Just Kidding

by Annie Bryant

  Maeve sat up straight watching their every move. Energetic and skilled, the cheerleaders were flipping across the stage like star performers. Those uniforms are totally cute, she marveled. That red and white combo would look fabulous with my hair. When I’m in high school I’m so going to try out! Maeve hesitated for a second. Wait a minute, she told herself. Am I going to have time for cheerleading and dance and theater? By the time I’m in high school I’ll need to focus all of my extra time on my theater and movie career. I might not have time for cheerleading on top of that. Maybe they’ll let me be an alternate or something. I just HAVE to have that uniform!

  Maeve sighed. Being totally committed to a future career in the entertainment industry did have its downside!

  She felt a tug on her sleeve. It was Charlotte, bringing her back down to earth. Mrs. Fields was applauding the cheerleaders and walking out to the microphone at the center of the stage. The principal would be introducing the skits soon, and Maeve knew that her group was up first. Focus, she reminded herself as she got up and followed the others backstage. There are some things more important than cute uniforms!

  By the time Mrs. Fields was done, people couldn’t wait to see the skits. There was nothing funnier than seeing their classmates goof around on stage. Predictably, Ms. R’s class hadn’t been able to settle on one idea, so they were going to present two skits—one from the girls and one from the boys.

  “And now,” Mrs. Fields was saying, “I’m proud to announce the start of our Spirit Week skits. As you know, I’ve asked students to perform something that would show us what Spirit Week has meant to them. I expect all of you to give a great round of applause to anyone who has shown the “spirit” to get up and perform in front of their peers. She looked at a card in her hand. “The first group is ‘Girl Power…and Friends,’ from Ms. Rodriguez’s homeroom. Let’s welcome Avery Madden to introduce them.”

  Avery walked out on stage, breathing hard. Her legs felt like jelly and she had clamped her hands to her side to keep them from shaking. Avery had never been this nervous before a big game. Performing on stage was definitely not her thing. She searched the crowd for Maeve. Sure, Avery had given speeches for student government in elementary school, and she’d gotten up in front of the entire seventh grade in the race for class president, but performance was a brand new thing for her. She hoped she wasn’t getting what Maeve called “stage fright.” She remembered Maeve saying that taking deep breaths helped to calm her down whenever she performed. Since Avery was breathing like she’d run a marathon, she figured she better employ Maeve’s trick, and she began to take slow, smooth breaths. As she neared the microphone, Avery took one last big gulp of air, caught Maeve’s wave out of the corner of her eye, and let the air out in a giant whoosh. Unfortunately, the audience heard her, and kids began to laugh. Great. Just what I needed. Her knees began to shake.

  Mrs. Fields gave Avery a smile of encouragement and backed away from the microphone, which had been adjusted for her height. It was several inches too tall for Avery, so she quickly reached out to lower it, although she didn’t know if it would make a difference. Right now, Avery was convinced that if she opened her mouth, the only thing that would come out would be a pitiful squeak—a sound more like Maeve’s guinea pigs than a seventh-grade girl.

  After fumbling for a few awkward seconds, Avery finally managed to slide the microphone down to the right level and lock it. Wiping her sweaty hands on her pants and glancing at her notecards, she faced the audience. “Our skit is called Revenge of the Sports Martians from Planet Trogg and it was inspired by this particular Spirit Week.” She made sure to look directly at Chase Finley, who blinked at her but didn’t even open his mouth to make one of his famous snide remarks. “Hope you like it—and hope you get it!” Phew, Avery thought. I’m so glad that’s over with. She couldn’t believe how exhausted she felt from saying those few words in front of an audience, and she had a newfound respect for Maeve. Being on stage was no joke!

  As soon as she walked backstage, the curtain opened to show Maeve, Charlotte, Chelsea, Betsy, Katani, Isabel, and several other girls in Ms. R’s class dressed in sports clothes. Each wore either baseball pants and a numbered T-shirt, basketball jerseys and baggy shorts, or tight white football pants with short-sleeved shirts bearing players’ numbers. All of them were covered in dirt, as though they’d been playing hard. Each girl wore a sideways baseball cap on her head, and each girl’s head hung down at a strange angle, as though it wasn’t quite resting properly on her neck.

