The Rule of Three

by Megan McDonald

  “Yeah, but, I thought —”

  “It’s no big deal. We just have to come in costume. I guess Mr. C wants to make sure we can still sing with those big, pointy hats on or something.” She giggled.

  “I’m dead.”

  “How come? What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t come. I have something important I need to do tomorrow.”

  “So, just tell him. He’ll understand.”

  “Yeah, right. Mr. Anybody-Who-Misses-a-Practice-Gets-Kicked-Out-of-the-Chorus. You know how strict he is about showing up. You’re only allowed to miss like one practice.”

  “Have you missed any?” asked Samantha.

  “No.”

  “So?”

  “Yeah, but this is dress rehearsal. How could this have happened?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been on the rehearsal calendar forever. And it says full cast.”

  “I didn’t know it meant the chorus, too. Yep, I’m officially dead.”

  I took an excruciatingly long time packing up my stuff. When the auditorium was empty of all other kids, I inched over to Mr. Cannon.

  I cleared my throat, but my voice sounded like a mouse’s anyway. “Mr. Cannon, could I maybe talk with you for a minute?”

  “Sure, Stevie. Is everything OK? You seemed a bit, shall we say, distracted today. I need you to focus, and make sure you come in with your ‘dragonfly’s wing’ line on cue.”

  “I know. It’s not that. Look, I have to tell you something, and I know it’s going to make you mad, but, see, I read the schedule and everything, and how it said full cast for dress rehearsal, but I didn’t know that meant everybody. I mean, I knew it meant cast members, like actors, but I didn’t know it meant the chorus, too.”

  “And . . . ?” he said, motioning with his hand for me to go on.

  “And, um, well, I can’t come tomorrow. See, I really like to bake and stuff, too, and I’m entering the Cascade County Cake-Off, and it’s tomorrow, and I didn’t know and I had to pay a hundred dollars just to be in it, and it’s at the same time, so I don’t see how I can —”

  “Be in two places at the same time?” Mr. Cannon finished the sentence for me.

  “Exactly.” I let out a breath. It was a relief to have the words no longer knotted up inside me.

  “Look, Stevie, I’m glad you came to me in person to let me know, but it’s not the end of the world. You’re my strongest soprano, and you’ve had these songs down for weeks.”

  “Really? You mean it? So it’s OK if I can’t be here tomorrow? I can still be in the play?”

  “No worries. I was aware that this might present a problem long before now. Honestly, when I first heard that you had other major commitments, I was concerned that it might interfere with practices.”

  “You were?”

  Mr. C nodded. “But I don’t think you’ve missed a single practice. You’ve shown me you’re committed to this play.”

  I was aware . . . might present a problem . . . when I first heard . . . Mr. Cannon’s words knocked around inside my head like blueberries in a blender. “Wait — you mean you knew? About the cake-off? But how? Who . . . ?”

  “Alex mentioned it to me.”

  “Oh. Really? When?”

  “The day you auditioned, she told me it might be difficult for you to be at all the rehearsals, because you were entering the baking competition.”

  “You mean she told you before you decided who got the parts?”

  “Yes, the day of the audition. But that’s not why I put you in the ensemble, Stevie. Your voice is key to my whole chorus.”

  “But I . . . never mind. Thanks, Mr. Cannon.” I picked up my backpack and slung it over my shoulder. Suddenly, it felt as heavy as two tons of concrete. I trudged up the aisle.

  “Oh, and Stevie?” called Mr. C behind me. “I almost forgot. Can you give this to your sister? It just turned up, and I know she’s been looking for it.” Alex’s missing charm. He held it up, dangling it in the air. Comedy seemed to scoff at me.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” Mr. Cannon said. “Knock ’em dead at the cake-off tomorrow, kiddo.”

  Quiet anger is worse than the yelling kind. With the yelling kind, you scream at your sister, “Don’t talk to me again. Ever!” and after you yell, the tight fist inside you lets go, and you can breathe again.

  But quiet anger is like that experiment we did in Girl Scouts in the third grade — the one where they pass out a can of soda and a nail and you think you’re going to get to make some cool rocket or something. Instead, you drop a nail in a can of soda and wait to see how long it takes to rust out and fall apart. The soda slowly eats away and eats away at that nail until it dissolves and disappears.

