by Emma Wunsch
“Well, we’re certainly endeavoring,” she said. “My onion-ing is top-notch of course. Unfortunately, Norbert wrote so much today that I’m not actually an onion until act four.” Maude scrunched her face in thought. “Or maybe it’s act five.”
“Whatever the act, you’ll make a terrific onion,” Walt said.
“The only problem is that the curtain I have to raise is actually pretty heavy.”
“Theater curtains can be tricky,” Walt said.
“Other than that, I’m sure Banana Pants will be . . .” How will it be? Maude wondered. In addition to the heavy curtain, Donut had nearly fainted when he saw how many lines Norbert had written for him. He’d recovered from that only to nearly faint again when he saw the extremely tight yellow pants Agatha and Agnes had sewed. Plus, Felix’s sets were getting enormous, Fletcher didn’t seem to understand that he was the best dancer in the class, and Desdemona thought everyone knew how to cartwheel. Luckily for Maude, the onion didn’t dance or sing or cartwheel.
“Once I get the curtain raised, my parts should be okay,” Maude told Walt. She felt extremely relieved that Banana Pants was Hillary’s problem, since she had much more important things to think about, like which companies the princess should write to next.
Walt flipped, stood up, and picked up a gold envelope from the table. “Look what I got in the mail today.”
“You got a letter?” Maude asked.
Walt nodded and held it out. “Read it.”
Maude read the letter. For a moment, she wondered if, in her late-night letter-writing craze, she’d accidentally written the letter to her dad. But that was bananas! This was not the kind of letter Maude would write. She wrote important letters! But she knew, without a doubt, who would write this kind of letter. Not only did it sound like a certain princess who lived one point two miles away, but there was also a tiny crown on the bottom of the page. Only one family in town had stationery like that!
“I don’t think who you think wrote that letter wrote it,” Maude told her dad. “It was definitely, without a doubt, not Miss Kinde. I know that one hundred percent. For a fact.”
Walt smiled. “I don’t care who wrote it. I’m just excited to see the play. What do you think about having a cast party here?”
“Cast party?” Maude asked, but really she was thinking, How could Miranda write that letter? How could she do such a thing?
“It’s customary to have a party after a show,” Walt said. “Let’s have it here. We still have plenty of soup. Everyone could come!”
“Everyone?” Maude asked. “Miss Kinde?”
“Sure. Miss Kinde, the whole cast and crew of Banana Pants, Principal Fish, Miranda’s parents, Donut’s mom, everyone!”
“No,” Maude said. “I don’t want anyone eating soup here.”
“Oh,” Walt said sadly. “It might be nice . . .”
“No cast party,” she said firmly.
“All right,” Walt said. “But if you change your mind, you know where to find me.” He picked up a book called Everything You Wanted to Know About Beetles but Were Afraid to Ask. “I’ll be in my office if you need me,” he said.
“Maybe you should change your mind,” Michael-John said.
Maude jumped. She hadn’t even noticed her brother was sitting on the couch, surrounded by books and sleeping pets.
“About the cast party?” she asked. Not only was she surprised that she hadn’t seen him, she was more surprised that he had an opinion about cast parties.
Michael-John nodded.
“I don’t want Miss Kinde eating soup here!” Maude stomped her foot, which startled Rosalie and Onion the Great Number Eleven awake. Rudolph Valentino kept sleeping.
“It wouldn’t be just Miss Kinde. Dad said everybody would be invited. Anyway, I thought you liked Miss Kinde.”
“I love Miss Kinde. But . . .” How could Maude explain any of this to her brother?
“I think it might be good for us to have a party here, Maude. It’s been a long time,” Michael-John said.
It was true. Before Maude and Michael-John’s mom died, they’d had loads of parties: soup parties, dance parties, turn-out-the-lights-and-sing-as-loud-as-you-can parties.
“Dad needs friends,” Michael-John said.
“Dad has friends,” Maude said, although she wasn’t so sure. She’d never really thought about it.
