Leading Ladies #2 (4 page)

“Mr. Barrymore?” I said.

He looked up, startled. Then he saw me standing beside him.

“Hi, sorry to—I'm Paulina . . . I was in your—I'm the one who—”

He pointed at me. “The one with the cell phone,” he said.

It's funny—he seemed larger than life when he was up onstage. But face-to-face, he wasn't that much taller than me.

“I just wanted to apologize about that. Not that I'm making excuses, and I certainly won't do it again, but I was actually making notes on what you were saying and texting them to myself for an article for my magazine.”

He squinted, narrowing his eyes that seemed more gray than blue.

“Magazine?” he asked.

“Yes, a school magazine—a student-run thing. We have a blog, too. It's called
4 Girls
. We do a new issue every four weeks, and I had gotten the okay from Ms. Whelan to write about
Annie
for this month's feature. I'm supposed to attend your dress rehearsal so the review will be printed in time for opening night, but then I realized—”

“Excellent,” Mr. Barrymore said. The lenses on his little, round glasses reflected the sun, making him momentarily look like he was shooting light beams out of his eyes. “And you want to interview me for the piece?”

“Oh. Well, actually that could be an interesting—”

Mr. Barrymore produced a business card, seemingly out of midair, and handed it to me.

“I'd be more than happy. I always have time for my friends in the press. You can e-mail me here, and we'll set something up.” He walked off briskly, humming to himself.

I could see my mother's blue Toyota pulling into the parking lot, but suddenly I couldn't move.

Wow.
I had just scored an interview with the director without even trying!

I was definitely getting good at this reporter thing.

“Yes, Sensei Joe!”

The sound of a crowd of ten-year-olds shouting at their karate teacher was almost more than my ears could handle. My little brother's class was running late, and somehow I'd gotten stuck tagging along with my mother to pick him up. Tuesdays were always busy, and sometimes I ended up wherever Kevin was. I hated to miss Day Two of the audition workshop, but I'd be back again for Day Three tomorrow. I rubbed my temples, feeling a headache coming on, and wondered how my mother could look so incredibly cheerful in the midst of all the shouting.

“Roundhouse kick!” commanded Sensei Joe. “With power and focus!”

The kids lined up, many of them hopping from one foot to the other in anticipation. In their soft helmets, mouth guards, and neck-to-knee padding, they looked like an army of hyperactive Pillsbury Doughboys. I wondered, not for the first time, how wise it really was to pay good money to teach Kevin how to attack something with his feet.

I turned my attention to the little screen on my phone. Tally had e-mailed a link to Gideon Barrymore's website, and I was staring at a tiny photograph of the man himself. The bio read:

 

Gideon Barrymore lives and works in Manhattan, where his recent stage credits include
A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Seagull,
and
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
. In addition to his Broadway work, he has made numerous film and television appearances, including his award-winning portrayal of Sergeant Dodge Maven in
Corn People III: Revenge of the Colonel
and an upcoming guest spot on the season premiere of the Emmy-nominated sci-fi drama
Nebula Wars.

 

I forwarded the link to Ivy. She'd been out again today—I wondered if she had the flu that was going around school. I'd been able to keep on top of
4 Girls
stuff for now but wanted to keep her in the loop. And I thought that since she'd moved here from New York City just a few months ago, maybe she'd heard of Gideon Barrymore. Maybe she'd even seen him in a show.

Another e-mail from Tally popped into my box.

To:
Paulina M. Barbosa

From:
StarQuality

Subject:
!!!

OMG, NEBULA WRS IS ON THIS 2MORRO NITE U R TuTALLY INVOTED OVER 2 WiTCH WITH ME!!!

 

That actually might be interesting
, I thought. I had never been to Tally's house, and I was sort of curious. Was her family half as nuts as she was? What if they were
twice
as nuts?

“Mom, watch! Mom! Paulie! Watch!”

I looked up at the sound of my brother's voice, which was audible even over the digital dance music always blasting at the dojo. When he saw that both Mom and I were looking, he aimed a wild kick at his target—a blue, plastic ball on a string hanging from a contraption that looked like a fishing rod, which was being held by one of Sensei Joe's many assistants.

“Eeeeeeeeyah!”
Kevin screeched. He leaped forward as he kicked, which I'm pretty sure he wasn't supposed to do. His foot connected with the ball, the fishing rod thing, and the assistant, in that order. Both Kevin and the assistant ended up on their backs on the mat. Kevin jumped to his feet, pumped a small fist in the air, and shouted, “Yes!”

No points for style, but I had to give my little brother props for enthusiasm, so I clapped loudly. My mother stuck two fingers in her mouth and made a shrill, high whistle. Kevin ran to the back of the line, but before he could get a second shot at glory, Sensei Joe announced that class was over for the day.

“Did you see me? Did you see my kick?” Kevin demanded as he ran up to us. I tried to guide him toward the door with my mother. The usual crush of kids leaving was colliding with students coming in for the next class, and the doorway was blocked by a woman struggling with a large, redheaded boy who appeared to be permanently trapped in his own helmet.