  And guess what? The nail is supposed to represent the inside of your stomach. (Needless to say, I didn’t drink a soda for weeks and weeks after that experiment.)

  After play practice, I felt the anger, like that nail, eating away inside me, poisoning my insides way worse than sugar and chemicals.

  Alex is my sister. How could she do something so mean-awful-wicked? This wasn’t like sneaking into your sister’s room or peeking into your sister’s diary or borrowing your sister’s shirt without asking. Normal sister stuff. Petty crimes.

  But this — she had actually gone and told Mr. Cannon that I would not be able to handle a big part. Even though he said that’s not why he put me in the chorus, the truth was, Alex had still gone behind my back and tried to turn him against me.

  So not fair!

  I felt like screaming. I felt like ripping out every hair on her head. I felt like breaking down her door and yelling, YOU ARE NOT MY SISTER.

  But I didn’t.

  Instead, I regarded my sister like a science experiment. The nail in the Coke. Something to watch. Observe. Maybe if I watched closely enough, it would give me a hint, a clue, an inkling about how a person could go behind my back, betray me, break every rule of sisterhood.

  Friday night.

  It was time. Time to take all my cupcakes out of the freezer. Baa, baa, black sheep, twelve bags full. Except there weren’t twelve bags full — there were only eleven, thanks to a family full of Sneaky-Pete Cupcake Snitchers.

  By my calculations in the margins of my Language Arts notebook, I needed one dozen more to finish my castle. By tomorrow.

  I got to work.

  It felt good to bake one last and final batch of cupcakes. One perfect dozen of My-Sister-Can-Drop-Dead-and-I-Don’t-Mean-Gorgeous cupcakes.

  While the cupcakes were baking, I decided to work out my anger on icing. Brown icing, blue icing, white icing.

  After an angry whirlwind of stirring, mixing, folding, and whipping, my tempest had subsided in a dust cloud of powdered sugar, and I was ready to begin building.

  I started with the foundation, using cupcakes to form a giant rectangle for the base of the castle. Then I slathered icing across several cupcakes at a time, stacking them one on top of another on top of another until they were high enough to form walls.

  The most fun was stacking cupcakes, one stack on each end, for towers and turrets, and one inside the walls for the castle keep. Upside-down ice-cream cones made perfect spires, and a licorice lace wrapped around the tower looked like a spiral staircase.

  It must have been nearly midnight by the time I finished the drawbridge over the moat and crept upstairs.

  My last thought as I fell asleep was not about cupcakes or castles or cake-offs.

  My last thought was about Alex.

  I wished I had the courage to sneak into my sister’s room while she was sleeping and paint her whole face green! Then everyone would know. Her secret would be out. The whole wide world would see that my sister Alex was not a princess at all. Not even a porcupine.

  My sister Alex was the Wicked Witch.

  After all, wasn’t it the Wicked Witch who had to have the ruby slippers, no matter what the cost?

  Saturday morning

  7:36

  I woke up and thought,
“Today’s the day! The day of the cake-off!”

  Then I remembered I was mad at Alex. I yanked the covers over my head. Curled up. Fell back to sleep.

  8:36

  I overslept! I woke up to what sounded like a lawn mower (or was it a bulldozer?) right outside my door. Either way, it sounded like somebody was about to bulldoze the house down. When I padded out into the hall, I realized it was just Alex and her blow-dryer.

  8:39

  Downstairs in kitchen. I popped a blueberry Toasty Pop into the toaster. I stuck my tongue out at my toaster-reflection, which looked like somebody who had been up half the night icing cupcakes and hadn’t bothered to brush her hair yet.

  8:42

  On the table, I found a shiny cupcake tin with a red ribbon around it. It was not from the thrift store. It was not from Goodwill. It was not from some old-lady garage sale. It was brand-spanking new, shinier than a toaster, and the cupcake hollows were filled with cake-decorating stuff — edible glitter, sparkle gel (looks like glitter-glue but you can eat it), even a pack of sugar-dusted rubber duckies made of icing.

