Romeo and Juliet Get Down and Boogie. That’s what most of the kids wanted to call the show. But not Mr. MacWilliams. “I wrote it,” he said, “and I’m naming it.” So it’s called Romeo and Juliet—Now!
It’s supposed to be like the real Romeo and Juliet (by Shakespeare), only brought up to date. For instance, Romeo whams Whoppers at Burger King, and Juliet grills Big Mac meat at McDonald’s, which is right next door. They arrange to take their breaks at the same time, and they meet in the shadows of a Dipsy Dumpster.
Romeo and Juliet have to meet in secret because their parents don’t want them together. Romeo’s parents are strict vegetarians. If they knew Romeo was working in a hamburger joint and fooling around with a meat-eater, they’d probably kill him. As for Juliet, her father’s a butcher, so naturally he would never let his daughter near a vegetarian. I don’t know what Shakespeare’s show is like, but it has to be better than that. Anyway, that’s about all I know, because soon after tryouts started, I got kicked off stage crew. Here’s how it happened:
It was taco day in the lunchroom. Maybe that’s why I got so mad. I love taco day, and I hate having it spoiled. Which is what Sue Ann did. How? By running off at the mouth again about the girl from California.
“Guess what?” she started.
Stupid me, I bit. “What?”
“Guess who’s trying out for Juliet?”
“Miss Piggy.”
“No,” she said, not even cracking a smile at my little joke. “Zoe.”
I swear she pronounced the name like she was praying in church. I honestly believe Sue Ann thinks Zoe Miranda is Mrs. God. “I’m impressed,” I said.
“Well,” she said, “isn’t that goochy?”
“Goochy? Where’d you get that word? Never mind, I know.”
And then we both said it: “Zoe.”
“So what’s goochy supposed to mean?” I asked her.
“It means, y’know, sensational. Really something. Y’know?”
“So why is it goochy that Zoe is trying out for Juliet?”
“Why? Man, Megin, don’t you know—”
“Your taco, Sue Ann.” If it’s taco day, you can always tell when Sue Ann is getting hyper: she tips her taco more and more as she’s eating it, till all the stuff starts falling out the other end.
She restuffed her taco. “Don’t you know who Mr. MacWilliams wrote the part for?”
“Miss Piggy.”
“Maggie Wentzel.”
Actually, I knew the answer. Everybody knows Maggie Wentzel wants to be an actress. “So?”
“So? So Mr. MacWilliams wrote the part before Zoe ever showed up from California. So now they both want to be Juliet. So now who’s Mr. MacWilliams gonna pick?”
“Your taco, Sue Ann. How should I know? That’s his problem.”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing—” Sue Ann’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Maggie Wentzel hates her. Hates her. She wants to kill her.”
“Great,” I said. “At least there’s one person who’s not slobbering all over Zoe Miranda.”
Sue Ann blinked. “What do you mean by that?”
“Groveling and sniveling.”
“Megin—”
“Kissing her goochy butt.”
“Megin, just because—”
“Taco.”
“—because I talk about somebody doesn’t mean I’m groveling and sniffing.”
“Sniveling.”
“You’re just jealous, that’s all.”
“Yeah, right,” I snickered, “I’m jealous. Because I can’t wear silver sandals too.”
“She’s wearing shoes now.”
“Right—silver ones. So what’s next, silver boots? I’m really jealous of that. I wish I could worship Halley’s comet too, and wear green toenail polish and anklets on both ankles and a ton of makeup. Yeah, I really wish it, no kidding.”
Sue Ann’s lower lip pouted out. “Yeah? I bet you wish you could wear a bra like her too.”
“That so?”
“Yeah. You’re jealous ’cause she’s a real girl.”
“Really? Since when did you start shopping in the lingerie department?”
“At least I feel like a girl.”
“That so? What do you think I feel like?”
She burst out giggling. “Wayne Gretzky.”
“Well here, feel this—” I reached across the table and mashed her nose in with my finger; then I shot my chair back and jumped up to leave. There was a jolt behind me, a screech, glass sliding, crashing, and suddenly my jeans were all warm and wet with taco stuff. Zoe Miranda was glaring at me through her green eye shadow. “You owe me a taco.”
“You owe me a pair of jeans,” I told her.
“You owe her a whole lunch,” one of her grovelers butted in.
“Who asked you?” I shot back.
The California girl batted her green eyelids once. “You backed into me.” She didn’t raise her voice. She said it real slow, all calm and collected and silver shoes and bra sticking out and gold hoop earrings. “You backed into me,” she repeated.
I couldn’t think of what to say, so I just kept glaring at her, at her silly green eyelids. I noticed they weren’t just green, they were silvery green.
“Whose fault was it?” piped up one of the other grovelers. She was asking Sue Ann.
We all turned. Sue Ann sat frozen at her place, her taco practically straight up and down, a little mountain of taco stuff growing under it. Her eyes were wide as windows; they kept shifting from me to Zoe. She didn’t speak.
“You backed into me,” came the calm, silvery voice.
The green eyelids were unblinking. She’s a real girl. She’s a real girl. Then the words were coming out of my mouth: “You wanna fight?”
The green eyes grinned, the golden hoops hopped, the lipstick smirked. The silver girl from California turned and walked away. Her grovelers followed. They were laughing out loud.
I didn’t speak to Sue Ann till next day, at stage crew. Tryouts were in the front part of the stage. We were in the back. Our job was to mix about a ton of shredded paper with flour in a couple big boxes. Later we would boil it in pots in the Home Ec kitchen to make papier-mâché, which would then be slapped onto a frame that the boys were working on. The whole thing was going to wind up as a five-foot-high Whopper.
Sue Ann didn’t say anything. She couldn’t even look at me. She just kept stirring her paper. I let her stew for a while, then I said, “Thanks a lot, Sue Ann.”
