by Mo O'Hara
“Now, without further ado,” said Mrs. Flushcowski, “I give you Robin Hood.”
The curtain rose and the lights came up on the stage to show me and some Merry Men stick-fighting.
Then Merry Man One said, “There is a group of rich travelers approaching. Shall we let them pass or make them pay?”
“Their jewels will buy food for the starving poor,” I said. “Let us hide. They won’t see us in all this fog.”
That was the cue for the backstage crew to start the smoke machine. Fake fog rolled onto the stage. I looked over and saw Mark standing by the machine with an evil grin on his face.
The kids dressed as rich travelers came out led by two kids dressed as a horse while the Merry Men and I hid behind some cardboard trees.
While the travelers and the horse were saying their lines (yes, even the back end of the horse had more lines than the baker), I looked around to see if there was any sign of Frankie.
In the audience, Sami was bouncing up and down in her seat in the classic way kids all over the world let you know that they have to go to the toilet.
Pradeep got up to take her and they went out the back.
I heard my cue—the line that comes before mine in the play: “I guess that villain Robin Hood isn’t about!”
We all jumped out from behind our trees and stood in front of the horse.
“You shall not pass until you give us all your gold!” I shouted.
Then my eye caught a glimpse of white from the side of the stage. Mark was putting on his white Evil Scientist lab coat. He was up to something, but what?
“The sheriff will know of your treachery, Robin Hood,” the rich traveler said, and handed me a bag of chocolate money.
I looked past the offstage traveler. Mark took a test tube out of his pocket and poured some liquid into the smoke machine. The fog started to get thicker and thicker.
“I only rob the rich to give to the poor,” I said, coughing, and handed the bag to one of the Merry Men. “Take this to the village.”
By now I could barely see the Merry Man to hand him the bag. The fog was rolling out over the audience too. I put my hat over my mouth and nose and held my breath. Then I noticed the rich travelers and the Merry Men were all falling asleep onstage. I looked out into the audience. They were all fast asleep too. Some of them were even snoring.
I dropped down low to the floor where the air was clearer. I remembered that from our fire safety drill. But I never thought I’d have to use it to avoid sleeping gas!
CHAPTER 10
SWEET DREAMS, EVIL PLANS
Mark was wearing a small gas mask that he had pulled out of his jacket pocket.
He walked onstage and looked out into the audience.
“Result!” he said, but in a mumbly way so it sounded like, “Meesulmt!”
“What did you say, Mark?” I said, but because I was talking through my Robin Hood hat it came out like, “Muut mid moo may, Maak?”
“Mang om,” he mumbled, and stepped backstage to turn off the smoke machine. Then he picked up some of the cardboard that the cast had used to fan the air for the rope-swinging scene and wafted the fog away from the stage and out into the audience.
“I said, ‘Result, moron,’” Mark said, taking off his mask. “That should be enough sleeping gas to keep ’em out for a bit.”
I slowly took the hat away from my mouth and took a cautious breath. It seemed safe now. “Sleeping gas? Why?”
“I needed to—” Mark started to say, but I interrupted.
“You needed to knock them all out so they wouldn’t stop you from getting Frankie?”
“No, I—” Mark started again.
“You needed to knock them out so that you could somehow make them all be your zombie fish slaves like when you tried to zombify the whole school last term?”
“Been there, done that,” Mark scoffed.
“You needed them all unconscious so you could take over their minds and make them all go after Frankie?”
“No, but that sounds cool. Maybe next time,” Mark said.
“Then why?”
“Duh? I needed to knock out Solomon Caldwell. The rest were just for fun. They do all look pretty stupid now that they’re snoring and drooling.” Mark did his Evil Scientist laugh. “You and the other moron gave me the idea with all this Robin Hood stuff you’ve been doing. Rob the rich—Solomon Caldwell—and give to the poor: me.”
“I don’t get it. You’re going to rob Solomon Caldwell?” I said. “What are you going to take?”
“I’m gonna get him to make me the winner of Talent or No Talent. Then I’m gonna take the prize money. Easy.”
“So your evil plan before wasn’t to ruin the play? Or to kill Frankie?” I asked.
