by Marilyn Kaye
“Dressing rooms,” Alyssa said, pointing at doors as we walked. “Props. Sets. Wardrobe.” Clearly, she knew a lot about her little brother’s theater world. I wondered if she was really as alienated from her family as she claimed to be.
“You’ve been here before,” I said.
“Well, sure. Someone has to do the dirty work in the family.”
We’d started hearing voices, and I realized we were approaching the rehearsal. A man standing by the curtain put a finger to his lips.
There were three actors on the stage—a man, a woman, and a little boy who I presumed was Alyssa’s brother. A voice coming from someone I couldn’t see rang out.
“No, no! Laura, you’re supposed to be off-book by now! And George, you should have moved stage left! Take five. Then we’re going to go through this scene again.”
Alyssa translated for them. “Off-book means the lines are memorized. Take five means a five-minute break.”
The cute little kid with silky black hair waved to Alyssa and ambled toward us. I couldn’t resist a glance at Alyssa’s expression. She was actually smiling a real smile, not a smirk. Of course, being Alyssa, she didn’t bother to introduce us. Her brother, however, was more well-behaved.
“Hi, I’m Ethan. Are you Alyssa’s friends?”
There was something about the way he asked this that made me think he’d never met any friends of Alyssa’s before. Rachel and I told him our names and assured him that yes, we were his sister’s friends. He seemed very happy to hear it.
When he had to go back onstage for the rehearsal, Alyssa considered what we should do while we waited.
“Oh, I know, let’s look at the costumes,” she said, and she took us to the door labeled WARDROBE.
The large room was packed with freestanding racks of clothes. A young woman sat at a table, running some fabric through a sewing machine. She looked up with a frown as we entered, but then she offered a small smile.
“Hi, Alyssa.”
“Hi,” Alyssa replied. “Okay if we look around?”
“Sure.” To us, she said, “I’m Carrie Dale, the wardrobe mistress.” She looked pointedly at Alyssa as she spoke.
Alyssa sighed. “Sorry,” she said, and introduced us. And now Alyssa was being polite! How many more shocking experiences would I have today?
“Are you making a costume?” Rachel asked Ms. Dale.
“No, just fixing a seam. Feel free to explore, but tell me if you take anything off a rack. It may not look like it, but everything’s organized.”
There were some amazing clothes on the racks—long dresses with hoopskirts that looked like they would suit a woman from a hundred and fifty years ago. A man’s tuxedo, a child’s pinafore, gowns covered in sequins. Shelves on the walls held hats, masks, jewelry. I saw costumes that were immediately identifiable—pirates, princesses, clowns—and others that weren’t, like a long yellow tube and a big purple ball of fur.
“Wow,” I said. “They must put on a lot of plays.”
“When I was younger, Mom and Mami took me to the children’s plays they perform on Saturday afternoons,” Rachel told us.
“The playhouse is a big deal,” Alyssa explained. “It’s known even outside Lakeside. Important people come here to scout out new talent. That’s how Ethan got his commercial jobs.”
“Hey, check this out!” Rachel exclaimed. “Ms. Dale, can I take this off the shelf?”
The wardrobe mistress looked up from her machine. “Okay.”
I turned to see what Rachel had found. She was holding what looked like a headband with two big floppy ears attached.
“Bow your chin,” she ordered me. Carefully she placed the band on my head, and I discovered that a transparent plastic wire holding a pink blob was dangling from it. Rachel fixed the blob onto my nose.
“Look, Alyssa!” she called. “It’s FunnyBunny!”
Alyssa started laughing. I went to the big full-length mirror on one wall and examined myself. I was about to laugh when an amazing thought came to me.
Watching my expression, Rachel asked, “What’s the matter?”
“I just had an idea.” I went to Ms. Dale.
“Do you have a pig mask?” I asked her.
“We have three pig heads,” she told me. “We do Three Little Pigs every year.”
