The Show Must Go On!

by P. J. Night

  “I’m going to read for the part of Rachel, Carrie’s best friend,” Melissa continued. “I need to set my sights on something I think I can handle.”

  “I’m going for Carrie, Lis,” Bree said. “It’s time for me to jump into the deep end.”

  “How cool would it be if we got to play best friends in the play?” Melissa squealed with excitement.

  “Yeah, well, that’s not going to happen,” said someone right beside them. Bree didn’t even have to turn her head to know who had spoken. It was Tiffany O’Brian, one of the most popular—and snobbiest—girls in the school.

  “Really?” Melissa replied. “And why is that?”

  “Because I’m getting the lead,” Tiffany replied. “This audition is a waste of time. I’ll be playing Carrie. This reading is merely a formality.”

  Bree never ceased to be amazed by the size of Tiffany’s ego and her boundless sense of entitlement.

  “Just because you’ve played the lead before doesn’t mean you’ll be the lead in this one,” Bree pointed out.

  “Well, look who’s speaking up,” Tiffany taunted. “Little Miss Wallflower, never dances at a party, never says two words. And you are suddenly going to get the lead. I think if anything you’re more suited to play the ghost.”

  “Leave her alone, Tiffany,” Melissa chimed in. “She’s allowed to audition just like you are.”

  “Waste your time if you like, Wallflower,” Tiffany said, tossing back her wavy blond hair. “But the part is mine.” Then she turned and walked to the other side of the auditorium.

  “She’s the worst,” Melissa said when Tiffany had gone.

  “Must be nice being Miss Perfect,” Bree added. “I wonder how it feels. Maybe I should ask my sister.”

  The door to the auditorium swung open, and Ms. Hollows walked down the aisle and up onto the stage.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, did we all enjoy the script?” she asked, scanning the auditorium from one side to the other.

  Murmurs, grunts, and nods of agreement passed through the assembled students.

  “Very well then,” she said. “Let’s begin. Will those auditioning for the role of Carrie please line up to my left, here on the stage?”

  This is it, Bree thought. No turning back now. She joined four other girls up on the stage. Tiffany, seeming to be in no hurry, was last in line. She probably thinks she’ll watch the rest of us, then go last and blow us all away, Bree thought as she watched the first girl walk over to Ms. Hollows in the center of the stage. And who knows? Maybe she’s right.

  Bree glanced at the girl performing a scene, but she really didn’t hear any of the lines. Her focus was locked on the script and the lines she was going to read.

  “Next,” Ms. Hollows called when the first girl had finished. Bree swallowed hard and walked briskly to the center of the stage.

  “And which scene have you chosen, Gabrielle?” Ms. Hollows asked. This time Bree was less startled when the drama teacher used her full name. She figured Melissa must have been onto something yesterday. She must have looked me up in the school records, she thought.

  “I’m going to do Carrie’s monologue during the ‘floating objects’ scene,” Bree answered.

  “Very well. Begin.”

  Bree had thought about who Carrie was. She wanted to become another person, not just be herself reading the lines. Megan was wrong. Acting was more than just pretending. She was going to become Carrie. Bree began:

  I told you. This house is haunted by the girl who died before she ever got invited to a sleepover. Her name was Millie, and now she shows up every time someone has a sleepover in this house. I feel kinda sorry for her, but she is a ghost. And who wants a ghost at their sleepover? I know, I know, it sounds nuts that I’m standing here talking about a ghost like she’s just some girl who lives in the neighborhood, but somehow I think she’s really connected to this house. Well, it’s my house now, not hers, and she’s just not invited. End of story. I know you don’t believe me about Millie, but don’t be surprised if—

  Instinctively, Bree paused onstage, as the stage directions called for the girls at the sleepover to laugh and throw pillows at Carrie. Then a hairbrush and a small handheld mirror on the dresser float up into the air. The brush moves in long, even strokes. The mirror remains stationary. Suddenly a face appears in the mirror—and only in the mirror—the face of a young girl brushing her long jet-black hair. All the characters scream, except for Carrie.

  After the brief pause, Bree continued with the lines:

  I told you! I told you the ghost is real. Millie, is that you? If so, you are not welcome! This sleepover is for the living only!

