“One minute to curtain call,” said Mrs. Gillipetti. “Ruby, are you positive you’re all right?”
“Yes!”
Ruby took her place backstage. The curtain was down, the stage was dark, and Ruby could hear a great din from the other side of the curtain. Moments later, the first notes of the piano and violin sounded, played by the Central High students who made up the small orchestra.
The curtain rose.
The stage was slowly lit.
And Ruby J. Northrop stood before what felt like all of Camden Falls, Massachusetts.
For one horrifying moment, she couldn’t remember what was supposed to happen next. Then her line came to her and she spoke it clearly, and just loudly enough.
But not with any emotion, thought Ruby, panicking.
Someone in the audience coughed. Someone else sneezed.
The cardboard tree standing next to John Parson’s house began to teeter. Ever so subtly, Ruby reached out and steadied it. The teetering tree had been quite amateurish, Ruby knew, but her response to the problem had been professional. She hoped Aunt Allie had noticed. Ruby was pleased with herself, and some of the butterflies lost their energy.
The play continued. Ruby concentrated on her lines. The first scene came to an end. The second scene came to an end. The third scene began and Ruby willed herself to think of nothing but the story that she and the cast were telling. She placed herself hundreds of years back in time, in the life of the beleaguered Alice Kendall, and suddenly found that she was Alice. When Harry Lang accused her, rather more sharply than usual, of being a witch, her tears came easily and naturally. They slid down her cheeks, and she allowed them to fall without wiping at them, knowing that not calling attention to them actually called quite a bit of attention to them and made her performance remarkable indeed.
The audience was hushed, but at the end of the scene, burst into spontaneous applause.
And with that, Ruby’s butterflies disappeared entirely. She was, at last, able to enjoy her role.
Ruby glided through the rest of the performance and felt quite proud of it, even though later one of the kindergartners wandered onto the stage when it wasn’t her scene. Ruby thought quickly and ad-libbed a line: “Run along now, duck, and find your mother.” (She liked the addition of the old-fashioned-sounding “duck.”) Then she shooed the girl into the wings. Toward the end of the play, shortly before Ruby’s long-awaited death scene, Harry said, “So let this be a lesson to you, Ruby,” and stood smirking, waiting for Ruby’s reply. The audience caught his mistake and Ruby heard a few snickers. Again she thought quickly, and after the briefest of moments, said, “I know of no one in these parts who goeth by the name of Ruby, so assuredly you meant to calleth me by my given name of Alice.”
“Uh, yeah,” said Harry.
Ruby picked up with her next line, aware of laughter but pleased with herself, and then launched into Alice’s best-ever death scene. Shortly after that, the curtain came down on colonial Camden Falls, and the auditorium erupted in cheering and applause.
I did it! thought Ruby. She looked at Mrs. Gillipetti, who was standing in the wings, wearing a broad smile.
“Wonderful,” said Mrs. Gillipetti quietly. “Just wonderful, everybody. Okay. Get ready for the curtain call.”
Later, Ruby found that although she could recall the first scenes of the play quite clearly, much of it, including the curtain call, had become a blur to her. She remembered lots and lots of clapping and even some whistling and cheering. She vaguely remembered seeing the smallest children run onto the stage holding hands, so that when one of them tripped, the entire row fell down. She remembered watching Harry walk onto the stage alone, watched him grinning and waving at the audience. And she definitely remembered what happened when she walked onto the stage herself. The audience, which had been noisy, fell silent. The clapping stopped. The cheering stopped. The whistling stopped. Then each person in the audience stood, raised his arms, and clasped his hands above his head, forming a lopsided circle.
Ruby, confused, looked at the rows of ringed arms, and Mrs. Gillipetti leaned over and whispered, “They’re giving you a standing O.”
The audience had just taken their seats again when a stream of people, each holding a bouquet of flowers, walked down the aisle and approached the stage. One by one, they stepped onto the stage and presented a member of the cast or crew with a bouquet. Some received more than one.
Olivia handed Ruby a small bouquet and whispered, “This is from Nikki and Flora and me.”
