“Mom?”
“I’m trying to sound like a physicist. Is it working?”
“No, and please don’t,” I said. “The world’s upside down anyway. Suddenly Dad’s all about theater after discouraging me my whole life.”
We stopped at a light, the only one between my house and school. Mom looked over. “Can I tell you something?”
“Not if it’s mushy-gushy,” I said.
Mom laughed. “And what by you is mushy-gushy?”
This I could not possibly explain. Mike’s sudden exit the night before—coming at the same moment I realized his identity—had been heartbreaking.
Heartbreaking!
A word that I, a sixth-grade boy in good standing, could not believe I was even capable of thinking. Mike was gone and I would never ask him the questions I’d stored up, never connect with him as my own flesh and blood.
Ha! Funny way to think of a ghost, right?
So, no, Mom, please don’t tell me anything else. I can’t take it right now.
On the other hand, what if it was important?
“All right, what?” I said.
The light changed. Mom tapped the gas pedal. “Your dad and I met in a theater class. Did you know that? His ambitions were all wrapped up in theater, too, for a while. But his family history”—she shrugged—“anyway, something happened, something tough for him, and it caused him to change course.”
I didn’t ask what. I didn’t want to know. That morning I had too much going on already.
Unfortunately, Mom kept talking. “I think it’s been tough for your dad to see you so interested in something that hurt him in the end. I think, if you want to know the truth, he’s been trying to protect you. That’s what parents do.”
We were approaching kid drop-off, known in the afternoon as parent pickup. I saw the bench where I’d first seen Mike, felt a pang. A lot had happened.
“And now he’s not protecting me all of a sudden?” I said in spite of myself.
Mom was focused on navigation—cars, kids, parents, crossing guards. She didn’t register my question till she had pulled over.
“I don’t know why,” she said, “but I know how he gets when he’s got a challenge. He digs in.”
I smiled. “Mike always told us to dig in, too.”
“Good advice for a gravedigger,” Mom said. “I think I would’ve liked that Mike. It’s a shame he’s… well, what? Gone? Gone for good? Strange how he disappeared so totally, almost as if he really were a—”
“Don’t say it, Mom. And yes, I think you would have liked Mike too. Most of the time you like Dad.”
“Some days. But hang on. What was that supposed to—”
My hand was on the latch. I pulled open the door. “See you, Mom. Thanks for the ride! Knock ’em dead with that Emily stuff! You can do it!”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Lunchtime, Monday, May 8, 7 hours till Performance
The snow started falling for real after English.
Then it kept on.
By noon, the irises and daffodils had frozen, and Clive was worried about his apple trees. Any other school district would have called early dismissal, sent us home, but you can’t do that in Plattsfield. There’d never be school at all.
That day, Clive, Madeline, Fuli, and I crowded in with the rest of the drama geeks at lunch. Even Eddie Muir sat with us. We were all pretty quiet. We had plenty to worry about. Our director had disappeared. His replacement was a rookie. The show we were about to stage was not the one either Fig or Mrs. Winklebottom, or most of the parents, were expecting.
Mia said, “On Monday, we will all have detention.”
Eddie said, “For the rest of the school year.”
Brianna said, “For the rest of our lives!”
“Maybe the snow is, like, a good thing?” Lila said. “Maybe no one will, like, even show up.”
“Oh, they’ll show up,” Sarah said. “This is the North Country. People will tromp here by snowshoe or snowplow.”
“How’s your dad doing?” Marley asked me.
“He’s lost it,” I said.
Fuli said, “Perhaps that is a good thing as well. He will have empathy. Many of the characters in the play lose it: Hamlet, Ophelia, Gertrude, the ghost…”
“Basically, everybody except Polonius,” Emma said.
“And Fortinbras,” I put in.
Emma wasn’t sitting next to me that day. In fact, thinking about it, she hadn’t seemed so super friendly lately. At first when I had found out she liked me, or people said so anyway, I thought it was weird, and then I thought it was gross. I mean, Emma who had an underactive imagination? Emma who was always bragging about her parents and their money?
