by Nancy N. Rue
So it only seemed to make sense that Darbie and Sophie would write the script and hand the scenes to Fiona and Kitty to figure out what Aunt Emily called the “set changes.” Sophie told them to be sure to talk in the new theater language Aunt Emily was teaching them.
Kitty was amazingly good at it. Sophie couldn’t tell whether Fiona was or not because she spent most of the time scowling at the Treasure Book while she wrote things down. Still, by Saturday afternoon the whole script was written, which meant they didn’t have to meet on Sunday.
But Saturday night, Darbie called and asked Sophie if she could come over the next day anyway and make sure everything was perfect before they handed it in to Miss Blythe on Monday.
That day was Sophie’s favorite day of work — because as she and Darbie took turns reading the narration and walking through the scenes of pantomime, it all became real.
Sophie clutched at her chest as she hid behind a “counter” in a chipper — a fish and chips shop — being little Darbie, while angry men dragged the owner out into the street, yelling at him because he wasn’t welcome in the neighborhood.
She felt a lump in her throat as she waved good-bye to her ma, who was going off to another peace talk someplace far away.
And she cried real tears as she put flowers next to a “headstone” on that same ma’s grave.
“You have to play me when we perform this, Sophie,” Darbie said — handing Sophie a box of Kleenex. “I can’t even be me like you can!”
“Then you have to play your ma,” Sophie said. “Because you’re the only one who can make me cry like that.”
That would mean, of course, that Kitty and Fiona would take turns reading and playing all the other parts.
“Fiona won’t fancy that,” Darbie said.
“You mean she won’t like it?” Sophie said. “She’ll love it! She’s very versatile — you know, like she can play any role.” Sophie nodded thoughtfully at the script. “We should have her put more big words in the narration too.”
Darbie agreed. Fiona didn’t.
Before school on Monday, Sophie told Fiona everything as the four of them half ran down the hall to find Miss Blythe.
“You don’t have time to do it before we give it to her right now,” Sophie said breathlessly. “But you can do it later.”
“What if I don’t want to do it at all?” Fiona said. She slowed to a walk, so that Sophie had to cut back her pace too. She stared at Fiona.
“Why not?” Sophie said.
“Because it’s not my script,” Fiona said. “It’s yours and Darbie’s. And now you want me to come in and fix it for you so you’ll sound smarter.”
Sophie squinted at her. “I don’t get it.”
Fiona rolled her eyes and sighed and shook her head.
“It’s so obvious, Sophie,” she said. “If you don’t know, I’m sure not going to tell you.”
Sophie couldn’t get her mouth to move. She was still just gawking at Fiona, as Darbie would say, when Kitty and Darbie ran back to them. Kitty jumped right up on Fiona’s back, piggy back style.
“We gave it to Miss Blythe!” she said, arms locked around Fiona’s neck.
“She’s going to love it, so she is!” Darbie said. It was the first time Sophie had ever heard a giggle in Darbie’s voice.
Fiona shook Kitty from her back and kept her eyes on Sophie. “If she doesn’t,” she said, “don’t expect me to fix it.”
As it turned out, Miss Blythe didn’t think it needed “fixing” at all. She sailed right over to their group’s table in arts class with the script and went on and on about the creativity and the sensitivity and every other “ivity” they had managed to get in there, all the while squiggling her fingers in the air with punctuation marks Sophie had never seen before.
Kitty and Darbie beamed. Fiona sulked. Sophie closed her eyes and tried to imagine Jesus so she could beg him for an answer to this new mess.
It seems like I just get one thing worked out, she said to him in her mind, and something else goes wrong. Now what do I do?
She peeked at Fiona, who was still looking at Miss Blythe with lead in her eyes.
And why is Fiona making this so hard?
Sophie wanted to drag her out into the hallway and eat the head off her, as Darbie would say. That’s how mad she was.
