Starring the Baby-sitters Club! (9780545633208)

by Martin, Ann M.

  The Walking Disaster strikes again, I thought. But I was wrong. The thunk had been Alan Gray’s elbow hitting the floor. Backstage, the pirates had grown bored, and Noodler and Smee had started another swordfight. Logan had backed Alan into a corner and hissed, “Walk the gangplank, traitor!” and Alan had lost his balance.

  “Sorry!” called Logan.

  Mr. Cheney closed his eyes briefly. When he had collected himself, he asked Kristy and me to begin reading.

  Kristy read.

  I changed my lines.

  When the time came for me to sew on Peter’s shadow, I said, “Oh, Peter, sewing is so simple. Here. Take this needle and thr —”

  “Dawn,” interrupted Mr. Cheney, “if you aren’t sure of your lines, please use your script.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  We continued the scene. Mr. Cheney listened to us closely.

  I tried to stick to the script, but soon I found myself saying, “Peter, I’ll be happy to come to Neverland with you, and teach the Lost Boys how to cook. Then they can —”

  Mr. Cheney interrupted again. “What are you doing, Dawn?”

  “Well, Peter Pan is a little old-fashioned. Don’t you think? It’s awfully sexist.”

  “I think it’s terrific!” called a male voice from backstage.

  “Mr. Cheney, I’m just trying to update the story,” I said.

  “It’s going to be difficult to improve on Sir James Barrie’s lines, Dawn. Besides, we are putting on the traditional story.”

  “Oh, we can keep the fairies and the flying and everything.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Cheney drily.

  “No, really. We can do the traditional story. We’ll just change some of the words so kids don’t get any wrong ideas.”

  I heard a snicker then, and Cokie stepped out of the wings. She tried to say something, but she began to laugh and couldn’t stop.

  “Miss Mason?” said Mr. Cheney.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just … Dawn, I can’t believe you want to change the play. And anyway, what wrong ideas are you talking about?”

  “About women’s roles. And men’s. Really, when you think about it, we shouldn’t refer to ‘women’s roles’ and ‘men’s roles’ at all. Both women and men can and should do everything.”

  “You like the idea of women fighting in wars?” asked Cokie.

  “There shouldn’t be wars in the first place,” I said.

  Cokie was still trying not to laugh. “But, Dawn —”

  “Excuse me, girls,” said Mr. Cheney. He was speaking with very tense lips, which is never a good sign. “We are supposed to be rehearsing. Cokie, you are not in this scene, so please go back to whatever you were doing. Dawn, say Mr. Barrie’s lines as they’re written. And Kristy, please do not refer to your script quite so much. At least look at Dawn when you’re talking to her, not at the paper.”

  “Okay,” said Kristy and Cokie and I.

  Cokie disappeared behind the curtain, and Kristy and I returned to the scene we’d been rehearsing. We said about four more lines before Mr. Cheney called, “Dawn, please project! Kristy, quit looking at the script!”

  “Okay,” we replied.

  Three more lines.

  “Kristy! Script!”

  “Sorry,” said Kristy.

  Five more lines.

  “Dawn, project!”

  From behind the curtain I heard Cokie giggling. Then I heard her say to someone, “Notice that Mr. Cheney never has to tell Kristy to project.”

  “Mr. Cheney,” Kristy protested. “Did you hear Cokie?”

  “Yes. Yes, I did.” Mr. Cheney raised his voice for Cokie’s benefit. “Cokie, please contain yourself,” he said. Then he lowered his voice. “Okay, girls.”

  I started to say my next line, but instead I laid my script carefully on the stage. I walked over to Mr. Cheney and said, “Does Wendy really have to sew on Peter’s shadow for him? Can’t she give him the needle and thread — the pretend needle and thread — and say, ‘Peter, I won’t sew it on for you, but I’ll be happy to teach you how to sew it on’?”

  “Peter doesn’t have all night, Dawn!” called Cokie.

  And Mr. Cheney, after sighing again, said, “Think of it this way. Peter is just a boy. He needs someone to help him.”

  “But Wendy is just a girl.”

  “She’s a girl who knows how to sew,” said Mr. Cheney.