  The girls had their arms stuck out and their eyes stared straight in front of them, like zombies. Their legs moved as though they were rubber, and they didn’t seem to notice anything, not even each other, as they staggered around the stage.

  Then several basketballs rolled across the stage, and the staring eyes all lighted on them and began to chase after them. “Ball…ball…” murmured the zombies as they tried to stumble after the basketballs, almost falling over their own feet and bumping into each other without realizing it. “Must get ball…must pass to boy…must only pass to boy…must get ball and pass to boy.”

  As the zombies finally zeroed in on the slowing basketballs, Avery and a few other girls ran onto the stage. Unlike the zombies, the new cast members wore the bandanas and purple eye paint from the day before. They were clearly meant to be humans, because they called to each other and were graceful and alert as they tried to pick up the basketballs. But the zombies blocked them away from the basketballs, chanting “must get ball” and “must only pass to boy” while continuing to stare straight ahead.

  When the girls tried to pull the basketballs away from the zombies, the zombies acted as though they were not there, while hilariously managing to stiffly throw the balls anywhere but the right place. Several basketballs went into the audience, some hit the other zombies. One even bounced lightly off Mrs. Fields, who tapped her foot in pretend annoyance.

  Avery and the other girls shouted, “Throw it to me!” and “I’m open!” and “Over here, boys!” But the zombies ignored them and continued to throw the balls all over the place. Kids in the audience were loving it, calling out to the zombies to throw the balls in their direction.

  The boys in Ms. R’s class were beginning to whisper to each other and were shifting uncomfortably in their seats, but the rest of the auditorium was laughing.

  Finally, Maeve, the head zombie, stumbled to the center of the stage. As the girls shouted, “Throw to me! I’m open, I’m open!” she acted as though all the noise was becoming too much for her. She put stiff zombie hands on her head, shook it from side to side, still staring, eyes wider than ever, and said loudly, “Must not pass. Must not…do not know why…“She seemed to be getting weaker by the second. “…Do not know…Red Sox…second baseman.”

  And with that, she stumbled one final time, fell face forward on the stage, and lay still.

  Behind her, as though connected to their head zombie, the other zombies all wavered and began to teeter and fall, calling softly, “Red…Sox…second…baseman…second…baseman…” In two seconds, all the zombies lay still all over the stage.

  The girls, led by Avery, looked down at the crumpled zombies and picked up the only basketball that was still on the stage. Soon they were running all over the “court,” passing and shooting, shouting happily to each other when they fake-scored baskets. From the wings, the players were joined by Riley, Nick, and Dillon, who was back in Avery’s good graces. They became part of the game right away, passing to the girls and to each other, dribbling around the court and setting up plays, shooting, and in general, acting like a real team.

  Maeve raised her head slowly, as though with tremendous physical effort. She could “hear” the girls and boys playing well together. She focused her staring eyes on the game, then turned slowly to the audience and spoke the final line of the skit: “Zombie…make…big…mistake. Zombie want to play too.” But it was too late, the game was over. Zombie Maeve staggered and her head dr
opped again, as though all the life had been drained out of her.

  As the curtain closed, the audience laughed heartily and applauded until their hands stung. The Girl Power…and Friends skit was a big hit.

  Mrs. Fields and Ms. Rodriguez both looked bemusedly at the boys from Ms. R’s homeroom that were still in the audience. They seemed sheepish. Clearly, as Avery had hoped, they got it.

  Mrs. Fields waited until the applause for the zombie skit died down and the actors returned to their seats before she introduced the next group. “And now let’s all welcome Kevin Connors to introduce the ‘Cool Dudes’ of Ms. Rodriguez’s class.”

  Kevin looked less sure of himself in front of a microphone than he did on the basketball court. He gripped the microphone tightly and said hesitantly, “And now, the Cool Dudes of Ms. R’s homeroom in The Blabber Birds.” Whistles and hoots emanated from the audience. “Bring it on!” someone shouted.