“Huh?” she went, as if she didn’t hear.
“You heard me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.” Her face was sinking deeper and deeper into her box. “You coulda stuck up for me, you know. You didn’t have to go joining Zoe and her grovelers.”
“I didn’t join them.”
I could barely hear her voice. “Well, you didn’t exactly come racing to my rescue, did you? I thought I was supposed to be your friend.”
“You are.”
“Yeah, sure. You got a great way of showing it. The whole place was laughing.”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, it must make Zoe Miranda feel pretty powerful. Walking into this school and snapping her fingers and—zap—there goes my best friend. Excuse me, my former best friend.”
“I am your best friend.”
“Traitor.”
“No!”
She was starting to cry. It’s an old trick of Sue Ann’s, whenever she wants sympathy. Trouble is, I always fall for it. So in another minute or two, it was like nothing had happened. We were laughing and throwing shredded paper and making fun of the auditioners. We could hear them but we couldn’t see them, because between us and them were all kinds of scenery junk, including the McDonald’s golden arches. They were the first thing the stage crew made. They were huge.
At first the Romeos were trying out. Each one had to do a speech and sing a song, “Whopper Woo.” Every couple minutes, even in the middle of the song, we could hear Mr. MacWilliams’s booming voice: “Val-dooo-cci!”
I don’t know why Mr. MacWilliams did it, but he put El Grosso’s idiot friend Valducci in charge of the lighting. That’s why the stage lights were always changing colors, like we were in a disco or arcade. And that’s why the spotlight was never where it was supposed to be, but roaming all over the place: on the auditioners in the wings, the walls, the ceiling, the back of Mr. MacWilliams’s head. Sometimes a sliver of spotlight would reach all the way back to us. “Val-dooo-cci!… Val-dooo-cci!”
The Juliets came after the Romeos. Their song was “Squeeze Me, Please Me, Cheese Me.” Maggie Wentzel did it first. She was great. I would have given her the part right there. Then it was Zoe’s turn. Sue Ann and I stopped mixing paper to listen.
“I don’t think she’s so hot,” I said. Sue Ann just shrugged. I jabbed her. “She’s really rotten, isn’t she?”
She shrugged again. “Sort of.”
I laughed. “Come on, Sue Ann, tell the truth. I won’t get mad.”
She grinned. “I think she’s great.”
“She stinks.” I laughed and kicked over her box.
Suddenly her face broke out in horror. She pointed to the floor and squealed: “Look out!” Something was heading away from the kicked-over box and straight for me. A roach! A BIG roach! I jumped up and backed away. That’s when I tripped over something, and next thing I knew I was stumbling backward. I couldn’t stop. Behind me, Zoe was into the long, final high note of the song. Then I banged into something else and fell. World War III. Crashes all around. But the high note never stopped. I looked up in time to see a big scenery panel fall forward, and there was the bright-lit stage front, with Zoe Miranda singing the high note out toward Mr. MacWilliams in the auditorium, her arms high in the air, her fingers spread out. Down came the golden arches—slowly, like they didn’t really want to—and as they came down, Mr. MacWilliams came up, and as they toppled down over Zoe Miranda like a giant halo, she never flinched, never stopped singing. The crash of the golden arches and the end of the note came at the same time.
Dead silence. Zoe Miranda, arms still up, was turning slowly toward me. Then everything went white: the spotlight was on me. And out of the blinding light came Mr. MacWilliams’s booming voice: “Out! Tofer! OUT!”
It took me about three seconds to scramble around for my book bag and get out of there. The spotlight followed me all the way. In fact, even as I was walking home, I could have sworn it was still on me.
Sue Ann slept over that night, along with her monkey, of course. We were all serious at first, her apologizing for screaming and getting me in trouble, me telling her to forget it. Then she started grinning at me. “Megin?” she said.
“Huh?”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Speak.”
“You wouldn’t believe how funny it looked. You stumbling backward and all.”
“I couldn’t stop.”
“I know.”
“I was trying to stop and not fall on my butt at the same time.”
“I know, I know!”
“I crashed!”
“Ka-boom!”
“And the scenery! Everything!”
“Ka-boombah!”
We howled.
It was while we were howling that I reached into my book bag and pulled out a half-eaten Milky Way. Something else came out too: a roach. Probably the roach. It plopped onto some paper—you could hear it—and disappeared. I blinked through my laughter tears. “Omagod.”
Sue Ann saw it too. “Eeeek!” She jumped onto a chair. “Megin! Kill it!”
“Kill it? I gotta find it first.” I started kicking stuff aside. “Come on.”
“I’m not coming down there! I’m scared to death of roaches!”
“I don’t exactly love them either, bozo, but we gotta get it or I’m the one that’ll get killed. Grosso’s always saying we’re gonna get roaches because of me.”
She still wouldn’t come down, so I gave her my hockey stick. She started swishing through the floor stuff. “If you see it, mash it,” I told her—but at the same time, an idea hit me. “No, don’t mash it.” I ran to the bathroom and brought back a paper cup.
“What’s that for?” she squealed.
“Never mind. Just find the roach. And don’t mash it.”
Well, for the next ten minutes it was “Megin, there!… Megin, there!” and each time I looked “there,” the roach was gone. But finally I got it—I gave Sue Ann’s monkey a shake and out it fell. I pounced like Gretzky on a loose puck—down came the paper cup. The roach was trapped.
One by one I pulled the papers and stuff out from under, till there was nothing but an old postcard beneath the roach. I lifted the postcard, keeping the cup clamped to it, and carried the roach out of my room, down the hallway, to El Grosso’s room. He was inside. The door was shut. I crouched. I pressed my little surprise to the threshold. I tilted the postcard, lifted the cup. The roach ran under the door.