22
Monday morning, an exhausted 3B walked into the auditorium. They looked around at the empty seats, the stage with the curtain that was neither up nor down, and the enormous sets that still needed to be lifted onto the stage. It seemed impossible that, in just ten hours, there’d be an actual audience!
“OKAY, PEOPLE!” Hillary Greenlight-Miller hollered into her megaphone. “THIS IS OUR ONE AND ONLY DRESS REHEARSAL. FIND YOUR PLACES!” She clutched her Things to Do List.
Slowly, Donut walked to the front of the stage, opened his mouth, and said . . . absolutely nothing.
“DONUT!” Hillary bellowed.
“I can’t do it,” Donut whispered. “The play is still too long, the dances are still too hard, the pants have way too many buttons and are still much too tight.”
Hillary looked around. “DIDN’T ANYONE MAKE ANY CHANGES THIS WEEKEND? I GAVE LOTS OF DIRECTIONS.”
“The play is not too long,” Norbert said. “It’s perfect.”
“I have fifty-five lines, Norbert,” Agnes said. “And I’m not even a lead.”
“My dances aren’t too hard,” Fletcher said. “Everyone should practice.”
“We’ve been practicing,” Agatha and Desdemona whined.
The class looked at Donut’s pants, but it was impossible to deny their tightness and the ridiculous number of gold and yellow buttons.
“Yellow buttons are stylish,” Agatha mumbled.
“Gold ones are better,” Agnes said.
“And what’s going on with the curtain?” Norris asked.
3B looked at Maude and then at one another with almost as much dread as they felt before taking a practice exam. If they didn’t do something, Banana Pants would be a disaster, and Principal Fish would never let another class have a creative endeavor.
Hillary Greenlight-Miller looked at her cast and crew and tried to remember what things had been like before Banana Pants, back when 3B was just 3B. Hillary thought about that long-ago Monday morning when Desdemona happily shared about her gymnastics show and Donut talked about his French crullers, and Agnes and Agatha, the very best of friends, were thrilled with their simple, tiny animal clothes.
And then something unexpected happened.
Hillary Greenlight-Miller put her megaphone down. She walked down the aisle, got on the stage, and walked over to Donut, who was trembling. The class held their breath, but Hillary did not yell. She did not say anything as she very dramatically tore up her Things to Do List.
3B gasped.
“What are you doing?” Norbert asked, his voice cracking. “That list was so long! There were so many words.”
Hillary looked out at the class. “I,” she said loudly, “am endeavoring.”
No one said anything.
“Remember when we first learned what a creative endeavor was?”
The class nodded.
“Our purpose was to put on a class play, right?” Hillary asked.
“Right,” Norbert and Fletcher and Desdemona said.
“Well,” Hillary continued, “the playwright George Bernard Shaw said that ‘the quality of a play is the quality of its ideas.’”
“Wow,” Maude said quietly. “That’s something my dad would quote!”
“I think our idea, Banana Pants, is of good quality.”
“Thank you,” Norbert said.
Hillary shook her head. “But we took our own ideas too far.” She picked up a handful of the torn-up list and threw it in the air. “And I put too many things on this list,” she said. “I forgot about the people—the people who had the good ideas for the play.”
3B nodded.
“Donut,” Hillary said almost gently. “Close your eyes.”
“What?”
“Trust me,” Hillary said.
Donut closed his eyes.
“Now, imagine that the audience isn’t people. Imagine that the audience is doughnuts.”
“Doughnuts?” 3B said.
“Doughnuts,” Hillary repeated. “Imagine chocolate doughnuts, jelly doughnuts, coconut doughnuts, delicious rainbow-sprinkled doughnuts.”
Donut imagined hundreds of doughnuts eagerly waiting to hear what he had to stay. I could be king of the doughnuts, he thought. His mouth started to water, and his tongue got unglued from the roof of his mouth.
“Once upon a dark and stormy night,” Donut said loudly and clearly. “There was a pair of extremely yellow pants.”
3B cheered. If Hillary could put down her megaphone and rip up her list, and Donut could say the opening lines, there was nothing they couldn’t do. Right away, Norbert cut the entire first act. Although he shed a tear here and there, he had to admit that, without act one, the actors could learn all of their lines and there was much less of a chance that the audience would fall asleep. Inspired by Norbert’s willingness to cut his words, Fletcher simplified his dance numbers and agreed that Desdemona could do a front handspring at the end of each one. By lunch, Agnes and Agatha had doubled the width and length of Donut’s pants and removed almost all of the buttons, and Felix had sawed his mountainous sets in two so the stage was visible.
Now that Miranda was able to put her props in the correct places on the more reasonably sized sets, and her already small role of Silent Mysterious Woman with the Fish was even smaller, she had only one thing left to do. Which was the hardest thing of all. Taking a deep breath, she walked behind the stage and over to Maude, who was still trying to raise the curtain. Miranda’s heart began to race, and she felt as thirsty as Donut had been on the stage. Apologizing to Maude seemed impossible!
But then she remembered what Maude had said that first early morning. Miranda could clearly hear Maude saying, “It’s not impossible! When you do something wrong, you apologize. You say, ‘Sorry, that was a terrible idea. I won’t do it ever again’!”
“Maude,” Miranda said, her heart thumping wildly, “I am sorry. My secret letter writing was a terrible idea.”
Maude let go of the curtain rope and turned to look at her friend.
“I won’t do it ever again,” Miranda said. “You asked me not to and I did it anyway. That was wrong.”
Maude smiled. “I didn’t want you to write love letters,” she said. “But I think . . . I think it might be good for my dad to make friends. You were right about that.” She shrugged. “Love is not my cause. But it doesn’t mean it can’t be yours. But no more secret love letters,” she added.
“Never,” Miranda said, full of relief. “I promise. I don’t want to write any more letters. At least not on my own. But I did think of another cause.”
Maude gave Miranda a doubtful look.
“Composting!” Miranda squealed. “Shouldn’t Mountain River Valley compost?”
Maude’s eyes grew wide. How had she never thought of that? Composting was a terrifically amazing idea!
“I thought of it when I was throwing out my lunch,” Miranda explained. “Now that the Styrofoam trays are gone, there’s less garbage. But there could be even less if Mountain River Valley composted the leftover food.”
“Wow,” Maude said.
“Speaking of food, or rather candy, this came for me the other day. I have no idea why.” Miranda held out a packet of Rainbow Sweeties.
Maude stared at the candy.
“There are five big boxes of them at the castle, too. I don’t know why I’m getting so much candy. I thought everyone knew I don’t like sweets.”
Miranda pushed the packet closer to Maude, but Maude didn’t take them.
“Is it because of rule sixty-eight?” Miranda asked. Rule sixty-eight stated that candy could not be eaten in school unless it was a national holiday. This made no sense, since school was never open on national holidays.
Maude shook her head.
“Are you still mad?” Miranda sounded worried.
Maude shook her head again.
“But you love candy. And Rainbow Sweeties are your absolute favorite.”
“That candy is part of my heinous crime!” Maude shouted, dashing out from behind the curtain and across the stage just as Donut, Desdemona, and Agnes were finally getting the hang of Fletcher’s easier version of the jitterbug.