It was hard to keep from showing that over the next three days as the group rehearsed. Darbie told Sophie that Fiona had a “right puss on her, she did,” but Sophie was determined not to let Fiona’s pouting spoil their presentation. Every time Fiona shrugged when they asked for her opinion, or read the narration like a first grader in a reading group, or walked through a scene as if she were a stick instead of a “bitter peeler” — the Irish term for policeman — Sophie just chewed at her lip and kept going.
Until Wednesday, just three days before the performance. And then she couldn’t hold it back any longer.
Nine
The group was rehearsing that Wednesday after school at Darbie’s, using her back deck as the stage. They had all their tables and chairs — their set pieces, Aunt Emily told them — and the small stuff like flowers and teacups — their props, Aunt Emily said — everything lined up perfectly backstage. There was a copy of the script for each of them, and they were even wearing their costumes. They wore blue jeans and white T-shirts so they could put other things on top — aprons and hats and Sophie’s black velvet cape, which she wore as Darbie going to her ma’s gravestone. Kitty had surprised them with that scathingly brilliant idea.
Everything would have been perfect — except that Fiona was being such the Puss Face, as Darbie whispered to Sophie, that she would hardly speak to anyone, and when she did, every word squeezed out between her teeth like the last of the glue coming out of the tube.
“The audience won’t be able to hear you if you don’t talk louder,” Sophie said during one of Fiona’s tight-jawed narrations.
“I don’t see any audience,” Fiona said.
“There will be one,” Sophie said. “We have to pretend they’re there.”
“They’ll all be asleep anyway,” Fiona said. “So what difference does it make?”
Over on stage left Kitty’s forehead puckered up. “Why will they be asleep?”
“They won’t,” Sophie said. She looked hard at Fiona. “Let’s do that part again.”
It was that way all through rehearsal, which made it hard for Sophie to concentrate on being Darbie. Instead of imagining that the wadded-up brown lunch bags Fiona and Kitty were throwing were stones being pelted at Darbie by mean kids, she saw the Fruit Loops drooling and snoring in the back of the room and the Corn Pops dozing off nearby. The audience wouldn’t go to sleep if YOU weren’t so boring! she wanted to shout at Fiona. The way Fiona walked around all stiff during the throw-rocks-at-Darbie scene made Kitty act like a robot too.
But at least Darbie’s giving it her best, Sophie thought. During the part where Darbie’s mother died on the street next to her smashed car with Darbie/Sophie at her side, Darbie touched Sophie’s face like a real mother would, and Sophie burst into tears.
“That’ll wake the audience up,” Fiona said. “They’ll be guffawing all over the place.”
Darbie sat straight up and glared at her. “What does that mean?”
“Throwing up?” Kitty said.
Fiona shook her head. “Laughing themselves into oblivion. That is so corny.”
“Her mother died!” Sophie said. “I’m supposed to cry!”
“It sounds fake,” Fiona said. She studied her fingernails. “I think we should take that scene out. We need to get some humor in.”
“Humor!” Sophie said.
She could feel Darbie stiffening beside her. “What’s such a gas about this?”
“That means ‘what’s funny,’ ” Sophie said.
“Nothing,” Fiona said. “That’s the point. The Corn Pops are going to be entertaining the audience. We’re going to be making them wish they were having a tooth
pulled or something.”
“We’ll entertain them too!” Sophie said. Looking up, she could see right up Fiona’s flaring nostrils.
“Right,” Fiona said. “They’ll be laughing at us.”
“Will they, Sophie?” Kitty said.
“No, they will not.” Sophie’s words came out as squeezed-tight as Fiona’s. “Not unless Fiona keeps on making a bags of it.”
“Acting the maggot,” Darbie mumbled.
“I knew it,” Fiona squeezed back at Sophie. “I knew you would turn all this into my fault. But I’m not the one. I didn’t have anything to do with this. You and Darbie planned it all, and then you’re all telling me and Kitty what to do!” Fiona shoved her hair out of her face with the side of her hand. “I’m so not your little slave. If you don’t start listening to me, I’m going to find another group to be in. And don’t think I won’t!”
