“You’ll be a great little actor, Nelson,” shouted Celeste.
“Silence, fool!” he commanded.
“I’m serious, you idiot! It’ll be the best thing for you.”
“I’m gonna fight ’em off! A seven nation army couldn’t hold me back!” sang Nelson.
ADOLF HITLER IN A BOX
Celeste was right about almost everything, but not about the drama group. It was a huge mistake. Exactly one week later, Nelson was sitting backstage of the school theater dressed in an oversized striped nightshirt with oven gloves on his hands. A small mustache and greased hair had given him the unmistakable appearance of Adolf Hitler, or rather a clown version of Adolf Hitler. This was an all-time low for Nelson. Never had he felt so miserable, nervous, and humiliated all at once. He stared at his reflection in the mirror and considered his escape options.
A) Pretend to be too sick to go on stage. The trouble with this idea was that he’d left it too late to begin a believable decline in health.
B) Run for it. Not a great idea, as leaving the school at lunchtime would be considered an act of truancy and therefore earn him a whole bunch of detentions. Also, looking like Hitler wearing oven gloves while running down the street would be asking for trouble.
C) Just go through with it and never, ever come back to this stupid drama group ever again. Ever.
C was his only real option. He’d just have to stick it out. Anyway, the biggest problem was not the makeup or even the oven gloves—it was the play’s writer, director, and lead actor: Katy Newman.
Katy Newman had blazed through her life with bulletproof confidence and truly believed that she was the boss of everything. It didn’t bother her that no one else in her drama group was considered cool or even talented. All she needed were kids who would do exactly as she said without question. If they hadn’t all followed Katy around like puppies they might have been friend material, but they did, so they weren’t.
Katy’s plays were notorious for handling serious subjects in an embarrassingly earnest style and they all involved Katy dying dramatically at the end. This lunchtime, St. Patrick’s school was to be subjected to Alice in Nightmareland, a spin on the traditional tale of Alice where the heroine was an evacuee whose fears were represented by scary life-sized versions of the toys she had brought with her on the train to the countryside. Nelson was playing Adolf Hitler as a jack-in-the-box. It was his job to pop out of the box and shoot Katy Newman with a starter pistol at the middle of the play. Katy had fake blood ready to pour out of her chest. And if you think that’s bad, then maybe now is a good time to tell you—this was also a musical.
“Twenty minutes before curtain-up, people. Last chance to use the loo,” sang Katy as she whizzed through the changing rooms. Katy was particularly excited today because a well-known casting director from London was visiting the school looking for “cute and plucky kids” to be in a BBC drama set in the Second World War. In Katy’s mind, this was probably the last play she would need to perform at the school. There was no doubt that once the casting director saw her in action it would be only a matter of days before she was on TV and more famous than the moon.
“If no one needs the loo, I think we should run lines once more just to be sure, okay?”
This made Nelson decide he should take Katy’s advice and go to the bathroom after all. He opened the door from the backstage area onto an empty corridor. The bathroom was at the far end. He would have to make a run for it.
Until this point in his life, Nelson had never run anywhere so quickly. The fear of being spotted by someone while dressed as Adolf Hitler seemed to have infected his legs so that they now operated at gazelle-like speed. Had Mr. Goff the gym teacher seen him in action, he would have insisted Nelson join the school running team, but Nelson’s impressive sprint was suddenly cut short as the bathroom door he was aiming for swung open and three boys emerged. These were not just any boys; these were extremely cool older kids. Boys who could spit exactly the same way top football players do and who walked around school with the swagger of pirates. If they saw Nelson they would not only laugh their heads off until Nelson’s face was redder than a pepper, but also almost certainly give him the nickname “Nazi Nelson.” This was not a fate Nelson could bear, which is why his speedy legs changed course and he dashed through the first door on his left.
On the one hand, this had worked perfectly, and the cool boys never caught a glimpse of him. However, Nelson was now standing in the middle of the girls’ bathroom, and the only thing worse than being seen by cool older boys would be being seen by cool girls. And the bathroom was absolutely packed with them.
