The Changeling Read online

  The drama class started with a short study of acting techniques and stage terminology and classroom improvisations. Martha managed to get through her improvisation with only minor panic, and she felt great about it afterwards. It was about that time something important began to develop in Bent Oaks Grove.

  Josie was still begging for the Tree People, and suddenly it all became possible again by making the whole thing into a play. The story of the Tree People became a serialized dramatic production, like an outdoor soap opera, with daily sequences performed for a small but enthusiastic audience.

  Martha and Ivy rebuilt the old flooring in the shallow cave for a stage, collected props and costumes and organized all the best moments in the history of the Tree People into scenes. And it was more fun than ever.

  Costuming was no problem. Ivy was able to bring all sorts of strange and exotic articles of clothing from the endless clutter of the Carson house; and what she couldn’t find, Martha could usually rescue from the forgotten depths of closets in the Abbotts’ household. Special costumes were developed for each of the important characters in the play. Prince Willow, for example, always wore a short cape made from an old Spanish shawl, and a plumed hat fashioned from a round velvet sofa cushion with most of the stuffing removed and decorated with a peacock feather pinned on with a large phony-diamond pin. It was important that each character have a specific costume, since Ivy and Martha were the only actors. Otherwise, it would have been necessary for them to mar the realism of every entrance by stopping to announce who they were at that particular moment.

  Martha’s specialties turned out to be the highly dramatic parts, including, of course, the sinister Queen Oleander. As a matter of fact, Martha’s Queen Oleander soon became a real masterpiece of menacing evil, and by far the favorite character of an enthusiastic audience of Bent Oaks theatergoers. And very soon that wasn’t just Josie, either. It wasn’t long before some of the young children who came to Bent Oaks from time to time found out about the plays and became regular patrons. And by the time they’d started bringing some friends, an audience of eight or ten little kids wasn’t unusual.

  Martha, the actress, was a real and honest amazement to Martha, the Mouse, but Ivy professed to be not the least bit surprised.

  “I knew you’d be good at it,” she said. That made Martha feel even more confident, somehow. But it didn’t explain why she could act when giving a talk to the class on even a two-minute current event, had always meant horrible sleepless nights, full of waking nightmares about stupid mistakes or even complete breakdowns with tears and panic. On the other hand acting, at least once she was on stage and had gotten started, was hardly frightening at all. Not frightening, but wildly exciting, in a way that Martha hadn’t been excited about anything in her whole life before.

  The Bent Oaks Theater was well-established by the time Miss Walters got around to the tryouts for casting the musical, and Martha signed up to try out for a straight dramatic role—only group singing and no dancing. Of course, Ivy signed up for the lead dancer, and it wasn’t until Martha saw the sign-up sheet with Kelly Peters’ name in big curly letters, right under Ivy’s, that it began to be clear just what form the lightning might take.

  The day of the tryouts Martha was thrilled—and horrified—to learn that she had gotten a part. A character part, not too important, but with some real acting in it. And during lunch hour she went, with mixed feelings, to sit in the back of the auditorium and watch the tryouts for the dancing parts. There were eight or ten girls trying out, and Miss Walters began by explaining that since they were not professionals, she was not going to ask them to do any set routines or steps. Instead, she would play a record once while they all listened, and then they would be asked to improvise to the music, one at a time. They were just to move freely to the music, any way it made them feel.

  Of course, most of the girls didn’t do much more than pose and giggle around the stage. So, when the fourth or fifth contestant had stumbled in pink-faced retreat back to her seat, Kelly Peters’ entrance was an electrifying contrast. From the moment she wafted on stage dressed in leotards and real ballet slippers, with her hair pulled back in a floating blond ponytail, it was perfectly plain that she had taken ballet lessons since she was seven years old. As a matter of fact, it began to seem to Martha, after the first dazzle of contrast had begun to wear off, that what Kelly was doing was less a dance than a carefully done series of ballet exercises. It also seemed to Martha that what Kelly was doing had very little relationship to the music, as if she had decided on the steps she would do and the order in which she would do them before she even heard Miss Walters’ record.