  This was the moment Bree was waiting for in the audition. She was to pretend to be horrified as the brush stops moving and both the brush and mirror drop to the ground, the glass in the mirror shattering all over the stage. Then Bree let out her best horror movie scream.

  “Thank you, Gabrielle,” Ms. Hollows said when the scene was over. “Next!”

  Bree left the stage and took a seat in the front row. She could feel the adrenaline that had fueled her audition still coursing through her.

  She then watched as two other girls auditioned for the role of Carrie. Although Tiffany did a good job, Bree was confident it was no better than the audition she had given. She suddenly felt sure of herself, thinking that she could really do this, that she was as good as anyone up there.

  Auditions for the role of Rachel were next. Three girls tried out, including Melissa. When Melissa had finished, she rushed over and sat next to Bree.

  “You were great!” Bree said.

  “So were you!” Melissa echoed. “That was quite a scream. You were way better than Tiffany any old day.”

  One by one, Ms. Hollows called out the rest of the roles, and groups of students went up and read. When everyone had auditioned, Ms. Hollows spoke into the microphone.

  “Thank you all,” she said. “The cast list will be posted tomorrow.” As Bree and Melissa got up to leave, Ms. Hollows brushed past them. She turned back, looked Bree right in the eye, and whispered, “The play has been waiting for you.” Then she hurried from the auditorium.

  “What was that?” Melissa asked, seeing that her friend was obviously shaken.

  “I—I don’t know,” Bree murmured. “Does that mean I got the lead?”

  CHAPTER 3

  Bree lay awake in bed, staing at the ceiling. She turned her head and glanced at her alarm clock. It read two thirty.

  Will I ever fall asleep? she wondered. She couldn’t get Ms. Hollow’s words out of her mind. The play has been waiting for you. What in the world did that mean?

  She recalled the eerie feeling she’d gotten when she first read the play. As much as she wanted to put it down, another part of her felt drawn to the play. She felt as if she had to audition, and now she might actually be getting the lead. Is that what Ms. Hollows meant?

  Bree looked over at the clock again. 2:35. Rolling over onto her side so she couldn’t see the clock, she forced her eyes closed. Much to her surprise, she dozed off.

  When the alarm went off at six thirty the next morning, Bree woke with a start. She was confused for a moment about where she was exactly. She knew she had been dreaming—deep, intense dreams—but she couldn’t remember anything about them. Realizing that she was still safe in her own bed, she threw off the covers and started to get ready for school.

  “Today’s the day,” she murmured to herself as she slipped on her bathrobe. She didn’t totally expect to get the lead, but just for fun, she imagined what it would be like to take her bow on opening night. She was stretching her arms way out and bending over when she accidentally knocked into the small handheld mirror sitting on her dresser. It shattered on the floor.

  “Gabrielle, is everything okay?” her mom shouted from downstairs.

  “Yes, everything’s fine!” Bree replied.

  Just seven years of bad luck, that’s all, she thought as she quickly swept up
the shattered pieces. She then headed downstairs for breakfast, her delusions of grandeur trailing behind her.

  As she entered the school building a short while later, Bree glanced quickly at the time on her cell phone. She still had a few minutes before homeroom, so she dashed to the auditorium. Stepping up to the bulletin board outside the door, she took a deep breath and scanned the board. Nothing! No cast list yet. She’d have to wait.

  Struggling to pay attention in her first class, Bree bolted from her seat when the bell rang. Navigating the hallways, cutting and skipping around past people like a quarterback on a football field, she hurried to the auditorium. There she found a crowd of students gathered in front of the bulletin board.

  Before she could reach the board, Bree spotted Melissa, who shrieked, “You got it! You got it!”

  Bree squirmed through the crowd and shoved her face up to the board. There, hanging by a pushpin, was the cast list. Next to the name “Carrie” it said “Gabrielle Hart.”

  Bree was stunned. Her wish had come true! She had gotten the lead!

  “And I got Rachel!” Melissa added, pointing to her own name on the list, right below Bree’s.

  “I—I can’t believe this,” Bree said, for a moment not knowing whether to celebrate or to run and hide.