Min placed a bouquet of roses in her arms and said, “This is from Aunt Allie and me, and from your parents, too, because I know they’re here tonight.”
Ruby felt tears spring to her eyes, and she pulled Min to her in a tight hug.
Bouquet after bouquet was delivered. Mrs. Gillipetti received three, each member of the orchestra received one, and the lighting director received one.
Ruby was in a happy muddle of tears, chatter, and flowers, the cast members giving one another high fives, when a tall woman wearing what Min would call a no-nonsense suit strode onto the stage. Once again, the auditorium fell silent.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mrs. Gillipetti, “a few words from Mayor Howie.”
Ruby turned to Harry and mouthed, “The mayor?”
Harry nodded, eyebrows raised.
“This,” began Mayor Howie, “has been a wonderful event. Everyone involved in the production should be very, very proud. What you’ve seen here tonight,” she said to the audience, “represents months of hard work, dedication, and ingenuity. Kudos to the cast and crew of The Witches of Camden Falls.”
Ruby watched the mayor stride off the stage. She decided that if, when she was grown up, she didn’t get to be an actor for some reason, then she definitely wanted to be a mayor.
Mrs. Gillipetti now took Mayor Howie’s spot on the stage, raised her hands, and said above the din, “Thank you all for coming and for your support. Remember that our final performance will take place tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock. Spread the word.”
Ruby was following Harry into the wings, feeling sad that opening night was over, when she felt someone take her by the elbow.
“Ruby Northrop?” asked a man’s voice.
“Yes?” Ruby turned around.
“Douglas Geoffries,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m with the Camden Falls Courier. Could I have a few words with you?”
“Sure!” said Ruby, who then answered Mr. Geoffries’s questions about her age and how long she’d been living in Camden Falls and other performances she’d been in.
The paper was published on the following Wednesday. When a copy was slapped down on the front doorstep of the fourth Row House from the left, Ruby snapped it up, turned the pages until she found the article about The Witches of Camden Falls, and scanned it for her interview. There was her name in print. And there was a photo of her and Harry onstage. Ruby cut out the article and tacked it to her bulletin board. She was very proud of it. It made her feel as happy as when Aunt Allie, on the drive home after opening night, had reached into the backseat of Min’s car, taken Ruby by the hand, and said, “You were wonderful, dear.”
It was a silent group of girls who gathered at the fairgrounds outside Camden Falls on Sunday morning. Flora and Annika had said little to each other the previous evening, but they’d been at Ruby’s performance, so they hadn’t had much opportunity to talk. When Mrs. Walter brought her car around to the front of the Row Houses on Sunday and tooted the horn, Flora and Annika had walked slowly outside and slid into the Walters’ car, where they had found a very quiet Olivia. Barely a word was spoken on the drive to the fairgrounds.
“Everything okay, girls?” Mrs. Walter asked later as they were climbing out of the car.
“Yeah,” said Olivia.
“Yup,” said Flora.
“Mm-hmm,” said Annika.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes!” said Olivia.
“We
ll, all right. I’ll see you later. Olivia, your dad’s working at the store today, but I’ll bring Henry and Jack here at noon. Look for us at the information booth. I’ll want to check in with you then, okay?”
“Okay.”
The girls approached the entrance to the fair. Nikki was waiting for them. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” said Flora, Olivia, and Annika.
After a long and very uncomfortable silence, Flora finally said, “What should we do first?”
This was met with three shrugs.
“The midway?” suggested Flora.
A pause. Then, “I guess,” said Olivia.
“Don’t be so enthusiastic,” said Annika.
“Look who’s talking,” said Olivia.
Nikki cleared her throat. “Does someone want to tell me what’s going on? You guys were quiet all day yesterday. Are you mad at each other? Did you have a fight?”
“No,” said Olivia, Flora, and Annika.
“Then what is it? Are you going to act like this all day? Because if you are, Mom and Mae are here, and I could have a lot more fun with them.”
“So go find them,” said Olivia.
“All right. Maybe I will.” Nikki turned around.
