Sophie Steps Up

by Nancy N. Rue

  “A cute little man with glasses,” Mama said. “He teaches Bible study to your age group.”

  “Dr. Peter?” Sophie said. “Go way outta that!”

  “It’s not a bit of a horse’s hoof. I’m telling you the truth.”

  Daddy looked from one of them to the other, a mustache of whipped cream under his nose. “Why don’t I understand a thing you women are saying?” he said.

  Mama patted his arm. “You’d have to have a bit of the Irish in you,” she said.

  On Friday during arts class, each group went into the cafeteria- turned-auditorium to do its presentation privately for Miss Blythe, so she could make sure they were ready for a real audience. Sophie’s group was scheduled to go last.

  “Miss Blythe is saving the best for the end,” Fiona whispered as they waited, dry-mouthed, backstage with their set pieces and props.

  “She wants a dramatic finish,” Darbie said.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Kitty said.

  Sophie put her hands out and the Corn Flakes and Darbie grabbed on, and Sophie prayed. “Help us do what you did, Jesus, and that’s help people understand.”

  “And please help us win,” Fiona said.

  “Amen,” Kitty said.

  “Are you ready, actors?’ Miss Blythe called from in front of the stage.

  Sophie tried to brush away the nagging Fiona-thought and gave Kitty a little push to go out and start the narration.

  “Let’s do it perfect,” Fiona said.

  “Perfect” didn’t totally describe their performance for Miss Blythe. Kitty lost her place twice when she was reading the narration, and Fiona forgot to put out a chair for one of the scenes, and Sophie couldn’t quite get the tears out at the “graveside.” But when they were finished, Miss Blythe stood up and shouted, “Bravo! Brav-O!”

  “I bet she didn’t do that for the Corn Pops,” Fiona whispered. Sophie could see the triumphant gleam in her eyes even in the dark behind the curtain. Sophie felt a bit victorious herself. Maybe, like Daddy said, they could educate AND win.

  And then she looked at Darbie, who was twisting her mouth up as she looked at Fiona, like she was trying not to say out loud what she was thinking. But Sophie knew what it was. Fiona herself still didn’t get it yet. Was there any chance that the other kids would?

  It was hard, though, on Saturday not to think about the possibility of the entire audience standing up, calling out “Bravo!” The more the cheers and applause went through Sophie’s head, the more she dreamed that the stage curtains were going to open up to the Corn Flakes’ secret world, and other kids were finally going to understand about how stupid it was to hate and fight. She tried not to let herself add in a vision of herself accepting first prize with her fellow cast members and waving to Mama and Daddy in the front row and seeing them beam with pride. But that seemed to be the ONLY thing Fiona could think about.

  She called four times on Saturday, just to assure Sophie that they were so going to blow everyone else away. Darbie called twice to ask Sophie to convince her that things were going to be “quite different” after their performance, what with the Corn Pops and Fruit Loops no longer “acting the maggot” because they would now be educated. She was still having trouble believing it. Kitty called only once, and Sophie couldn’t tell whether she was giggling or crying. She was definitely Kitty-nervous.

  Sophie wasn’t very nervous — not with Daddy having flowers delivered to the house for her, and Mama fixing her an herbal bath and playing Irish music while she French-braided Sophie’s hair, and even Lacie coming out of her church misery long enough to give her a card that said, “I’m actually kind of proud of you. Go figure.” That all made it easier to push her Fiona misgivings aside and think only of Miss Blythe predicting more bravos.

  When she got to the arts room that night, she couldn’t hear Miss Blythe saying ANYTHING over the chaos that ruled.

  The Fruit Loops were grabbing the soccer balls the Wheaties were using in their performance and using them to play keep-away over the heads of the Corn Pops, who were all trying to get their hair buns to look exactly the same. Willoughby’s hair was so short and wavy it kept popping out like Slinkies all over her scalp.

  Maggie stood in the midst of the Corn Pops, zipping up zippers and adjusting tights.

  “They can’t even put their pantyhose on right?” Fiona said when Sophie joined her group in the corner.

  “They’re a bit thick, those four girls are,” Darbie said.

