CHAPTER TWO

Here is that

which will give language to you, cat: open

your mouth; this will shake your shaking

Shakespeare’s The Tempest

I stared at her for a moment in bewilderment, then grabbed the pins and ran up the stairs. I couldn’t stop to think about what I’d just heard.

Sometimes people outside the theater say, “The show must go on!” like it’s some kind of joke. It isn’t. It’s the most important thing of all. I had to become a cat and make people laugh before I could think.

Or panic.

The music for the Frog’s dance was just ending as I reached the wings. Austin gave me a thumbs-up sign when I dropped the pins on his desk, then started to cue the lights for my entrance.

I walked over to the curtains masking the side of the stage, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly, clearing my mind of everything that had just happened. Cat, I thought as I waited for the applause for the Frog to die down. As Cat, I could do things I’d never be able to do in real life. Cat.

I sauntered slowly onstage into the glare of the lights, swinging my tail, and said my first lines as though nothing had happened: “Here Parmesan, here Mozzarella, here Cheddar!

Come out little mice. Let’s play Lunch.

You can be It.”

While I’m upstage trying to catch a Mouse, Cinderella is downstage, being kind to an ugly Old Hag who’s really her fairy godmother in disguise. My best friend, Zandy Russell, is the Old Hag. She’s got a great voice, so she gets all the big parts—like the Fairy Godmother—that call for someone who can really sing.

The script calls for us to exit at the same time. Zandy leaves by climbing down one of the trap doors in the floor of the stage. To the audience, it looks like she’s disappearing magically because her exit is covered by a big cloud of violet smoke.

When the technical rehearsal began and all the special effects rolled out, I realized the Cat was running offstage because she was scared silly by that big purple cloud. So I showed her fear. The director liked what I was doing so much she encouraged me to work up the action even more. Now I’m onstage alone for almost a full minute after Zandy leaves. Tonight was the first real test of how well I could act without lines.

The audience started laughing when I jumped in fright at the smoke, kept laughing as I tried to run away from it, then started to clap, still laughing, as I slowly slunk off the stage.

That applause was just for me.

The prop master was standing in the wings, waiting to hand Cinderella a tray stacked with dirty dishes. He held his thumb up and grinned.

“Cin-der-elllll-a,” the Stepmother called from the wings. But the laughter was still so loud she had to wait and call again.

I stopped to listen until the laughter died down.

Emily Chang, who plays Cinderella, came offstage in answer to the Stepmother’s call. She leaned over and whispered, “Good job,” before she picked up a tray from the props table and went back on. On the other side of the stage, Austin gave me a small salute from the stage manager’s desk.

I floated all the way to the dressing room.

I opened the door and took a deep whiff of the familiar odor: makeup and old socks. It smelled wonderful.

Zandy sat at one end of the makeup table that ran the length of the room. She waved at my reflection in the mirror, pointed at the chair next to her, and went back to tucking her dark brown hair under a headband. No matter how big a part she’s had, Zandy’s always been my best friend.

The two high school girls who play the Ugly Stepsisters, Pam Thompson and Tina Peers, were doing their homework at the other end of the table. Pam wore a lime green dress, a purple wig, and a huge fake nose. Tina was in shocking pink with blue hair. She reached up and scratched her nose carefully around the big wart, which matched the color of her wig.

I shook my head in sympathy as I watched them.

All that homework!

I wasn’t looking forward to high school. I hated to think of doing math problems in the dressing room whenever I was offstage.

And then I remembered . . . that rumor Mrs. Lester had talked about. If it was true, our theater could be closed by the time I was in high school. I shook my head again to clear away that ridiculous thought. The Oakfield Children’s Theater couldn’t close. It had been here forever. Though why would Mrs. Lester be looking for a new job if the theater wasn’t closing?

By the pricking of my thumbs . . .

This time I knew the lines from the Scottish play had nothing to do with stage fright. Something wicked was threatening my theater. I needed to talk to Zandy.

“I beat you back, E-lizzy-beth,” she said as I sat down beside her.

She dug a big white glop out of a jar of cold cream. As she smeared it on her face, the wrinkle lines of her Old Hag makeup melted into gray circles. She picked up a tissue and began wiping the goop off one cheek.

Some of the little Mice were playing a game under the costume racks. The last thing I wanted was for one of them to overhear me and start to worry. So I leaned over close to Zandy, but even then I couldn’t bring myself to put what I’d heard into words.

Zandy had gone through three tissues before I spoke.

“Mrs. Lester’s looking for a new job,” I said softly.