Emma who called Clive and me dumb because we believed Mike was a ghost?
But then I thought some more, how maybe she was just trying to get my attention like people said. If that was true, should I be flattered? So even though Emma wasn’t the kind of person I could ever see myself liking, at least she was a person with the good taste to like me.
Right?
Mia looked at her. “So, Emma, now you’re okay being Polonius?”
Emma glared at Diego. Apparently she hadn’t forgiven him yet, or anyway she didn’t see the PicPoc as an homage. Diego shrugged and smiled back shyly. “You know I’m sorry, right? I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
Emma ignored him. “I like Mike’s interpretation of Polonius. I like that Mike thought Polonius was sane and happy.”
Marley said, “I miss Mike.”
Clive said, “We all miss Mike, I think.”
Madeline said, “I miss my gerbil, too.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
5:30 p.m., Monday, May 8, Countdown to Performance: 90 minutes
Snow or no, all us Sixth-Grade Players arrived early in the dressing rooms below the aud—all except Eddie, who played the ghost, Guildenstern, and Osric.
Where was he, anyway?
If there’s one thing Plattsfield parentals are good at, it’s driving their vehicles in snow. Still, it was possible his family’s car had gotten stuck.
He’d show up eventually; he had to.
Clive and I helped each other with costumes and makeup. For my first character, Marcellus, I wore a helmet that looked like an upside-down mixing bowl, a gray tunic over black pants, and boots that looked lace-up but were actually Velcro.
The pants and boots I wore for the whole show. The mixing bowl got changed out depending on my character. In the final scene, it was a crown.
Getting ready, all of us guys were pretty quiet but for Diego. If Diego had been quiet, I would have worried he was dead. He poked and pinched and pretended to rip costumes. He hid Claudius’s eyebrow pencil. For Diego, this could’ve been any day of the week, any random rehearsal at which he’d probably forget Horatio’s lines and trip over a headstone and skewer himself with a rapier, not that he cared.
“Is your heart pounding?” I asked Clive.
“It pounds when I look at myself in the mirror. Yikes. I am ba-a-a-a-ad!”
This was true. Claudius’s evil eyebrows slanted north to south, temple to nose, and he had a dusting of powder on his hair to show that he was old-old-old. His costume was white, which Mike called ironic since the guy in white usually is the good guy. But since Hamlet, the broody one in mourning for his father, wore black, the villain’s white was supposed to show contrast.
The minutes ticked down. Still no Eddie. Did I mention his character comes on early in act one?
What were we supposed to do without him?
I picked up my phone, called him for about the tenth time.
Everyone else had called or texted too.
The messages showed delivered, but he wasn’t picking up.
Clipboard in one hand, stopwatch in the other, Mia appeared in the doorway. She was wearing a headset so she could communicate with Justin in the tech booth.
“Five minutes, everybody. Stand by for act one curtain. Stan
d by.”
“What are we going to do about Eddie?” Clive asked.
Mia’s face looked the same as usual but for the line between her brows. It was always there but now it looked more like a canyon. “Noah’s dad will go on as the ghost if necessary. His face is hidden under his helmet. No one will know.”
“Dad doesn’t know the part!” I squawked.
“You’d be surprised,” Mia said. “Four minutes, you guys. Better get your butts upstairs.”
Should I have worried? Probably. But I had my own stuff to worry about, like digging in, inhabiting my character, or—failing that—at least remembering my lines.
Clive, Diego, and I fell in behind the girls, climbed the stairs, crossed the fluorescent-lit hallway, opened the heavy metal door, passed through it, climbed three more steps, came out into the dimly lit backstage.
You might’ve expected excitement to make us giggle, shove one another, tug one another’s costumes, generally fool around; in reality we were so far beyond that, even Diego, that we stayed absolutely quiet.
