Playing Juliet Read online

  The racket made us all freeze momentarily until Austin finally motioned us on with his flashlight. But Zandy wasn’t moving. She clutched my arm, hard. “Beth, we need to get out of here. Now.”

  I put my other arm around her and whispered fiercely in her ear, “The eviction begins tomorrow morning. Unless we find this bracelet tonight, we’re not going to be doing any more plays here. Ever.”

  And your dad won’t have any reason to come see you. I didn’t have to say that. I knew Zandy was thinking it.

  She took a deep breath, dropped my arm, and started walking.

  The flashlight got us through the shop. Then it was easy. The ghost light lit our way across the stage. The stair railings, with the help of the flashlight, led us down to the basement and to the door of the costume room.

  The three of us went straight to the jewelry cabinet. Zandy pulled out the center drawer. Austin shone the light over the neat rows of necklaces and bracelets, tiaras and rings. Zandy’s magic wand glittered in the front. Huge jewels sparkled white, yellow, red, purple, and blue as the light hit them. They looked splendid—theatrical and absolutely fake. Nothing at all like the real diamonds in Mrs. Fredericks’s bracelet.

  We searched the jewelry drawers not being used in our play; first the bracelets, then the necklaces, and finally the drawer marked MISSALANEOUS. Some third grader must have written the label for it years ago. It used to make me smile whenever I saw it, but none of us were smiling now.

  We closed the last drawer empty-handed then looked through each one once more.

  “It’s not here,” said Zandy. “Let’s go.”

  She started to walk toward the hallway, but I couldn’t accept defeat that easily. I took the flashlight from Austin and ran the light over the whole room, just in case.

  Suddenly I saw a gleam on the floor near the windows.

  “Look.” I kept the flashlight steady and started toward it, weaving my way around the cutting table and along the row of sewing machines. Austin and Zandy followed close behind.

  The gleam got brighter as we got nearer. There, in the corner against the wall, shining in the light, was a pool of water. It grew slightly bigger as we watched.

  “It’s flooding,” Austin said. “That water is seeping up from the ground through the concrete.”

  “What can we do?” I asked, watching the water grow larger.

  “There’s an old sump pump in the scene shop,” he said. “It should take care of it.”

  “Why isn’t it working?” I hissed.

  “It only works if you turn it on. I’ll find the switch when we get back to the shop.”

  I handed him the flashlight and we followed him out the door, up the stairs, and to the stage.

  The ghost light had gone out.

  “Is someone here?” Zandy sounded absolutely terrified.

  “We left the door unlocked.” I was scared, too. So scared I didn’t even think of how unlucky it was for the ghost light to be off.

  But Austin had a techie’s view of the problem. “The bulb must have burned out. Should I stop and fix it?”

  “No!” said Zandy with a sound like a whispered scream.

  I was getting worried about her. Thank goodness we would be outside and heading home any minute.

  We stumbled across the stage and into the scene shop. We’ve all built sets and props there, but Austin knew it like the back of his hand. He found the switch to the sump pump before I’d gotten more than a couple of feet in the room.

  “That’s funny,” he said after he’d given it a flip.

  “What’s funny?” demanded Zandy.

  “Did you hear anything?” he asked.

  “Did you?” Her voice was a squeak.

  “We should have heard the motor turn on.” He flipped the switch off and on a couple of times then stared at it, thinking. “Shoot,” he said finally. “I bet I know what’s going on.”

  He walked to the door and reached for the light switch to the room.

  “No,” Zandy begged.

  But he turned it on. Absolutely nothing happened.

  “The power’s out,” Austin said. “That’s why the ghost light is off. And if someone doesn’t get an electrical generator hooked up to that sump pump pretty quick, the basement of this theater’s going to be underwater by morning.”

  “Do you know how to hook up a generator?” I asked.

  “If I had one, I bet I could figure it out.” He ran his hand through his hair. “But I don’t. We need to get help.”

  Zandy started shaking her head. I think she was too scared to talk. To be honest, I wasn’t feeling real courageous myself. If my parents found out where I was, I would be grounded for life. And after all this, we hadn’t found the bracelet.

  Austin was still concerned about the flooding. “If the water rises much further, the props and the costumes will be ruined,” he said.

  I suddenly remembered running my fingers over the jet beads on the cape I wore when I played Martha Cratchett in A Christmas Carol. I was tracing the intricate pattern on the black silk, wondering how many actors had worn it and what other plays it had been in, when Mrs. Lester had called me over to her.

  “That cape is over one hundred years old,” she had told me. “Look at the sewing on the inside, all done by hand.”

  I flipped it up and studied the tiny stitches. “I wonder who made it. And who owned it.”

  Mrs. Lester had reached over and felt the heavy silk. “The materials—this silk, the jet beads—were expensive, so the person must have been fairly wealthy. And since it’s all black, it was probably worn by someone in mourning.”

  Less than twelve hours from now we were going to lose our theater. Would we be mourning the loss of our costume collection as well?

  There was no choice. We had to get help. And we had to do it now.