She planted her hands on her hips and lowered her face so that she was slitting her eyes right into Sophie’s like a pair of knives. Sophie felt her own slashing back.
“You’re being selfish, Fiona,” she said. “We’re doing this for Darbie — not for you!”
There was a stinging silence. Somewhere in the middle of it, Fiona tore her script into confetti and stormed into the house. Nobody followed her.
After a few minutes, Aunt Emily came out, mouth in a grim line, and suggested they call it a day and let everybody cool off. Kitty looked more than happy to escape.
“I don’t think this was a good idea at all, Sophie,” Darbie said when Kitty was gone. She tucked her swingy hair behind both ears, and Sophie could see a red rim forming around each eye.
“It’s the best idea ever,” Sophie said. “It’s class. I just don’t think Fiona gets what we’re trying to do.”
Darbie pulled her lips into a thin line, the way a grown-up would. “If she doesn’t, nobody will.”
“Then we totally have to do it so they all will.” She knew she was sounding like Kitty, but there was no other way to sound. She felt so much younger than Darbie all of a sudden.
“I won’t be made to look like an eejit,” Darbie said. Her eyes went hard as stones. “I’ll take a bad grade before I’ll be laughed at.”
Sophie opened her mouth — and then she closed it again, because now she couldn’t promise Darbie that the entire audience wouldn’t fall right out of their chairs.
Aunt Emily invited Sophie to stay for supper, and she and Darbie’s uncle Patrick spent the whole time, as far as Sophie was concerned, turning themselves inside out to make the girls laugh. But the last thing Sophie wanted to do was “guffaw.”
By the time Aunt Emily took her home, Mama and Daddy had already left for a meeting at church, and Zeke was asleep. Sophie curled up on her bed and tried to sort out whether to imagine Colleen O’Bravo, get Jesus in her mind, or just camp outside Mama and Daddy’s bedroom door until they got home and beg them to let her see Dr. Peter. She was ready to try all three when Lacie tapped on the door and let herself in before Sophie could even tell her to go away.
“I am so bored!” Lacie said as she sprawled across Sophie’s bed just like she’d done every day since she’d been grounded.
“Make yourself at home,” Sophie said in a dry voice.
“I’ve done all my homework. I’ve studied for my geography test twelve times. I’ve written letters to everybody I ever knew in Houston — I mean letters — not even email. You’d think they’d at least let me get on the Internet.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Sophie said. “You’re grounded.”
“Really, Einstein?” Lacie sighed. “So what are you doing?”
Sophie pulled her script out of her backpack. “I’m trying to figure out what to do about our play.”
“Another film?” Lacie said. “I don’t know what you’d do if you had real problems.”
“I do!” Sophie said. “This is for a school project. Everybody’s parents are going to be there, and if Fiona doesn’t get her act together, I’m going to have to transfer to another school or something.”
“Let me see that, Drama Queen,” Lacie said. She snatched the script from Sophie’s hand.
“If you’re going to make me feel like an eejit, I will eat the head off you.”
“Whatever that means.” Lacie moved her eyes across the page. Sophie flopped back against her pillows and tried to think what Colleen O’Bravo would do if she had a sister. She didn’t, of course. She was an orphan without siblings, ever since the Troubles
—“Huh,” Lacie said.
“Just give it back,” Sophie said. She stuck her hand out, but Lacie waved her away, her eyes still glued to the page.
“Who wrote this?” Lacie said.
“I did — well, Darbie and I did. She’s Irish.”
“Is this like her story or something?” Lacie said.
“Yes — which is why I don’t want you laughing at it. All those things really happened to her.”
“Dude — it’s horrible.”
“It isn’t horrible! Miss Blythe said it was a good script — ”
“I’m not talking about the script — I’m talking about what happened to this Darbie chick. How could a person go through something like that?” Lacie turned the page and after a moment she looked up at Sophie, who was now breathing like the spin cycle on the washing machine. “This is good, Soph. You sure you guys didn’t have somebody helping you?”
