The Rule of Three

by Megan McDonald

  Knife, fork, spoon.

  Rock, paper, scissors.

  Lights, camera, action.

  Everywhere you look, things come in threes. It’s the Rule of Three.

  Honest. It’s a real rule. The Rule of Three says that things are better when they come in threes.

  Think about it: Red, white, blue. Snap, crackle, pop. Bacon, lettuce, tomato.

  I’m in the middle of three. Sisters, that is. There’s Alex, oldest and (still!) bossiest, and Joey, youngest and not really a pest anymore, except for when it comes to Little Women.

  And me. Me, Myself, and I. Stevie (not Steven!) Reel.

  My dad used to be an actor, and he teaches classes and workshops in drama. He says most plays have a three-act structure. Act I, Act II, Act III. Introduction, Confrontation, Resolution. Dad calls it some fancy name, like Aristotle’s Incline or something. But really it just means Beginning, Middle, End.

  Once you start to pay attention, you find threes everywhere.

  They started popping up in science class:

  Solid, liquid, gas.

  Crust, mantle, core.

  Igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary. It even works for rocks.

  Columbus had three ships. Space has three dimensions. Even Plato said the soul has three parts. The whole world is made up of threes!

  Believe it or not, you can find rules of three in math, myth, and music; in plants, animals, and nature; in art and in architecture.

  See? I am not making this up. It’s a real rule (not a Reel rule!). Like an actual law of the universe or something.

  What goes up must come down.

  For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

  Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

  With three sisters, we know all about stuff going wrong. But at least it’s not boring. That’s what my best friend, Olivia, says.

  She’s an Only. She’s always going on about how lucky I am to be in a family of three sisters. I try to get it through her head — lots of times, sisters are like . . . well, like this magnet Joey has stuck on her bulletin board: Big sisters are the crabgrass in the lawn of life.

  Olivia doesn’t know about the crabgrass. Like fights. Fights over bathrooms and black shirts and boys, cupcakes and pancakes and parts in school plays.

  Of course, I have to admit, Olivia doesn’t get to be in the Sisters Club, either. She doesn’t get to stay up half the night laughing till she pees her pants with her two best friends in the world, who are most times right in the next bed, or the next room, or just down the hall when you need them.

  Alex has this old-fashioned poster hanging in her room that’s been there for as long as I can remember. The edges are all curled and it’s sun-yellowed now, but it’s a painting called Two Sisters by some guy named Bouguereau. (Joey calls him Booger-O!) He’s the one who painted all those pale, sad-eyed orphan girls who look lonely. In this one, the older sister has her arms around the little one, who’s holding an apple. The older sister has a blue ribbon in her hair, and dark, sad eyes, with smudges of bruise-colored roses on her cheeks.

  When I was little, I used to go into Alex’s room and point to that poster, and ask, “Why is she so sad? Does she miss her mom and dad?”

  Alex always answered the same way: “No, she misses her sister.”

  “But her sister’s right there,” I’d say, pointing to the curly-headed cherub with the juicy green apple.

  “Not that sister. The other one. The one in the middle.”

  I always loved Alex for that. For making me feel like there’s a hole there without me. For making me feel missed.

  Sisters are better in threes.

  That’s the truth.

  The whole truth.

  And nothing but the truth.

  I was making my famous Don’t-Bug-Me-I’m-Baking cupcakes when Joey came into the kitchen, waving a moldy old copy of Little Women in my face. Even though the spine is cracked, the pages are yellowed, and the mustiness factor is a seven, Mom says it’s not old; it’s classic. Joey could read it by herself, but it is (a) about as long as three Harry Potters, with teeny-tiny print; (b) full of old-fashioned kinds of words; and (c) um, well, let’s just say Joey likes to ask a lot of questions. So, we’ve been reading it aloud together.

  “Stevie, want to read Little Women?” Joey asked.

  I held up my wooden mixing spoon dripping with chocolate peanut-butter banana cupcake batter, as if to say, “Can’t you see I’m busy right now?” but Joey’s face looked so eager and hopeful, I had a hard time letting her down. “Maybe while the cupcakes are baking, we can read for fifteen minutes.”

  “Only fifteen? How about longer?”