“You were the spitting image of Jackie Mason,” my mother assured Kevin as we waited for them to move out of the doorway.

“I think you mean Jackie Chan, Mom,” I corrected.

“Did you see it, Paulie?” Kevin pressed.

“I saw it,” I assured my brother, pulling him around the obstacle to follow our mother out the door. “It was very . . .
kick
tastic.”

“Kicktastic!” Kevin yelled in agreement. I tried to get him to move down the street toward the car, but he kept stopping to aim random kicks and chops in the air.

“Hey, have you ever heard of Gideon Barrymore? He's an actor in this movie
Corn People III: Revenge of the Colonel
?” I asked.

Kevin came to a sudden stop, and he smacked his head with his hand.

“
Everybody's
heard of that movie!” he told me.

“Have you actually seen it, though?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? It's like the greatest
Corn People
movie ever made.” Kevin looked at me and rolled his eyes. I bet he was thinking, “Big Sisters” the same way I was thinking, “Little Brothers.”

“What about the actor? He was in
Nebula Wars
, too,” I continued.

“
Nebula Wars
rocks,” Kevin confirmed. “Death to the Techutrons! Report to command base! All systems on vaporize!”

Wow.
Two for two on Gideon Barrymore's work. Even if Kevin didn't know the guy by name, his enthusiasm for the shows made Gideon Barrymore a certified celebrity, at least in my house.

“How about
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
?” I asked as we reached the car.

“Haven't seen it, but it sounds way cool,” he said. “Can you hold this?”

Something plastic and wet plopped into my hand. Kevin's mouth guard.

“Kevin, gross!” I yelled.

My mother hovered by the driver's door, searching for her keys. “What's wrong, Paulie?”

“He handed me his mouth guard,” I exclaimed. “It is so disgusting. Seriously—I'm going to throw up!”

As soon as the locks clicked up, Kevin yanked open his door, got into the car, and buckled his seat belt, an innocent expression on his face. My mother came around to where I was still standing on the sidewalk, holding the mouth guard as far from my body as I could. She took it from my hand, neatly wrapped it in a tissue, and dropped it into her purse.

“Thank you.” I sighed.

“Anytime,” she replied.

I climbed into the backseat next to Kevin.

“Next time I'm going to cream that guy,” he announced over the sound of the car starting.

“That's great, Kev,” my mother said, squinting into the rearview mirror as she pulled the car onto the street.

“Really?” Kevin asked eagerly.

“Tally asked if I could come over tomorrow night,” I said.

“Tally? That's nice, honey—you've never been to her house, have you? But why on a Wednesday night? Wouldn't the weekend be better?”

“Mom, really?” Kevin repeated. “When I kick, does my foot go higher than my head?”

“It's for
4 Girls
,” I said. “Stuff for the next article. Believe it or not—the director of
Annie
? The new theater instructor? He's going to be on this TV show tomorrow night, and Tally wants me to watch it with her.”

“Mom, does it?” Kevin pressed.

“Sounds like fun, Paulina. Just make sure your homework is done first,” she added. “Kevin, your foot does go higher than your head when you kick, and I just don't know how you can do it. Doesn't it hurt?” A few spatters of drizzle fell on the windshield, and she switched on the wipers.

“Oh yeah, it kills!” Kevin confirmed, grinning proudly.

“I actually kind of like Tally,” I said.

“Is Tally the one with the hair or the one with the girly clothes?” Kevin asked.

Ivy was my only friend that Kevin acknowledged by name, since she had proven herself worthy by being a
Battlestar Galactica
fan. Tally and Miko, who had been to my house several times when we were working on the first
4 Girls
issue, he simply called The Hair and Girly Clothes.

“The Hair,” I said. “Girly Clothes is kind of taking a break from
4 Girls
at the moment.”

“Bummer,” Kevin said.

Word.

“Oh, honey, Miko didn't change her mind about that?” my mother asked. “That's really too bad. How will you get the design and the layout done without her?”

Why did everyone keep asking me that?

“I'm sure that after a couple weeks off, Miko will be back,” I said. “And if I have some problems with the design program, I can just ask her. It's not like she's moving to Siberia. I've got everything covered.”

“I'm sure that you do,” my mother said encouragingly.

I nodded in agreement. Paulina M. Barbosa: Poster Child for the Power of Positive Thinking.

“No, really, I'm fine,” Ivy said, closing her locker, then opening it again and staring inside like she'd forgotten something. “I just feel like I was out for more than two days—today doesn't feel like a Wednesday.”

“I know,” I said. “Isn't it really weird when you're convinced it's like noon, and it's actually only ten, and then you find out someone else thought the
EXACT
same thing? Like, couldn't it be possible that time actually does slow down sometimes, and we just don't know it?”

“Uh-huh,” Ivy said, still staring into her locker.

“Ivy? Are you sure you're okay?”

She turned and gave me a slightly startled look.

“What? Yeah, I'm totally fine. I just zoned out there for a second.”

