Playing Juliet Read online

  “Could she sell the theater?” I demanded. “Tear it down and build really expensive houses?”

  When Mrs. Mac laughed, I knew she wasn’t laughing at me but at the impossibility of the idea. It made me feel better immediately. “Not a chance. Mrs. Fredericks may own the building, but the city owns the land. This site can only be used for a theater.”

  “What was that about some Scottish play?” Zandy demanded as soon as we left Mrs. Mac’s office.

  “It’s a play by Shakespeare,” I said. “I can’t tell you the name because we’re in a theater. But it’s the most unlucky play ever. And I haven’t lifted the jinx yet.”

  Any one who’s memorized “13 Superstitions Every Theater Kid Should Know” would realize I’d left two things out. I don’t know why Mrs. Mac didn’t notice, but since she said it’s silly to worry without doing anything about it, I pulled Zandy into the girls’ bathroom, got a paper towel, wet it, and she and I headed for the lobby.

  I went outside and turned three times. Widdershins, like Mrs. Mac said. This time, I spit and I cursed. Okay, really quietly so no one else could hear, but I cursed. Then I begged loudly to be let back in.

  “What were you mumbling out there?” Zandy asked. She was Googling something on her phone.

  “Nothing.” I held up the paper towel. “I have to go clean my spit from the sidewalk. It’s funny Mrs. Mac forgot that part.”

  “You know what’s really funny?” said Zandy, staring down at the screen. “I just found a list of Shakepeare’s plays. If the Scottish play is the one I think it is, then if you put Mrs. Mac’s name and your name together, you’ve spelled it out.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  What think you of a duchess? have you limbs

  To bear that load of title?

  Shakespeare’s Henry VIII

  Lasagna has to be my favorite food. The smell of it baking grabbed me and drew me straight to the kitchen as soon as I walked through the door. It wasn’t ready yet, so I was rummaging in the fridge looking for a snack—a very large snack—when my heartless mother ordered me away.

  “You’ll ruin your dinner.”

  “It’s not for hours and I’m hungry.” I lowered one shoulder, tilted my head at a pathetic angle, and moaned the last few words.

  It didn’t work.

  “We’re eating in thirty minutes so you can make your play. Scoot.”

  “Pleeease . . .”

  My weak, pleading voice was clearly beginning to get to my mom. She loves to feed people. My odds of coming away from this with at least a small snack were growing, and we both knew it.

  Then the phone rang. Mom grinned at me in triumph. She knew I couldn’t bear to let it ring, and if I abandoned the refrigerator, she’d be able to resist any further pleas.

  I stood there, hesitating, while R. J. walked by and picked up the receiver. His conversation was like a one-sided tennis match. “Hello. . . . Yes. . . . Okay.” Then he handed it to me and said so loudly the person on the other side of the phone was bound to hear every word, “It’s Mrs. Mac. What did you do wrong?”

  All thoughts of food fled as I took the receiver.

  “Tell your brother you didn’t do anything wrong.” There was a smile in Mrs. Mac’s voice, then it became serious. “Lara Kindle has come down with the flu and won’t be able to go on tonight. I’d like you to play the Duchess as well as the Cat. You’re not in any of the same scenes and you’d have time to change costumes. Think you can do it?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then get here as soon as you can.”

  What an honor!

  I was spending the night at Zandy’s after the play, so I took one farewell sniff of the lasagna and got packed fast.

  My parents are pretty good about theater emergencies, but my mom insisted on making me a sandwich before I left. My dad insisted that I wait until I got to the theater to eat it. Once when I was really young, I spilled a whole milkshake in the back of his brand new SUV. He hasn’t let me eat in his car since.

  It was pouring rain by the time Dad pulled up in front of the theater.

  “Take my umbrella. You’ll get soaked,” he said.

  I shook my head. “It’s only ten feet to the breezeway.”

  I blew him a kiss, grabbed my backpack and the sandwich, said, “Thanks, Dad,” and took off running before he could finish saying, “Don’t slip on the wet pavement.”