  “That’s enough to get us past the boring part.”

  Joey looked insulted. “Huh! There are no boring parts.”

  “Yah-huh. What about all that stuff about Meg and her bonnet? Admit it, Joey. Bonnets are boring.”

  “Says you.”

  Something you should know about Joey: when she gets into something, she gets way into it. Her latest phase: all Little Women all the time, bonnets or no bonnets. Case in point:

  She gave up presents for Christmas because in Little Women, the dad’s away at war and they don’t have any money, so they have to give up Christmas presents.

  She started saying stuff like “I dare say! Nothing pleasant ever does happen in this family!” and “It’s a dreadfully unjust world.”

  She’s growing her hair to give it away to charity, so she makes me measure it a gazillion times a week!

  She even wants us to call her Jo instead of Joey. I don’t mind reading with her, but lately, I’d been stalling and making up excuses because we were on Chapter 38 and in two chapters is the “Valley of the Shadow,” when Beth dies.

  Joey is going to freak!

  All of a sudden, we heard a crash from the next room, where Alex had been clickety-clacking on Dad’s laptop. Joey and I went running and saw Alex teetering on the arm of the big overstuffed chair, staring in horror at Dad’s laptop, which had crashed to the floor.

  Good thing Dad was out in his garage/studio/workshop. He was putting in long hours building a giant genie lamp for some fat guy to pop out of in a play they’re doing at the Raven Theater, next door.

  “Is it broken?” Joey asked.

  “Just the battery popped out, I think,” Alex said, finally reaching to pick it up.

  Mixing bowl and spoon in hand, I was still stirring, trying not to lose count. “Alex, Dad’s going to kill you if you break that,” I said.

  “What’s so big and important that you have to look it up every five seconds, anyway?” Joey asked.

  “The Drama Club at school is putting on a new play, and Mr. Cannon said they’d be announcing what it will be on the website by five o’clock today.”

  “It’s only 4:33,” I pointed out, still stirring counterclockwise.

  “By five o’clock,” she said, like I’d never heard the word before. “Not at five o’clock. That could mean before five.”

  “Sheesh.” Sometimes sheesh is all you can say when your sister’s a DQ. Alex has taken every one of the quizzes in her teen magazines, and she always comes up DQ (Drama-not-Dairy Queen).

  “What do you think it’ll be?” Joey asked.

  “I hope, hope, hope it’s Romeo and Juliet,” Alex said. Surprise, surprise. She’s been wanting to play Juliet since the late Pleistocene era (a.k.a. 1.8 million years ago).

  Alex pretended to drink poison. “‘Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace. . . . A dateless bargain to engrossing death!’” She clutched her throat, then her stomach, then staggered and fell in a heap on the worn corduroy couch.

  Drama Queen to the max. Alex is always pretending to faint
, fall over, and die of poisoning, snakebite, stabbing, smothering, or beheading.

  “I hope it’s Little Women,” said Joey. “The musical.”

  “You have Little Women on the brain,” said Alex. “Besides, it’s too sad, because of Beth —”

  She’d been about to blow it, giving it away about Beth dying. Luckily, my hand got to her mouth just in time, so dying just sounded like E-I-E-I-O-ing. Never mind that I splattered chocolate peanut-butter banana batter in her hair and almost did a Cyclops on her, practically poking her eye out with my mixing spoon.

  “What’s too sad? What about Beth?” Joey shrieked, then covered up her ears. “No, wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Twinkle, twinkle, little star!” she screeched at the top of her lungs, to drown out Alex just in case.

  “Sorry,” Alex said when I took my hand away. I thought she’d yell at me, but instead she sucked a glob of cupcake batter from her hair. Joey saw that the coast was clear and cautiously removed her hands from her ears.

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” I told Alex. “You know the play’s going to be a musical.” Even though I knew how much Alex wanted the play to be a Shakespeare drama-not-comedy, I couldn’t help wishing for a musical. I love musicals! It’s kind of my thing to sing along when we watch them on TV, and everybody says I have a good voice.

  “Nah-uh.”

  “Yah-huh,” said Joey.