“Wait, don’t go,” said Flora. “You know what, you guys? I think we need to talk.”
“About what?” asked Annika sullenly.
“About us. Look. Annika, this is your first visit here. And Olivia, I think it’s bothering you that Annika was my best friend before I moved to Camden Falls. And Annika, I think it’s bothering you that Olivia and Nikki are my best friends now.”
There was another pause, and then Nikki said, “And, Flora, I think it’s bothering you that your friends aren’t getting along.”
“It is!” Flora exclaimed, and suddenly felt tears coming on. She swallowed a sob. “I love all of you. You are my friends. And I was looking forward to introducing Annika to you. And you to Annika. But this is” (Flora now let out a sob she couldn’t control) “this is horrible.”
Olivia put her arm around Flora. “I think we can work things out, though, don’t you?”
“I hope so,” said Flora.
“Well, if what you just said is true — that we’re all friends and you love all of us — then I’m pretty sure we can.”
Through her tears, Flora saw that Annika and Olivia were crying now, too. “This is so embarrassing! We can’t all cry here in front of everybody,” Flora exclaimed, eyeing the groups of people who kept hurrying toward the entrance to the fair.
“We need to go somewhere to talk,” said Olivia, looking around. The fairgrounds, which on ordinary days were the town playing fields, consisted of a large grassy area surrounded on three sides by woods. Not far from where the girls stood was a graceful spruce tree, its sweeping branches spreading low. Olivia pointed to it. “Let’s go sit under the tree. We can face the woods. That will be pretty private.”
The girls walked shakily to the tree, sniffing and hiccupping, and now Nikki was wiping her eyes, too. “Are you sure we need to talk?” she asked. “That doesn’t always work well at my house. I mean, it didn’t when my father was around. No matter what anybody said, you couldn’t win an argument with him. And then he and my mother would get madder than ever at each other and finally Dad would go crashing out of the house, yelling at all of us.”
“Well, we’re not your father,” said Flora gently. “This talk isn’t going to end that way.”
The girls sat down in a circle behind the tree.
“I hope someone has Kleenex,” said Annika, wiping her eyes.
“I do,” said Olivia, reaching into her pocket with a trembling hand.
“All right. Let’s start at the beginning,” said Nikki.
“What’s the beginning?” asked Flora. “I mean, what’s the beginning of … this?”
Nikki said slowly, “I think the beginning was a couple of months ago when you told us that Annika was going to visit.” She glanced at Olivia.
Olivia, her cheeks reddening, said to Nikki, “Yeah. I knew Annika was Flora’s best friend before she moved here. And now we’re best friends — I mean, you and Flora and Ruby and I are — but I was afraid that when Annika came, Flora would see what she was missing.”
“What do you mean?” asked Flora.
Olivia shrugged.
“No, really. What do you mean?” asked Nikki. “This is important, Olivia. If we’re going to talk about this stuff, then we’d better really talk about it. Because if we don’t, we’re going to create distances.”
“I’m afraid that if we do talk we’re going to create distances.”
“Not if we’re already friends,” said Flora. “And we are.”
Olivia drew her breath in and said, “I never had a best friend before. No one liked me, not really. I skipped a grade, and I’m smaller than everyone in our class, and I’m interested in things no one else cares about. So I never expected to have a best friend. Then I got three, but I was always afraid that everything could be taken away. Why should you guys like me so much? So when Flora said Annika was coming to visit and she talked about all the great things Annika used to do, I felt like I —” Olivia stopped talking suddenly.
“What?” asked Annika. “Like you what?”
“Like I wasn’t going to measure up,” whispered Olivia. “Like Flora would see Annika again and realize what she was missing.”
“But I was afraid I wasn’t going to measure up!” cried Annika. “Flora e-mails me about the great friends she has in Camden Falls and all the things you guys do together. So I guess I —” Now it was Annika’s turn to stop talking.
“It’s okay. You can tell us,” said Olivia.
“Well, I was jealous of you and Nikki. I’m even a little jealous of Camden Falls.”
“Of Camden Falls?” repeated Flora.