  “If you think you can’t believe it, wait until Tiffany finds out!” Melissa said.

  “Wait until I find out what?”

  Tiffany shoved her way to the front of the crowd. Her eyes opened wide and she pursed her lips tightly together as she read down the list. “Ugh. This is so wrong!” she whined.

  “What’s wrong about it, Tiffany?” Melissa asked. “You auditioned; Bree auditioned. She got the part.”

  “But I am so much better than her,” Tiffany complained. “I have to be in this play.”

  “But you are in the play,” Melissa pointed out. “You’ve been cast as Millie, the ghost who haunts Carrie’s sleepover. It looks like you’re more suited to play the ghost.” She caught Bree’s eye and winked, holding back a giggle at her own joke.

  “It’ll be fun to work together, Tiffany,” Bree said. In a weird way she felt sorry for Tiffany. It meant so much to her to play the lead.

  “I don’t need your pity, Wallflower,” Tiffany barked. Then she turned and stalked away from the crowd.

  “See you at rehearsal, Tif!” Melissa called after her.

  “Lis, don’t,” Bree said. “The more upset you make her, the more she’s going to take it out on me.”

  “Oh please, Bree,” Melissa said as the crowd began to break up and head off to their classes. “She’s got to grow up. She can’t always get everything she wants. You won that role fair and square.”

  “I wonder,” Bree replied, her thoughts drifting back to the previous day. The play has been waiting for you.

  “What do you mean?” Melissa asked.

  “What? Oh, nothing. I’ve got to get to class. I’ll see you at rehearsal.”

  “See you at rehearsal . . . Carrie!” Melissa called out.

  “Good-bye, Rachel!” Bree shouted back. She was thrilled that her best friend would be there with her every step of the way. But there would still be Tiffany to deal with, not to mention the play itself.

  At the first rehearsal the next afternoon, Bree made her way to the auditorium. Stepping inside, she found a bunch of students up on the stage, hard at work putting together the set for the show.

  Many plays had been put on in this auditorium over the four decades since the middle school had opened. And so it was no problem for the students who had volunteered to work behind the scenes on the play to rummage through old scenery and props to make a new set.

  The main set for the play was Carrie’s bedroom. Bree stared at the stage, watching the set decorators hard at work. They had been at it for only a little while, but she could see that when it was completed, it really would look as if Carrie lived in a haunted house. The walls of Carrie’s bedroom, which now stood stacked in a row waiting to be set up, were cracked and peeling. Cobwebs dangled from the corners.

  A dusty, damaged chandelier sat on the stage, waiting to be hung. When it was fully wired, it would flicker on and off, as offstage, a student operated a light switch set up to control the chandelier.

  A spotlight was being set up. It would be placed outside a fake window built into one of the walls. Turning this spotlight on and off quickly would create the illusion of lightning flashing outside during a thunderstorm scene.

  On the back side of the window, a pair of tattered old shutters hung loosely. Poles attached to the bottom of these shutters would allow unseen students backstage to flap them during the storm scene, as if the wind were fiercely blowing them back and forth against the house. An old piece of tin with a handle on the bottom hung backstage. When a student shook the tin sheet, it sounded like thunder.

  Bree smiled widely, picturing all these elements coming together on the finished set to create Carrie’s bedroom—her bedroom.

  “Boo!”

  Bree jumped, startled by Melissa’s sudden entrance.

  “Don’t sneak up on a person in a haunted house,” Bree scolded her best friend. “Even if it’s not finished yet. Don’t you know anything?”

  “I know that Tiffany is still sulking,” Melissa replied.

  Bree turned to face the back of the room and saw Tiffany sitting by herself, flipping through her copy of the play, shaking her head in disapproval.

  Ms. Hollows entered the auditorium and hurried down the center aisle. She paused at the foot of the stage for a moment, taking in the vista of Carrie’s bedroom. Then, giving a quick nod of approval, she climbed the stairs and walked out to center stage.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she began. The buzz of excited conversation that had been humming through the auditorium stopped instantly. “I thank you all again for volunteering to be a part of this play. Thank you to the set decorators and technical volunteers. Now, may I have all the actors up onstage, please?”

