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 remember. 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.

But Mrs. Mac spoke first. “Beth, everyone here owes you our deepest thanks for discovering the theater was flooding. Because of you, I was able to get a team in to pump out the water before it caused any damage.”

I was so surprised I just stood there, mouth open, trying to grasp what was happening.

“The last time the basement flooded, we had to close the theater for three months. We lost half the costume collection and most of our props. You saved us from another disaster.”

But I knew I had not played the heroine in this story. I took a breath and said, “I need to apologize for breaking in to the theater.”

“Of course you do,” Mrs. Mac agreed. “While your father assured me you did it with the best of intentions, it was wrong, and I want you to tell me you’ll never do it again.”

I shook my head back and forth. “I’ll never do it again.”

“Good.” She paused as if searching for the best way to phrase her next comment. “How have your parents handled this?”

“I’m grounded for two weeks, but it won’t start until after Cinderella! closes.”

She smiled. “You have very considerate parents. It’s good of them to think of everyone who are depending on you in this play.”

I don’t know if she meant for me to think about how close I’d come to letting everyone down, but if she did, it worked. I felt selfish.

“One more question,” she said. “How did you get the door open?”

“I had to open the padlock once when I was working in the shop and I remembered the combination.” It was so close to the truth. I couldn’t mention Austin.

Mrs. Mac picked up a pencil and jotted a note on her desk. “Time to change the locks on that door,” she muttered. “I doubt you’re the only one who’s memorized the combination.” Then she looked up and pointed her pencil at me. “You’re forgiven. I’ll see you Thursday at the performance.”

I ran into Austin as I entered the lobby.

“Chuck Peterson asked me to come in to help dry up the damp places in the basement,” he said. “I hear you were the one who caught the flooding.”

“Don’t tell anyone, but I rode over here by myself late at night and got into the theater.”

“How did you do that?’

“I remembered the combination to the padlock. I just told Mrs. Mac. She’s going to change the locks.”

“Thank you,” said Austin as he walked away toward the basement door.

Seeing Mrs. Mac wasn’t so hard, I thought as I rode home. I bet the two weeks I’m grounded will just fly by. Zandy was right. I was pretty lucky when my parents decided how to punish me.

It wasn’t until Saturday, the last night of the play, that I realized just how badly my punishment was going to hurt.

I always wear my grubbiest clothes to the final performance because we strike the set right after each play ends. We bow, the curtain comes down, the costumes and makeup come off, we get into our grubbies, and we start to work.

Our first job is to return our costumes to Mrs. Lester. She was stationed in the lobby, checking off each piece and putting them in the big cardboard boxes that go to the cleaners.

I was standing in line behind one of the Duchesses, holding my Cat’s head, suit, and mittens, when I remembered the blue gown with the dripping pearls I’d worn for that one fateful performance.

“I already turned in the Duchess costume,” I told her. “I left it to be mended the night I wore it.”

Mrs. Lester looked down at her list. “Popped that in the dry cleaning box as soon as it was fixed. Now, off you go.” She reached past me for the Frog’s flippers another kid was holding.

I headed to the stage to tear down the tree outside Prince Charming’s castle. We build new trees for almost every show because trees take so much room to store and are really easy to make. I’d taken off all the branches and was just starting to unwrap the burlap on the trunk when Mrs. Mac walked into the house and went straight to the seat she sits in when she’s directing. We rarely see her during strike. Chuck Peterson is in charge then. But Mrs. Mac stood there, eighth row center, until she had our attention.

Almost everyone was onstage taking something apart. I don’t think Mrs. Mac’s ever made an announcement during strike before. That should have tipped us off that this was going to be serious, but we were all laughing and kidding around with that happy/sad feeling everyone gets at the end of a successful run.

She cleared her throat and we slowly stopped everything we were doing to listen to her.

“I’m very sorry to tell you that we will be losing the lease to this theater in a few months,” Mrs. Mac said rather matter-of-factly.

Her announcement came as a shock to most of the kids.

“What? Why?” A few kids called out, but Mrs. Mac raised her hand and, in a few seconds, the silence in the theater was total. You probably could have heard a pin drop, if anyone had a pin, and if they could have relaxed their hands enough to let anything fall. One of the smallest Mice moved closer to Emily, who put an arm around her shoulder.

“Mrs. Marguerite Fredericks, who came to the opening night of your play, is the new owner of this building, and she has decided to use this space for an adult theater company. Our lease will expire in about five months.”