“Yeah. You’re always going on about how wonderful it is here —”
“She is?” said Nikki.
“Yes. And, Flora, I want you to be happy and everything. I do. But — and I know this doesn’t make sense — somehow I didn’t want you to be happier here than you were — I mean, I didn’t want you to forget — it’s just that I didn’t want to lose you.” And with that, Annika burst into tears and buried her head in her hands.
Then Nikki started to cry.
“Why are you crying?” asked Olivia, bewildered.
“Because a year ago,” said Nikki, sobbing, “I could never, ever have had this kind of talk with anyone. I didn’t have any friends, either, Olivia, and now I have three best friends. You guys, think about why we’re crying. It’s actually because we have so many friends. Annika, Flora can be friends with us and with you. Olivia, Flora can be friends with Annika and with us. Right?”
“Right,” said Annika and Olivia.
But now Flora began to weep. “You know why I was so upset when my project only won second place?” she said.
“I truly have no idea,” said Nikki. “I’ve been wondering about it since yesterday.”
“It was because I wanted Annika to see how happy I am here. I wanted her to see that I fit in. I thought if I could win first place with a project about Camden Falls and my family and everything, then I could prove that I fit in, and that I belong here.”
Olivia started to laugh.
“It isn’t funny, Olivia!” cried Flora.
“Well, this is: I wanted to win first place with my photos so I could impress Annika.”
“Oh, for the love of Mike,” said Flora, sounding so much like Min that Annika and Nikki began to laugh, too, and then finally so did Flora.
“You guys!” Annika exclaimed.
Olivia looked at her watch. “It’s nearly eleven o’clock,” she said. “We’re missing the fair.”
“And it’s Annika’s last day here,” said Flora.
“Somehow I think our talk was more important,” said Nikki. “We really needed to have it. Is everybody clear on everything?” she added. “Annika, I think
Flora is always going to be your friend. You’re not going to lose her. And, Flora, Annika sees that you’re happy. Olivia, whether you like it or not, you have best friends for life.”
“Same goes for you,” said Olivia to Nikki.
Nikki stood up and brushed off her jeans. “Well, all right, then.”
Olivia, Flora, and Annika stood, too, and the girls put their arms around one another and headed back to the entrance to the fair.
“We have four hours before we have to meet Min and Annika’s parents,” said Flora, “and then Annika will have to go home.”
“What should we do first?” asked Nikki.
“Midway,” said Olivia. “And I have to remember to check in with my mom.”
“After that we’ll get lunch,” said Annika.
“Oh, look!” exclaimed Flora. “There’s one of those photo booths. Let’s see if we can all fit in it.”
They could, just barely. And the strip of photos, when it was ready, showed most of Flora’s head, the right side of Nikki’s head, the left side of Olivia’s head, and the top of Annika’s head.
“Who’s going to keep it?” asked Annika.
“We all will,” said Flora. “I have an idea. Let me have it for now.”
Flora had to wait until Tuesday, after she had said good-bye to Annika and her parents, after the second performance of Ruby’s play, after another day at the fair (this time with Nikki and Olivia and Ruby), after an impressive fireworks display, and after school had begun again, before she could carry out her idea. Then she took the strip of photos to Camden Falls Art Supply, Xeroxed it three times, carefully cut out the strips of photos, and asked to have each strip laminated.
“There,” she said that evening as she showed them to Min. “Four bookmarks. One for each of us to remember the fair by. I’ll give Olivia and Nikki theirs tomorrow.”
Flora put Annika’s bookmark in an envelope and added a note that said “Friends forever and always” and mailed it to her the next day.
Over and done in a flash.
That was how Ruby thought of Camden Falls’s 350th birthday celebration. How, she wondered, was it possible to plan for something for so long, to prepare for it, to look forward to it, to dream about it — and then to find yourself on the other side of it so quickly? This was exactly what happened with her birthday every year. And with Christmas. And even with summer vacation, which lasted much longer than any of those other things but still managed to fly by, so that when it was over, Ruby found herself shaking her head in wonderment.
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