The Next Great Paulie Fink

by Ali Benjamin

  The Shakespeare challenge. After that call from Mira, I’d forgotten all about the Paulie competition, actually.

  But when I step into the classroom, it’s clear that I’m the only one who forgot.

  Interview: Fiona

  No, I had not been psyched about the whole Shakespeare challenge. But it wasn’t like I was going to let someone else win.

  So here’s what I did: I went home and searched online for How to talk like Shakespeare. I figured I’d find a few suggestions—change you to thou, add eth after every verb, which would make ordinary sentences come out sounding like I brusheth mine teeth, or Some days, I wisheth to smacketh thou in the back of thine head, Sir Diego.

  Instead, my search turned up something else entirely.

  I always thought Shakespeare was stuffy—the sort of thing that was only for, like, that old Oxthorpe guy who glares at us from that portrait in the humanities classroom. But it turns out Shakespeare is all about insults! There are, like, so many put-downs in his plays! There are even a bunch of websites entirely dedicated to his best burns. Some were so great I can’t believe I never thought of them myself. Like:

  I am sick when I do look on thee. That’s Shakespeare for Dude, you make me want to throw up.

  Would thou wouldst burst! That means, If I could, I would make you explode into eight jillion pieces.

  The rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril! Just a fancy way of saying You stink.

  There were so many great ones: I scorn you, scurvy companion! He hath not so much brain as earwax. You viperous worm that gnaws the bowels! And my favorite, because it’s so simple: You ruinous butt. I imagined myself glaring at Diego and saying that: Diego, you ruinous butt.

  I tried to memorize them, but there were too many, plus most of them fell out of my brain as soon as I read them. So I wrote a few down on my arm. Then I added a few more. By the time I fell asleep, I was covered with marker right up to my shoulders, and my head was swimming with phrases like shard-borne beetle, and bolting hutch of beastliness, and prince of fiends, and plague-sore, and puke-stocking, and I didn’t know what half those words meant, but I didn’t even care, because, hello, who ever thought to call someone a puke-stocking?!

  I was totally going to win this competition. I just knew it.

  As it turned out, though, I wasn’t the only one who discovered that site.

  The Shakespeare Challenge

  Fiona springs out of her seat as soon as I walk into Mags’s class. “Good dawning to you!” she shouts, way too loudly. I notice her arms are covered in scribbles.

  Diego has markings all over his arm, too. He steps directly in front of Fiona. “How fares Caitlyn?” he asks.

  I glance around the room. Yumi’s wearing a velvet cap with a giant feather sticking out of it, like something that Shakespeare himself might have worn back in the day. Her T-shirt says KEEP CALM AND READ THE BARD. Sam and Willow and Lydia are wearing their usual pom-pom headbands, but they’re also wearing white T-shirts with different phrases all over them:

  IN A PICKLE

  DEAD AS A DOORNAIL

  BREAK THE ICE

  CHARMED LIFE

  ALL THAT GLISTERS ISN’T GOLD

  “What’s all this?” I ask them.

  “Cheat sheets, kind of.” Willow grins, pointing to the words. “Shakespeare invented these. Inventeth them. Hast inventeth them?”

  Sam nods, and adds, “Isn’t that so cool? I mean, ’tisn’t it?”

  Everyone’s pretty quiet at first, barely speaking at all—like they know they’re being judged and are afraid of getting the words wrong. But as we walk down the path toward the goats, Diego and Fiona start trading insults.

  “You crusty botch of nature,” Fiona reads from her elbow.

  Diego checks his wrist. “You… Banbury cheese!” he replies.

  “Heedless jolthead!”

  “Thorny hedgehog!”

  “Dull and muddy-mottled rascal!”

  “Minion of the moon!”

  “I don’t even know what that means, you… you… popinjay!”

  Yumi turns to me. “This is so Shakespeare,” she says. I have no idea if she’s being sarcastic, but then she tells me that back in Shakespeare’s time, audiences always got really rowdy. “They’d cheer for the insults, boo the villains, throw rotten fruit at the actors onstage. Sometimes fights broke out in the middle of the performance. It was chaos!”