  “Oh, no!” Charlotte whispered to Isabel. “I don’t like the sound of this!”

  Isabel said nothing, but clenched her hands together. Charlotte moved a little closer to Isabel and linked her arm through her friend’s.

  The curtain opened to show Chase dressed in a fluffy skirt (his gym shorts hanging down), oversized pink ballet shoes, and a white-feathered scarf and hat. He resembled one of the dodo birds from Sesame Street. Chase looked so completely silly that everyone began to crack up as soon as he flopped his way to the center of the stage.

  Chase did a few classic yoga postures, with his arms floating in various poses above his head while he tried to stand on one leg, which provoked huge laughter from the audience. Even the teachers were laughing at his attempts at grace. Maeve had to admit that Chase did have really good comic timing.

  Then Chase opened his mouth and began to sing—absurdly off-key—warbling like a bad opera singer and gesturing dramatically while still poised on one leg. His performance brought down the house. Ms. R was wiping tears from her eyes, and her face turned very red as she laughed helplessly. Even Charlotte and Isabel couldn’t help but giggle…Chase looked like a complete dodo bird.

  When he had finished his “song,” another boy came out, dressed in basketball clothes and dribbling a ball, pretending to talk to Chase very seriously. Chase pretended to listen, his head attentively tilted toward the boy, and then, as the boy continued to mime a conversation, Chase flapped his wings and pretended to get upset.

  Behind Chase came Derek Janner, one of the other boys who hung out with Kevin. He was wearing a trench raincoat belted across his waist and a hat pulled low over his eyes, which were hidden by sunglasses. But under the hat he had on a bird mask and wore a wig of long black hair. He carried a pair of large binoculars and trained them on the audience, watching them avidly and then turning to say something over his shoulder to another boy, who listened eagerly and then leaned forward and began to ask a series of eager questions: “Who? You don’t mean it! You’ve got to be kidding! Where were they? When did you find out?”

  Katani, Charlotte, Avery, Maeve, and Isabel sat in silence. None of them was laughing anymore. It was completely obvious…Chase was impersonating Isabel and blaming the rumor on her!

  “Oh,” Katani whispered to Charlotte, “this is so not funny! I don’t ever want to speak to Chase Finley again. It’s one thing to tease a whole group, but to single out one person in front of the whole school,” and she looked at Isabel directly, “an innocent person…it’s just plain mean. And what does this have to do with Spirit Week?”

  “If you think about it,” Charlotte whispered back, “this is just what Spirit Week has been about for our class this year. Gossip and rumors.”

  “But that’s not what it’s supposed to be about,” Katani protested. “If my sister Candice could see this, she’d totally lose it! She loved Spirit Week at Abigail Adams, and she told me last night that it used to be the best week of the entire year. We are so not on the right track here.”

  “The question of the day is,” Charlotte murmured, “how do we get back on the right track?”

  The laughter of the audience, most of whom were still reacting to the boys dressing as bird girls, was building, and Chase was loving every minute of it. He fluttered around the stage, seeming to forget that he was supposed to be huddled in conversation with the boy next to him. When the boy cleared his throat loudly, Chase kicked his heels in the air to a burst of giggles from the audience. They loved his skit, and he knew it.

  The girls could almost see the wheels turning as Chase decided to improvise a new line. He stopped what he was doing, strode to the center of the stage, threw out his feathery chest, and said to Derek, “And you can just take your silly sweatshirt back…because it…” Chase was so excited by the audience response that he’d obviously forgotten whatever he planned to say. Finally, he burst out, “Because it will always remind me of you!”

  Kevin, who had come back to the audience to sit down after introducing the skit, stiffened in his seat. His eyes flashed to the stage and then to Isabel, who was sitting at the end of the same row, her eyes glued on the stage in horror and disbelief.

  Isabel’s face was flame red. She wished she had never left Detroit. Her mother was doing better, so maybe they could move back this weekend.