  Up popped my blueberry strudel. Toaster Girl was smiling now.

  Mom walked in. “Mom? Is this for me? I ran over and hugged her. “I love it! I can put some finishing touches on my cake, and use the little rubber duckies like mini moat swimmers around my castle!”

  “I know it’s last minute — but I had a gift certificate from work and I just thought you should have a few fun things to use for the cake-off. I’m so disappointed I can’t be there today, Stevie. I wasn’t counting on having to reshoot my Apple Slump segment. I guess the apples slumped a bit more than they were supposed to.” I laughed.

  “I know you’ll do great, sweetie. Just remember, have fun.”

  “I will.”

  As Mom and I discussed plans for the day, I found myself dreaming of sugar-dusted rubber duckies bobbing on a moat of blue sprinkles.

  9:09

  Final dress rehearsal today. It turned out to be a good thing after all that I wasn’t a princess in the play. I don’t think I could handle the stress of wearing such a complicated costume. There were like seventeen pieces to the princess dress, and Alex could only find eleven of them.

  She was acting normal to me, as if nothing had happened yesterday. Then I remembered — she didn’t even know that I had talked to Mr. Cannon. She was way too busy rushing around like a chicken in a rainstorm — darting from mirror to mirror, flinging velvety, satiny, lacy pantaloon-type clothing around all over the upstairs.

  Anger bubbled to the surface again, flaring inside me like a hot flame. I guess no amount of cupcakes could put out that fire.

  9:11

  P.U. Alex was combing goopy, gross, smelly stuff into her hair, and it was making my eyes smart and stinking up the whole entire house.

  “Greasy grimy gopher guts!” Joey said, pinching her nose and scrunching up her face.

  I, for one, agreed.

  “Something is rotten in the state of Delaware,” said Joey.

  “Denmark,” said Alex.

  “What’s with the smelly stuff?” Joey asked.

  “You mean thou odiferous stench?” I asked, tossing in some Shakespeare, too. “Foh! Prithee, stand away. ’Tis the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.”

  Alex, Queen of Shakespeare, rolled her eyes at us. “It’s to make my hair straight!” she informed us. “But it’s not working.”

  “Why do you need your hair straight?” Joey asked. My question exactly.

  “I’m Princess Winnifred,” Alex said, like that explained it. Joey and I shrugged. “Hello! You’ve seen the movie. The main princess does not have curly hair.”

  “She does so have curls,” said Joey. “In the one where Carol Burnett is the queen.”

  “Well, I’m talking about the Broadway one with Sarah Jessica Parker. I looked it up online, and for your information, Sarah Jessica Parker definitely does not have curls. Her hair is really long, almost to her waist — even longer than yours, Joey — and she has a long, tiny braid down one side.”

  “Dare to be different,” I told my sister.

  “I can’t. Zoe DuFranc is Larken, and she has dark curly hair, and we’ll look too much alike.”

  “Well, you smell like an art project,” I snapped.

  “And you look like a mop of wet spaghetti!” said Joey.

  9:30

  Dad suggested that Alex try sleeping with orange-juice cans in her hair (for curlers). The bigger the curler, the straighter the hair.

  As much as I’d like to see Alex with orange-juice-can hair, she didn’t have time to sleep. The dress rehearsal was starting in a few hours.

  “You could press your hair in the dictionary,” I told her. “Like we used to do with violets.”

  “C’mon, Stevie, you have to help me.”

  “Why me? What about Joey?”

  “Don’t look at me,” said Joey. “Dad’s taking me to the Cascades Playhouse to check out their magic flying carpet.”

  “Well, don’t look at me. I’ve got to get ready for the cake-off.”

  “But your cake’s made, isn’t it? So you’re ready.”

  “Don’t you get it?” I practically bit her head off. My eyes flashed with fury. “This is a big day for me, too, you know. Yours is only a dress rehearsal, but mine is like, like the Cupcake Olympics.”

  Alex just didn’t get it. She didn’t even seem to care that I was boiling mad. And to make things worse, by the time I woke up this morning, my enchanted castle looked more like a slumped-over Tower of London.