She pointed me toward a cabinet on the other side of the room. Alyssa and Rachel followed me there. Opening it, I saw a bunch of heads—an alligator (or maybe it was a crocodile), monsters, assorted creatures I couldn’t identify. And three pigs.
I pulled one out. Alyssa lowered her head, and I put it on her.
“Can you see?” I asked.
“Yeah, there are holes in the eyes. And the nose.”
I searched the cabinet for something else but didn’t see it. I hurried back to Ms. Dale.
“What about a bear?”
“There are whole costumes for bears. Goldilocks, rack eight.”
Sure enough, there were three brown fuzzy jumpsuits in different sizes, all with attached headpieces. I picked out the smallest. “Rachel, try this on!”
It was a little too tight. Mama Bear was better, but the legs were too long.
“Just hold them up,” I advised her.
We went to the mirror, Rachel hobbling as she tried to walk in the too-big costume.
“Now, look at us together,” I ordered. “FunnyBunny, PigglyWiggly, and BigBadBear.”
“Thirteen,” Rachel mumbled. Apparently, the mouth opening on the face of the costume didn’t match her actual mouth.
“Right, BigBadBear13. What do you think?”
“The Amazing Maze!” Alyssa exclaimed. And through her thick fur face, Rachel made an excited sound. Clearly, I didn’t have to tell them my idea.
The wardrobe mistress joined us. “I’ll bet you want me to take a picture for Instagram, right?”
“Well, no, actually, I was wondering…could we borrow these? Just for tonight?”
Ms. Dale shook her head. “I’m sorry, girls, but we have a very strict rule about costumes. Nothing leaves the theater.”
I couldn’t see Alyssa’s or Rachel’s face, but I knew they had to be just as disappointed as I was.
Just then, the door opened, and a man walked in.
“What’s going on?” he asked sharply.
I recognized his voice—he was the director of the play in rehearsal.
Alyssa strode toward him. “Mr. Kelly, can we borrow these costumes? And bring them back tomorrow?”
The look on the man’s face told me the answer would be no. But before he could say it, Alyssa pulled off the pig head. His expression immediately softened.
“Oh. You’re Ethan’s sister.”
She nodded. “Alyssa Parker.”
He hesitated. “I assume you need them for some kind of costume party? You’ll have to be very careful, don’t tear them or spill anything on them.”
“We’ll be careful,” Alyssa said.
Mr. Kelly didn’t look thrilled, but he nodded at Ms. Dale and left the room.
As we moved away from the mirror, Rachel forgot to lift the trousers and tripped. She struggled back upright, and we checked to make sure the costume wasn’t damaged. Rachel wasn’t damaged either, but I worried that this could be a problem.
Alyssa went to Ms. Dale and asked to borrow some pins. She returned with them, and she and I knelt down on the floor to pin up Rachel’s legs.
“I can’t believe he said yes,” I said to Alyssa. “He must really like you.”
“No, he thinks I’m weird, like everyone else. It’s because of my parents. They’re patrons. They give a ton of money to the theater. He probably thinks they gave me permission to ask for the costumes. Okay, Rachel, is that better?”
Rachel took a few tentative steps and nodded.
“Then let’s get my brother and go.”
“Like this?” I asked.
Alyssa secured a paper bag from the wardrobe mistress, and we took off our masks and he
lped Rachel out of her costume so she wouldn’t get stuck with any pins. Then we went to collect Ethan.
Alyssa was just about to call the rideshare service when Mr. Kelly came toward us.
“Would you and Ethan like a ride home?” he asked.
“Sure. Thanks. But actually, it’s all of us. Is that okay?”
Again, he didn’t look too thrilled, but clearly he would do anything to make the Parker family happy. So we all piled in with our costume bag and the director drove us to Alyssa’s.
I’d only seen her house from the outside before. Inside, it was just as modern, with lots of chrome and glass and open spaces. When we walked in, we saw a very handsome teenage boy sprawled on the floor in front of what looked like an elaborate sound system. He took off the headset and looked at us.