  “Here we go, Bree!” Melissa said excitedly as the two made their way onto the stage with the rest of the actors, including Tiffany, playing the ghost; the boy playing Carrie’s elderly neighbor; and the boy and girl playing Carrie’s parents, as well as a few others.

  “Yeah, here we go,” Bree echoed, still unable to shake the twin feelings of excitement and nervousness.

  “Ready to put on a fantastic play, everyone?” Ms. Hollows addressed the cast. The actors on stage nodded, some more vigorously than others. Bree was somewhere in the middle. Tiffany’s eyes were glued to the floor.

  “All right then,” Ms. Hollows continued. “Let’s start from the top. Scene one. Rachel, Laura, and Carrie. Places, please.”

  Bree, Melissa, and Dara Marinelli, the girl who’d been chosen to play Laura, sat in a circle in the middle of the stage. They began rehearsing the scene.

  RACHEL: Nice, Carrie. The place looks like it was decorated by a wrecking ball!

  CARRIE: Cute. You know we only moved in a few weeks ago. My family and I haven’t had a chance to fix it up yet. I just couldn’t wait to have my first sleepover. It helps to make it feel like home.

  LAURA: Yeah, if your home’s been condemned!

  CARRIE: Ha-ha-ha! Come on, you guys. We should—

  (SUDDENLY LIGHTNING FLASHES AND THUNDER RUMBLES.)

  LAURA: Eiii!

  CARRIE: Laura?

  LAURA: Sorry, I’m just a little afraid of thunder. I—

  (THE THUNDER SOUNDS AGAIN . . . LOUDER THIS TIME. LAURA SCOOTS OVER CLOSER TO CARRIE. SUDDENLY THE CHANDELIER OVERHEAD FLICKERS ON AND OFF, AGAIN AND AGAIN.)

  RACHEL: Okay, now I’m officially creeped out. I—

  CARRIE: Look!

  (CARRIE POINTS TO THE CHANDELIER. A FLASH OF LIGHTNING REVEALS THAT THE CHANDELIER IS SHAKING UNCONTROLLABLY. EVERYONE SCREAMS.)

  “Okay, let’s take a break, everyone,” Ms. Hollows called out. “Very good start.”

  As the girls in the cast sat down on the edge of
the stage to get their notes from Ms. Hollows, the lights in the auditorium began to flicker again. But this time it was not just the stage lights that flashed on and off. Every light in the room twinkled.

  “Please leave the lights on!” Ms. Hollows shouted impatiently to the technical crew backstage.

  “It’s not us, Ms. Hollows!” Tyler Lahari, the boy running the lights, replied, sticking his head out from backstage. “We didn’t touch the lights that time!”

  Then the entire auditorium went completely dark.

  CHAPTER 4

  “Flashlights!” Ms. Hollows shouted out.

  Several members of the backstage crew came running out with their flashlights blazing.

  “I’m going to see if I can find out what’s going on with the lights. Perhaps the whole school has lost power,” Ms. Hollows said, and left the auditorium.

  “Great, now what do we do?” asked Bree.

  “I have an idea,” Melissa said. “Why don’t we sit in a circle and pretend this is a real sleepover?”

  “We could even tell ghost stories to get us in the mood,” Tiffany added. “Unless, of course, you can’t handle it, Wallflower.”

  “I’m fine,” Bree said. “I guess it can only help us get more deeply into our characters.”

  As the backstage crew settled into the front row of the auditorium, the girls onstage flipped on their flashlights and sat on their pillows.

  “I’ll go first,” Melissa said. “Here’s one I heard at summer camp.

  “A girl went to a school dance. She was kinda shy and was sitting in a corner when a nice-looking boy came over and asked her if she wanted to dance. No one else had even come near her, so she jumped at the chance.

  “The girl was surprised that she had never seen the boy at school before. He told her that he used to go to the school a few years earlier but had moved away and that he always tried to come back for the school dances, since he liked them so much and they always brought back so many good memories for him.

  “The two danced every dance, and soon it was time to leave. The boy offered to walk the girl home, saying that her house was on the way to his house anyway. During the walk, the girl got cold, and the boy offered her his school jacket, which had his name stitched onto the front. He draped it over her shoulders, and she felt warmer right away.