  Just then Anne-Stuart marched up to Maggie and said her sequined top was itchy, followed by B.J. complaining that her satin shorts made her look fat.

  “Those costumes are quite grand,” Darbie said. “I don’t see what they’re raving on about.”

  “Of course they’re grand,” Kitty said, tilting her chin up. “Our Maggie made them.”

  “One thing is for sure,” Fiona said. “They are so not going to get a good grade for getting along and being organized. But look at us, all sitting here ready to go.”

  Sophie glanced over in time to see the victorious gleam still in Fiona’s eyes.

  Meanwhile, Miss Blythe’s hands were punctuating the air with flying exclamation points, and her usually silken hair was looking electrified.

  “She’s going off her nut,” Darbie said.

  Kitty giggled. And giggled. And kept giggling until she got the hiccups and had to dart to the restroom before she wet her pants.

  “That can’t be good,” Darbie said.

  “Don’t worry,” Fiona said. “I’ve got Kitty handled. Besides, she’s not freaking out as bad as Willoughby. Look at her.”

  Willoughby did appear to be losing control. Her head was by now a mass of springs, which were bobbing to and fro as she looked from one scolding Corn Pop to another. They were taking turns putting their noses close to hers and all but chewing her lips off. She finally sat down on the floor, green sequins and all, and bawled like a baby calf.

  Miss Blythe did manage to get everyone settled down and explained that they would all sit in the back of the cafeteria during the showcase to watch the other groups perform until it was their group’s time to go on. The Corn Flakes grabbed each other’s hands and squeezed.

  “This is class,” Darbie said. “They’ll all of them see us, they will.”

  “See us win,” Fiona said.

  See us completing our mission, Sophie wanted to say. But Miss Blythe was already swearing them to silence and leading them down the hall toward the cafeteria. Sophie clung to Fiona’s hand with her own clammy one and followed.

  The cafeteria was festooned with giant shamrocks and green streamers, and every chair was filled with somebody’s mom or dad or grandma. Sophie stood on her tiptoes to find Mama and Daddy, who had the video camera in his hand — and Lacie and Zeke, right in front of Boppa’s bald head. Fiona’s dad was there too, but not her mom, and Sophie felt sad for Fiona — until she spotted another familiar face, twinkling behind wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Dr. Peter’s here!” she hissed to Fiona.

  “No way!”

  Sophie tried to point him out, but the lights went off — amid squeals from the sixth-grade class — and Miss Blythe appeared on the stage, hair once again hanging calmly in silky furls. Sophie sucked in a breath she couldn’t let go of.

  Are we just going to, like, wash everybody’s feet when we’re doing this? she thought.

  Colleen O’Bravo nodded her red ringlets.

  Jesus looked at her firmly and kindly.

  Sophie LaCroix settled back in her seat and breathed out a long, praying breath.

  Most of the groups’ presentations were good, especially the Wheaties’, who did creative ball passing with feet, heads, and hips, all to music. Even the Fruit Loops were decent, Sophie had to admit. They did a karate demonstration, complete with a lot of loud noises that Fiona whispered weren’t necessary. Still, Sophie clapped for them when they took their bows.

  And then the Corn Pops performed.


  They filled the stage with their green sparkly costumes and glittered hair bows and silver pom-poms and did a routine that was a dance and a cheer and a gymnastics program all kicked and bounced and wiggled into one. Sophie truly thought she was watching something on TV.

  Julia could kick her leg so high her foot nearly hit the top of her head.

  Anne-Stuart executed one perfect split after another.

  B.J.’s cartwheels were as smooth as her satin shorts.

  And Willoughby did so many spritely little backflips it made Sophie dizzy.

  When they struck their final poses, the whole audience stood up and cheered and whistled and clapped their hands over their heads. Everybody except Fiona.

  “It wasn’t THAT good,” she whispered to Sophie from her seat. “Wait ’til they see ours.”

  “Come on then,” Darbie said, nodding over at Miss Blythe, who was motioning to them from the stage. Sophie could almost see question marks popping out of the teacher’s head. “We’re on.”

