana splits.

  “Don’t worry,” she said with a wave. “I’m sure there’s a big plate of broiled chicken and steamed veggies waiting for me on the kitchen table.”

  I tried to return her laughter, but I still wasn’t sure what was funny.

  “See you on Monday, Anya,” she said, making her way gracefully up the walk.

  “See ya, Kenz,” I replied. I almost added, “Enjoy the veggies,” but something told me the joke—whatever it had been—was over.

  I woke up on Saturday to a gloomy sky and the sound of rain pattering against my window. I was actually surprised at how bummed I was that we wouldn’t be rehearsing today. It had been such a terrific week, and I wished I didn’t have to wait until Monday to see Austin and my cast again.

  Thunder rumbled overhead. Noises off, I thought. Fitting.

  I had just thrown my legs over the side of the bed when Susan came bounding into my room.

  “Don’t you knock?” I said, stuffing my feet into my fluffy pink slippers.

  She ignored the question. “I made posters! Cool ones. With the name of the show and the date and time and location.”

  To prove it, she shoved a sheet of paper at me—it was the 8 1/2 by 14 kind my dad called “legal-size.”

  “I hope you asked Dad if you could use his work stuff,” I said before eyeing the fabulously colorful flyer she’d printed out.

  “We can pay him back,” she said, flopping beside me on the bed. “Out of the ticket money. Like the Windex.” She tapped the flyer. “Just look at that!”

  I felt myself grinning as a flash of lightning illuminated the room. “These are actually great,” I said. “Seriously! I love the font you picked, and the colors are perfect. We can post them in all the shops in town and at the pool and the tennis courts. And the coffeehouse! We should start hanging them up today!”

  “Correction,” said Susan. “You should start hanging them. I’m going to the movies with Mia and Elle.” She beamed, looking very pleased with herself. “Mom’s dropping us off, and Elle’s dad is picking us up. Rumor has it Maddie and Spencer are going too. We’re going to spy on them to see if they kiss!”

  I laughed. “Don’t do that,” I advised.

  As much as I would have liked her company (not to mention her help) on my poster-hanging errand, I didn’t have the heart to ask her to cancel her movie plans on my account. Especially since I knew this would be Susan’s first official cinema excursion without parents. It was practically a rite of passage.

  “I’ve already swiped Dad’s stapler and a couple of rolls of Scotch tape,” she informed me.

  “Swiped?”

  “Okay, borrowed. Mom said it would be okay to hang the posters as long as you asked the store owners for permission. So you don’t end up in jail.”

  I was about to tell Susan I was pretty sure they didn’t throw kids in jail for putting up posters when my phone pinged, indicating a text message.

  My heart leaped a bit, thinking it might be from Austin. It wasn’t, but I was not at all disappointed to see who had sent it.

  Becky!

  Swimming canceled cuz of rain. Let’s hang out!!!

  I immediately texted her back: Awesome! I’m going into town to hang posters. Wanna help?

  Becky’s response: Totally! Will bring umbrella. Be over in 15.

  I was dressed and waiting on the front porch in ten. I couldn’t wait to tell her—in person—how the first week of rehearsals had gone. We’d been texting and even managed to fit in a Skype session or two, but it just wasn’t the same as telling her about it face-to-face.

  I decided to take along the money we’d collected as dues—one hundred and thirty dollars total, all in tens and fives. This would be a good opportunity to stop at the bank and exchange it for singles, which we would need for making change when tickets went on sale. I put the wad of bills carefully into the inside pocket of my rain jacket and zipped it closed. I had never carried so much money on me at one time, and frankly, it made me a little nervous.

  Soon enough Becky came splashing up our front walk in her pink paisley rain boots, holding what I assumed was a golf umbrella. The thing was huge. It was practically a tent!

  Which was why she hadn’t felt the need to wear her rain jacket.

  Which was why I could see that she had on a brand-new T-shirt:

  PROPERTY OF CHAPPAQUA MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRLS’ SOCCER

  “C’mon!” she cried, laughing and waving for me to join her under the umbrella.

  I wish I could say the sight of that shirt didn’t bother me at all. I wish I could say, now that I had the theater up and running, I didn’t care one little smidge about Becky being part of the team and getting invited to Daria Benson’s house for pool parties.

  I wished I could.

  But I couldn’t. Not completely, anyway. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel thrilled about Random Farms and the show and my amazing cast, but in spite of all that, something inside me still twisted a bit at the sight of that shirt. It made me feel apart from Becky somehow . . . disconnected . . . even if we were about to be scrunched up against each other under her big umbrella.

  It was almost like landing face first on the soccer field all over again.

  But I shook it off, like the raindrops trickling off the nylon of her umbrella. I was hanging with my best friend for the first time in a week, and I refused to let something as silly as a team T-shirt ruin it.

  So I took a deep breath and tucked the posters, tape, and stapler under my rain jacket, and we headed off for King Street.

  Our first stop was the barbershop, because Becky’s brothers were regulars there and she knew the barber would happily allow us to post the flyer in his window. We also hit up the pharmacy, the hardware store, and a little café that sold fancy teas from around the world.