  But, Martha told herself, she was probably prejudiced. It certainly was obvious that the rest of the audience was very favorably impressed. When Miss Walters lifted the needle from the record, all the other contestants and watchers sighed and clapped and nodded to each other that, of course, Kelly had won the part.

  Then it was Ivy’s turn. As Martha watched her walk to the wings, she felt almost more nervous and shaky than she had for her own tryout. Ivy walked slowly to the middle of the stage and waited there for the music to start. She had unbraided her hair, and it foamed around her thick and curly. Coming right after Kelly’s pink roundness, Ivy looked startlingly wild and thin and dark. The music started, but Ivy went on standing, staring down at her bare feet, until Martha in agony, thought perhaps she was frozen with stage fright—and then she began.

  The music started out light and bright, and Ivy moved in a swinging skip, as if she were going through a field of flowers on a beautiful morning. As the music became freer and wilder, Ivy pranced and gamboled, tossing her black mane of hair, whirling and leaping like a crazy thing. Finally the dance slowed and softened with the music and at last swayed sadly into stillness.

  Martha watched the girls in the audience look at each other uncertainly, with surprised faces. One or two of them burst into applause and then quickly stopped.

  Martha knew that Ivy had not danced real ballet, as Kelly had. But it seemed to Martha that Ivy had danced the music so exactly that you felt what she did as much with your ears as with your eyes. She had danced the music, and the way it made her feel, and the way she felt about dancing. It had seemed beautiful to Martha, but she didn’t know if anyone else thought so—at least she didn’t know until she looked at Miss Walters.

  Looking at Miss Walters’ face, Martha immediately knew that Ivy had won the part of the lead dancer; and a moment later, looking at Kelly Peters’ face, Martha also knew that there was going to be trouble.

  Martha stayed around long enough to hear the parts announced—Ivy Carson, the lead dancer, and Kelly in the chorus along with five of the others. After the announcement, Miss Walters called the dancers up on the stage to talk to them. The bell had rung, and Martha couldn’t wait any longer for Ivy so she started to leave. Outside the auditorium, she passed a small group of Kelly’s closest friends, who stopped talking to stare at her. Then Debbie Ralston broke away from the group and ran after her. Martha walked faster, but Debbie caught up and grabbed her arm.

  “What did you and Ivy do to get Miss Walters to give you the parts you wanted?” she said.

  “Wha-what did we do?” Martha said. “Nothing. Just what she told us to.”

  “Oh sure,” Debbie said. “And that’s why she picked Ivy even though Kelly was a thousand times better. That makes a lot of sense. I’ll bet you gave Miss Walters some big sob story about how ‘poor Ivy’ should have the part because her family’s a bunch of drunks and jailbirds.”

  It was Debbie talking, but it sounded like Kelly’s style and vocabulary. Martha jerked her arm away and ran down the hall, but not fast enough to keep from hearing, “You and Ivy are going to get called out.”

  At Rosewood Junior High, being “called-out” was usually just talk—mostly used by boys and most often forgotten by the time the day was over. It was unusual when you heard about some determined boys who actually met after school t
o fight. Coming from a girl it was even more unusual, and frightening. A girl would have to be much angrier to consider such a thing, and a girl was less apt to mean a fair fight, one against one. Kelly probably had in mind a kind of mass attack.

  There was no chance to talk to Ivy until after school, so Martha had to suffer through two hours, pretending to think about social studies and art. What would she do, she kept thinking? How would she face it? How could she possibly face a real fight with scratching and hair pulling? And what if she ran away and left Ivy to face it alone, or did something else as terrible?

  After school, Martha ran to meet Ivy in front of her locker and got there just in time to see Ivy pulling a rolled up slip of paper out of the locker handle. The paper said, “You two creeps are CALLED-OUT. Today after school.” Ivy grinned at Martha, wadded the paper up and threw it in the trash can.

  “What shall we do?” Martha said, trying not to sound as desperate as she felt.