I assumed this was Josh, the stepbrother, but of course Alyssa didn’t bother to introduce us.
“Are the parents home?” she asked anxiously.
“No, not yet.”
She looked relieved. “Can you feed Ethan?” she asked, making the statement sound more like an order than a question.
“Sure,” he said.
Ethan joined him, and they left the room together.
“Wait here,” Alyssa instructed us.
She returned with a pamphlet in her hand and held it up to show us.
“The East Lakeside Middle School Student Directory,” I read aloud.
“Here she is,” Alyssa said, and pointed to the entry for Kiara Douglas. “And it’s within walking distance!”
But it wasn’t that close, the sun had gone down, and this felt like the coldest evening ever. Even in our puffy coats, mittens, and hats, we were freezing by the time we reached Kiara’s street. We watched the numbers on the houses and came to the elegant apartment building I’d seen through the telescope.
“This is it,” Alyssa said. But when we got to the door, we found we couldn’t open it. There was a plaque on the side of the door with numbers next to buttons. It was one of those places where the person you were visiting had to know who you were and buzz you in.
“Does her address give the apartment number?” I asked.
Alyssa checked in the school directory. “No.”
“She probably wouldn’t let us in anyway,” Rachel said.
I was thoroughly dismayed. All this planning for nothing. But just then, the door opened and two people came out. Alyssa grabbed the door before it could completely close.
We were inside, but we still didn’t know the apartment number. It was Rachel who spotted the mailboxes, with names and numbers on them.
“Douglas, 6C,” she announced.
I loved the fact that we were really working on this like a team! Three loners, united. It was a beautiful thing.
Alyssa spoke. “Okay, let’s get ready.”
We got our stuff out of the bag. Rachel stepped carefully into her bear costume. I put on the ears with the pink nose, and Alyssa got into the pig head. Then we stepped into the elevator. Lucky for us, it didn’t stop at any other floors before reaching the sixth. No one was in the hall either when we got off, and we made it safely to the door marked with 6C.
I imagined were both taking a deep breath, just like me. And then I knocked.
After a few seconds, we could hear footsteps. They stopped, and that was when I realized that there was a peephole in the door. My heart momentarily stopped. Who was going to open a door to kids who looked like us?
But the door did open. A man with grayish hair and glasses stood there. He was holding an open book in one hand, and he didn’t look shocked. Just sort of puzzled.
“Is it Halloween?” he asked.
Since I was the only one with a visible face and audible voice, I spoke.
“Is Kiara home? We’re friends from East Lakeside.”
Now he really looked puzzled. Or maybe a little worried.
“Friends?”
I amended that. “Classmates. In the same English class.”
He stepped aside and held the door open for us. “She’s in her room. Down the hall, first door on the left.”
The door was closed. I tapped lightly, but I didn’t hear anything. So I gave the door a light push, and it opened.
I could see the back of Kiara’s head. She was at her desk, focused on a computer screen, and she hadn’t heard us. I coughed.
She turned and saw us, standing side by side. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out of it.
Having never heard a rabbit’s voice, I did a cartoon version. “How do you do,” I squealed. “I’m FunnyBunny, and we’re here to ask you how you’d feel about hanging out with us sometime.”
Alyssa followed. “Oink oink. I’m PigglyWiggly.”
Rachel’s voice was muffled, but we could just make out “BigBadBear.” Then, “Thirteen.” And then, “Ow!”
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I got stuck with a pin!” She bent down to adjust her hem and I knelt to help her. In the process, my nose came off. When I got back up, Alyssa said, “Your nose is really pink now.”
I touched the skin, and pink dye appeared on my finger. “Oh—oh, no!”
Then, finally, the silent Kiara spoke. Well, not exactly. She started laughing. And she kept laughing, clutching her stomach as if it hurt from the laughter. Then we were all laughing.
And I knew I’d been right about her. She was going to be one of us.