  It was as if someone had turned a dial in Sophie, making everything go faster than normal speed. They were backstage checking their props and set pieces that Aunt Emily had put in place for them before the show. They were huddled behind the curtain listening to Miss Blythe introduce them with exclamation points in her voice. The lights were on and Kitty was taking a deep breath and marching out onto the stage as if she performed in front of thousands every day. They were starting.

  “On a cold March day in 1990,” Sophie heard Kitty’s voice echo from the microphone, “in the city of Belfast, Northern Ireland — ”

  And then Darbie was hurrying onto the stage, dressed as her ma and cradling one of Izzy’s baby dolls in her arms.

  The audience was quiet as Fiona, in her Mr. O’Grady overcoat and hat, swished toward Darbie while Kitty explained about his important work in “the Troubles.” Kitty sounded wonderfully serious. Darbie waved to Fiona like a real wife, and Fiona hurried toward her in a husbandly way. Right on Kitty’s cue, Sophie held Rory’s toy gun above her head backstage and shot it. Fiona crumbled to the ground.

  A scattering of chuckles came from the audience.

  Sophie froze with her arm still in the air. Across the stage, Darbie looked as if she truly had been shot, before she ran, as she was supposed to, to Fiona/husband and crouched over the body until the lights dimmed and Kitty hurried off to give Fiona the script for her turn.

  “They laughed!” she whispered as Sophie peeled the coat off Fiona. “It’s the Corn Pops and the Fruit Loops.”

  “They’re doing it on purpose, just to mess us up!” Fiona hissed.

  Sophie shook her head firmly as she pushed Fiona toward the stage. “We have a mission to accomplish.”

  “We’ll have them in tears in no time,” Darbie whispered.

  Fiona gave a jerk with her head and went for the microphone. Her voice rang out clear and strong. Sophie put on her Darbie hat and burst into the light.

  At first, she couldn’t see the faces looking up at her. In fact, it was just like being in a film with only the camera in front of her. Her camera, in Daddy’s hands. She broke into a skip as Fiona told about trying to grow up in a place where other children threw rocks at her because she was Catholic. Sophie was Darbie then, and when the crumpled bags were hurled at her, she screamed as if they really were stones, and curled into a ball on the ground.

  But once again the audience laughed, from way in the back. They didn’t just chuckle this time. There were sure-enough Fruit Loop guffaws and Corn Pop giggles. It was only one loud “SHUSH!” from one of the adults that kept Sophie going, kept her fleeing from the “rocks” that Kitty and Darbie chased her with, disguised in their street-kid caps.

  As they frantically grabbed the new set pieces and costumes backstage, Sophie could see that all the girls’ eyes were wild.

  “Just keep going,” she said. “Just do the best you can.”

  She was proud of them. They did — all of them. In scene after scene they acted their hearts out, being policemen and store owners and rotten kids and the frightened Darbie and her ma. But every time a scene reached its most serious point, the back of the auditorium erupted in harsh snorts and chortles. By the time the Corn Flakes reached the part where Sophie had to kneel at Ma’s graveside, she didn’t have to try to cry. The tears were already choking up from the hurt place inside her. She and the Corn Flakes had tried so hard.

  “It’s hard for us to understand,” she heard Fiona saying over the microphone, “how it was for Darbie to live with so much fear and sadness. But we have to try, because we can help her start a new life here, and we can become better people ourselves — not always acting heinous because we don’t get our way, but thinking about somebody else for a change.”

  Sophie blinked through her tears. That last line wasn’t in the script. Neither was the funny catch in Fiona’s voice.

  But neither were the giggles that started again in the back of the room.

  It definitely wasn’t in the script for Sophie to put her face in her hands and cry.

  But she did.

  Twelve

  They didn’t get it. They didn’t get it and they never will.

  The thoughts were crying out so loudly in Sophie’s head she didn’t realize at first that the other roar she was hearing was the audience. But they weren’t laughing. They were clapping, in waves that grew stronger and stronger until they were rolling right onto the stage. Somebody was shouting, “Bravo!” and it wasn’t Miss Blythe. It sounded like Daddy.

  Sophie pulled her face from her hands and looked straight into the eyes of Aunt Emily and Uncle Patrick, and Kitty’s mom, and Lacie. Into Daddy’s camera lens and Boppa’s bald head and Mama’s proud face. The whole audience was standing up, and most of the ladies were wiping their eyes.

