Playing Juliet Read online

  Sitting in the moonlight breathing in the achingly sweet scent of orange blossoms made me feel as if there were no problem in the world worth worrying about. Long ago, before the theater was built, before the land became a park, this was the site of an old Spanish hacienda. There’s a historical plaque on the theater that tells about the early building. The family who lived there had planted oranges, and one old gnarled tree survived. It grew in front of the theater, its waxy white flowers glowing in the dark.

  The sound of heels tapping along the old brick walkway broke the quiet. Mrs. Fredericks passed us heading to the parking lot.

  The lights inside the theater went out, but we sat for a few more minutes, just long enough to hear the sound of heels tapping on the brick again. The sound grew louder, more urgent, until Mrs. Fredericks rushed past us and began beating on the theater door.

  The lights came back on and we could hear voices, though we were too far away to distinguish anything being said. Then the door opened and Mrs. Fredericks disappeared inside.

  Zandy’s mother stood up suddenly and hugged herself, rubbing her arms briskly. “Time to go before we all freeze,” she said and bobbed her head toward the theater. “Unless I miss my guess, that poor woman just lost her car keys.”

  I knew Mrs. Fredericks wasn’t poor, but I also knew this was a golden opportunity to get her to like us.

  “Let’s look for her keys on the way to the car, just in case she dropped them.”

  Zandy’s mom smiled at me and then at her daughter. “What a nice friend you have,” she said.

  Zandy winked at me. She knew what I was thinking.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We two alone will sing like birds i’ th’ cage.

  Shakespeare’s King Lear

  I’d been curled up on the guest bed in Zandy’s room for half an hour, but she was still trying on clothes, still looking for the perfect thing to wear to lunch with her father. Her bed was piled so high with her discards, I couldn’t even see the pink and white striped bedspread that lay under it all—which was a shame, because her mother had hired a decorator to redo Zan’s bedroom as a thirteenth birthday present, and under all the clutter it looked like something you’d see in a magazine.

  I still remember when Zandy told me what her mom was giving her. I was so impressed; my parents’ idea of redecorating my room is to tell me to make my bed.

  Zandy held up a red jacket with a black ribbon trim. “Should we wear heels?” she asked.

  “Did you see me wearing heels tonight? See this bruise?” I held up my arm. “Besides, we don’t own any.”

  “I have a pair.”

  “Really?” This was news to me.

  “I had to wear them when I was singing with that choir last Christmas. You could buy some.”

  “By lunchtime tomorrow? I have to go to church in the morning.”

  Zandy rummaged around in her closet again.

  “How about pants?” she asked.

  “How about wearing your Fairy Godmother eyelashes?” I said with a big yawn.

  Zandy threw a shoe toward me but missed on purpose.

  “Just because you don’t have any problems,” she said, “doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t use a little help.”

  “What do you mean?” I sat up indignantly. I did not appreciate hearing this from my best friend. “What about the theater closing?”

  “You just told me Mrs. Fredericks loves theater and really liked ours when she toured it. Of course she’s not going to close it.”

  “Mrs. Mac said she hasn’t signed the lease yet.”

  “Beth, what else can the woman do with a two-hundred-forty-eight-seat theater in the middle of a public park?”

  What else could she do with it?

  I lay back into the pillows slowly, stress ebbing away, but then I bolted upright again.

  “Don’t forget how badly I messed up as the Duchess,” I said.

  “You won’t have to play the Duchess again. There isn’t another performance till Thursday and Lara’s bound to be over the flu by then.”

  I sank back down again. The pillows felt so cool and soft. Zandy was right. What else could she do with a working theater in the middle of a public park?

  Zandy pulled a blue dress the color of sapphire from the middle of the heap on her bed and held it in front of her for the third time.

  “Does this make me look older?” she asked.

  “Why would you want to look older?” I snuggled down further under the quilt. I’d gotten to bed so late the night before. And there was no reason to stay awake worrying. Zandy wasn’t going to wear that pretty blue dress onstage.