KIARA CAME OVER THE NEXT DAY, AND THE spyglass cooperated. When she looked through it, she saw little kids on the merry-go-round in the playground. She thought it was weird that they were playing outside with no coats on when it was so cold. But then the children’s fantasies kicked in, the wooden horses became real horses, and they went galloping into the woods.
We saw several fantasies that afternoon. Rachel saw the two boys who’d teased her in English class running from a herd of elephants charging after them on Main Street. She told us that in her revenge fantasy, they were tigers, but elephants were even better. I saw Jim Berger, the skinny kid from our English class, breaking up a fight among a bunch of huge men.
Alyssa claimed that she saw me and Mike walking hand in hand, but when she let me look, I didn’t see that. Personally, I think she invented it just to make me happy. But it was a fantasy I could get on board with, so I let it slide.
I actually did see Mike when I looked through the spyglass. He was back in the playground, pointing to a big, bright-yellow bird and jumping up and down. It was probably a once-in-a-lifetime spotting of some one-of-a-kind endangered species, and that was probably his fantasy.
I also saw Alyssa’s. She was floating across the sky on a broomstick. She was still a witch, only this time she was all in white and looked a little like the good witch in The Wizard of Oz. I didn’t tell her, though, and the image was gone before she looked into the spyglass again. I have a feeling it’s not a fantasy she’d want to admit.
We didn’t see SwanK. And I think that’s a good thing.
Kiara didn’t talk much, but I could tell she was having a good time. We still don’t know much about her—her family, how she got addicted to that game, why she’s a loner. And we didn’t ask. For now, it was enough that she wanted to be with us instead of her role-play “friends.” Maybe someday we’ll know more.
Meanwhile, we’ll keep looking in the spyglass. We’ll see fantasies, fears, and feelings. And not just ours.
Alyssa once said that nothing here in Lakeside makes sense. I still think that’s true, in a way. But the spyglass put us in touch with each other. Now four confirmed loners aren’t lonely anymore. For me, Lakeside has become all about making new friends. And being happy.
Makes sense to me.
“THIS IS A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT FOR ALL seventh graders. We have two nominations for your grade representative. Submissions are closed now, and voting will take place one week from today. Your nominees are Paige Nakamura and Rachel Levin-Lopez.”
Was I still daydreaming or was something wrong w
ith my ears? A couple of classmates turned and glanced at me with surprise on their faces. Even Mr. Clark, my science teacher, was looking at me with a puzzled expression. Then I knew I’d heard correctly. My name. As a nominee for seventh-grade representative.
The bell rang, Mr. Clark dismissed us, and everyone left their desks and headed to the door. I guess I was in what they call a state of shock. My brain told me to get up but my legs wouldn’t move. Finally, my limbs responded, and I rose. As I passed his desk, Mr. Clark smiled at me and said, “Congratulations, Rachel.”
Congratulations? Like this was something I wanted?
There were no words to describe what I was feeling. Stunned? Upset? It was beyond all that. This has to be a mistake. Or maybe it was a joke. Someone was teasing me. But who would do something like that? There was a kid in my English class who sometimes teased me about being teacher’s pet. And Paige, of course. Why would she nominate me? Because she knew she could beat me? But that didn’t make any sense. If she was the only person who submitted her name, then she would have won automatically!
But when I went to my locker for my coat, Paige herself passed me in the hallway—and looked at me in such surprise that I knew it couldn’t have been her.
Alyssa was waiting for me outside, and I immediately saw the shock on her face. Normally, at school, she walked around with a set expression, neither smiling nor frowning or reacting to anything at all. She always tried to look like nothing affected her one way or another. But now her mouth was open, and I had never seen her eyebrows up that high.
“What was that all about?” she asked me.
“I-I don’t know!”
Then Kiara appeared. She took in our expressions and asked, “What happened?”
“Didn’t you hear that announcement?” Alyssa demanded to know. “About Rachel?”
“Of course I did,” Kiara replied.
“And you’re not shocked?”
Kiara shook her head. “No. I already knew.”
“You know who nominated me?” I asked.
Kiara nodded. “I did.”