  So was Dr. Peter.

  “Take a bow, actors!” Miss Blythe said from the wings. “Get up — take your bows!”

  Corn Flakes were suddenly grabbing Sophie from all sides and dragging her to the front of the stage where they bobbed like dashboard dogs and waved. Sophie saw Mama blowing her a kiss and Maggie standing on a chair and grinning a big square grin.

  Just before they fled backstage, Sophie also saw the Corn Pops sitting with their arms folded and their eyes rolled. All except Willoughby, who whistled through her fingers until B.J. reached up and pulled her down by a handful of corkscrew curls.

  “I thought the whole audience hated it when there was all that laughing!” Kitty whispered as they made their way through the dark to the backstage steps.

  “That was just those Corn Pops, acting the maggot as usual,” Darbie said.

  Fiona grabbed Sophie by the arm and put her lips close to Sophie’s ear. “You don’t think it was all the parents just feeling sorry for us, do you?” she whispered.

  “No,” Sophie whispered back. “I think it was because of what you said. You got it, Fiona.”

  It really didn’t matter then, Sophie decided, whether they won a prize or not.

  Or at least, not until Miss Blythe swept up onto the stage with three envelopes in her hand. The audience went still, except for the sixth graders, who all sat on the edges of their chairs, tipping them forward and holding Miss Blythe with their eyes. Sophie’s heart was slamming in her chest, and she was sure she could hear Fiona’s doing the same. She thought she heard Darbie murmuring something about “Jaysus.”

  Even if we don’t win, it’s okay, Sophie prayed to him. But we do deserve to, don’t we?

  “Third prize,” Miss Blythe said too loudly into the mic, “goes to . . .” She slit the envelope open with a long red fingernail. “The Karate Kids!”

  The Fruit Loops whooped like monkeys on Animal Planet, and all of them scrambled up onto the stage and jumped for the envelope.

  “Gentlemen,” Miss Blythe said, “art is discipline.”

  The audience laughed one of those aren’t-boys-a-mess laughs. Fiona flung her arms around Darbie, Kitty, and Sophie and whispered
in a hoarse voice, “The Pops will get second prize and that’s okay. We should totally clap for them.”

  “Of course,” Sophie said. “That’s what Corn Flakes do.”

  “We’re class,” Darbie said.

  They squeezed each other tight, and Sophie barely noticed that Kitty was about to cut off the circulation in her left wrist. She held her breath as Miss Blythe produced the second envelope.

  “Second prize goes to . . .” Slice with the fingernail. Shake out the paper. “The Troubles: Darbie’s Story!”

  The audience shouted like one person, out-voiced only by the screams of the Corn Pops.

  “That means we won!” B.J. shrieked. “We got first!”

  “Can our actors come up and receive their prize?” Miss Blythe said.

  There was more clapping, and somehow Sophie led the Corn Flakes up to the stage. Kitty bounced like she was on a pogo stick, and Darbie dipped her splashy hair back and forth and smiled shyly as Sophie passed the envelope to her. Her dark eyes were shimmering, and for the first time since Sophie had met her she looked like a real little girl.

  But as they all bowed again, Sophie was afraid to look at Fiona. They hadn’t won first prize, and it was pretty certain the Pops were going to. Fiona was facing the floor as they bowed so Sophie couldn’t see it — though she was surprised Fiona didn’t snatch their second prize envelope from Darbie and stomp on it.

  They were barely off the stage when the audience buzzed into silence and Miss Blythe cleared her throat into the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said in a deep voice, “the first-prize winner is the Irish Showdown Dance Troupe!”

  The scream Sophie expected from the Corn Pops didn’t happen. Instead, while the audience clapped and whistled, they lined up in the back and cartwheeled and backflipped their way up the aisle. In front of the stage, they formed a pyramid topped by Willoughby, who leaped to the stage and started a chain to pull the rest of them up. There they struck a final pose, smiling like a toothpaste commercial.

  “Do you think they thought they were going to win?” Fiona said to Sophie beneath the roar of the audience.