  “I want my father to see I’m not a kid anymore,” she said in a small tight voice.

  I opened my eyes and concentrated on the pattern of pink and blue roses on the wallpaper along the top of the wall. “I think my father likes to think of me as a little girl,” I said hesitantly.

  “Not mine.” Zandy shook her head decisively. “He doesn’t like being around kids.”

  Maybe there’s no such thing as a life without problems. Some of them keep popping up no matter how hard you try to pretend they’re not really there.

  “It’s not that easy to make fathers happy,” I said slowly. “My dad doesn’t like theater very much. Or at least he doesn’t like me being around theater.”

  “He comes to all your shows.”

  “He liked it when I was little, but it’s been different since I entered middle school. And I get lawyer stuff shoved down my throat all the time. Maybe if I played Portia . . .”

  “Who?” Zandy pushed the pile of clothes to one side so she could sit on her bed.

  I looked over to see if she was kidding, but she really didn’t know who Portia was.

  “You’ve got to read more Shakespeare,” I said.

  Zandy made a face at me.

  “There’s a famous female lawyer called Portia in The Merchant of Venice. My dad mentions her a lot when he talks to me, but he’s not thinking of me playing the part.”

  “Does your mom mind you acting?”

  “She was thrilled when I finally got in a show. They both were. And then proud when I started getting cast most of the times I tried out. But lately it’s changed. It seems the better I get, the unhappier they get.” I said the last sentence slowly. I hadn’t realized that before I heard myself say it.

  “Did you tell them you wanted to be an actor?”

  “This morning I asked if I could take acting lessons in San Francisco.” I turned my face into the pillow and blew a pink-checked ruffle out of my mouth.

  “Great! What did they say?”

  “They said San Francisco was too far. Only people who are serious about acting go all that way to study.” Funny, my voice sounded as small and tight as Zandy’s did when she was talking about her father. “They said it’s not for someone who’s just doing it for fun.”

  There was a long silence.

  “You need to tell your parents you’re serious.”

  “It’s hard.” I bit my lip. “It’s going to make them unhappy.”

  And what makes me think I’m good enough?

  “You’re going to have to tell them sometime,” said Zandy. “It’s the only thing you’ve ever wanted to do.”

  “I wanted to drive a garbage truck when I was three.”

  This time it was a pillow that flew across the room.

  “Zan.” I was serious again. “Your dad . . . it’ll get better. You’re growing up.”

  Zandy stood up and grabbed an armload of clothes off her bed. She dumped it on her chair, stood back, and stared at the towering pile.

  “The blue dress and heels,” she said.

  My parents picked me up to go to church at 9:30 in the morning. By the time we got back home, Zandy had left five messages on the answering machine, all about what she was wearing.

  She and her dad rang our doorbell at one o’clock on the dot. Zandy’d ended up wearing the sapphire blue dress with sto
ckings and heels after all. She looked great. She hardly even wobbled.

  Her dad was in jeans and a knit shirt. He kept smiling really hard, but when he saw me in the dress I wore to my cousin’s wedding, a little frown appeared between his eyebrows.

  “I remembered how much Zandy loved to go to Pizza Pals and watch the puppets performing,” he said. “But if you two would rather go somewhere else . . .”

  “It’s fine, Dad,” said Zandy.

  I smiled really hard, too, so he’d know it was okay with me. If we were watching the puppet show, we wouldn’t have to talk.

  But when we reached the restaurant and sat down at the benches around our table, the show hadn’t started yet. Zandy’s father tried to make conversation. He asked the usual questions grown-ups ask when they have no idea what to say to kids.

  “What grade are you in, Beth?”

  “Seventh,” I said, looking down at the menu. “Same as Zandy.”

  “What’s your favorite subject? Besides recess.” He forced a laugh.