  “But Peter says he wants a mother for the Lost Boys.”

  By this time, Kristy had laid her script on the floor, too, and was standing next to me. “Give it a rest, Dawn,” she said.

  “Okay, okay, okay.”

  We returned to our scripts, but before we could pick them up, Mr. Cheney, smiling brightly, said, “How about if you try the rest of this scene without the scripts?” I think he was trying to distract us. (He looked as if he might have a headache.)

  I pretended I had just sewn Peter’s shadow back on him. I waited expectantly for Kristy to say her next line.

  Kristy opened her mouth. Then she closed it.

  I heard Cokie whisper loudly, “It’s a miracle. Kristy Thomas is speechless.”

  “Mr. Cheney,” complained Kristy.

  “Cokie,” complained Mr. Cheney.

  I had a feeling we were all about to get in trouble. Instead, Logan got thrown out of the play.

  Of all the pirates, I would have to be cast as that one guy named Noodler. The other pirates have some weird names, like Mr. Smee and Skylights, but most of them have more regular names — Bill Jukes, Alf Mason, Gentleman Starkey. How did I wind up as Noodler? At least I’m not playing a Lost Boy. One of the Lost Boys is named Tootles. Luckily, that part went to little Melody Korman, who can handle it. But think if I had to play a character named Tootles. I would have been laughed off the track team.

  At first, I wouldn’t even tell anyone about the Noodler business. When Mr. Cheney posted the cast for Peter Pan, I told my parents I’d gotten a role as a pirate which, it turns out, they already knew because Ms. Halliday had called our house that afternoon to tell us that Kerry, who had also auditioned, was going to be an Indian.

  “Are you going to be Smee?” my father had asked me at dinner.

  “No. Just some pirate,” I told him.

  But I couldn’t keep my secret for long. Every kid who had looked at the chart that day had seen my name next to the name Noodler.

  At least I got to be in the play. I figured I could deal with the name as long as I could be part of Peter Pan. It was important to me. Most of my friends were involved with the play. Pete Black was going to be Nana and the crocodile, although no one would know. (Those animal costumes are huge and you can’t see who’s inside them.) My girlfriend Mary Anne, who refused to be in the play, ended up working on it anyway. And a bunch of her friends (who are also my friends, since we’re all in the Baby-sitters Club) were in the play. Plus, one is designing the scenery, another is working on the costumes, and another is choreographing dances for the little kids.

  The point in all this is — Well, actually there are two points. 1) I desperately wanted to be in the play, and I got my chance when I was given the part of Noodler. 2) Since most of my friends were working on the play, they were all around to see Mr. Cheney fire me.

  I’ve never been fired from anything before. I mean, not just out-and-out fired in front of a whole bunch of people.

  Here’s the problem. There wasn’t a lot for the pirates to do just then. We didn’t have many lines to learn, and we only appeared in two scenes. Two high-profile, highly important scenes, but still, just two scenes. The little kids (the Indians and Lost Boys) appear in more scenes, and anyway, it takes them longer to learn their parts and the musical numbers, so Jessi and Ms. Halliday are working with them practically nonstop.

  What I’m trying to say is that the pirates had sort of been fooling around at rehearsals. No one seemed to need us, except Savannah Minton and Mallory Pike who had to measure us for our costumes. (Mallory was embarrassed out
of her mind. She made me measure myself and read the numbers to her, and then she made this great show of writing down the numbers on a sheet of paper, like that was really all her job was — just recording numbers, not using the measuring tape.)

  Well, I keep getting away from the point, which just goes to show you how embarrassed I am to tell how I was fired. Okay. So on Monday, which was, like, our third rehearsal or something, this is what was going on. Jessi and Ms. Halliday were teaching dances to the Lost Boys and the Indians. Mary Anne was helping Jackie Rodowsky learn his lines for the part of Michael Darling. Savannah and Mallory had finished measuring us pirates and were waiting to measure the little kids. The lighting people and set people and sound people were running around, figuring things out, making sketches, and taking notes. The kids with big roles and a lot of lines to memorize were rehearsing with each other or on the stage with Mr. Cheney.

  And then there were us pirates. We had nothing to do.