Meanwhile, from the house came the sound of footfalls, squeaky seats, chatting, and laughing. Waiting in the wings, I wished I were in the audience too, with nothing to do but sit and watch and criticize every tiny mistake.
Wait! No! No way to think!
My mom was out there rooting for me, and Clive’s parents, and Brianna’s relatives from Poughkeepsie, and Coach Fig’s family, and Coach Fig himself, if he’d recovered enough from the wedding cancelation.
Mrs. Winklebottom would be out there, too.
Detention forever.
Don’t think about that!
But what if she realized the script had changed, leaped from her seat hollering because the wholesome families of Plattsfield should not be subjected to so much blood, even if it was artistic?
If only Mike were here. He could have taken care of her. He wouldn’t even have needed lightning or swordplay, just a sudden silencing case of laryngitis.
Dad might know about lasers, but laryngitis he could never pull off.
“Thirty seconds, everybody,” Mia said. “Places for act one. The scene is… Elsinore.”
Since Claudius didn’t come on till scene two, Clive’s responsibility was to hand me my sword, look me over, make sure no boogers had escaped my nose, no ketchup stained my doublet. Apparently, I was okay. Clive nodded approval.
“ ‘If it be not now, yet it will come’,” he whispered.
“ ‘Readiness is all,’ ” I said. “Act five.”
With the curtain between us and the audience, Brianna, Diego, and I walked out onstage. At the same time, I spotted him out of the corner of my eye—our ghost. Phew! Eddie must have made it after all.
“Standby for entrance, Mr. Muir,” Mia said calmly. “And it’s a good thing you’re dead, because otherwise I’d kill you.”
So there I stood downstage right on the ramparts of Elsinore.
I forgot my dad and Mrs. Winklebottom and the snow outside and how our ghost had been late. I forgot about the rustling, fidgeting, giggling audience on the other side of the curtain. I forgot about Mike. I dug in and inhabited my character, who was about to tell Hamlet’s best friend, Horatio, that he’d seen something strange hovering around the castle, and what exactly did Horatio want to do about it?
“A-a-a-nd, curtain,” said Mia, causing Clive and Sarah to pull the ropes at the same time that—bzz—the holy spirit brought up the lights.
When the audience was done gasping and murmuring at our beautiful Elsinore, Brianna took a breath and spoke: “ ‘Sit down awhile, and let us once again assail your ears, that are so fortified against our story, what we have two nights seen.’ ”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
A little more than two hours later, Hamlet and Laertes lay spattered in ketchup, the poisoned bodies of Gertrude and Claudius beside them.
“ ‘Good night, sweet prince,’ ” Horatio said, “ ‘and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’ ”
After that there were a few more speeches and then, the real highlight, Fortinbras spoke the last line: “ ‘Go, bid the soldiers shoot.’ ”
Five, four, three, two, one. The lights went black. In the wings, my dad and Mia brought down the curtain.
“Places for the curtain call, everyone. Places!” Mia said.
Hamlet, Laertes, Gertrude, and Claudius jumped to their feet. All of us scurried into the wings. We were giddy, full of ourselves, delighted. We had done it!
Except…
… all at once and all together, we came to a realization.
There was no sound from the house.
No cheering. No applause. No nothing,
For all we could tell, the audience had gotten up and left.
Even my mom? She couldn’t stick around and clap a little?
But we had worked so hard!
Oh sure, there had been a few muffed moments. Polonius had gotten tangled in the arras, Gertrude had slipped in ketchup, I had almost fallen into Ophelia’s grave, and Diego—I swore I would punch the kid—sailed through the “flesh” part fine but giggled when Laertes said “virgin.”
All in all, though, the performance had gone well, way better than the final dress. When Hamlet said, “To be, or not to be,” the house was quiet as, well, a tomb. When Sarah as Gertrude delivered the speech about how Ophelia died, “There is a willow grows aslant a brook…,” I heard sniffles and sobs from the audience. I even felt a tear in my eye myself.