  Ivy shrugged. “We won’t do anything,” she said. “The whole thing is just stupid.”

  “Do you know who wrote it?” Martha asked. “And why?”

  “Kelly, I guess,” Ivy said, opening her locker and putting away her books. “And I know what it’s about, of course. But not why. I don’t really see why, at least not exactly.”

  “It’s because you won the dancing part,” Martha said. “And Kelly wanted it.”

  “I know that,” Ivy said. “I know that’s what it’s about. But that’s not why. I mean people don’t just automatically get beat up because they win a dancing part. Not that I’ve ever heard of.”

  In spite of herself, Martha laughed a little. “No, I guess not,” she said. “I guess the ‘why’ is just who Kelly is—and who she thinks she is. Like the Queen of Rosewood Junior High, or something.”

  But Ivy didn’t laugh with Martha. Instead her face tightened and she said, “Or else it’s who I am. A lot of it is just who Ivy Carson is.”

  Things Martha wanted to say ran through her mind. She wanted to say, “That has nothing to do with it,” but she knew that probably wasn’t true. And also she wanted to say, “Please, Ivy. Don’t talk that way.” But instead she only said, “They’ll probably be waiting for us on the way home. A whole lot of them.”

  “Then we’ll go home some other way,” Ivy said.

  “But if we do that, they’ll tell everybody and say we’re cowards.”

  “So what?” Ivy said. “People say all sorts of stupid things.”

  Martha’s hands started twisting together. “But—but my father says that anybody who runs away from a fight can’t ever look himself in the face again.”

  That made Ivy grin again. “Well, if he said him-self, he couldn’t have been talking about you,” she said. “Besides, my Aunt Evaline always says that fighting never solves anything.”

  Martha nodded, thinking that that sounded pretty true, but also thinking that not fighting left some things to be solved, too. At least right at the moment.

  “But how are we going to get home?” she said.

  “Easy. We’ll go out behind the auditorium and climb the fence instead of going out the gate. And then we’ll go home in a big circle. By tomorrow, they’ll probably have forgotten all about it.”

  The grounds of Rosewood Junior High were entirely enclosed in a high chain-link fence that was not at all easy to climb because the links were too small to provide good footholds. However Ivy pointed out that if you were barefooted, some good toeholds were possible. Therefore it was only necessary to take off your shoes and socks and throw them over the fence before you started over.

  Ivy reached the other side very quickly, but as Martha started down the outside of the fence, her skirt got hung up on the sharp wire ends that fringed the top. Ivy was on her way back up to help unhook the skirt, when Mr. Gregory, the principal of Rosewood Junior High came around the corner of the building.

  “All right, young ladies, what’s going on here?” His tone of voice was not exactly angry, but it was definitely cool.

  Martha and Ivy stared at him, clinging to the outside of the fence like a couple of paralyzed monkeys, immobilized with apprehension. “We—we were just climbing the fence,” Ivy finally managed.

  “That much is fairly obvious,” Mr. Gregory said. “But since there are rules about climbing the fence, and since the front gate is still wide open, it might be more interesting to hear why you are climbing the fence.”

  “We were just taking a short cut,” Martha blurted.

  Ivy actually grinned. “Well, more of a long cut.”

  The grin seemed to help. Mr. Gregory smiled, too. Or at least he twitched in a way that suggested a smile.

  “Well, may I suggest that you get down off the fence and enter the school yard in the proper manner—by the gate.”

  “You mean, we have to come to your office?” Martha’s voice quavered, and she felt her eyes begin to flood.

  “Oh no,” Mr. Gregory said rather hastily. “I don’t think that will be necessary. I was just suggesting that if you want to go back on the school grounds, you should do it in the usual way.”

  Martha realized then that Mr. Gregory had only seen her motionless at the top of the fence, and Ivy climbing back up, and had assumed they were on their way in.

  “Oh,” she breathed in relief. “But we were going the other way. We were just going home.”

  “You were leaving?” Mr. Gregory sounded a little incredulous. “You didn’t appear to be leaving.”

  “We really were, though,” Ivy said.