  By the time they reach the goat pen, Fiona and Diego are ready to fight about anything. “’Tis my turn,” Diego tells Fiona, grabbing the feed bucket.

  “’Twas yours most recently,” she says. She’s smiling, but her teeth are gritted. She yanks the bucket toward herself. “’Tis mine.”

  “You’re a fusty nut with no kernel!”

  “No, you’re the fusty nut!” Fiona screams. She puts both hands on the bucket and pulls as hard as she can. Diego lets go, which sends her flying backward. Goat feed spills everywhere. She scrambles to her feet, picks up a handful of food, and hurls it at him. He grabs his own handful and tosses it at her.

  “You’re a bladder!” Fiona shouts.

  Timothy and Thomas get in on the action. “’Tis a food fight!” They scoop up pellets and run around throwing them at everyone.

  “Yumi’s a fusty nut!” Timothy shouts, tossing pellets at her. “Sam’s a fusty nut! Gabby’s a fusty nut!” They each respond by grabbing and throwing pellets of their own.

  The twins start flicking their sweatshirts at each other like wet towels. “Hellhound!” Timothy taunts his brother. “Mildewed ear! Quintessence of dust!”

  Thomas lashes back. “Quintessence of dust, my butt! Shakespeare vs. Shakespeare is on!”

  As they begin wrestling, I look around. Sam’s chasing Lydia, who’s chasing Willow. Yumi’s leaping all over, sprinkling pellets like they’re flower petals. That feathered cap on her head keeps slipping down over her eyes, but it barely seems to bother her. By now, Fiona’s snapped off a honeysuckle branch and is twirling it above her head in circles. “I’ll whip thee with a rod!” she’s shouting at anyone who comes near her. Meanwhile, Gabby’s just smiling through the whole scene, sometimes applauding like she’s an audience member appreciating one of Shakespeare’s plays.

  Only Henry’s not fighting. He steps into place next to me and surveys the scene. “Some are born great,” he says very seriously. “Some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. And some…” He waves his arm toward the chaos, and doesn’t finish.

  It’s all so unexpected. Flying goat feed. Shakespeare’s words mixing with the bleating of the goats. Timothy and Thomas in the middle of their Shakespeare vs. Shakespeare brawl. Fiona in her suit, wielding a honeysuckle branch like a lasso. And Henry acting like a wise old man.

  I burst out laughing, and that’s the thing that surprises me most of all. The sound of my own laughter. I can’t remember the last time I laughed.

  But then I stop, just as fast as I started. Because Mr. Farabi is striding toward us, and he’s not alone. Glebus is right behind him, and she arrives just as Yumi—eyes covered by that feathered cap—releases another sprinkle of pellets.

  They catch Glebus right in the eye.

  Interview: Gabby

  GABBY:

  Of course Glebus screamed at us, but what I remember most about the Shakespeare challenge is how in just over a month, you’d gone from not wanting to speak to any of us to running an entire competition.

  You reminded me of a Megastar contestant from season four, Maryellen Papademiera, from Indiana. She was pretty quiet, so everybody assumed that Maryellen would be on the first bus back to the Midwest. Except guess what? It turns out that quiet little Maryellen had ambition. Before long, she’d renamed herself Spicy G and was hanging out with Jadelicious at the poshest nightclubs.

  I’d planned to spend my weekend learning to speak Shakespeare, but I started the weekend by watching just a few minutes of the one where Maryellen becomes Spicy G. The
n a few minutes led to a few more minutes, and I sort of lost track of time. Before I knew it, it was Sunday night, and my grandma was hollering at me that it was time to “turn off Megastar and go to bed, right this very second.” I never even looked up any Shakespeare words.

  So my plan for that first competition was to be like Maryellen before she became Spicy G: I’d stay quiet, slip through to the next round.

  CAITLYN:

  But I noticed how quiet you were. And as we walked out of Glebus’s office after all her yelling, I told you to say something Shakespearean, and you were all, “Mmm?”