  “Who do we call?” I asked.

  I could almost hear Austin’s brain clicking. “In an emergency, call 911,” he said. “There’s a phone here in the shop.” He paused for a moment. “Cross your fingers that it’s still working. We won’t have to say anything. We’d just call and leave the receiver off the hook. When the police come to check it out, they’ll search the whole building and find the flooding.”

  “And we’ll be long gone.” It was a good plan. With any luck at all, we’d be home free by the time the police arrived.

  But Zandy was still shaking her head. “I need to go now,” she said. “My mother can’t find out I did this.”

  “Go ahead, Zan,” I said. “Austin and I can finish up.” It wasn’t fair to desert him after all he’d done to help us.

  “We’ll be right behind you.” Austin pointed the flashlight toward the door to the flat house and she disappeared through it. Then he walked over to the phone and picked up the receiver.

  “I’ve got a dial tone,” he said, and started to punch in the number.

  We both heard something fall.

  Maybe Zandy kicked the paint cans again on her way out.

  Or maybe somebody—or something—was inside the building with us.

  We raced out of the shop, through the flat house, and back to our bikes. I’ve never run so fast in my life. Austin was right behind me.

  Zandy’s bike was gone. I jerked mine out of the bushes and tried to hop on the seat. By then, my hands were so wet I couldn’t get a grip on the handlebars. I wiped them frantically on my jeans and jumped again. The rain on the bike’s seat instantly soaked through my jeans.

  I don’t think there is anything as uncomfortable as cold, wet denim.

  As soon as I started to pedal, the rain came down even harder, lashing out of the sky until every inch of my clothes were drenched.

  Austin grabbed his bike, made a running start, and almost slipped off because his seat was so slick. We stuck our helmets on as we were riding out of the driveway.

  We’d pedaled down the street for at least a block before I asked, “Did you finish dialing?”

  Austin’s helm
et bobbed. “I got an operator, dropped the phone, and ran. Let’s hope someone comes to check it out.”

  What will happen if they don’t? I thought.

  “I didn’t lock the padlock,” he added. “I just threw it on the ground.”

  We rode in silence through empty roads lined with dark houses and windblown trees. My bike skidded as I steered around a large limb lying in the middle of the street, but I regained my balance.

  “Thanks,” I called to Austin before I turned off at the next block.

  The hair hanging out the back of my bike helmet was plastered to my neck. I shook my head but it didn’t budge. The rain was slashing so hard against my face I could barely see.

  I stowed my bike at the side of the house and climbed quietly into my bedroom through my open window. I didn’t think it was possible to feel worse than I did at that moment.

  And then I heard my father’s voice from the chair at the other end of my room. “And just where have you been, young lady?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions!

  Shakespeare’s Hamlet

  Parents have a lot to say when they find you sneaking into the house after midnight. And they keep saying it, over and over.

  My mother must have said, “I can’t believe you broke into the theater—in the middle of the night—all by yourself,” at least ten times.

  My father must have said, “I can’t believe you were biking around town—in the middle of the night—all by yourself,” at least twenty times.

  They both said, “Do you realize you could have been killed?” a lot more.

  Somehow I managed to keep Zandy and Austin out of it. I told my parents that I’d ridden to Zandy’s house and thrown pebbles at her window, but she never woke up. I said that I had opened the padlock to the back door once when I was working in the shop and remembered the combination.

  Yeah, I lied, but how could I tell on Zandy? It would kill her if her mother found out. And Austin? He had come out in the middle of the night to help us. Dragging them into this wouldn’t help me one little bit. And the rest of the story was true.

  As soon as I mentioned the flooding, my father called Mrs. Mac. He didn’t have any trouble finding her number.

  It was really, really embarrassing that he had to tell her I broke into the theater. It helped a little that Mrs. Mac said it was logical to search for the bracelet in the jewelry cabinet, so logical that she’d checked there the day before. She thanked my dad for calling and said she would take care of the water seeping inside immediately before it did any real damage.

  At least I saved the basement from flooding.

  But as soon as my dad hung up the phone, the questions started again.

  “Why did you have to talk to Zandy in the middle of the night?” asked my mother. “You’d been with her almost all day.”

  “Why couldn’t you wait until the morning?” asked my father.

  This time I didn’t have to lie.

  “Because it’s Monday! The morning could be too late.” I knew my reason for sneaking out would start to make sense to them. “I overheard Mrs. Fredericks say she was going to tell her lawyer to begin evicting us today. I wanted to find her bracelet before they started moving all the theater’s stuff onto the sidewalk. Just in case it made her change her mind.”

  That’s when my dad buried his head in his hands and started to breathe in big noisy gulps, his shoulders shaking up and down.

  A wave of guilt swept over me. Had what I’d done made him cry?

  Then I looked over at him and realized he was laughing at me. Hard.

  “I’m tired,” he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “So that’s why you snuck out? You wanted to stop the eviction proceedings before they began?”

  I nodded sulkily. His voice had gone squeaky when he said “eviction proceedings” like he was trying not to laugh again.