  The café owner was a nice lady with long curly red hair who looked at the flyer with interest, then asked me if it was too late for her daughter, who was a sixth grader at a nearby private school, to sign up.

  “It’s too late for this session,” I said, trying to sound professional, “but we’re planning to do future performances. You should check out our website.”

  When we left the café, Becky said, “You have a website?” She sounded extremely impressed.

  “Well, not yet,” I confessed. “But we will eventually.” If there’s a second show, I added silently.

  We were halfway down the block when I heard someone calling Becky’s name.

  “Hey! Mezan!”

  Becky turned in the direction of the voice (which resulted in me losing a fair amount of umbrella coverage).

  “Oh, hi, Daria!”

  I instantly felt a knot form in my stomach as I looked and saw not only Daria but the whole starting lineup of the girls’ soccer team headed our way.

  “Sucky weather, huh?” said Daria.

  “We’re all going to get our nails done,” Abigail Silver reported, giggling. “Wanna come with?” She eyed me like I was a creature from another planet. “Your friend can come too, I guess.”

  Seriously? “Your friend”? Like she didn’t know w
ho I was? Abigail and I had been riding the same school bus for our entire lives. Her brother, Matthew, and I were in the same Hebrew school class!

  “Thanks, but we can’t,” said Becky. “We’re doing a really important errand.”

  I wondered if she’d only called it important for my benefit.

  Then I felt bad for wondering that.

  “Oh, man, too bad,” said Daria, not bothering to spare me a second glance. “Well, maybe next time. Oh, and we, like, totally missed you at the pool party last Sunday! We were really hoping you and that Austin guy would be there, but I guess he was busy too.”

  That Austin guy?

  I was positive I’d heard her wrong.

  And then . . . I was positive I hadn’t. Because suddenly it made sense. Austin had known Daria’s party had started at eleven thirty because he’d been invited.

  That Austin guy!

  That.

  Austin.

  Guy.

  OMG!

  “That Austin guy” had been invited to Daria Benson’s pool party, along with Sophia Ciancio and Becky Mezan.

  Okay . . . Sophia maybe wasn’t a surprise, and Becky I understood. But Austin? Could it be that somewhere between dribbling soccer balls and passing notes in study hall, Daria had somehow managed to notice how blue his eyes were?

  Thunder crashed above me, and for one crazy second I found myself hoping I’d be struck by lightning.

  Then the soccer girls were saying their good-byes (to Becky, not me) and splashing off in a squealing, giggling group toward the nail salon.

  Becky turned to me with a sheepish look. “I’m sorry.”

  I shrugged. What did she expect me to say?

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “Honest. The only reason I didn’t tell you about the pool party was because I didn’t want you to feel bad. You were so jazzed about the theater and all, I didn’t want to bring you down.”

  I knew this was the truth. Becky understood how miserable I’d have been if I’d known she’d been invited, so she’d done the kind thing by simply not mentioning it. It wasn’t a lie, technically.

  “It’s fine,” I said, mustering up a smile. “But, just out of curiosity, since when does Daria Benson include Austin Weatherly on her high-profile guest list?”

  “Since he tutored Abigail in English,” Becky reported, “and kept her from failing the class. If she hadn’t passed, she’d have been benched for the first half of next season, and since Abigail’s their best goalie, I guess Daria decided to invite him as a thank-you. Plus, I heard Abigail saying she thinks Austin’s really cute—for a seventh grader.”

  “Oh” was all I could think of to say.

  For a long moment the only sound was the rain hissing and splattering on the umbrella above our heads. Then I heard myself say something I never thought I’d say.

  “You should go to the nail salon with Daria and the others.”

  Becky looked confused. “Really? But what about the posters?”

  “I’ve got only one more left. It’s all right. Honest. I’m not upset.” I was, a little, but what kind of a best friend would I be if I didn’t let Becky go bond with her new teammates?

  Besides, there was suddenly something I had to do.

  “Are you sure, Anya?”

  I gave my BFF my most genuine smile. “Positive.”

  Becky hesitated.

  “Go,” I said, laughing. “It’ll be fun. You can get your nails done in your swim team colors. Maybe they’ll even paint little dolphins on your pinkies!”

  “Okay,” said Becky. “I’ll Instagram a picture of them later.”

  I stood there in the downpour, watching as she and her giant umbrella took off across the street after Daria, Abigail, and the others. Then I ran half a block to the arts and crafts store. The first thing I did was ask the owner if I could hang my poster in the window.

  The second thing I did was make a spur-of-the-moment decision: I unzipped my inside pocket, took out a handful of bills, and used them to buy packets of iron-on transfer paper and blank light blue T-shirts.

  At home, using Susan’s poster as my template, I created what was to be the official Random Farms logo, and Dad’s inkjet to print it onto the iron-on transfer sheets.

  Then I locked myself in the laundry room and plugged in the iron.

  The first one came out a little crooked. The second was slightly off center. But by the third, I’d gotten the hang of it, and by the time Susan had gotten home from the movies, I had finished creating custom Random Farms Kids’ Theater T-shirts.