  Chase had just repeated almost exactly, word for word, what Amanda had said to Kevin that day in the art room, and he’d set up the skit as though Isabel was the gossip who repeated it all. But what Kevin knew, which Chase had apparently forgotten, was that Isabel hadn’t been in the room when Amanda was talking about the hoodie. There was no way Isabel could have repeated anything like that to anyone, because she didn’t even know it had happened. Someone else was framing her.

  Kevin began to drip sweat. He felt like a total loser. Like everyone else, he had been led to believe that Isabel was behind all the rumors and gossip swirling around the breakup. He’d thought Isabel was pretty mean to spread his private life around school like that, when he’d liked and trusted her. But it was totally clear now that Isabel had had nothing to do with it; she couldn’t have had anything to do with it. And yesterday she had even tried to talk to him—maybe to try to end all those dumb rumors—and he had just walked away and acted like she wasn’t there. He hoped his mother and sisters never found out about this. They would be on his case forever!

  He shook his head, thinking to himself, What a bird brain! Oh, no, he groaned at his own pun. Enough about the birds.

  Kevin couldn’t wait for the stupid skit to be over with. He had to find a way to apologize to Isabel. He hoped she would forgive him. As for Chase, he just might never speak to that phony dude again.

  Luckily most of the audience had no idea about the truth of what had happened. They were just laughing at Chase’s over-the-top acting style. Someone shouted, “Enough already!” Finally, to the relief of the BSG, Chase stopped the skit and took a long bow at center stage.

  Anna and Joline were sitting with their mouths pursed. They weren’t laughing at the skit either. Chase caught everyone’s attention, and they were outraged. They should be the ones getting all the glory; none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for them. Anna whispered to Joline that she was never going to speak to Chase Finley again.

  Katani leaned in to Avery. “Mark my words, Avery Madden. Chase just lost his best friend.”

  As the laughter and applause for Chase rose to a crescendo in the auditorium, Anna couldn’t stand it anymore. All this applause should be for her, and no one would ever know that she had anything to do with it.

  She stood up and shouted, “That’s not the line, Chase, and you know it. That’s not what she really said. It’s ‘Take back your hoodie, because it clashes with everything I own!’”

  Instantly, there was a hushed silence in the auditorium. The boys onstage, even Chase, stopped cavorting and stood uncertainly. Amanda’s mouth dropped open, and she and her friends turned in their seats to glare at Anna. Every member of the audience joined them, and then a low, insiste
nt buzz began to rise from the seats.

  Anna grew still as she saw the stares coming her way. This wasn’t the applause she had been hoping for. These stares weren’t friendly. They looked a lot, in fact, like the stares that had been directed at Isabel all week—cold and unfriendly. Anna tried to look away from them, but there were too many—even the teachers were staring at her. Joline yanked on Anna’s sweater, “Sit down…you’re going to get us into trouble.”

  Anna, realizing her predicament, tried to think of something else to say, but nothing came out of her mouth. She hastily sat down, and before she dropped her eyes to the floor, she saw that Kevin was looking at her with disgust.

  “And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person,” Katani whispered with a wink to Charlotte.

  The buzz didn’t stop. Anna whispered loudly to no one in particular, “Look, you’re making way too big a deal out of all this. The skit was a joke…the whole thing was a joke…I mean, we were just kidding.” But the stares remained hard and cold on her face, and the whispers got louder. Finally, she became defensive. “Hey, can’t anyone take a joke around here?”

  Since no one seemed to be accepting her explanation, Anna worked her way out of her seat and hurried out of the auditorium. Queen of Mean no. 2, Joline, followed on her heels.

  By now Mrs. Fields was up and rapping for order on the podium. She waved a hand at Chase and the others, directing them to return to their seats. Reluctantly, Chase left the stage.

  Mrs. Fields looked sternly at the students. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but too many people seem to see something in this last skit that doesn’t seem very funny to me at all. Spirit Week skits are supposed to be about what spirit means to you, and somehow I think this skit has completely missed the point. I won’t be saying anymore about it, except to tell you that I find it very disturbing. I find it especially disturbing that many people were laughing at something that obviously is NOT funny and most likely has caused significant pain to someone in this room.”