  We’re not allowed to take food into the theater. I wolfed half of the sandwich outside the door. My clothes had gotten so wet in the ten feet between the car and the breezeway, and the wind was so strong, I was shivering with cold. I kept hearing Mrs. Mac say, “Get here as soon as you can,” so I tossed the rest of the sandwich in the trash can and ran into the lobby, still chewing.

  Austin was lying in wait for me. He grabbed my arm before I got two steps through the door. “Mrs. Mac wants you to go to her office first,” he said. “It’s going to be a rough show. Another kid, one of the Mice, just called in sick.”

  “Cross your fingers that no one else gets it.” I crossed my own as I said it.

  “At least all my crew seem to be okay so far,” he added as I hurried to Mrs. Mac’s office. Austin believes firmly that the crew is the most important part of any play.

  I couldn’t touch the photo of Juliet with him in the lobby.

  But I could come back.

  I knocked on the door frame before I entered the office. Mrs. Mac peered over the piles on her desk, at least five pencils stuck in her hair this time.

  “Thank goodness,” she said as soon as she saw me, then leaned forward and studied me carefully. She sat back in her seat, pulled out a pencil, and began tapping off instructions. “Lara’s much taller, so you can’t wear her costume. Ask Mrs. Lester to pull a medieval gown for you. There must be at least thirty hanging in the rack room. Lara’s was blue, so try to find one that color, but the most important thing is that it fits.” The tapping stopped. “Can you think of any other problems you might have?”

  Could I think of any other problems? Of course I could. It’s bad luck to wear blue onstage. At least that’s what “13 Superstitions Every Theater Kid Should Know” says. Sometimes I wonder if it’s always right. I’ve seen a lot of blue costumes onstage, though I’ve never had to wear one. And then I remembered that Lara had worn a blue gown and she had come down with the flu after the first performance.

  Maybe I could get away with wearing a dress in another color. After all, Mrs. Mac had only told me to try to find a blue gown.

  That left only one other problem.

  “How many lines does the Duchess have? After I get the costume and do my Cat makeup, I’m not going to have much time to learn them.”

  Mrs. Mac smiled at me and began rifling through the piles on her desk. “I knew I could count on you.”

  She pulled out a script and handed it to me.

  “The Duchess only has three or four lines, but they’re complex and very important to the comedy in the ballroom scene. Make an index card with the cues and your lines and carry it with you onstage.”

  “I can memorize it,” I protested, but she interrupted me.

  “Memorize what you can,” she said. “You might be word perfect when you go on—you’ve always been a quick study—but these lines have to come in on exactly the right cue. It’s not fair to the other actors to take a chance.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  “Hide the card in your skirt. If you need to look at it, I know you’ll be able to think of some action to cover what you’re doing.” She paused and thought for a moment. Tap went the pencil. “No. All the Duchesses carry fans. Paste it in your fan and no one in the audience will know what you’re using it for.”

  The phone rang just as she finished speaking.

  “Break a leg,” she said and gave me a little nod of dismissal as she reached to answer it.

  I needed to hurry, but I headed straight back to the lobby. I glanced around casually just to make sure no one was the
re before I walked over to the back wall. I looked around once more then brushed my finger on the brass plaque underneath the old photograph.

  “Someday,” I whispered, and headed for the costume shop, smiling.

  The costume shop looked absolutely normal for just before a performance. Prince Charming was heading out the door, wearing a gold crown and a cardinal-red Stanford sweatshirt, and buckling a jeweled sword over his jeans. Pam was getting the purple jewelry that she wore as the Stepsister out of the cabinet drawer, and Mrs. Lester was sitting at one of the sewing machines, mending a costume for a worried-looking Page Boy. When I told her I needed a medieval gown, she just pointed at the rack room.

  Rack rooms were named after the long poles, or racks, that hang from their ceilings. You’d think they would be called costume rooms, because there are only a few poles—ours has six—that run the length of the room, while there must be thousands of costumes crammed on each one.