  “Well, it gives me no end of relief to know that my daughter is not in the habit of acting like a juvenile delinquent without great provocation. But if you had bothered to ask me, I could have told you that all Mrs. Fredericks can do to evict you from the theater is get her lawyer to write a letter saying she’s not going to renew the lease and she expects the theater to be vacated when the lease expires.”

  A wave of relief shot over me. We had a few more months to pray for a miracle. The lease didn’t expire until September.

  My mom looked at me and yawned. “We’ll finish this tomorrow. Dad and I have to decide your punishment and right now I’m so angry that grounding you for the next ten years sounds way too mild.”

  She picked up my wet jeans and held them out in front of her with distaste. “Next time you’re worried about a legal matter, ask your father instead of Zandy. That way I’ll get a lot more sleep.”

  Dad got up to go back to bed, too. “There seems to be a certain misplaced logic in your actions,” he said. “But they were very dangerous and there have to be some serious consequences.” His voice sounded strained, like he was fighting to smother another laugh.

  He reached out to ruffle my hair as he headed for the door. “Still, I’ll see if I can talk your mother into a reduced sentence,” he added. “After all, Scooter, I’m a lawyer. I’m good at that kind of thing.”

  It was after 3:00 a.m. before I fell asleep.

  My stomach was crawling with mice, vicious beasts that were trying to eat their way out from the inside. When I heard the alarm go off in the morning, I woke up with a small cry of pain. We had lost the theater.

  The first thing I did was take the phone under my covers and call Zandy. I didn’t even say hello when she answered, just whispered, “I got caught last night. They don’t know about you. Don’t say anything.”

  I heard her gasp as I hung up.

  I got out of bed and opened the curtains to a day that was mocking me. Sunshine poured in the windows and a hundred flowers chose today to bloom. I don’t own a beaded black cape, so I put on the closest thing I had to mourning clothes—a black T-shirt and a pair of black jeans.

  R. J. was coming out of the bathroom as I started down the hallway to the kitchen.

  He looked worried. “What happened last night? I kept waking up hearing people talking.”

  “Didn’t Mom and Dad say anything?”

  “No, but they’re really upset about something.”

  When you’re sneaking out at night, you never think about how hard it’s going to be to explain it to your little brother.

  “I did something really dumb last night.” I bent over and looked at his face to make sure he was taking this seriously. His eyes were staring straight into mine, his mouth open slightly. “I snuck out and rode my bike over to the theater to check something.”

  R. J. gave a little gasp.

  “Mom and Dad caught me when I came home.”

  R. J. looked as shocked as I hoped he would—I never want him to make the same mistake I did. “What are they going to do to you?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  I didn’t know and I didn’t care. Whatever they decided didn’t matter. Our theater was closing, and I didn’t think anything worse could ever happen to me.

  It really helped that R. J. gave me a quick hug.

  I got to school so late, I didn’t get a chance to talk to Zandy until the first break.

  We headed for the knobby old pepper tree at the back of the playing field where we go when we want to be alone. Poor Zan. She looked so guilty. When we reached the tree, she didn’t say a word, just turned and ran a fingernail down the cracks in the trunk.

  “My dad caught me climbing in the window last night,” I said.

  “Did you tell him about me?” Zandy half-whispered the question.

  “No. I told you that when I called. What good would it do to get you in trouble?”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Then I told her the whole story of what happened, with as many details as I could rem
ember. And sure enough, as soon as I was done, Zan asked again, “Are you sure no one knows about me?”

  “I told you. Everyone thinks I was riding around town all by myself.”

  “Thanks. A lot.” Zandy pulled one of the long pink strands of dried peppercorns off the tree and rubbed it between her hands. The puffy pink shells around each corn dissolved into dust. “What are your parents going to do to you?” she asked as she dropped the dark wrinkled corns one by one through her fingers.

  I smelled the pepper and yawned.

  “They grounded me for two weeks.” Thanks to my dad. He is a very good lawyer.

  “What about Cinderella! ?” asked Zandy. “There are still four more performances.”

  “My grounding starts next Monday. My parents said they didn’t want my punishment to hurt anyone else. So I get to finish the play. But I can’t go to the cast party. And I have to apologize to Mrs. Mac.”

  “You’re lucky,” said Zandy, smiling a little. “My mom would have grounded me until I was thirty.”

  “Lucky? Starting next Monday, it’s straight home after school, no friends, no phone, no texting, no email, no exceptions.” I did a pretty good imitation of my mother’s voice, but secretly I agreed with Zandy. I thought I was getting off pretty easy, too, except for having to face Mrs. Mac.

  I rode to the theater alone after school the next day. The closer I got, the slower I pedaled. I was so ashamed of what I’d done.

  I locked my bike to the rack then unlocked it and locked it again just to be sure it had clicked shut. I stopped to tie my shoe and rearranged the books in my back pack. But no matter how long I delayed, I finally arrived at the door to Mrs. Mac’s office. It was open, of course, and she saw me before I could knock. I took a deep breath as I stepped inside, ready to begin my apology.