  “But you’re not doing anything right this minute.”

  “Yes, I am! I’m waiting for Olivia to call. She’s coming with me to the cake-off. Her mom’s going to drive us.”

  “Well, I’m going with Scott and I’m going to be late —”

  “Alex and Scott Towel, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” sang Joey mockingly.

  “Joey and Laurie, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” I teased back, momentarily forgetting my anger.

  “Laurie who?” Alex asked.

  “You know. Laurie. The guy from Little Women. The one that likes Jo. Joey’s in love with him.”

  “So? Alex is in love with Scott Towel and that Voice Man guy.”

  “Let’s go, Joey!” Dad called up the stairs.

  “I’m leaving, too. Good luck today, girls,” said Mom.

  “Alex, you’re in charge,” Dad reminded her.

  Alex in charge of me?

  “And I don’t want to hear about any fighting,” said Dad.

  That shouldn’t be hard. Since technically I still wasn’t speaking to her.

  9:37

  Alex barged into my room, waving Mom’s iron around. “Iron my hair!” she ordered me. She actually popped open the ironing board, laid her head down on it, and stretched out her long hair as if she were Rapunzel or something.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “No! Dad said Mom used to iron her hair in high school. C’mon! Hurry up!”

  “No way am I going to iron your hair!” I protested.

  “You have to,” said Alex. “I’m in charge.”

  9:41

  I had never ironed so much as a sock, much less my sister’s hair!

  If Alex knew how mad I was at her, she wouldn’t let me near her hair with an iron. . . .

  I got the iron really hot. Huffing and puffing. I must have accidentally set it on Puff-the-Magic-Dragon, because hiccups of steam kept poofing out of the thing, even though I hadn’t added a single drop of water. I started by ironing Alex’s hair at the ends, about an inch at a time. Her hair is super-curly, and it took five minutes to iron one curl.

  “Shouldn’t I be using a towel or something to put over your hair?”

  “Just iron!”

  Alex muttered lines she was rehearsing while practically leaning upside-down on the ironing board.

  “Hey! I think it’s really working!” I said, sur
prised.

  “Stop pressing the mist button,” Alex ordered. Ssssss! Steam hissed off of Alex’s hair, sending up cumulus-cloud puffs, like smoke signals.

  I couldn’t help cracking up. “You look like one of those cartoon characters that are mad and have steam coming out of their ears.”

  “As long as I look like a straight-haired cartoon,” she snapped.

  9:45

  Operation Straight Hair was going great, until . . . the phone rang.

  Olivia! I grabbed the cordless, switching the iron to my left hand.

  “Stevie!” Alex said, annoyed.

  “Don’t worry. I got it. Just hold still. DO NOT move a hair.”

  It was Olivia. Even though I was going to see my best friend in about twenty-one minutes, she started yakking away about all this stuff that happened yesterday since I’d seen her, telling me all about:

  A spitball catapult some kid named Dylan built in shop class

  How she fell asleep studying the night before and messed up Potamia (as in flubbed her test on Ancient Mesopotamia)

  Her new piano teacher’s hairy-toed bare feet (Hairy Feet wears flip-flops!)

  9:49

  “What’s that burning smell?” Alex asked.

  All of a sudden, I smelled a stinking smell. An awful smell. A terrible, horrible burning smell, vile and odiferous. Worse than the Chinese Fried Rice Incident — the time I burned the rice in a skillet so bad it filled the whole kitchen with smoke.

  Holy Hamlet! Alex’s hair!

  I dropped the phone.

  9:51

  Alex yanked her hair out from under the iron. The iron and ironing board went crashing to the floor. I grabbed the iron, turning it off before it could burn anything else.

  The back of her hair was . . . smoking! Way worse than a cartoon character.

  Alex stood up.

  All of a sudden, to my horror, I saw a big hunk of Alex’s beautiful, once-curly long hair fall to the ground. Then another. I’d left the iron on her hair too long!

  Alex turned around.

  The shape of the iron, like a big triangle, was burned out of the back of her hair.

  “Uh!” I sucked in a horrified breath, my mouth gaping open. I covered my mouth with both hands, not daring to say a word.