  Somehow, in the mass of medieval gowns, I managed to find a lilac dress that looked about my size. It fit.

  But when I showed it to Mrs. Lester, she started to frown. “What part are you playing?”

  “One of the Duchesses. Lara’s sick.”

  Mrs. Lester closed her eyes tightly together for a few seconds, then shook her head. “No, no. You’ll be standing next to Nafeesa Russell. She’s in lavender. That color is too similar.” She opened her eyes again. “You need a light blue gown. Like Lara wore. Didn’t Mrs. Mac tell you that?”

  “She said the important thing was that it fit.”

  Mrs. Lester gave me a quizzical look. “And she didn’t say anything about the color?”

  Busted.

  “Just to try to find a blue one.”

  “I suppose this shade does look almost blue,” she said. “But can you see that it’s more purple in this light?”

  I bobbed my head, reluctantly. “Yes.”

  It looked like there was no way I was going to get out of wearing a blue costume. Mrs. Lester motioned me to follow her as she walked to the rack room.

  “We’ll find you the right color,” she said, turning sideways to fit down the narrow aisle between the clown and animal costumes. The medieval gowns started at the back half of the left rack, right after a dozen spotted Dalmatian suits.

  The first gown Mrs. Lester picked was huge. The second one, sky-blue brocade with a string of pearls looped across the bodice, fit perfectly.

  Of course it did. According to “13 Superstitions Every Theater Kid Should Know,” it’s also bad luck to wear real jewelry onstage.

  But surely the pearls were imitation.

  “Mrs. Lester, are these real pearls?”

  She crossed her arms and cocked her head. “Really, Beth? Thousands of dollars of pearls hanging in the rack room? Where do you think the term ‘costume jewelry’ comes from?”

  I smiled at her. “Of course. They just look so pretty, you’d think they were real.”

  One down. One to go. “Mrs. Lester, have you ever heard that it’s bad luck to wear a blue costume onstage?”

  “What?” She sounded indignant. “I’ve never heard any such thing. And I’ve been a costumer for more than thirty years.”

  I felt a rush of hope. Our teachers are always telling us not to believe everything we read online. Maybe someone just made up the superstition about blue costumes being cursed. If Mrs. Lester hadn’t heard of it, and Mrs. Mac had asked for a blue costume, it probably wasn’t true.

  “Can you imagine what my job would be like if I couldn’t use blue?” Mrs. Lester reached into the costumes hanging on the other side of the aisle and pulled out the skirt of a deep blue gown with a white pinafore. “What would I put Alice in?” She dropped it and grabbed a dress of blue-and-white check. “Or Dorothy? Ridiculous!”

  She marched out of the rack room and rummaged in a box on the wall marked HATS, MEDIEVAL. I followed behind her. She’d convinced me already, but she wasn’t finished.

  “I think most theater superstitions are silly, but that is the silliest one I’ve ever heard.”

  She tugged a small blue cap trimmed with pearls out of the box and popped it on my head. She backed up, put her hands on her hips, and ran her eyes over me from head to toe. Then she smiled.

  “Perfect,” she said and handed me a fan. “Find a pair of character shoes that fit and you’re all set.”

  My heart sank.

  I’d never worn character shoes before. They must have two-inch heels.

  “Can’t I just use the ballet slippers I wear with my Cat costume?”

  I knew what Mrs. Lester was going to say before she said it. “All the Duchesses wear black character shoes.”

  “I’m not very good at walking in heels,” I protested half-heartedly.

  “Then you’d better start wearing them. You’re going to need all the practice you can get.”

  I rushed up to the dressing room, wobbling all the way.

  Zandy kept everyone from talking to me as I tried to do my makeup and learn my new part at the same time. There weren’t that many lines, but the Duchess talked in tongue twisters. Whenever the King exploded in a one-word speech, I’d follow with a string of words starting with the same sound.

  When he said, “Disappeared!” my line was, “A distinctly disturbing departure.”