“Yes,” Sophie said. She felt a smile starting to form, and then she scowled up at the ceiling. “I wish Fiona thought it was good. She says we’re going to get laughed out of the school.”
“I guess it could get cheesy when you act it out,” Lacie said.
“Only if she keeps acting like she hates it,” Sophie said. “She’s supposed to be my best friend, and she’s being all stupid and making a bags of the whole thing and messing everything up. Darbie doesn’t deserve that.”
“Did I miss the part where you started speaking another language?” Lacie tossed the script on the bedspread and turned on her side, cheek in hand as she leaned on her elbow. “Okay — let me get this straight. You and Darbie wrote the script. You spent all day Sunday at Darbie’s house. You ate dinner at Darbie’s house tonight. But Fiona’s your best friend.”
“Yeah,” Sophie said. “So?”
“Du-uh!” Lacie said. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Fiona’s feeling left out because you’re paying all this attention to Darbie. Get a clue, Soph.”
“But we already went through this with Maggie when we were doing our science project! Fiona knows I can be friends with other people and still be her best friend.”
“But back then, every other word that came out of your mouth wasn’t ‘Maggie.’ Besides, you and Maggie and Fiona and — what’s that little whiny child’s name?”
“Kitty.”
“Ya’ll are all friends with each other. How does Irish Girl fit in?”
Sophie considered that as she poked at a tiny hole in the bedspread. “Darbie likes Fiona okay — but I think she knows Fiona doesn’t like her that much.”
Lacie sat up, legs crossed in front of her. “Okay, so two things are different. One — you didn’t spend every spare minute with Maggie and leave Fiona out, and two — Maggie was part of the group, and Darbie isn’t. She’s not a — what do you guys call yourselves?”
“Corn Flakes.”
Sophie’s throat felt thick, and it was hard to breathe. She hadn’t meant to hurt Fiona, but the way Lacie described it Sophie might as well have punched her best friend in the heart.
“Fiona probably hates me now!” she said.
Lacie put up both hands. “Okay, don’t go flipping out on me. For once in your life, listen to a little advice from me — hello, I’ve been there.”
Sophie doubted that, but she nodded. Anything to keep from losing Fiona, which was suddenly more important than the showcase or Colleen O’Bravo or even her video camera.
“Look,” Lacie said, “you have to
make Fiona feel like she’s important again.”
“The only way to do that is to drop Darbie,” Sophie said.
“Are you going to listen to me or what?”
Sophie gave her another glum nod.
“You call Fiona up and tell her she’s your best friend in the world and you want to hear why she thinks the script is lame.”
“But it isn’t.”
“No, duh. But just listen to her and make her feel like you’re taking it all in — and then you tell her she’s the only one who can make it work.”
“That’s not true.”
“Sure it is. If she keeps ‘making bags out of it’ or whatever, it is going to bomb. You said that yourself.”
Sophie squinted through her glasses. “You think that’ll work?”
“Trust me. Do it right now. I’ll get the phone — at least that’ll give me an excuse to hold it in my hand. I’m going into telephone withdrawal. I’m going to forget how to use one.”
Before Sophie could even think about it, Lacie punched in Fiona’s number and handed the phone to Sophie.
“I’ll stay here in case you need any coaching,” Lacie said. “Hold it out so I can hear.”
You really are bored, Sophie thought. But for the first time since Fiona had ripped up her script, Sophie felt a little sparkle of hope. When Fiona answered the phone, she launched right in.
But before she could even get out the words, “I am so sorry about what happened this afternoon” — with Lacie nodding at her side — Fiona said, “Stop. Just stop.”
“I was just — ” Sophie said.
“If it’s about the showcase thing, don’t waste your time.”
“But I really want to hear — ”
“Forget it,” Fiona said. “The Corn Pops still need another dancer. I’m auditioning for them tomorrow.”