  Take that, Property of Chappaqua Middle School!

  “Anya?” came Susan’s voice from the front hall.

  “Be right there.”

  I quickly folded up the shirts, took a clean trash bag from the box under the laundry sink, and put them inside it. I didn’t want Susan to see them until I handed them out to the cast and crew, which I would do at some point during the week before the show—tech week. They were going to be an awesome surprise!

  An awesome ninety-seven-dollar surprise.

  I hid the bag of shirts in the closet and went to find my sister.

  Because to be honest, I was dying to know if Spencer had kissed Maddie!

  Before I went to bed on Sunday night, I made a conscious decision not to say anything to Austin about knowing he’d been invited to Daria’s. What would be the point, right? The important thing was that he’d sent his regrets and come to auditions instead. And besides, I wanted to be in the right frame of mind as we began week two of the theater.

  Actually, I couldn’t wait to start rehearsal on Monday morning, and I was confident that my cast would return from their weekend activities relaxed, refreshed, and ready to get back to work.

  I was wrong.

  The first hour was spent—or, more accurately, frittered away—on everyone recapping their weekend fun. Jane and Elle had won the three-legged race at a neighborhood barbecue, and Mia had sung the “Star-Spangled Banner” to open Sam’s baseball game (so much for resting her voice!). At that same baseball game, Sam had slid into home plate to score the winning run. Problem was, he’d done it face first, scraping his cheek and giving himself a horrible black eye in the bargain.

  “I hope you’ve got enough pancake makeup to cover that,” I whispered to Maxie.

  Teddy’s family had gone to Jones Beach on Long Island for the weekend, and they’d brought Travis along. Both boys were sunburned almost beyond recognition, which not only made it hard for them to dance, but made them extremely grouchy as well.

  We spent a full hour on the introduction number, “Comedy Tonight,” which was an ensemble piece in which the cast basically marched around and shifted in and out of simple formations with the occasional arm movement. It barely qualified as a dance, it was so straightforward.

  The number should have been a breeze, but after a weekend of three-legged-racing, sliding, and singing, everyone was feeling pretty sluggish. Teddy howled in pain when Jane mistakenly flung out her left arm when she should have lifted up her right one, accidentally smacking him on his badly sunburned back.

  I decided we should turn our attention to costumes, and I was delighted with Maxie’s wardrobe choices! She’d done wonders with the Quandts’ hand-me-downs, which she’d combined with some old costumes and castoffs she’d dug out of her own basement. The fittings were going surprisingly well.

  Until Sophia got her first real look at her costume for “Castle on a Cloud.”

  “It’s hideous,” she spat.

  I could see poor Maxie was a little intimidated by our resident diva. “But it’s perfect for Cosette’s character,” she explained.

  “Hmmphf!” Sophia turned up her nose. “Cosette’s character needs to find a better place to buy her clothes!”

  “Sophia,” said Austin calmly. “The song is called ‘Castle on a Cloud,’ not ‘Castle on Fifth Avenue.’ ”

  “It looks like rags!”

  “That’s because it is rags,” said Ma
xie. “Cosette is a servant. She’s practically an orphan!”

  “I know that!” Sophia snarled. “But where is it written that orphans have to dress like slobs?”

  “Pretty much everywhere,” I said. I took the flower-patterned dress Maxie was holding and thrust it at Sophia. It was an enormous billowy thing that used to be my mother’s. The reason it was so big was that Mom had worn it when she’d been eight months’ pregnant with Susan, but no way was I going to tell Sophia that. I was glad Maxie had had the foresight to cut the word maternity off the label.

  “Cosette is a child,” I explained, trying my best to sound directorial. “She’s mistreated and hungry and afraid. But the incredible thing about her is that she never gives up dreaming. Even though she’s dressed in rags, she still believes in that beautiful castle. That’s what the song is about. Now, either you wear the dress or I give the solo to someone else.”

  Sophia glared at me for a long moment. Finally she grabbed the costume, stomped backstage, and returned a few minutes later, wearing it.

  “I hate it,” she snarled.

  “Good,” I replied. “You can use that emotion to tap into Cosette’s feelings. I’m pretty sure she’d have hated living in squalor and being treated like a slave.”

  Sophia glowered but said nothing.

  “Well done,” Austin whispered, leaning in close so only I could hear. “You turned the princess into a servant . . . and you’re not even a fairy godmother.”

  “Oh, I’m way more powerful than a fairy godmother,” I whispered back with a grin. “I’m the director!”

  On Tuesday a bunch of the girls stayed late to work on the sparkly backdrop for Mackenzie’s solo.

  On Wednesday, thanks to Susan’s efficiency, the piano tuner came and saw to the old upright. This made a huge difference in the music quality. Austin was thrilled. When I asked the tuner how much I owed him, he explained that his accounting department would send a bill. I had no idea what it cost to tune a piano; at home, Mom always handled that sort of thing. I was glad we’d collected the dues money. Even though I’d made the unexpected T-shirts purchase, I was sure what was left would cover it.