  I had to practice saying all the lines out loud to make sure I didn’t trip on any of them. The hardest was the one with the simplest words: “Find the fair female whose fragile foot it fits.”

  Naturally I had to say that one twice.

  Fitting the lines on my fan was a tough job as well. There was only enough room for my lines and the cues that came right before them. Any line that repeated only got taped in once.

  But I wasn’t worried. I didn’t have to know exactly where each cue came in the scene. I only needed to listen and react when the King spoke.

  When the rest of the cast arrived, we ran through the scene onstage. The blocking was a piece of cake. The Duchesses always walked in a line, and I was at the end. All I had to do was follow everyone until our exit, when we turned back the way we came in. Then I said, “Find the fair female whose fragile foot it fits,” one last time and led us offstage.

  No problem.

  Because of all the changes, Mrs. Mac asked everyone to meet in the house for notes before we started. I like being in the house just before the play begins. There’s such a feeling of expectation. The curtain is closed, waiting to be opened, and I always think the seats look eager for the audience to come in and claim them. Time for us to get our business done and back to our side of the curtain so the house manager can open the doors.

  I managed to get my favorite seat in the second row, B-8 (B for Beth and eight—my lucky number). I was feeling pretty confident.

  Mrs. Mac’s notes took longer than usual because she had to announce that we’d be one Mouse short and that I was going to play a Duchess. She’d just finished working out the changes in the curtain call—as we went out onstage at the end of the performance, I was supposed to wear the Duchess’s costume and carry my Cat headdress—when she dropped the bombshell.

  “We’ll be having a very special guest tonight,” she said. “A relative of Lucille Bow, the woman who built the Children’s Theater so many years ago, will be here. I know you’ll enjoy knowing Marguerite Fredericks is in the audience. Mrs. Fredericks was married to Lucille Bow’s nephew.”

  So, Mrs. Fredericks, who held the future of the theater in her hands, was watching this performance.

  No problem. Cinderella! was a very good play.

  Austin came up and told Mrs. Mac that a crew member was going home sick.

  No problem. He’d find someone else to crew.

  Zandy whispered that she’d just heard that our Cinderella, Emily Chang, had a temperature and wouldn’t tell anyone how high it was.

  No problem. Emily was famous for never missing a performance. She wasn’t onstage every minute. She could throw up between scenes if she had the
flu. I’d seen her do it once before when she was sick.

  I was playing a part I’d only rehearsed once.

  No problem. I had a copy of my lines pasted in my fan. I just followed all the other Duchesses onstage.

  The play would be great.

  No problem.

  The performance started off with a bang. The Mice worked around the missing performer so well, no one in the audience could tell they were one short. My scene as the Cat fleeing the purple smoke got another great laugh.

  I didn’t fret about playing a part under-rehearsed. When the moment of reckoning arrived, I picked up my fan from the prop table and trotted gaily onstage with the other three Duchesses. I snapped my fan open, and my lines were right there in front of me. I just had to listen for the King to give my cues.

  The first one came early.

  “Disappeared!” said the King, and I immediately followed with, “A distinctly disturbing departure.”

  The line got a few laughs but it should have gotten a lot more. My character was there to provide comic relief.

  I thought about how to play it a little bigger as I waited for my next cue. When it came, I threw my arms out and said, in a strong New York accent, “Talk, talk, tell us the tale of your travels.”

  The audience’s laugh was longer and louder. I breathed a sigh of relief. I shouldn’t have switched to an accent in the middle of the scene, but I figured no one would notice since I had only spoken four words without it.

  I checked my fan. Only one more line but I had to repeat it twice.

  A little Page had been moving slowly around the stage, holding out a tray of treats the King was serving in the ballroom. The Duchesses were last on his rounds. It wasn’t until I reached over to take one that I realized the spongy yellow squares weren’t foam rubber.

  Most of the time stage food is fake. I guess the director thought it would make the ballroom scene more realistic if we actually ate.

  “What is this?” I murmured through a gracious smile.