“Rats.” She finished mopping the last bit of cold cream off her face. “We’ll miss her.”

She wet a sponge and smoothed the base for her Fairy Godmother makeup on her right cheek.

“Zandy . . .” I glanced at my reflection and broke off. The painted whiskers on my cheeks wiggled earnestly every time I spoke. A strand of my hair had escaped, its light blonde color standing out against the black fur of the Cat’s headdress. I tucked it back in and realized Zandy was staring at my face in the mirror, too.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Mrs. Lester . . .” The rest came out in a rush. “She said there was a rumor the theater is going to close.”

Zandy was so startled she raised her voice. “Close? The Oakfield Children’s Theater?”

The Ugly Stepsisters looked up from their books simultaneously. Pam, the one in the purple wig and fake nose, turned to Tina. “How did they find out?” she asked.

At least, I think that’s what Pam said. She’d dropped her voice really low. If there’s anything you learn by spending all your time at the theater, it’s how to control your voice.

Tina shook her blue ringlets. “Pas devant les enfants.”

And they both shut their books, got up, and left the dressing room.

I looked up at the TV monitor that showed the stage and frowned. “Isn’t it too early for their entrance?”

Zandy gave the monitor a quick glance, then turned back to the mirror. “Way too early.” Now she was frowning, too. “You know my mom’s made me take French since I was about three?” She whispered so quietly I had to watch her lips moving to understand her.

I nodded at her mirror image. Of course I know. If there’s a class around, Zandy’s mom has signed her up for it.

Zandy picked up a false eyelash with two-inch-long silver lashes and bobbed her head ever so slightly at where the Ugly Stepsisters had sat. “Tina said, ‘Don’t talk in front of the kids.’ My mother used to say that a lot when I was little. Before we moved to Oakfield.”

She paused. Zandy doesn’t talk much about her life before she moved here.

“Whenever I hear it, I always think something really horrible is going to happen,” she finally continued.

I picked up the lid to the jar of cold cream and screwed it back on. “We could ask Tina or Pam. They definitely know something.”

Zandy knew she’d be the one doing the asking. She opened her mouth as wide as she could and stuck the eyelash on her right eyelid. She batted her eyes to see if it was on tight. “Why not just ask Mrs. Lester?”

“She told me not to ask her anything else. She sounded like she meant it.”

“Pam, then,” Zandy said decisively, reaching for the second eyelash. “I’ve been in a couple of plays with her. She’s really nice.”

Zandy’s been in a couple of plays with almost everyone. Her first audition was on the day after her seventh birthday, the first time she was old enough to try out. She got cast as the youngest daughter in The Sound of Music. With a solo. She’s been cast in almost every production she’s tried out for ever since.

That was my first audition, too. I didn’t even get a callback.

Zandy glued on the second silver strip and batted her eyes again. “I hate the way these feel,” she said and slipped off the headband protecting her hair.

The Mice started to get up and head for the door. I checked the monitor and stood, too.

“We’ll catch Pam during intermission,” I whispered and left for my next entrance.

But Pam wouldn’t be caught. We couldn’t find her—or Tina—anywhere.

“They can’t duck us when the play’s over,” I said. “If we don’t run into them in the lobby, we’ll catch them when they’re changing.”

After the play, the lobby was so packed with the actors and the audience all talking and gesturing and hugging, it was almost impossible to move. I could see my dad on the far side of the room next to the light switch. That’s where my parents always wait for me. My dad’s really tall and blond, so he’s easy to spot. I plunged into the crowd only to be stopped by one of my little brother’s peskiest friends.

“Beth, could you sign my program for me?” he asked.

He looked at me almost shyly as he handed me a pen. “The Cat was really funny,” he said as I wrote my name. Then two kids from my class came up. And suddenly it seemed as if everybody in the lobby wanted my autograph.

It feels really good to have perfect strangers tell you what a great job you did. It feels even better when some of them say you’re a really talented actress. It took a while to work my way across the room to my parents, but I didn’t mind.

I was almost there when the ninth person stopped me. I waved at my parents before I signed her program. Mom waved back enthusiastically. She’s not as tall as my dad, but she stands out in a room almost as much because she’s got all this energy. She moves her arms when she talks and her face always shows exactly what she’s thinking. My little brother, R. J., has her brown hair. I got my dad’s. I could see my dad and R. J. out of the corner of my eye, leaning against the wall with their arms crossed, obviously ready to go home.

My parents were congratulating Zandy when I finally reached them. Mom handed me a bouquet of red and white carnations and gave me a quick hug. “What a performance! But it looks like everyone’s told you that already. How many people asked you to sign their programs?”