  “Think about it. High School Musical. Wicked. Dreamgirls. The Lion King. Hairspray. Legally Blonde. Even Young Frankenstein. Everything’s a musical.”

  “The Little Mermaid,” Joey added.

  “Wherefore art thou — doesn’t anybody do Shakespeare anymore?” Alex said, touching the back of her hand to her forehead in a swoon.

  “Not unless Shakespeare is a musical,” I told her. “They even make tragedies into musicals.”

  “That is a tragedy,” Alex said, stabbing keys on the laptop again.

  “What’s so bad about musicals?” Joey asked. “I love musicals. Stevie and I know tons of the songs.”

  “Duh!” Alex looked up. “Musicals have music, Little Sister, and with music, you have to sing.”

  “What’s wrong with that? You sing in the shower all the time.”

  “Yeah, but in a musical, you have to sing in front of other people. I’m an actor. Stevie’s the singer in this family. I only sing where nobody but Sock Monkey can hear me.”

  “I hear you,” Joey and I both said at the same time, cracking up.

  “Nobody important,” said Alex, wrinkling her nose at us.

  “Fink Face!” Joey and I screamed, and we pointed at Alex, which is what we always do when Alex makes her wrinkly pug face. That face is supposed to make us mad, but really it just makes us laugh.

  “Shh! Quiet, you guys. I can’t think. Wait, here it is! I think this is it. Mr. Cannon must have posted it. After much discussion . . . blah, blah . . . sure you’ll be as pleased . . . blah, blah . . . we are happy to announce . . . this year’s Drama Club production . . . blah, blah . . .

  “Once Upon a Mattress, the musical!” Alex announced.

  Once Upon a Time . . . to buy earplugs!

  WOE IS ME

  Starring Alex

  Me: Why did they have to pick stupid Once Upon a Mattress?

  Sock Monkey: What’s wrong with that? It’s about a princess. You love playing princesses.

  Me: Not dorky ones!

  Sock Monkey: Whatever. A princess is a princess is a princess.

  Me: Not when her name is Winnifred the Woebegone. They call her Fred.

  Sock Monkey: Ha, ha, that’s funny.

  Me: What do you know? You’re full of stuffing.

  Sock Monkey: Hey, watch it.

  Me: Woe is me.

  Sock Monkey: Don’t you mean Princess Woebegone is you?

  Me: Very funny, you. This is serious! You know how long I’ve been wanting to act in a real play, like Romeo and Juliet.

  Sock Monkey: People don’t have to die just to make it a good play.

  Me: I know. But it helps. I’m no good at comedies, anyway.

  Sock Monkey: What do you mean? You’re funny.

  Me: Yeah, right. I think you have me mixed up with Joey. Everybody knows Joey is the Funny One in the family.

  Sock Monkey: How about that time you tripped over the volcano and went flying across the stage? Everybody laughed, didn’t they? That was funny.

  Me: I broke my toe! That was so not funny.

  Sock Monkey: Why don’t you just try out for Lady Larken, then? She doesn’t have to act silly.

  Me: And let Jayden Pffeffer steal the show? I don’t think so. If I’m going to be in the play at all, I have to at least try for the lead. Then if I don’t get it, maybe I could still be a minor character, like Larken.

  Sock Monkey: C’mon, you know you’re going to try out, and you just said you’re going for the lead, and you know you’ll be great, so why not just admit it?

  Me: I so do NOT know that.

  Sock Monkey: Which?

  Me: I don’t know for sure that I want to go out for the lead. I mean, what if I do, and I’m not great? Don’t forget, it’s a musical.

  Sock Monkey: So, you’ll have to sing. But it’s not like you have to be a soprano like Stevie. At least the princess role is an alto. You can handle that, easy. And besides, “Happily Ever After” is really the only song you have to sing all by yourself, without anybody.

  Me: A solo? That does it. I am so not going out for the part!

  Joey was holding a ruler up to her hair, trying to measure her own ponytail. Mom was doing research on the laptop, stressing out and making herself jealous over all the other, way-more-famous cooking shows on TV (Hello! Maybe because they actually know how to cook, whereas Mom is an actor who fakes the cooking part) and I (Yours Truly) was dreaming up highly new and original recipes for the World’s Most Divine Cupcake.