Nelson froze where he stood, closed his eyes, and gulped, like a mouse who had accidentally run into a snake pit. He would never, ever be able to make friends after this. Who on earth would want to hang out with the Nazi who ran into the girls’ bathroom wearing oven gloves? He was about to go from zero to minus one hundred on the school popularity chart, and winced at the prospect of how much his mother would laugh when she found out. He would have to change schools for sure now. Maybe even leave town or, better still, move to the other side of the planet and start a new life on a nice remote island where the only inhabitants were coconuts. Nelson braced himself for an explosion of laughter. But it didn’t happen. Instead, he opened his eyes to find that none of them were looking at him. They were all clamoring noisily to get a glimpse of Cheryl Corbett’s tattoo (which Nelson later found out was actually a fake). Nelson inched slowly away from the girls and was just about to make his escape when the door flew open and smacked him right in the face. Nelson was slammed against the wall behind the door as five more girls ran into the bathroom to see if the rumors about Cheryl’s tattoo were true. He would probably have started to cry, but the need to remain unnoticed was so powerful it stemmed the flow of tears until he was well clear of the girls’ bathroom.
Phew.
Nelson snuck back through the door leading to the stage and decided it was safer to wait out the last few minutes before the show started inside his jack-in-the-box prop, which was waiting in the wings to be wheeled on with the rest of the scenery. It was small, dark, and wonderfully quiet inside the box. He even had a cushion to sit on and a packet of Skittles left over from the last rehearsal. He also had a gun—the starter pistol Katy had borrowed without asking from the gym teacher’s office.
It was halfway through his fourth Skittle and with only ten minutes to go before the play was due to start that it happened.
From inside the box, Nelson heard the stage door open and the unmistakable Welsh voice of his history teacher, Mr. Mallison, speaking in urgent, hushed tones. Nelson decided to keep quiet. He even slowed down his chewing action to avoid making any funny noises with his mouth.
“There’s no one in here, Judy. Now, tell me what’s going on,” whispered Mr. Mallison. Nelson could picture his hairy index finger pushing up the large square glasses that were forever trying to escape from his face by sliding down his long, thin nose.
Nelson didn’t know who Judy was.
“Oh God, I don’t even know where to start,” said the woman, sounding almost hysterical.
Nelson was all ears. His eyes widened as though that might help him pick up a clearer signal.
“Just take a breath and start from the beginning, okay? What on earth has happened?” said Mr. Mallison.
Nelson heard the woman sniff. The kind of big, snotty sniff you do after you’ve been crying for a while.
“I got a text. About ten minutes ago. It was from Daphne.” It sounded as if the woman was about to burst into tears again. Mr. Mallison made a gentle hushing sound. There was a long gap while the woman gathered herself together before she spoke again.
“There’s been an accident. On the school trip to Cadaqués,” said the woman, her voice trembling. At this point Nelson felt as if all the air was sucked out of his lungs. Celeste was on that trip. She’d emailed him photos of her tour of the artist Salvador Dalí’s house. She
was due back tomorrow. But he couldn’t get distracted now—he had to listen.
“Happened about an hour ago. A bunch of the kids, they went on some kind of boat ride. There was an explosion.” The woman took another deep breath to steady herself.
Nelson pressed his ear against the side of the box.
“They found five of the kids floating out at sea,” she went on, her voice cracking.
“Oh my God—are they all right?” Mr. Mallison was clearly horrified. The woman must have nodded, because Nelson heard Mr. Mallison say, “Oh, thank goodness for that.”
Nelson relaxed. Celeste was all right. This woman was just very upset. Phew.
“They had life jackets on, apparently. But there’d been six kids in the boat, not five. One of them is missing.”
Nelson froze.
“Who? Who’s missing, Judy?”
There was a pause. Nelson screwed his eyes up tight as if he knew he was about to be hit by a truck-sized piece of information.
“Celeste Green.”