  We decided to have a swordfight. To our credit, we had realized we should practice swordfighting since pirates are always drawing out swords and having duels, and we wanted to look like authentic pirates. But our swordfighting was getting out of control.

  On the other hand, we were having fun. Also, we were busy. And the more occupied we were, the less apt the other pirates were to remember I was playing a guy named Noodler.

  After one lengthy duel in the wings off the stage, Alan Gray, who was playing Smee (and really should have been memorizing his lines), put down his sword (a twelve-inch ruler) and said, “Didn’t Cheney say he might work with us pirates later this afternoon? If he isn’t going to we might as well leave.”

  “I don’t know. Did he say that?” I replied.

  “I think he did,” said the guy playing Gentleman Starkey.

  I looked at my watch. “It’s almost four-thirty.”

  “Cheney’s all caught up with Dawn Schafer,” said Pete Black, who didn’t have any more to do than the pirates did. He’d been listening to Dawn and Kristy who were rehearsing onstage, but now he joined us in the wings.

  “What do you mean he’s all caught up with Dawn?” I asked.

  “Well, listen,” Pete replied.

  We moved closer to the curtain and listened. We could hear Dawn going on about women’s lib or something. She was saying that Peter should sew on his own shadow and Wendy should give the Lost Boys cooking lessons.

  “Is she crazy?” said Alan.

  “She must be,” I replied. “Give the Lost Boys cooking lessons?”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean Cheney is going to kill her. If she’s too much trouble he’ll probably give the part of Wendy to Dawn’s understudy.”

  We listened to the conversation awhile longer. Finally Pete said, “Cheney won’t get around to working with you guys today. Not now. It’s too late.”

  “Thanks to Dawn,” said Alan. He put down his ruler and wandered among the kids backstage. I followed him.

  “Hey!” I started to call to Mary Anne, but she was involved with Jackie Rodowsky. She was feeding him his lines and Jackie was repeating them, trying to memorize them. He kept mixing up words, saying them in the wrong order, and Mary Anne looked completely frustrated.

  I decided it might be a good idea to try to amuse her. “Hey, Alan!” I called. “Come here!”

  Earlier that afternoon, Alan and I had found a box containing parts of the pirate costumes. They were the parts that didn’t have to be any particular size, like eye patches, earrings, scarves, and … plastic swords. Before I knew it, Alan and I and a couple of other guys, including Pete who wasn’t even a pirate, were wearing these sort of half-pirate costumes, and dueling with the plastic swords.

  Mary Anne ran over to us. “Logan!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing? Put that sword down!”

  I stopped dueling with Alan, but I didn’t put the sword down. Instead I raised it above my head, arm outstretched, and shouted, “Mutiny! The pirates are going to mutiny!”

  Silence.

  Uh-oh.

  Everything grew quiet. The kids faltered in their dancing and stood still. Sam and Stacey stopped reading their scene aloud. Mallory and Savannah halted in their tracks and their tape measures fell to the floor. Onstage, the voices of Kristy, Dawn, and Mr. Cheney stopped speaking.

  Everyone and everything was still for maybe four seconds. And then the curtain parted wildly and Mr. Cheney strode through it. He surveyed the scene. What he saw first was Alan and me in our pirate gear. What he saw second was everyone else looking at us.

  “Logan! Alan!” roared Mr. Cheney.

  “He started it,” said Alan immediately, pointing to me.

  “Traitor,” I muttered.

  “Logan, this is not the first time you’ve fooled around,” said Mr. Cheney. “I’ve been watching you.” Oh, fine. “Were you the one who just yelled ‘mutiny’?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Cheney counted to ten before he spoke again. I know he did. I could see his lips moving. “Look around you, Logan. Do you see all these children?” Of course I saw them. “They are working. They are also looking up to you older kids. And you are not setting a very good example.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Logan, who is your understudy?”

  “Jason Henderson. He’s the understudy for me, Bill Jukes, and Gentleman Starkey.”

  “Fine. Jason is now Noodler. You’re out of the play.”

  I stood rooted to the floor. I couldn’t move.

  I had been fired.

  Logan definitely should not have been fooling around backstage today, having sword-fights and calling for mutinies. There’s just no excuse for that kind of behavior. However, I was grateful to him for one reason. While Mr. Cheney was yelling at him, everyone forgot about Dawn and me and what was happening onstage.