But now, lining up for the curtain call, we gave one another worried sidelong looks. One more time, Dad and Mia put their hands on the ropes, ready to raise the curtain, and then, finally, I heard a smatter of applause.
Moms, I thought. At least a few moms were still there.
The curtain rose. The cast had nowhere to hide, not even behind our characters. We faced friends and families as ourselves. The audience hadn’t left, it turned out. They were there, staring back at us, but they didn’t look hostile.
What they looked was more in shock.
And then I remembered the obvious. They had expected a Lion King ending. What they got was spilled ketchup and corpses.
Still, we had rehearsed this curtain call. And we would darned well do this curtain call. Just like in rehearsal, Eddie Muir, Brianna, and I—the minor characters—stepped forward into the silence and bowed, feeling, if I may speak for myself, queasy.
And that’s when it happened. Like a rockslide starting with pebbles, or an avalanche with a few flakes of snow, the faint sound grew louder until, seconds later, it became a roar, and every single person in the audience leaped to their feet.
And what’s more…
… the absolute first person to leap, which I know because she was in the front row directly opposite me, was Mrs. Winklebottom herself. Beside her, and—wait one second, wasn’t she supposed to be on vacation?—was Miss Magnus.
Both of them were crying.
“Bravo!” “Bravo!” “Bravo!” came shouts from throughout the aud.
It was just the way Mike had predicted: Riotous applause! Standing O! Plattsfield-Winklebottom Memorial Sixth-Grade Players triumph!
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Downstairs, we high-fived each other, poked, prodded, made noise, made rude jokes—the usual sixth-grade stuff. In other words, we returned to being ourselves, except a super-happy, super-proud version of ourselves.
We had done it!
I was so happy I even looked over at Emma, ready to smile, ready to think of her as an okay person who was allowed to like me if she wanted. But Emma wasn’t paying attention. She was smiling like Hanukkah at Diego. And he was smiling back.
A few minutes later, Clive and I were sitting at the mirror, wiping off our makeup when Dad checked in, told us we were fantastic.
“When Eddie was so late?” he said. “I thought we were done for! But that kid who filled in at the last minute was amazing. Who was he, anyway?”
I didn’t know what Dad wa
s talking about, and I didn’t have time to wonder because someone squealed from the aud stage above us.
“Want to see what’s going on up there?” Clive asked. “Come on, Professor McNichol.”
Down the hall, up the stairs, through the door to the stage, and there, in the wings, was Mia, source of the squeal. Before her, the stage was bare except for fifteen folding chairs.
Elsinore—graveyard, parapets, chapel, arras, and all—had disappeared.
* * *
The cast party was scheduled for the next afternoon. The parents said it was so we kids could get our sleep, but it was really so they could get theirs. Parents were invited to the cast party, too.
The plan was potluck in the caf.
Yawn.
But then—more help from supernatural forces?
On Saturday morning, Coach Fig sent an email announcing that the venue (useful word!) had changed. It was now a swanky lake-view lodge.
There would be a DJ! Excellent food! Flowers and a ginormous cake!
There would be champagne for the parents and pineapple in the fruit salad!
How had such a thing happened?
Maybe you’re ahead of me this time, too.
Coach Newton, wedding planner, had tried to cancel arrangements for the wedding of the century. But the baker, the florist, the caterer, the DJ—they all told him the same thing. Payment had been made in full the day before. Wedding or no wedding, the party must go on!
In which case, why not make it our party?
* * *
The lodge was all wood and glass, with a stone fireplace and floor-to-ceiling views of snow-covered trees, the glittering lake, and beyond it the shores of Vermont, the undiscovered country.
JK. Even I have been to Vermont. So—I checked—has Fuli.
Not that I was super focused on scenery. Instead my eyes were glued to the buffet: crunchy fried things, cheesy biscuits, mini pizzas dotted (so sad) with clams, all sorts of sweet and salty things, ridiculous amounts of bacon.
Noah McNichol and the Backstage Ghost Page 14