“Dad knows a lot of people,” Michael-John said. “The beetle experts, all the yogis, the quotation society. But those people aren’t really friends. You know what a real friend is.”
Maude looked at the secret-admirer letter on the table. “Friends are overrated,” she said.
“Friends are extremely important,” Michael-John said.
“Do you have friends?” Maude asked her brother, even though she knew he didn’t because he just stayed home in pajamas reading dictionaries all day. Although, actually, he wasn’t in pajamas now.
Michael-John’s eyes grew wide. “Of course I have friends! I have tons of friends, Maude.”
“Oh,” Maude said.
“Wait—do you think I just stay home in my pajamas reading dictionaries all day?”
Maude was shocked. “Uh, um, well . . . Who are your friends? When do you see them?”
“My friends are other students who choose to do school at home,” Michael-John said. “I see them Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And the occasional Tuesday afternoon.”
Stunned, Maude put her glasses on. How could I not know this? she wondered. Then again, when was the last time she’d asked her brother what he’d done while she was at school? Normally, she burst into the house, announced what she’d done that day, and had a snack. Today she hadn’t even noticed him! And he was right there.
“Just today, I met up with Gwyneth-Rose, Sarah-Rose, Sadie, Jedidiah, Rachel-Jane, and Fred,” Michael-John continued. “We went to the museum and rode mountain bikes.”
“Oh.” Maude put her glasses back on top of her head and stroked her chicken.
“I know you have perfect vision,” Michael-John said. “But once in a while, maybe you should look up from your letter writing and see what other people are doing. You might be surprised.”
“I see plenty of things,” Maude said quietly.
But Michael-John had gone back to reading his comic book and didn’t seem to hear her.
18
THE FIGHT
Early Monday morning, Maude met Miranda at the entrance of Mountain River Valley Elementary.
“Maude! Is waking up early your new cause?” Miranda laughed. “I don’t think Miss Kinde is going to let you in again.”
“I’m not going in,” Maude said. She was wearing her favorite bandana, her VOTES FOR WOMEN sash, and a shirt that said SAVE THE SAOLA with a picture of a small, two-horned animal underneath. “I got up early because of this.” She held out Walt’s letter, which she’d secretly swiped.
Miranda nodded slowly. For some reason, in all her daydreaming about Miss Kinde and Walt, she’d never imagined Maude reading the letter.
“I know you wrote this,” Maude said. “Now my dad wants to have a cast party at my house and it’s all your fault.”
“But a cast party at your house is a great idea,” Miranda said. “Miss Kinde would love that. She hasn’t said anything about her letter yet, but . . .”
“You wrote Miss Kinde a letter, too?”
“Well, yes,” Miranda said. “I couldn’t just write one love letter. There had to be two!”
Maude scowled. “How could you? There are so many better things to write about than stupid love!”
“Just because I don’t want to write about Styrofoam or mountain gorillas doesn’t mean love is stupid,” Miranda said.
“But Styrofoam and mountain gorillas are important!” Maude shouted. “Love is not important. Love is silly!”
“It is not,” Miranda said, getting mad. “Love is important, Maude. Love makes people happy! Don’t you want people to be happy? You’ve never seen a
saola. Why do you want to spend your time trying to save something you’ve never even seen?”
“If I don’t try to save the saola, who will?” Maude asked. “I can’t believe you won’t think about the big, wide world.”
“The small world is important, too,” Miranda said. “Love is a cause, too. Miss Kinde said so! That’s the whole reason for the creative endeavor. To spend time doing something we love! Just because my cause isn’t about something endangered or polluted doesn’t mean it’s not important!”
“I hate love!” Maude shrieked. “And I hate you for writing stupid love letters.” And with that, Maude stormed off, leaving Miranda alone at the door.
19
EVEN WORSE WITHOUT A FRIEND
The week of the fight was fabulous for everyone except for Donut, who was very, very nervous, and for Miranda and Maude, who were too angry to enjoy the last week of their creative endeavor.
