Lucky Break

by Sienna Mercer

  Olivia suppresed the urge to beat him with his goggly eyes. ‘Yes, pretend. You are supposed to be acting, after all.’

  ‘Maybe …’ Garrick stood up.

  Jackson came over. ‘Break a leg,’ he said to Garrick, flashing a grin at Olivia.

  ‘Enough with the jealousy, man,’ Garrick said.

  ‘No, no,’ Jackson replied. ‘That’s how they say “good luck” in the theatre.’

  ‘Oh, well, uh, thanks, but I can’t go on.’ Garrick shuffled his feet.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Jackson said. ‘You are the most convincing alien octopus that has ever graced the stage.’

  ‘Absolutely!’ Olivia added, hoping she sounded like she meant it.

  Garrick looked suspicious.

  ‘I’m serious,’ Jackson said. ‘You own that role. Be confident, man. Be strong!’ Garrick started to nod along. ‘You are Romezog, and you will have your Julietron!’

  ‘You’re right, Jay Jay,’ Garrick said, punching Jackson on the arm. ‘I will have her, won’t I?’ He winked at Olivia and made a clicking noise. ‘See you on stage, baby.’ Garrick stood up from the bed and sauntered off.

  Olivia hit Jackson gently. ‘Did you have to use me as bait?’

  ‘Hey,’ Jackson said, leaning in so close that she could see the flecks in his blue eyes. ‘A kiss with you would get anyone to do anything.’

  Olivia shivered and clutched one of the posters of the bed behind her. She had tried so many ways to corner him and kiss him this past week, but something had always gotten in the way. Is he saying that he wants to kiss me? Olivia hoped so. She had just minutes to kiss him before Garrick got there first.

  ‘I would happily get stabbed with a retractable sword for you,’ Jackson grinned, referring to his death in the play.

  Olivia smiled back.

  ‘You are an amazing Juliet and a wonderful actress,’ he said quietly, stepping even closer.

  The noise of swords clashing backstage, Charlotte complaining, props being moved around – they all faded away as Jackson took her face in his hands. Was it finally going to happen?

  ‘And an awesome girlfriend,’ he whispered.

  She closed her eyes and felt his breath on her face. Her heart was pounding.

  ‘Fifteen minutes!’ shouted Ivy, making Olivia jump.

  Jackson took a step away from her.

  No! Olivia thought. Come back! So close!

  Then Garrick sauntered over and pressed something into her hand. Baffled, Olivia saw a wrapped-up mint. ‘It’s for later,’ he mock-whispered.

  Olivia wanted to scream, but all she could do was grit her teeth. Her last chance to kiss Jackson was ruined – and now there was no escape.

  Garrick Stevens was going to be her first kiss.

  Chapter Nine

  Ivy looked out across the lobby of the theatre where friends, family and what seemed like every girl under the age of sixteen within a twenty-mile radius were milling around.

  One girl with blonde pigtails was flipping through the specially printed programmes. ‘What do you mean he isn’t Romeo? Isn’t this Romeo and Juliet?’

  Her black-haired friend pointed to a page. ‘It says here that he’s some kind of cyborg.’

  ‘Well,’ replied Pigtails, ‘I don’t care if it’s science fiction or science class, as long as I’ve got a seat up close! I didn’t buy this ticket off eBay to sit at the back.’

  Ivy rolled her eyes, but at least having Jackson in the cast helped Camilla’s directorial debut become the fastest sell-out production in Franklin Grove Middle School’s history.

  But the only two audience members she cared about right now were obviously not following instructions. They were late.

  She looked past the dolled-up girls and spotted a solo figure in a simple, dashing black suit and a mandarin-collared white shirt, almost hiding behind a pot plant.

  ‘Dad!’ Ivy shouted.

  He was staring in completely the wrong direction. Ivy only had fifteen minutes to round him up, find Aunt Rebecca, get them to their reserved seats and be backstage before the curtain went up.

  ‘VIP number one spotted,’ she reported to Sophia over the headphones. ‘VIP number two, unaccounted for.’

  ‘Check,’ Sophia replied. ‘Twelve minutes.’

  A red sweater dress caught Ivy’s attention. It was Rebecca on the opposite side of the lobby, by the ladies’ room.