  GABBY:

  I guess I’m not so great at being put on the spot, because my mind just sort of went blank. I tried to remember what Diego and Fiona had shouted, or what the twins had called each other, or anything Paulie had said on the day he talked like Shakespeare, but I just froze. You were looking at me like you hoped I could say something that sounded like Macbeth or whatever. But all I could think of was Maryellen and something she’d said: “People assume they know everything there is to know about me. But when they look at me, all they’re seeing is their own darn selves.”

  I don’t know. That seemed sort of profound, and Shakespeare’s supposed to be profound, so I said to you, “All people see is their own darneth selves.”

  You shook your head sort of sadly. That’s how I knew it was over for me.

  Victory Lap

  By the time we leave Glebus’s office after the Shakespeare fiasco, it’s already recess. Diego bursts out of the building and shouts, “That was awesome!”

  No one seems upset at all that we just got hollered at. In Glebus’s office, they looked at the floor, all shamefaced. But now that we’re outside, they’re laughing and high-fiving.

  “Caitlyn!” shouts Sam. “You just started the Mitchell School’s first-ever food fight!”

  “It wasn’t just any food fight, it was a goat-food fight,” adds Willow. “Which is like eight thousand times better than a regular-food fight!”

  Even Henry is looking happier than I’ve ever seen him. “That was pretty cool, Caitlyn,” he says.

  Diego nods. “It was classic Paulie Fink.”

  “While also being classic Shakespeare,” Yumi agrees.

  “Yeah,” says Gabby, “take a bow, Caitlyn!”

  Timothy and Thomas start chanting, “Take a bow!”

  But Diego shakes his head. “Don’t just take a bow,” he says. “Take a victory lap! Once around the playground!”

  The twins switch their chanting from “Take a bow!” to “Vic-tory-lap! Vic-tory lap! Vic-tory lap!”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I say. “I just—”

  “Take the lap,” Diego insists. “Always take the victory lap.”

  I take a few tentative steps, and everyone explodes into cheers. A few steps in, Fiona leaps in front of me. “Hold up! Stop!”

  She peels off her blazer. “Here. Take this.”

  It’s the one she wore on the second day of school: turquoise, and missing some buttons. The collar is ringed with dirt. “Come on, Caitlyn,” she says. “You deserve the power of the blazer.”

  “Uh… thanks, but…,” I begin, trying to figure a way out of this, but everyone’s watching, and Fiona looks like she’s handing me the greatest gift on the planet. “Oh, okay.” I slip my arms through the jacket. The arms are too short. I feel ridiculous, but everyone’s applauding, so I just start running. The others jog alongside me, chanting my name for the second time in two days.

  “Cait-lyn! Cait-lyn! Cait-lyn!”

  Gabby dashes onto the playground and finds Fuzzy at the swings. The two of them run toward me, and a bunch of other Minis follow. Fuzzy and I take the rest of the lap together, hand in hand, and she beams at me like I’m some sort of superhero. A mass of other kids, from lots of different grades, trail behind. Most of them don’t know why they’re chanting my name, but they also don’t seem to care. They chant anyway.

  When the lap is over, Gabby looks at me seriously. “Caitlyn,” she says. “Can you come to my house after school tomorrow? You and I have some serious work to do.”

  The Megastar Creed, aka All the Things I Know About Life from Watching Reality Television

  A List by Gabby

  1. You can never predict how contestants will turn out. Very few people will be the same in the final episode as they were in the first. If they stick around long enough, they’ll change.

  2. Every show has heroes and villains. At the start of the season, it’s hard to tell the difference. Sometimes it takes you all the way to the end of the season to know for sure.

  3. Know who you are. The audience can always tell the difference between an authentic Megastar and an imitation.

  4. Go for it! Throw yourself in headfirst. Be fearless. Most of all, make sure you’re having fun. What’s the point of being there if you’re not?

  5. The honor matters more than any prize. You won’t believe the things people do when their pride is at stake. Everybody wants kleos.

  6. There’s no guarantee you’ll win. Do your best, but know this: Sometimes the good guys lose.

  Interview: Henry

  CAITLYN:

  Tell me about how you first got the bad news.