Nelson could have cried out. He could have leaped from the box and demanded to be told everything. But he didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. He was just there. Frozen in time.
“Celeste? I don’t believe it!” said Mr. Mallison, stretching each word. “How is this possible?”
“I don’t know. Daphne texted me from the Spanish police station. You mustn’t tell anyone yet, Bob. Her family has to be told first.”
You could hear the disbelief in Mr. Mallison’s reply. “Celeste Green. Good Lord. Do they think … Judy, do they think she might be dead?” But the conversation was cut short by the arrival of Katy and her team setting up for the performance.
It wouldn’t sink in. How could it? What Nelson had just heard was so enormously terrible, so gigantically awful, his brain could not even begin to make sense of it. The truth just sat there in front of him—a mountain—an ocean—a planet-sized fact he simply could not comprehend. No tears came to his eyes. He was too stunned to feel anything. Celeste. Dead. The two words just didn’t connect.
Three and a half minutes later the curtain was up and Katy’s awful play was in progress. The audience was only one-third full, mainly teachers, but you couldn’t miss the casting director from London—a woman in her late fifties wearing a multicolored shawl, cork high heels, and gold hoop earrings. She was sitting in the front row and shifted awkwardly in her chair as if Katy’s play was giving her a stomachache.
“Oh, is this a nightmare or is this a dream?
Will I wake with a smile or wake with a scream?
I miss my papa, and I miss my mumm-y.
War is a nightmare for this poor evacuee.”
Katy sang with such force and such emotion that you could almost forgive her for not being in tune, but, I guarantee, if you had been in the audience you would only have been able to take this ghastly nonsense for a few minutes before you leaped out of your chair and ran screaming for the exit as if the room was on fire.
The moment had come for Nelson to pop out of the box and sing a song about how he was going to invade England, before shooting Katy with the starter pistol. He knew the audience was waiting. He knew Katy was right on the other side of that box, but Nelson could not move a muscle. The news about his sister pressed down on him more heavily than a hat made of hippos.
Katy threw open the lid and glared down at Nelson with enough hatred to boil a kettle. “That’s your cue. You’re supposed to jump up and sing now,” she hissed, but Nelson was unable to move, let alone reply. Katy decided to take drastic action, grabbed Nelson by the armpit, and lifted him up herself. The audience took one look at this befuddled little Adolf Hitler and started laughing out loud. “Sing the song,” whispered Katy through gritted teeth, but all Nelson heard was a high-pitched ringing in his ears before his eyes fogged over and he suddenly fainted, tumbling forward, crushing the box, firing the starter pistol—bang!— and sending Katy Newman toppling off the stage with a scream.
* * *
Mr. Wheeler, the drama teacher, decided this might be a good time to close the curtain.
THE DAY THAT FELL TO PIECES
The news that Adolf Hitler had shot Katy Newman in the middle of her play, knocking her offstage, spread through the school on a wave of shocked whispers and giggles. Within ten minutes the story saturated every classroom and had been bent and twisted into even more colorful versions of the truth. This was precisely why Mr. Mallison had waited until everyone, even the teachers, had returned to their classrooms, before leaving the backstage area with Nelson. Once the corridors were clear, Mr. Mallison laid one of his large hands on Nelson’s shoulders and they began a brisk walk to the headmistress’s office.
* * *
It’s funny how your body can get on without you at times. It doesn’t need your approval for every heartbeat or reflex, and right now Nelson had never felt more detached from himself. He knew he was walking swiftly through the school, he could hear the footsteps from Mr. Mallison’s huge shoes echoing off the walls, he could see the corridors lined with paintings made by students to illustrate climate-change issues, the anti-bullying posters, and the photo montages of classes planting vegetables in the new flower beds, but it felt as if his mind was separate from his body, like a kite on a long, long string floating high above it all. Connected, but only just.
* * *
Mr. Mallison didn’t even knock; he just strode right into the secretary’s office, making her jump up from behind her computer with a startled squeak.