  I’d read about a hollow laugh, but I’d never heard one before now.

  “English.”

  “Same as Zandy,” he said.

  I glanced over at her. She was smiling the same big smile as her dad and twirling her hair. Zandy likes math and music and science. English is dead last on her list of favorite subjects.

  Zandy’s dad started in again after the pizza was delivered. “What do you want to be when you grow up, Beth?”

  I looked at my pizza slice. The mushrooms and olives were different shapes, different sizes. The mushrooms were half circles with a stem, the olives were smaller, perfectly round.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  I couldn’t tell my own father the answer to that question. There was no way I was going to tell someone else’s.

  The afternoon could have been worse. No one died. The theater didn’t burn down. Aliens didn’t take over the Earth. But it was painful.

  We were watching the Pizza Pal puppets perform for the second time when the miracle happened. A little girl, about four, hugging a very tattered stuffed mouse, came up to our table. All three of us watched her out of the corner of our eyes as she stared at Zandy, then ran back to her mother and tugged at her hand, talking excitedly. The mother looked over at us—by then we were all staring at her daughter—smiled apologetically, and let her little girl pull her over to our table.

  “Did you play the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella! last week?” the mother asked Zandy.

  Zandy nodded. “Yes.”

  “Could you give my daughter your autograph? I was afraid to disturb you but Hannah, that’s my little girl, just insisted. She loved your performance so much.”

  Zandy smiled at them both, a real smile this time. “Well, sure,” she said. “But . . .” She held out her empty hands.

  The mother handed Zandy a napkin and a pen and turned to speak to Zandy’s father. “You must be so proud of your daughter. She has such a beautiful voice. And her stage presence is extraordinary. We were so excited when we realized she was sitting here.”

  Zandy’s father looked a little surprised. “I certainly am proud of her,” he said.

  I’m sure Zandy heard him all right but instead she concentrated on Hannah. “Did you like Cinderella!?” Zandy asked as she signed her name.

  Hannah bobbed her head, gripping the stuffed mouse by its long tail.

  “Do you remember the big Cat?”

  Hannah bobbed again and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

  “Would you like to have the Cat sign your napkin, too?”

  Hannah shook her head vigorously.

  Her mother smiled at me apologetically. “The Cat was a little scary if your favorite toy is a stuffed mouse.”

  Hannah never said anything. But as she walked back to her table, she was showing her mouse the napkin with Zandy’s signature.

  “Tell me about your singing,” said Zandy’s father, sounding really interested for the first time that day.

  And Zandy—Zandy the perfectly mannered, Zandy the self-assured, who talks to adults with ease and grace—looked down at her plate as if she were . . . me.

  So I told him.

  I told him how the applause grew when she came out for her curtain call in Cinderella!. I told him how she got the title role in Oliver! even though she was a girl, and I told him how she kept getting parts that usually went to older kids because of her great voice.

  Her dad listened like I was telling the most interesting story he’d ever heard.

  Then he turned to Zandy and said, “Did your mother ever tell you how we met?”

  She shook her head.

  “We were both singing in our college choir. She had such a beautiful voice.”

  “Do you still sing?” she asked, and suddenly they were talking about music just like they’d been doing so for years.

  I watched the puppet pals for the third time, nodding occasionally while Zandy and her dad chatted on. Half of what they were saying went over my head. Then they started singing little snatches of songs to each other above the din. The show ended just as Zandy’s dad was singing, “Oh, what a beautiful morning . . .” In the sudden quiet, his voice boomed out to the whole restaurant, and Zandy collapsed in giggles.

  Her dad ran his hand through his hair, embarrassed, but he grinned at his daughter while he was doing it. “I’d like to see you perform sometime.”

  Zandy shrugged, the laughing stopped.

  He noticed and thought for a minute. “Some people on the project owe me a few favors. Why don't you call me, collect, as soon as you know you’re going to be in another show. I’ll do my best to swing a trip back to see you.”