  HENRY:

  It took me longer to figure out than it probably should have. My dad’s on the town council, and I saw the way he came home from his meetings, with stacks of papers. They were spreadsheets, some sort of budgets, but to me they were nothing but pages with numbers. After a while I noticed that lots of the numbers were red. Red is bad on budgets, but I still didn’t understand.

  Even when I saw the articles lying around the house—they had headlines like RURAL SCHOOLS CAUGHT IN DEATH SPIRAL or CLASS DISMISSED FOREVER: RURAL SCHOOLS FACE CLOSURES—I still didn’t get it. I mean, I saw those words: Death Spiral. Forever. But I didn’t know I should be concerned.

  Then early in the summer Dad drove home from a meeting and sat in the driveway for a long time. When he finally came through the door, the rims of his eyes were all red. And the next day, he left an email open. It said: It’s time we face the facts; without something drastic, Mitchell cannot afford to keep its school open.

  My dad walked in at that point, saw me looking. “You weren’t supposed to see that,” was all he said.

  And that’s when the ground beneath my feet gave way.

  What Would Jadelicious Do?

  Gabby’s house smells of soup, wet dog, and medicine, but Gabby’s grandmother looks so happy to see us I barely get a chance to notice. She hugs me like I’ve known her forever.

  Next to us, Gabby scoops up a tiny wire-haired dog. “C’mere, Buster,” she says. She kisses him as he wriggles in her arms. “You mean old beast, you. You fierce and terrible creature.”

  “You look just like your mama,” Gabby’s grandmother tells me. I wonder how she knows that. But before I have a chance to ask, Gabby’s pulling me down the hallway to plan.

  Everything in Gabby’s room is some shade of purple: carpet, pillows, walls. And Jadelicious’s face is everywhere—pages ripped from magazines, then taped to walls.

  Gabby jams something into my hands: THE MEGASTAR CREED. “Memorize this, okay?” Then she hops up onto her bed and sits cross-legged on a rumpled lavender comforter. “Also, you’re going to need a speech.”

  “A speech?”

  “Yeah. A great one. Technically, you should have done this before announcing the first competition. But you hadn’t really found your footing yet.”

  “I’ve never made a speech.”

  “This one’s easy. You just have to lay down the rules of the competition. Tell them what you’re looking for. Remind them that you’re in charge. You need to scare the contestants, you know? Let ’em know who’s boss.”

  I guess she sees me looking doubtful, because she says, “Oh, come on, you can do it. You’re tough! You’re from New York City.”

  For a second, I’m confused. Then I remember: That’s the white lie I
told her on the first day of school. Already, that feels like a hundred years ago.

  “And if you get stuck,” Gabby continues, “just ask yourself one question: What would Jadelicious do?”

  I peer at one of the images on the wall. Jadelicious is hip-jutting on a red carpet in front of a sea of photographers. She looks like she’s daring them to get a bad photo. In another, fans are pressed up against the front of a stage, with rays of purple and magenta lights beaming down on Jadelicious from every direction.

  “She looks like she doesn’t care what anybody thinks,” I say. “I wish I knew how to do that.”

  “To not care, or to look like you don’t care?”

  Again, I get a flash of that old kickball game, the one where I panicked. “Both,” I say.

  “Hold on,” she says. “I know what you need.” She jumps up, opens her desk drawer, and rummages through a million pieces of paper: old drawings, greeting cards, math homework, crumpled essays.

  “Aha!” She pulls out a magazine article. “Read from here,” she says, pointing to a paragraph about halfway down the page. I read aloud:

  Jadelicious, who has legally changed her name to erase any distinction between her stage persona and her former self, admits that she didn’t always feel so confident being in the public eye.

  “What I realized early on,” says the Megastar, whose most recent music video has already been viewed nearly three million times, “is that you can’t wait for others to see you as a star. You have to believe you’re a Megastar, no matter what others think. That goes for everything in life: What do you want? Who do you hope to be? Nobody’s going to give you a permission slip. So just strike your pose and hold it.”