  Ivy marched over to her dad. ‘Hi, Dad, not much time, got to keep moving,’ she said in one breath.

  ‘OK, Ivy.’ He stumbled along, trying to keep up. ‘All going well backstage?’

  ‘We are on target,’ Ivy confirmed. ‘Except for you and Aunt Rebecca.’ She gave him a pointed look.

  ‘My apologies –’ he began.

  ‘No time!’ Ivy cut him off. By then, they had reached the opposite corner of the lobby. ‘Aunt Rebecca, it is lovely to see you; you look so nice; please come this way.’

  ‘Goodness,’ Rebecca said. She’d matched knee-high boots with her red sweater dress and an embossed brown leather belt. ‘You are efficient!’

  ‘I’ve saved seats for you,’ Ivy replied, pushing open the glass doors, manoeuvring past the people taking their seats at the back of the theatre and leading them down the centre aisle of the school theatre.

  ‘You are there,’ she said to Mr Vega and he obediently moved in to sit down next to Brendan. ‘And you are there.’

  ‘There?’ A flicker of awkwardness flashed across Aunt Rebecca’s face.

  Ivy realised what she’d done. She should have ‘accidentally’ saved them separate seats. Rebecca wasn’t exactly long-lost friends with her dad and Brendan was probably on her least-favourite-person list at the moment. But it was too late now. The show was sold out and she didn’t have time to move things around.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ came Sophia through the headset.

  Ivy put on a bright face, hoping to get away as fast as she could. ‘Yup, right there. Best seats in the house.’

  ‘Uh, thanks,’ Rebecca replied. She smoothed her dress and sat down next to Mr Vega. ‘Good evening,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘Good evening,’ he replied.

  She didn’t even acknowledge Brendan.

  ‘I hope you enjoy the show!’ Ivy wanted to smack her own forehead, but there wasn’t even time to do that.

  As she hurried up the steps, she heard Mr Vega go straight to the subject Ivy was hoping to avoid tonight.

  ‘Any news about Lucky?’ he asked.

  Ivy knew there wasn’t. She’d been texting all day and all week. They hadn’t found any trace of Lucky.

  Ivy forced all thoughts of the horse out of her mind. She had to get through the show and then she could think about it.

  ‘Ivy, dear!’ exclaimed a voice in front of her. It was Olivia’s mom.

  Mrs Abbott gave Ivy a hug, and Mr Abbott grinned at her.

  ‘We’re so excited about tonight,’ Mrs Abbott said. She was wearing an elegant emerald dress with a silver clutch. ‘Olivia has been practising so hard!’

  ‘And she tells us you’ve been keeping everything running smoothly,’ said Mr Abbott, in a dark grey suit with a black tie.

  Ivy smiled. ‘Thanks.’ The Abbotts always cheered her up. ‘I’ve got to run; curtain’s up soon.’

  ‘The obstacle is the path,’ Mr Abbott said and bowed to her.

  Ivy instinctively bowed back then hurried up the steps.

  Olivia peeked through the wing, stage right, careful to make sure no one in the audience could see her.

  Jackson was standing on a holodeck control board above Garrick and making the goggly eyes of his costume bounce wildly. ‘And in this state she gallops night by night, through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love …’

  He was giving the famous Queen Mab speech. It started out teasing Romeo about being in love but then turned into a rage against the alien–robot feud and how everyone was obsessed with all the wrong things.

  The audience, including Mr
Vega and her parents, were watching, enthralled.

  Who would have thought Mercutio as a cyborg could make so much sense? Olivia thought. Jackson was so good, exaggerating just the right phrases to make the meaning clear. No one could have done Merc-X88 better, Olivia knew, but that didn’t stop her wishing that he’d been cast as Romeo instead.

  As he danced off stage, on his way to the robots’ feast, the audience burst into applause. Olivia felt her pulse start to race. He was coming straight towards her and he had such an exhilarated smile on his face.

  ‘I was hoping to run into you,’ he whispered and pulled her away from the other actors leaving the stage, into the darkness of the curtains.

  Olivia knew there was a brief scene with butler robots before she had to go on. Was it enough time to kiss him? ‘You were?’ she said, looking into his silver-coloured face.