“Did she ever find her bracelet?” Kwame Prentice, who played the King, called out.

“Not to my knowledge,” said Mrs. Mac and went right back to the main point. “It will take us at least three months to move out of the theater.”

I could feel drops of sweat tickling their way down the middle of my spine. I bit my lip and listened with everyone else.

“For that reason, we will not be able to schedule any plays during the summer. We are investigating whether we can find a stage to rent for an occasional production down the road. I hope the Oakfield Children’s Theater will go on in some form, even without this building.”

Mrs. Mac paused and looked at our despondent faces. Then she raised her voice. “But I’m mounting another play in this theater no matter what.”

I think Emily started to clap first.

In a second, everyone was applauding. Cast and crew, we all gave Mrs. Mac a standing ovation from the stage, to thank her for that play and for all the plays she’d directed. Somehow, our clapping turned into a chant: “What-play-what-play-what-play.”

She laughed and held up her hand. “I want to end our productions in this theater with the same play the theater opened with fifty years ago—Romeo and Juliet.”

Romeo and Juliet!

There was a buzz of excitement, especially among the high school kids. They always get all the parts in Shakespearian plays.

But anyone can audition. And for the few minutes that I would be standing onstage and reading Juliet’s lines during that audition, I’d be playing Juliet.

“As you know, the theater is always dark for two weeks between each play,” Mrs. Mac continued.

I grinned. I wouldn’t miss the auditions. I was only grounded for two weeks after today.

I sent up a quick private prayer: “Please, God, let this not be our last play. Help us save the theater.” I was praying with such concentration, I almost missed what Mrs. Mac said next.

“But because we have so little time, I’m scheduling auditions for this Tuesday.”

I don’t cry very much and never in public. There was no way I was going to start now. Just to make sure, I walked off the stage, into the wings, and started to climb. Zandy found me about ten minutes later, curled up in one corner of the catwalk.

She sat down next to me and wrapped her arms around her knees.

“The high school kids get almost all the Shakespearian parts,” she said.

“I know.”

“I’m not auditioning for this play,” said Zandy. “I’m just signing up for crew.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not that good of an actress.”

“You get better parts than I do.”

“Only in musicals. I’ve always gotten small roles when I’m not singing. Maybe we can crew together this time,” she said. She looked down on the stage, where the strike continued in a buzz of despair and excitement. “How about volunteering for props with me, E-lizzy-beth? Props always needs at least two people. And we’d get to see the play every night.”

“You really don’t want to audition?”

“If I got a part, I’d have to spend hours and hours memorizing Shakespeare,” she said with a mock shudder.

How could someone as smart as Zandy feel that way? Shakespeare’s writing was so beautiful—how could she not want the chance to work with it?

I know I did, more than I’ve wanted anything else in my life.

But how would I persuade my parents to let me audition?

That evening, it was R. J.’s turn to clear the table after dinner, and when he took the last of the plates into the kitchen, I told my parents that Mrs. Fredericks was closing the Children’s Theater for good.

“What a shame,” said my mother. She reached over and took my hand. “It was such a special place for you. For all of us—the audience, too.”

My dad reacted like a lawyer. “What’s the City Council’s reaction to this? That theater’s right in the middle of a public park. What else could it possibly be used for?”

“An adult theater.”

My mother squeezed my hand.

My dad looked grave.

It was the perfect moment.

“Romeo and Juliet will be our last play,” I said quietly. “Is there any way I could have just one day off my grounding to go to auditions on Tuesday?”

My parents looked at each other.

I held my breath.

And R. J. came in and asked if we had any more dishwasher soap.

By the time my mother came back from the kitchen, the mood was gone.

“If you auditioned and got called back, wouldn’t you need to go to callbacks the next day?” asked my mother.

I nodded, slowly. I’d sort of hoped they wouldn’t ask about the next step.

My father looked over at my mom with approval and turned back to me. “So far you would need two days off from your grounding,” he said. “And when would rehearsals start?”

“Next Saturday,” I said, even more quietly.

“And they’d run about six weeks.”

I nodded again.

“So you’re asking for a six-week-and-two-day respite from a two-week grounding?” he asked.

“You do realize that this punishment is for very serious misbehavior?” said my mother.

I looked down at the table and nodded one last time. I knew what their answer was going to be:

Straight home after school, no friends, no phone, no texting, no email, no exceptions.