  Mr. Gregory sort of threw up his hands. “Very well, then leave,” he almost snapped, and Martha and Ivy skidded down the fence without even stopping to feel for toeholds, grabbed their shoes, and ran.

  19

  AFTER A LONG, TENSE and roundabout journey, Martha and Ivy reached Castle Court without seeing anything of Kelly and her gang. Martha guessed that Kelly’s ambush was probably still waiting for them just outside the school gates, but Ivy seemed to think it had all been nothing more than an empty threat.

  “They probably weren’t even looking for us,” she said. “They probably only wanted to scare us.”

  Martha wasn’t so sure. “Maybe they’re up on the hill waiting for you when you go up the path,” she said.

  “I doubt it,” Ivy said. “But I’ll go a different way, just in case. I’ll take the cutoff down to the freeway and around.” She started off up the sidewalk, turning once to look back and wave. Martha stood at the beginning of her own sidewalk, close enough to the front door to be sure that no one could cut her off from it, and watched Ivy go. She held her breath as Ivy disappeared around the corner of the Peters’ house, and breathed again when she reappeared farther up the hill. She looked tiny and alone. Martha’s fists clenched, and she actually took a few steps to run after Ivy and offer to walk her part way home. But then she stopped and reminded herself how little help she’d probably be if something did happen, and went inside and closed the door instead.

  The next morning before school, there was a knock on the door, and when Martha opened it, there stood Kelly Peters. Martha was fairly surprised to see her, but she was even more surprised at her own reaction.

  “Hello Kelly, what do you want?” she said, sounding, and even feeling, amazingly cool.

  Kelly smiled her most candied smile. “May I come in?” she asked sweetly.

  In the entry hall, Kelly got right to the point. “Look, Martha, I’m not really mad at you,” she said. “After all, we’ve been friends since we were only three years old.” Her face sharpened. “It’s that Ivy Carson I’m going to—” Suddenly the dimples were back. “Oh hellooo, Tom.”

  Tom was hurrying towards the front door wearing his dirty practice uniform and carrying his helmet. He stopped just long enough to say, “Hi Kelly. Bye Marty.” But that was long enough for Kelly to get between him and the door.

  “Is the team practicing before school again?” she asked, fluttering and dimpling.

 
Tom grinned. “Well, actually, I’m on my way to church,” he said. “I just dress this way to get attention.” Then he tucked his helmet under his arm like a football and pretended to do an end run around Kelly to get to the door. Kelly didn’t try to tackle him, but she looked as if she’d like to. She stood at the door and looked after him adoringly for all of thirty seconds before she got back to business.

  “I just came to tell you,” she said, “that it’s that sneak, Carson, that I’m mad at, not you.” She smiled winningly. “Okay?”

  But Martha did not smile and answer, “Okay.” Instead, she said very deliberately, “Okay, what?”

  Kelly sighed sharply as if Martha was being very dense. “Okay, you drop Carson, and we’re friends again.”

  Martha had observed and wondered at fits of temper all her life, without ever being able to produce anything like a real one herself—at least not at anything that was capable of returning the feeling. But now, suddenly, she was gloriously, sincerely angry.

  “Kelly Peters, you’re not my friend and you never have been. You’re a PHONY. (That was a word Martha had thought of using to Kelly at least a hundred times.) And if you think I don’t know why you want to be my friend all of a sudden, you’re crazy, besides.”

  Kelly stared at Martha, and Martha stared back, feeling almost as astonished as Kelly looked, but at the same time exhilarated, as if she’d finally accomplished something she’d been wanting to do for years. It wasn’t until Kelly had stomped out the door that she began to feel more like herself—a little frightened. There was no telling what would happen now.

  But the next few days went by uneventfully. And when the weekend came, Ivy and Martha spent part of it at Bent Oaks Grove, keeping a sharp lookout all the time and being careful to stay out of the trees. They were fairly certain that no one in Kelly’s gang could climb as they could, but it would be a bad place to be trapped. However, no one came except the usual bunch of little kids, who of course wanted to see another play.