On Tuesday, Hillary added four hundred more things to her Things to Do List. On Wednesday, Fletcher introduced a thunderclap, a reverse turn, and a feather step to his dance routines. On Thursday, Desdemona perfected her front handspring and her back walkover.
Norbert wrote three new acts three days in a row!
“I have too many lines,” Donut told him on Friday morning. “Can’t you make Banana Pants shorter?”
“No,” Norbert said firmly. “Every single word is important!”
Agatha had spent most of the week sewing yellow buttons onto a pair of yellow pants.
But Agnes preferred gold buttons to yellow, and she had sewn hers onto the spaces Agatha had missed.
“Those pants look heavy,” Donut told them. “How many buttons are on those pants anyway?”
Agnes did some quick math. “Nine hundred,” she said.
“And the left leg looks longer than the right.”
“Agnes did that side,” Agatha said.
“Did not,” Agnes said, sewing on another gold button.
Felix had constructed a mountain of planks so high and wide it blocked nearly half of the stage. “Your sets are so big, no one can see my props,” Miranda told him quietly. But she didn’t care about her props anymore, now that she and Maude weren’t talking. She glanced over at Maude, who was onstage in front of the curtain she still hadn’t been able to raise, being an onion. Or maybe she was garlic.
Curled up on the dusty stage, Maude couldn’t remember if she was an onion or a clove of garlic, since Norbert had given her several additional minor roles. She didn’t care about creative endeavors anymore.
But when they weren’t working on Banana Pants, school was even worse for Miranda and Maude that week.
They both got bonked on the head during gym class because, for the first time in their friendship, they were on opposite sides of the net and couldn’t yell “duck” when Coach Corsica hurled balls at them. Then they both got horrible headaches during music class because hearing their classmates play their recorders was unbearable without someone to complain to about how unbearable it was.
Lunch for both girls was especially miserable on Friday. Miranda sat on the left side of the table. Maude sat on the right, slowly eating soup and trying not to look at Miranda’s enormous, most-likely delicious lunch. Staring into her bottomless container of soup, Maude wondered if a cast party would have been a good idea, if only to make a dent in the never-ending soup situation. She also tried not to think about her brother out with all his friends while her dad was home alone with his already-discovered beetle. What had Michael-John meant about looking up? I see plenty of people. Don’t I? Right now, she could see Miranda happily enjoying her enormous, delicious lunch with Felix and Norris.
But Miranda was not enjoying her enormous, delicious lunch. Sitting next to Felix and Norris was not nearly as much fun as sitting with Maude. She didn’t laugh once, and she had so much lunch left, since Felix and Norris, unlike Maude, wouldn’t break any food-sharing rules. Miranda got up from the table and walked over to the back of the cafeteria. There was a lot less garbage there, now that the trash cans weren’t piled up with Styrofoam trays. Maude is probably happy to see this, Miranda thought. But it’s too bad there isn’t a better place to put this food, she thought as she dumped her leftover lunch. At the castle and at Maude’s house, there’s a compost bin, she thought, walking back to the table. Why can’t there be a compost bin at Mountain River Valley? Miranda’s heart jolted. She’d thought of another cause! Should she tell Maude? No, she thought. She’d never tell, because Maude thought all of her causes were better! And anyway, Miranda reminded herself, they were in a fight!
20
AN EXTREMELY TERRIBLE WEEKEND
For 3B, the weekend before the performance of Banana Pants was terrible. Norbert tried to make his script shorter but cried every time he erased a word. He loved them all too much! Hillary found that she could only add things to her Things to Do List, and Felix glued so much wood together that he accidentally barricaded himself in his room. Donut tried to book a trip out of the country, but his mom kept stopping him and making him practice his (zillions of) lines. Desdemona broke her grandmother’s favorite lamp trying to learn Fletcher’s still-impossible dance routines.
Since Felix’s sets were too big for anyone to see her props, Miranda moped around the castle looking for something to do. She avoided the East Library with the beautiful typewriter, but even in the fun rooms (indoor trampoline! rope swings!), she was bored and grumpy. Eventually, she found herself in the kitchen, where Blake was frosting tiny cupcakes.