  Lately, I’d been baking cupcakes whenever I had stuff on my mind. Baking is a great escape — I can take everything I’m feeling and put it into making cupcakes. It’s easy to lose myself in a batch of Brownie Perfection with Buttercream Frosting.

  And except for the burned batch of Don’t-Bug-Me cupcakes and the disgusting dozen of mint ones that came out puke-colored, most of my creations are edible. I’d even been thinking about entering the First Annual Cascade County (Move-Over-Betty-Crocker) Cake-Off.

  I added the Move-Over-Betty-Crocker part because bake-offs are old-school and cake-offs are way-cool. Experimenting is the best part, and any that don’t turn out gross (or get eaten) I squirrel away in the freezer.

  The only problem was that I, Yours Truly, had to work up the courage to get Fondue Sue (i.e., Mom) and Mr. Cheapsteak (i.e., Dad) to cough up one hundred clams-smackers-greenbacks-buckaroonies-dead presidents for the entry fee.

  “Hey, everybody,” Alex said, sliding into the room in her sock feet. “I have an announcement.”

  “The Hat!” said Joey. “You have to put on the Hat if you’re going to make a family announcement. It’s the rules.” Joey was referring to the old jester hat from King Lear. It’s a Reel family rule that you have to wear the Hat whenever you have something big and important to say.

  “No way. I am not wearing that smelly old fleabag,” said Alex.

  There she goes again. Always breaking the rules.

  “I’ve been thinking —”

  “That’s a first,” said Joey, cracking herself up. Joey never seemed to get tired of that joke.

  Alex was wearing this necklace she hadn’t taken off since her thirteenth birthday. It had two silver charms of the drama masks Comedy and Tragedy, kind of like good-luck charms. She nervously slid them back and forth on the chain.

  “As I was saying, I’ve been think — I mean, I thought it over and I decided I’m not trying out for the play.”

  My heart did a double-triple, mini-somersault flip-flop inside. The happy-not-nervous kind of flip-flop, like just before you open a shiny-wrapped Christmas p
resent. Alex NOT trying out for a play? I wasn’t sure I’d heard right until everybody asked, “Why not?” at the same time.

  I glanced over at Alex. Comedy seemed to be winking at me.

  “C’mon, guys. It’s Once Upon a Mattress. (a) It’s stupid and (b) It’s for kids.”

  “I’m a kid,” Joey said. “And I think it’s funny.”

  “And (c),” said Alex, ticking off the letters on her fingers, “I can’t sing.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t sing?” Dad asked. “You have a perfectly nice singing voice.” Mom stopped clacking on her keyboard and nodded in agreement.

  “You know singing’s not my thing. Not like Stevie.”

  Alex always does this. She says bad stuff about herself so people (Mom and Dad) will talk her out of it.

  I, for one, was not going to talk her out of it. I was way-down-deep secretly crossing fingers, elbows, and toes, hoping Alex was not going to try out for the play. Because ever since I’d heard that the school play was a musical, I had the idea that I could just-might-maybe try out myself.

  Alex may be the Actor in the family, but I’m the one with a good singing voice. And there are hardly any speaking lines in a musical — most of the lines you get to sing. But can I just say: if Alex found out I wanted to be in the play, she’d start acting all weird, doubting herself.

  I knew Mom and Dad would tell me that if I wanted something badly enough, I should go for it. But half the reason Alex is into acting is so she can be in the spotlight.

  It’s one thing for her to compete with Arch-Actress-Enemy Jayden Pffeffer. But I’m her sister. Even though I had as much right as she did to try out for the school play, I knew she’d think I was betraying her.

  My face grew hot just thinking about trying out. I looked from my sisters to Mom and Dad. Could anybody read it on my face? Tell what I was thinking? I tried to look like maybe I was coming down with a fever.

  “And (d) —” said Alex.

  “And (d),” I said for her, in a sarcastic voice, “Scott Towel is not going out for the part of the prince, right?” Scott Towel (real name Scott Howell, but Joey and I prefer the paper-towel version) was this kid Alex has been crushing on since the fourth grade. He happened to be the Beast in Beauty and the Beast when Alex played Beauty.