“Sorry, Judy—I should’ve knocked but…” Instead of words, Mr. Mallison finished his sentence with a nod of his head toward Nelson. Judy, a nervous, sparrowlike woman, nodded emphatically in reply, leaped to her feet, and skittered across the room.
Ah, so this is Judy, thought Nelson. The woman he had heard breaking the news to Mr. Mallison.
Judy knocked on the headmistress’s door but didn’t wait for a reply before opening it. The door swung open to reveal a large, wood-paneled room and the kind of desk Nelson had only ever seen presidents sitting behind in apocalyptic action movies. Mrs. Vigars would have made a convincing world leader: a mighty oak tree of a woman wrapped in a dark blue dress, black cardigan, and burgundy scarf knotted around her neck. Her magnificent face was framed with dark hair pulled into a no-nonsense bun, and “no-nonsense” was exactly the way in which she was speaking into her telephone right now.
“As soon as you hear anything more, you will call me first. No one else, do you understand, Daphne?” If I was Daphne, thought Nelson, I would totally understand, and even if I didn’t, I would say I did. Mrs. Vigars was seriously impressive and even put the phone down without saying goodbye. He’d seen her before in assembly, of course, but never up close. Wow.
This is the portrait of Mrs. Vigars that hung in the entrance hall of the school.
“Bob, couldn’t you have at least cleaned him up a bit?” said the headmistress, rising from her chair and picking up a small black handbag that sat on top of a pile of books beside her desk, but she didn’t wait for an apology. “Your mother is going to be here very soon, Nelson, and I’m not sure she’ll want to take you home looking like Hitler.” Mrs. Vigars turned to her secretary with a cold steely command. “No calls, and get me some cotton pads.”
As Judy and Mr. Mallison skittered away Mrs. Vigars opened her handbag and took out a packet of Werther’s Original sweets and some baby wipes. She put a sweet in Nelson’s hand and then popped one in her own mouth without taking her eyes off him. Nelson felt obliged to do the same. The sweet clacked around in his dry mouth like a pebble. Nelson could hear at least two telephones ringing in the secretary’s office as Mrs. Vigars led him to a seat by the window where a small mirror hung next to the most recent school photo. She handed Nelson the baby wipes, but Nelson just stood there looking at them with no idea what to do.
“Never mind, I’ll do it,” she said, and with one finger under his chin, Mrs. Vigars tilted Nelson’s face up toward her. She th
en put on her reading glasses and set to work. “Eyes closed,” she said, and Nelson obeyed. The cold wipes traced the lines of his face with soothing strokes. Mrs. Vigars seemed to be paying particular attention to the place under his nose where the horrid little mustache had been painted.
“You’re being very brave,” said Mrs. Vigars.
“Have they found her yet?” Nelson whispered back.
“Not yet, but they will.”
“I don’t think she’s dead.”
“Neither do I.”
“Cel’s a great swimmer. She probably swimmed away to a big rock or something.”
“Swam,” said Mrs. Vigars, and Nelson could hear the smile in her voice. “She probably swam away to a big rock.”
“Swam,” said Nelson. He heard the secretary enter the room but didn’t bother to open his eyes. Mrs. Vigars took the cotton pads from her and used them to apply a moisturizing cream.
“What’s that?” asked Nelson.
“This is my special de-Hitler cream,” she said in mock seriousness. Nelson liked the smell of it. Coconut. The door creaked open once more and Nelson heard Mrs. Vigars say, “Ah, you must be Mrs. Green.”
“Mum!” yelled Nelson, opening his eyes and turning toward the door, but instead of his mother, he was met by the sight of an extremely small woman who was as round and wrinkled as a turtle.
“No, no, no,” said the woman as she stepped forward. “I’m a neighbor, aren’t I, dear? Live three doors down. Hilda Mills.” Though in her late sixties, Hilda had thick curls of blond hair and her glasses made it look as if she had joke-shop eyes.
“Where’s Mum?” asked Nelson with real concern.
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