  I could not get over Dawn. What did she think she was doing? Wendy was supposed to fly to Neverland so she could teach the Lost Boys to cook? I understand Dawn’s point. I’m a girl and I hate cooking and cleaning and sewing. And if I were Wendy Darling and some strange kid flew into my bedroom and asked me to go to a wonderful place like Neverland to do housework for a bunch of lost boys, I’d be furious. On the other hand, we had a play to put on, and I didn’t think Dawn should contribute to the frazzled nerves of the director by changing the script without telling anyone in advance. No wonder I’m having trouble learning my lines. Dawn keeps changing hers. Still, Cokie didn’t have to giggle every time Mr. Cheney called, “Kristy! Script!”

  Oh, well. Then Logan yelled, “Mutiny!” and all was forgotten. Here’s what happened after Mr. Cheney said to Logan, “You’re out of the play.”

  The stunned silence that had fallen over the cast and crew of Peter Pan continued until Mr. Cheney clapped his hands twice and said gruffly, “Kristy and Dawn, you may rehearse on your own now. Cokie, I’d like to see you onstage by yourself, please.” He turned to march back through the curtains, and Cokie, looking as stunned as the rest of us, followed him wordlessly. She didn’t even give me a rude look.

  “Whoa,” I whispered to Dawn.

  Around us, everyone came to life slowly. Ms. Halliday and Jessi began rehearsing the little kids again. Most of the older kids whispered to each other for a few moments, then returned to whatever they’d been doing before Mr. Cheney blew up. And Mary Anne left Jackie Rodowsky, took Logan by the elbow, and led him into the wings.

  “Okay, let’s get back to work,” Dawn said to me briskly. “Let’s start with the scene in the nursery, right before you’re going to teach us Darling children how to fly.”

  “All right, but Dawn, please don’t change any lines. No wonder I can’t learn my own. I never know what you’re going to say.”

  “I won’t. I’ll be good, I promise.”

  I smiled. “Thank you.”

  We began the scene. Dawn lived up to her promise. And I still couldn’t say my lines unless I read them from the script.

  “Darn it!” I cried.

  �
��Relax, Kristy. You’ll learn your lines.”

  “When?”

  “This is only the third rehearsal.”

  “Well, you already know half your lines. And listen to Cokie out there with Mr. Cheney. She isn’t using the script. And she’s great.”

  “How do you know she isn’t using the script?”

  “Because I heard Mr. Cheney tell her to try working without it and she said okay. Now listen to her. Maybe Cokie should have been Peter Pan.”

  “Kristy! No wonder you haven’t learned any lines. You’re too busy paying attention to what everyone else is doing. Concentrate.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “Try harder.”

  So I did. I guess by the end of rehearsal I was a little better.

  “Thank you, everybody,” said Mr. Cheney at five-thirty. “Go home, work hard, and I’ll see you back here on Wednesday.”

  My friends and I began to gather our things together. The backstage baby-sitter helped the little kids gather their things together. As the auditorium began to empty, I saw Logan appear from the wings. He parted the curtain and walked onto the stage, calling, “Mr. Cheney?”

  Now, I did not mean to listen to their conversation. I really didn’t. But Sam and David Michael and I were waiting for Charlie to pick us up, and he had said he was going to be late. And there was no way we were going to wait for him outside in the freezing cold any longer than necessary. So we were hanging around the auditorium.

  By the way, in case you’re wondering, the BSC had informed its clients that club meetings were going to be suspended during the rehearsals for Peter Pan, but that Claudia could take messages and arrange jobs (with over-the-phone help from Mary Anne) any time she was at home.

  Anyway, Sam and a couple of his friends were talking backstage, and David Michael was hanging around them. And I was sitting on the floor near the curtain, studying my lines, when I couldn’t help but hear Logan say timidly, “Mr. Cheney?”

  “Yes?” (Mr. Cheney’s “yes” sounded pretty frosty.)

  “Could I please talk to you?”

  After a pause (maybe Mr. Cheney looked at his watch), he replied, “For a minute. I’m running late.”