  ‘Yes, I just wanted …’ Jackson trailed off.

  ‘Julietron!’ hissed Ivy from somewhere nearby. ‘Cue Julietron with the Capulets!’

  Just one second, Olivia thought. Please!

  But Jackson was already backing off. ‘You’re doing so great,’ he whispered. ‘Get back out there and knock ’em dead.’

  Olivia wasn’t sure her heart could take any more almost-kisses. She knew she was supposed to be on stage, but it was time to take matters into her own hands. She was just going to kiss him – now or never.

  She took a step forwards.

  ‘Olivia!’ Ivy’s voice stopped her in her tracks. ‘Your cue!’

  ‘Arg!’ Olivia said, peeling away from Jackson to rush on stage into a melee of metallic masks and actors jerking about like mechanical puppets.

  The fates were against Romeo and Juliet, Olivia thought as she moved around to the thumping synthetic music, and they are determined not to let me kiss my boyfriend!

  In every break during the rest of the performance, Olivia tried to find Jackson again, but the closest she came was a glimpse across the backstage area while she was rushing for a costume change. Operation Cyborg Smooching had failed.

  Now, Olivia was lying as still as she could while Garrick twitched around the cryogenic tomb she was on top of, performing his last monologue in the scene where Romezog arrives to find Julietron apparently dead, not knowing that she has been injected with an internal cryogenesis solution that gives the appearance of death.

  ‘Death, that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath, hath had no power yet upon thy beauty,’ he was saying. Olivia was impressed by Garrick – he had only missed a line or two throughout the whole show. The audience was silent, and Olivia hoped they were feeling the building climax of the tragedy.

  With each line Garrick spoke, she knew it came closer and closer to the end where she would have to kiss him – and there was nothing to convince her that it would be anything but the grossest moment of her life.

  She would have to make sure she didn’t vomit in front of everyone.

  Garrick climbed on to the tomb with her and accidentally whacked her in the face with one of his costume’s arms. Olivia struggled not to react; she was supposed to be in system malfunction mode.

  ‘Eyes, look your last!’ Garrick was building up to the end. ‘Arms, take your last embrace!’ With that, he whacked her again with an octopus arm.

  He lay down beside her and drank a purple vial of Astrolaudanum. Garrick gasped and choked and hammed up his death for at least a minute too long, then went silent.

  That was Olivia’s cue to wake up.

  ‘What’s here?’ she said. She was pretending it was Jackson that she was looking at, imagining what it might feel like if that was him. ‘A cup clos’d in my true love’s hand? Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.’

  She reached up to the back of her head to turn herself off and when she slumped on top of Garrick, Olivia heard several people sniffling in the audience – they were crying!

  She had to bite the inside of her cheeks not to smile broadly.

  Of course, they don’t know what’s coming next, Olivia thought. This was not the end of their show. Camilla had written an extra scene where Olivia would have no choice but to kiss the beastly boy.

  The lights turned red, green, blue and purple and the theatre filled with an electronic humming sound. On cue, Olivia and Garrick stood bolt upright as the audience gasped in astonishment. They knew this wasn’t how the story of Romeo and Juliet went. Camilla’s big rewrite was to have them come back to life after dying, to give them the happy ending Shakespeare denied them.

  Garrick and Olivia looked at each other and continued the scene. Olivia had to raise her voice over a muttering that she thought might be a disapproving Mr Wagenbach.

  ‘Sometimes, the fates do not stand for good people making mistakes,’ Olivia intoned.

  Oddly, there was a silence. Has Garrick forgotten his next line? Olivia wondered.

  But then Garrick started up again. ‘Thou lookest most delicious, my Julietron.’

  What? Olivia knew that wasn’t what he was supposed to say. It should have been something about the power of love.

  ‘Cometh into my alien arms,’ Garrick went on.

  Olivia could see Ivy just off-stage frantically gesturing at Garrick to get back on script.

  What is he up to? Olivia started to panic. Is this the extra stuff he had planned? That fake Shakespeare sounds awful!

  ‘A taste, sweet Julietron, of your tinny flesh. Just one bite!’