“No,” Mark mumbled. “I can’t kill the fish yet. I still need him. I caught him and was trying to tie him up out of the way in the rigging when I accidentally knocked down Pradeep’s stupid rope and dropped the moron fish. Still, it was pretty fun to see your moron friend get the blame.”
Mark grabbed my wrists and tied them behind my back with some patented Evil Scientist wrist ties from his pocket. I really don’t know why Mom keeps letting him order stuff from that Evil Scientists-R-Us catalog. “I gotta get on with my evil plan now, ya know, before everyone wakes up.” He grinned.
“I don’t get it. What do you need the money for?” I said.
“I need a lair,” Mark said.
“A lair?”
“An Evil Scientist lair where I can have, like, a shark tank or a pit of crocodiles or something. Every Evil Scientist has got to have a lair. Mom won’t buy me one, so I’ve gotta find the money some other way. It’s her fault really,” he said.
“But even if you get on the show, you’re not gonna win. What’s your talent?”
“I don’t need a talent, even though I am pretty sick at rapping. I’ve got a goldfish that can make the judges and the public vote however I want. Starting with Solomon Caldwell.”
He picked up the fire bucket from the side of the stage and showed me Frankie floating on the surface of the water.
“You’ve killed him!” I shouted, and pulled at my wrist ties.
“Relax, moron. He wouldn’t be much good to me dead. At least, not yet,” he said, and laughed again. “I put a couple of drops of the sleeping mixture into the water. He’s out like a baby.” He looked at Frankie. “A really ugly baby.”
Mark tied a piece of string to Frankie’s tail and carried him over to the front row where Solomon Caldwell was snoring away.
“Wakey, wakey, Solomon,” he said, tapping his face with the wet goldfish.
“Leave Frankie alone!” I shouted. “He needs to go back in the water.”
As Solomon started to come around, Mark swung Frankie back and forth in front of his face like a pendulum. Frankie was still really sleepy-looking, but his eyes fell open as he swung, and in seconds Solomon Caldwell was mumbling, “Swishy fishy!” and staring at the wall and up Mark’s left nostril. Once Solomon was hypnotized, if Frankie didn’t put a thought in his head and control him … Mark could. Frankie was still too groggy though. His eyes fluttered closed.
Just then I heard a really faint owl call, and this was definitely a place where there shouldn’t be any owls. Pradeep! I looked around.
Pradeep was backstage. His finger was in front of his mouth. Sami was with him. He motioned for her to shhh. Then he looked at me and gave a thumbs-up.
I kept one eye on Mark in the audience as he spoke to Solomon Caldwell. “When you wake up, you will make the first person you see a finalist on Talent or No Talent,” he said in a very slow, relaxing voice. “I will hypnotize the other judges with the fish too. And everyone watching TV! I will be the winner of the big cash prize.”
I kept the other eye on Pradeep and Sami. That wasn’t easy without getting pretty dizzy.
All this time Frankie was still hanging by his tail. He couldn’t survive out of water much longer!
Prad
eep whispered something to Sami. Then he climbed up on the rigging above the stage. He started unwinding a curtain rope that was wrapped around a pole.
Mark turned back to me. “That was sooo easy,” he said. He looked at his watch. “I’ve got a minute before the sleeping stuff wears off. I gotta make sure when Solomon Caldwell lays eyes on me, I look like a star.”
He chucked Frankie in the bucket with the sleeping mixture and stomped offstage.
CHAPTER 11
A DRAMATIC SHOWDOWN
As soon as Mark was gone, Sami raced over from where she was hiding at the side of the stage. She was holding a quiver—you know, the bucket thing that holds arrows—which she had filled with water. She scooped up Frankie and dropped him inside. As soon as his gills touched the fresh water, he started to come around. He looked up at Sami and in a second she had the zombie stare again. She leaned the quiver up against my back.
“Swishy fishy snap, snap,” she whispered, and then crawled offstage and hid behind a curtain.
“Snap, snap?” I whispered back, but she was already gone.