  When they dropped me off, Zandy walked me to my door, her eyes shining with happiness. “Thanks,” she said, then grabbed my arm and added fiercely, “Beth, we’ve got to save our theater.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Search for a jewel that too casually

  Hath left mine arm

  Shakespeare’s Cymbeline

  My mom was out in the garden, planting a flat of sweet peas and singing along to rock music blaring from her portable radio. I stopped and listened for a moment to the musical abilities of the woman who gave birth to me.

  No wonder I didn’t sing as well as Zandy.

  When Mom saw me, she stood, arching her back and groaning a little. “When did Zandy start wearing heels?” she asked.

  “Today.”

  She held out her muddy hands. “Want a hug?”

  I backed away in mock terror. “Gardeners don’t get hugs.”

  She stretched, groaning again. “At least tell me about your luncheon. Did you go somewhere snazzy?”

  “Pizza Pals.”

  “Oh de . . . lightful.” My mom’s got pretty good manners, too. “I’m sure you and Zandy had a good time together. You always do.”

  I could tell she was looking for a way to change the subject and her face lit up when she thought of one. “Mrs. Mac wanted you to call her as soon as you got back.”

  “On a Sunday?”

  The lines from the Scottish play sprang into my head. The theater was always dark on Sunday and Monday.

  “It sounds like a pretty minor emergency. Someone lost a bracelet at the theater last night.”

  “A bracelet? Not car keys?”

  My mom looked at me, puzzled. “I thought Mrs. Mac said a bracelet. But call her before you go over in case they found it already.”

  They hadn’t.

  Austin had been searching for an hour before I got to the theater. He filled me in on the details.

  “We’re looking for a bracelet with white and yellow diamonds set in the shape of a daisy.” He ran his fingers through his hair, which sprang back up as soon as he took his hand away. “I didn’t know diamonds came in yellow.”

  “Those were real!” I stared down at my wrist, remembering the size of the bracelet Mrs. Fredericks had showed me. “It must have cost a mint.”

  “M
rs. Fredericks is really bummed. She noticed it was gone as soon as she got to the parking lot last night. She went back to the theater and Mrs. Mac and Chuck Peterson helped her look for hours. They thought you and I might be able to trace exactly where we’d taken her.”

  So Austin and I went over every inch of the theater, retracing our steps from the previous night. I started in the girls’ dressing room, crawling on my hands and knees to check under the makeup table, then under each rack of costumes. Nothing. After I was done, Austin checked the room again. We double-checked each other as we followed the route we had taken, step-by-step. The costume shop took the longest time because we had to search through all the boxes and baskets lying open. Every time we turned around we found another one, on a shelf or a table or pushed under a sewing machine. I looked through thirteen boxes and eight baskets before we were done, all filled with shoes or scraps of fabric, reels of every colored thread. We searched through each one in case the bracelet had fallen in and slipped to the bottom. Austin saw something glittering halfway down the last box of ballet shoes and dove for it. He stood up, holding a silver gum wrapper.

  “Parking lot next?”

  “We’ve looked everywhere else.” Then a thought came to me. “The catwalk! Did she decide to . . .”

  Austin just raised his eyebrows and stared at me with a pained expression.

  “Parking lot.”

  We stopped by Mrs. Mac’s office to tell her we were going outside. She was on the phone, so we pointed to each other and then to the lobby door. Not the hardest thing I’d ever had to pantomime. She nodded at us and mouthed, Thank you.

  Austin and I walked between the theater and the parking lot twice but again we found nothing. Not even a gum wrapper.

  We went back through the lobby and sat down in the dark auditorium, in the last row on the right. The only light shone from the single bulb of the ghost light. The ghost light is put onstage before all the other lights are turned off. It stays on to give the crew enough light to leave the theater and see their way back the next day.

  Austin slumped down in his seat, dejected. “Think someone stole it?”