Zandy and I both shrugged, as though we hadn’t been counting, but I was grinning as I handed the flowers back. “Hold these while I change?”

“I always do.”

Dad leaned down for his hug. “Good job.” He held me at an arm’s length to look at my face. “Great whiskers! Any chance you two could change quickly? I’ve had a rough day.”

Poor Dad. He was usually in bed by nine o’clock.

“Ten minutes,” I promised, and we headed off to intercept the Ugly Stepsisters.

Pam and Tina must have made one of the fastest costume changes on record. They were heading out of the dressing room just as we got there.

Zandy put her hands on her hips as we watched the door close behind them.

“Something really is going on.”

“I’ve felt something was wrong for weeks,” I said. “You know that line from Shakespeare: ‘By the pricking of my thumbs . . .’” I clapped my hand over my mouth, dumbfounded by what I’d done.

“I don’t know Shakespeare,” Zandy said, starting to unzip her Fairy Godmother costume. “You’re the literary one. I only do musicals.”

I felt as if someone was staring at me behind my back. I turned around slowly to see Emily Chang holding Cinderella’s ball gown in one hand and a hanger in the other, looking at me in disbelief. She walked over and bent down to speak almost in my ear.

“Do you realize you just quoted the Scottish play?” she asked urgently, but so quietly only I could hear her. “That’s the worst thing you can do in a theater.”

Mrs. Macintosh is our director. At the beginning of every play, she tells us to come see her if anything is bothering us. The last thing she says is, “My door is always open.”

I went to talk to her as soon as I changed. I’d never gone by myself to see Mrs. Mac before, but Zandy had to take her crown and wand down to the costume shop and I was too worried to wait. I may not have been cast in the first play I tried out for, but I was part of this theater now, and I wasn’t about to let it close. I had worked too hard to get here.

I hurried down the hallway to Mrs. Mac’s office, but I stopped when I reached her door.

It was closed.

I stood and stared at it for a minute, the quote from the Scottish play running through my head as if it were printed right above the doorknob.

Thank goodness Zandy always sleeps over on opening night. I needed to talk to her so badly. I turned around and headed back to the lobby.

The crowd had thinned out but I couldn’t see Zandy anywhere. My dad broke the news to me: “Zandy had to go home, Scooter. Her mom came to pick her up. They asked us to tell you she can’t sleep over tonight.”

R. J. always plays with plastic monsters in the car. I buried my face in the spicy scent of the carnations from my parents and listened to him grunt and moan next to me as he knocked his monsters together in battle. The car turned left and in the backseat, R. J. and I swayed with the motion. But not Zandy.

There had to be a major emergency for her to go home without waiting to tell me why. Zan has super perfect manners. Now I had to worry about her as well as whether our theater was closing.

I looked out the car window. The rain had finally stopped. Big houses on big lawns changed to medium houses on medium lawns. The fruit trees were in bloom, and the white flowers on the plum trees looked like tufts of popcorn whenever the car’s lights shone on them.

I suddenly became aware of what R. J. was playing.

“Save the Cat,” he said, and a green Tyrannosaurus rex was knocked to the seat between us by a handful of action heroes.

“Am I the Cat?” I asked.

His action figures answered in as gruff a voice as an eight-year-old can manage. “You are the Cat. We save you from monsters.”

“When I was in A Christmas Carol, you guys attacked me.” I’ve spent a lot of years talking to action figures.

“The Cratchett girl wasn’t funny. The Cat is funny.”

Action figures talk in very short sentences.

My parents were talking about gardening. Right now they were debating the best fertilizer for their roses. I stopped listening and started reliving my conversation with Mrs. Lester. My dad had to call my name twice before I realized he was speaking to me.

“Beth, you won’t believe this, but some guy sitting in the row behind us said you should be doing professional work. On TV, no less.”

“Was he a TV producer?” I asked. “Or an agent?”

Both my parents laughed. I stroked the soft gray velvet of the upholstery with my index finger, counting the seconds while I waited for the reply.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Dad made another left turn before he answered.

Five. Six. Seven.

“I don’t know who he was. But I told him straight out, ‘My daughter just does this for fun. She wants to be a lawyer.’”

“Just like her dad,” Mom chimed in.

I didn’t say anything. I never do. There are some dreams you don’t put into words. And it was my own fault my parents thought I wanted to be a lawyer.

Eight’s my lucky number. I didn’t reach it.

I stared out the window at the medium-sized houses we were passing. Dark. Lights on. Lights on. Dark. Dark. Dark.

What would I do if my theater went dark forever?