  Bite? Garrick leaned closer and Olivia saw that he was wearing a set of false vampire teeth! When did he put those on? He was trying to turn Camilla’s sci-fi theme into a vampire one.

  Olivia hopped off the tomb to get away from him and continued with the lines as Camilla wrote them, trying to force Garrick back on script. ‘A peace between our races would serve the fates.’

  ‘Who cares about peace? You’re supposed to be mine!’ Garrick advanced, his ten arms outstretched, trying to grab hold of Olivia.

  She decided to buy herself some time, running away from Garrick. But she had to stay in character and run like a robot. Garrick chased her with his twitchy, itchy shuffle.

  The both looked absolutely ridiculous.

  She should have known, when it came down to it, they could not trust Garrick.

  You are in so much trouble! Olivia thought. When this mess is over, I am going to pluck your arms off one by one! And then Ivy and I – and Camilla – will bash you with them!

  Just as Garrick was about to catch her, someone shouted, ‘Behold!’

  Garrick froze.

  Jackson, in only part of his Merc-X88 costume, leaped on stage from the wings. ‘I thought my fate was sealed by that foul Tybalt,’ he said, improvising much better Shakespeare than Garrick. ‘Now it seems I am the cat with nine lives.’

  ‘You cannot stop me,’ Garrick muttered.

  Jackson darted in front of him. ‘Romezog, selfishness has consumed you. You must be banished from Veronova.’

  Olivia saw Camilla pushing three supporting actors on stage to help Jackson restrain Garrick and haul him off, making it look like an arrest. He shouted the whole time that Romezog would return.

  When the silence fell, Olivia realised that it was just her and Jackson on stage, and that they had to end the play.

  Jackson extended an arm and said, ‘Will you take my hand, beautiful Julietron?’

  Olivia wanted to rush across the stage to him, but she couldn’t break character. She had to do her robot-walk across the stage.

  But what are we going to do when I get there? Olivia wondered. How can we end Romezog and Julietron without Romezog?

  Finally, Olivia reached him, and felt her heart threatening to bounce right out of her chest. Jackson had the same look on his face as when he had pulled her into the wings.

  ‘May I kiss you?’ Jackson asked.

  In a rush, she realised that she was going to get her wish after all. Not really how I imagined it, but it’s super romantic all the same.

  It took everything Olivia
had to nod like a robot and not like a human in love.

  As Jackson leaned in towards her, the theatre lights blacked out. Their first kiss was in complete darkness. A moment shared by only them.

  Jackson pressed his lips against hers, and Olivia closed her eyes. It was soft and gentle, and sent a shiver down her spine like goosebumps.

  A short pause later, there was thunderous applause and they broke apart. The lights came up, and the rest of the cast, with a grumpy-looking Garrick, joined them on stage for a bow.

  Olivia held Jackson’s hand as they bowed together and felt tingly with happiness. She knew she would never forget her first kiss.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Nice save,’ Ivy said to Jackson as the cast rushed backstage, buzzing with the excitement of the closing scene. ‘I am going to kill Garrick.’

  ‘Not if I get there first,’ Olivia said.

  Ivy chuckled. Garrick wouldn’t stand a chance with the twins after him!

  ‘Mission accomplished,’ Sophia said, hurrying over from the wings and taking off her headphones.

  ‘Was that … the lights? Was that you?’ Olivia asked.

  ‘Ivy’s idea over the headphones, my execution,’ Sophia admitted. ‘Just in time, too.’

  ‘I wanted you two to have a little privacy,’ Ivy explained.

  ‘Thank you,’ Olivia said at the same time as Jackson.

  Ivy could see that her sister was absolutely beaming – from the buzz of performing, or from finally getting that kiss with Jackson? Probably both.

  Camilla burst into the green room, with an unreadable look on her face.

  Uh oh, Ivy thought. Camilla had been so strict through all the rehearsals. What did she think of the chaos of her carefully constructed ending?

  Camilla broke out in a huge smile. ‘That was better than I could have ever imagined. Why didn’t I think of putting Juliet with Mercutio?’ She gave them both a hug. ‘We’re going to do the rest of the performances like that, as long as I can keep Garrick in check.’

  By then, other cast members’ families were flooding backstage, presenting everything from neon flower bouquets to boxes of gold-painted chocolates.