“Blake? What are you doing down here?” Miranda was surprised. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Blake anywhere but in the car.
Blake didn’t look up. “I could ask the same of you.”
“I’m . . . I don’t know.”
“Oh. Well, as you can see, I’m frosting tiny cupcakes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t just drive, you know. I wanted to do something different today. Something challenging.”
“Is Chef Blue driving?” Miranda asked curiously.
Blake shook his head. “Absolutely not! He doesn’t have a license.”
“Oh.”
“Are you all right?” Blake asked. “You seem . . .” He looked up from the tiny cupcake he was frosting.
“I’m fine,” Miranda said. And then she promptly burst into tears.
After she stopped crying, Miranda told Blake everything about Maude’s causes and her love cause and Banana Pants, and how the beautiful typewriter in the East Library had made her realize she could write secret love letters.
“Secret love letters?” Blake asked.
“I wrote two letters. One to Miss Kinde and one to Walt. They were about watching Banana Pants together and eating soup.”
Blake nodded.
“They both like soup and theater. There could have been a cast party at Maude’s after the play. I thought if Maude could see how happy Miss Kinde and Walt were, she’d realize I was right about my love cause.”
Blake nodded again.
“Remember the early morning when you drove me to Maude’s?”
“I do.”
“I was putting the letter in Maude’s mailbox.”
Blake nodded a third time and handed Miranda a tiny cupcake, which she began to frost, even though she didn’t like cupcakes or frosting.
Blake’s tiny cupcakes were lovely shades of green and blue, but Miranda’s cupcake turned out yellow—banana yellow—which made her think about the play and that early morning two weeks ago, before she’d even heard of a creative endeavor. Suddenly, Miranda remembered Maude saying, “Don’t get my dad into any love cause or anything. Okay?”
And she had said okay! She’d agreed! But she wrote those letters anyway!
The princess made a dreadful noise.
Blake looked up.
“Maude asked me not to do something and I did it anyway,” Miranda told him.
Blake looked at Miranda. “It might be wonderful if Wal
t and Miss Kinde ate soup at a cast party. I think the world would be a better place if more people came together to eat soup.”
Miranda’s eyes grew wide. Blake understood! He believed love was a cause! She wasn’t wrong!
“But,” Blake said, “Maude told you not to get involved and you did it anyway. You went against her wishes for your own reasons. That’s wrong, no matter how good your intentions were.”
Miranda blinked back hot tears. “I wish I’d never found that stupid beautiful typewriter! Then I never would’ve written those stupid secret love letters!”
Blake looked at Miranda thoughtfully before he said, “But typewriters don’t write secret love letters. People write secret love letters.”
“What do I do now?” Miranda asked.
“Apologize,” Blake said matter-of-factly.
“Apologize?” Miranda said the word like she’d never heard it before. “How?”
Blake smiled as he frosted his last tiny cupcake. “If you can figure out what to say in two secret love letters,” he said, “I’m certain you can figure out how to say you’re sorry.”
21
OVER IN THE KAYES’ KITCHEN
While Miranda was crying over Blake’s tiny cupcakes, Maude was in her kitchen staring at Michael-John, who had just screeched, “Enough!,” put down his dictionary, ran outside, gathered chicken eggs, and brought them into the house.
“No more soup,” Michael-John told Walt. “At least not today. Today, I demand eggs!” He stomped his foot, which, because he was wearing slippers, was not very effective.
Maude and Walt stared at Michael-John. “All right,” Walt said, putting a frying pan on the stove.
“Wow,” Maude said to her brother. “That was . . .” What was it? It definitely wasn’t like Michael-John.
“That was something you’d do,” Michael-John said, putting slices of bread into the toaster. “I was sitting on the couch, dreading another soupy meal. I looked at you and thought that if Maude wanted to stop Dad from serving more soup, she’d do something loud and sudden. That’s not what I would do, but then I thought, why not? What’s the worst that can happen? And now look!” Michael-John said happily. “Eggs and toast!”