Then I heard a splash and felt a wet scratching against the wrist ties around my hands. Then another splash and then the scratching again. It took me a moment to realize that Frankie was jumping up and gnawing at the ties with his jutting, jagged, rotten teeth.
I looked up at Pradeep and shot him a look that said, “I’m nearly ready to do something, are you?” Then Pradeep leaned down and gave me the double thumbs-up sign (which almost made him fall off the rigging). Frankie jumped up one last time and with his final nibble, I could feel the ties fall from my wrists.
Right then Mark came striding out onstage with a hoodie on under his Evil Scientist lab coat, his hair gelled into spikes, and wearing dark sunglasses. He struck a pose.
“I look mega-cool, moron. Just like a winner of Talent or No Talent should.” And he laughed a loud Evil Scientist laugh as he walked across the stage back toward Solomon Caldwell.
I was free, but I couldn’t let Mark know. While his back was turned, I reached around on the floor and grabbed a couple of suction-cup arrows and a bow that one of the Merry Men had dropped when he fell asleep. I put the arrows in with Frankie and then slipped my hands and the bow behind my back so I still looked tied up, while Mark strode around onstage directly in front of Solomon Caldwell.
Suddenly the audience started to yawn and moan. The kids onstage rolled over and opened their eyes. People looked groggy and confused. While everyone was yawning and stretching, Sami snuck down off the stage and hid under Solomon Caldwell’s seat. She was clutching the baker’s hat from my old costume.
I shot her a look that said, “What are you doing? Get back!”
She responded with a look that either said, “I’m getting into the prime position for temporarily incapacitating Solomon Caldwell so he can’t look at Mark, thereby helping to keep Frankie out of danger” or “Me help swishy fishy go swish!” It was hard to tell which.
Mark smirked and posed right in front of the snoozing Talent or No Talent creator. “Now I just gotta do my Evil Scientist rap,” he said with a grin.
I knew I had to act fast. I jumped up, slinging the quiver onto my back and pulling a suction-cup arrow out. I aimed my bow carefully. I hoped all my shooting-arrows practice with Pradeep would pay off. I crossed my fingers for luck, but then I remembered that you can’t shoot an arrow with crossed fingers, so I uncrossed them again. Then I let go of the string.
The suction-cup arrow flew right into the back of Mark’s hoodie, making him whip around to face me.
I heard a gasp from the audience and looked out. They were mostly awake now and looking confused. Robin Hood was fighting with an Evil Scientist? This was not even in the cartoon version!
“Too late!” Mark laughed as Solomon Caldwell began to open his eyes.
Mark started to rap:
“People say I’m bad, they don’t know the plan,
I’m worse than bad, I’m well evil, man…”
This was much worse than I feared.
“Now, Sami!” I yelled, and Sami jumped out from under the seat with the baker’s hat in her hands. She leaped onto Solomon’s back and pulled the hat down over his head, covering his eyes before he could look at Mark.
“No!” Mark shouted. Then I heard a kind of mash-up between a Tarzan yell and a squeal of terror. It was Pradeep as he swung down from the rigging on a rope. He bashed into Mark and knocked him over.
Then one of the Merry Men shouted, “Robin, you have angered the sheriff!”
I guess he thought the show must go on even if it had completely changed direction since his nap.
Mark looked over at the kid and then at me. “Yeah!” Mark growled. “You shouldn’t have done that, morons.” He grabbed a fighting stick from Merry Man Number Three and came at me. He was much too close for me to fire an arrow, and other than those, I was unarmed.
I kinda got the feeling that “unarmed” was what was about to happen to me too.
CHAPTER 12
ZOMBIE’S GOT TALENT
In the audience, Solomon Caldwell was groggily trying to get the baker’s hat off his head, but without much luck. The people sitting next to him were looking at him in confusion, probably trying to work out if this was also part of the show.
Pradeep grabbed a fighting stick and threw it to me. Then he grabbed another one from Friar Tuck and we both stepped toward Mark.
Mark’s face throbbed red. He swung at both of us. Pradeep and I were quick, but Mark was strong. He swiped at me and knocked my Robin Hood hat clean off my head. That was close!
He swung at me again, knocking my stick out of my hands and into the wings. Then he turned to Pradeep and was pulling back, ready to swing, when I flung the fire bucket of water at him. His foot stomped right into it and he lurched to the side with one foot stuck fast. Water sloshed out all over him and the stage.
“Stupid morons!” he shouted. “You still can’t stop me!”
Mrs. Flushcowski was desperately flicking through the play script on her lap. “But none of this is what we rehearsed,” she squeaked. She looked at the stage and then at the audience. She still seemed a bit dazed from the sleeping gas. “And why is Solomon Caldwell playing the baker?” She seemed close to tears.
Just then, Mark grabbed Pradeep’s stick and snapped it in two across his leg. He jumped down off the stage with the fire bucket still on his foot and clanked toward Solomon Caldwell, who was sleepily tugging on the baker’s hat. I knew what I had to do.
I pulled another suction-cup arrow out of the quiver on my back, but nearly dropped it when I saw that Frankie was clinging to the arrow with his front fins.
“Frankie, let go!” I shouted, but Frankie shook his fishy head. “Please. I’ll only get one shot. If I miss, you could end up splatted on the wall.”
Pradeep was standing next to me. “You have to,” he said, and put the Robin Hood hat back on my head. “He can do it. And so can you, Tom.” He looked out into the audience. “I mean … Robin, thou must shootest the arrow. It is your destiny!” (I know Pradeep stole that last line from Star Wars instead of Robin Hood, but it suited the moment.)
Mark had reached Solomon’s seat. He grabbed the hat and pulled it off, but Sami clamped her hands over Solomon’s eyes and wouldn’t let go.
“Swishy fishy say, ‘Ptwwwwwwwwwwwt!’” she said, and blew a raspberry at Mark.
It was now or never. I pulled back on the bow and fired the arrow and Frankie at Mark’s face!
“Evil Scientist, you are so thwarted!” I yelled.
Mark turned and the suction-cup arrow hit him on the forehead and stuck there.
As soon as it hit, Frankie clung onto the arrow with his front fins and started fish-slapping Mark around the face with his tail.
“Get him off! Get the moron fish off me!” Mark yelled.
Pradeep stepped forward. “That rogue is now our prisoner. Get him!” Pradeep looked at the confused-looking Guards and Merry Men
and Rich Travelers and even the horse. “Get him!” he repeated with a yell.
The cast jumped down into the audience and dragged Mark onstage while he was still trying to swat Frankie off his face.
The whole hall was going crazy. People were shouting. The audience was confused. The kids onstage didn’t know what was going on, and no one, not even me, could get Frankie to stop fish-slapping Mark.
Mrs. Flushcowski had turned so pale that I thought she would keel over at any second. I suddenly had an idea of how to calm everyone down.
I went up onstage and whispered to Katie Plefka, who had been fanning Lady-in-Waiting Number Three with a bit of cardboard after she fainted when I fired the fish arrow. Katie nodded, walked to the center of the stage, and started to sing.
When the first notes hit Frankie’s ears, he stopped fish-slapping Mark, jumped into the water-filled quiver I was holding out to him, and started to sway to the music. The audience went quiet. Sami gently uncovered Solomon Caldwell’s eyes and sat on the floor next to his chair, rocking to the music. Solomon looked straight at the stage. The Merry Men and the Guards quietly tied up Mark with some of his own Evil Scientist wrist ties while the rest of the cast sat and listened to Katie sing.
When Katie hit her last note, the audience burst into applause.
Katie smiled (and I think I spotted her head grow a little bit, but not too much).
Pradeep and I walked over and stood on either side of her.
“Hooray for Maid Marian!” I shouted.
“Hooray for Robin Hood!” shouted one of the Merry Men.
“Hooray for them both!” shouted a Lady-in-Waiting.
I took off the Robin Hood hat and put it on Pradeep’s head. The audience clapped.
“Wait, I have something to say!” Solomon Caldwell spoke in a loud clear voice. The audience fell silent.
He walked slowly to the stage.
CHAPTER 13
FRANKIE STEALS THE SHOW