“Trying to find out what it's like to be Tally Janeway?” I asked with a grin.

“Oh
please
,” Ivy said. “You'll give me a relapse, and I'm weak to start with. Hey, look at the time—we should get going.”

Ivy looked like her normal self, dressed in her usual vintage clothes—superfaded jeans and a green, men's dinner jacket that set off her cranberry-red hair. But she was still a bit pale and tired looking from the epic flu that was going around. I sure hoped I didn't get it.

“Hey, listen, I came up with an idea for how to deal with the cover art situation,” I said as we walked down the hall.

“Yeah?” Ivy asked. “I'm sorry. I said I was going to figure that out.”

“Um, you were practically dying, remember? Anyway, I came up with something easy. Since we can't do original art like Miko made for the first issue, I was thinking how about a photograph instead? What if we just take a picture from the back of the auditorium—of empty seats and a bare stage. It totally sets up one of our features, following the Drama Club from the very beginning of casting to their first dress rehearsal during tech week.”

Ivy nodded.

“That's a good idea,” she said. “It will be easy to do, saves us a bunch of work,
and
it will look great.”

I beamed. Of the four of us, Ivy was the closest we had to a professional when it came to magazine work. When Ivy lived in New York City, her mother had been an editor at a huge magazine. Some of her know-how had definitely rubbed off on Ivy. She had a great sense of what would work and what wouldn't.

“And I've got a good digital camera,” Ivy added. “So I'll take care of getting the picture.”

“Awesome,” I said. “Oh, and Monday at the mini-meeting I got the signed permission form back from Tally, and—oh, I haven't even told you about
The Actor
yet!” I pronounced it with exaggeration:
ak-torr
. I'd already started to think of Mr. Barrymore as The Ak-Torr.

“What
ak-torr
?” Ivy asked. Her third-period class was on a different floor than mine, so there wasn't much time for me to bring her up to date.

“There's a new drama teacher! Ms. Whelan apparently had to leave, no one knows why, and this guy shows up to take her place, and he's this real actor from New York. You should have seen him yesterday, Ivy—he gets up onstage and he's like, ‘Hello. I am Gideon Barrymore.'”

“Weird,” Ivy said.

“Weird?” I asked. “How come?”

“Just that, you know—the Barrymores are about the most famous family of stage actors on the planet. Kind of funny that a Barrymore would show up at a tiny school way upstate to take over a middle-school production of
Annie
.”

Huh. I didn't think of that. “I didn't realize Barrymore was a famous theater name,” I said. “So you're saying it's weird that an actor would leave New York City to come up to a tiny town no one's ever heard of? You should tell him you're from the city, too! You can bond over the bagels and the skyscrapers and all the stuff you miss!”

Ivy paused at the stairwell, shaking her head.

“But I
don't
miss it,” Ivy said. “Why do people assume that the city is automatically
better
—that if you had the choice, you'd rather be there?”

“I don't,” I said, giving Ivy a funny look. Something seemed . . . different. And not flu symptom different. “I like it here.”

“Right?” Ivy asked. “Me too. Who knew at the ripe old age of thirteen I'd find out I'd been a small-town girl all along? If—”

The rest of her sentence was drowned out by the sound of the first bell, which was especially deafening in the stairwell.

“I've got to run and so do you,” I said, hoisting my bag over one shoulder. We had four minutes to get to class before the late bell rang.

“Okay, catch you later,” Ivy said as she headed for the stairs.

I went back into the hall. My social studies classroom was just a few doors down. A small group of girls was standing by the student announcements bulletin board, tacking up a huge poster for Homecoming Week.

Where there was a planning committee for a dance, there were PQuits. Miko was one of the mightiest of all the PQuits, and she was standing right in the center of the group, a stack of posters under her arm. She looked glamorous and professional in black skinny jeans and a matching turtleneck, her glossy, dark hair pulled up in a twist.

I couldn't help but wonder. How did Miko have time to be helping with dance stuff if she had zero time for
4 Girls
? I felt a little flame of resentment.

Be fair
, I told myself. Miko was different with her PQuit friends than she was when she was with me and Tally and Ivy. They put a lot of pressure on her to follow the group. Miko had never been quite comfortable with her two different worlds—I never knew if she would be friendly or aloof to me when her friends were around.

I decided I'd be friendly first.

“Hi, Miko,” I replied. “How's it going?”

“Oh,” Miko answered. She looked flustered to see me. “It's going okay.”

“Did you design that?” I asked, pointing to the poster in Miko's hand.

I didn't mean for it to sound like an accusation, but Miko held the poster partly behind her back, like she didn't want me looking at it.

“It only took a few minutes,” Miko replied.

Shelby had been pulling things off the bulletin board to make room for the poster. Now she turned around and saw me. She rolled her eyes, like I was someone's irritating little sister trying to muscle in on what the big girls were doing.

“They're for Homecoming,” Shelby said. “We are totally blowing last year's theme out of the water.”

Another one of my mother's Psychologist Specials is that the key to being friendly is showing interest in what someone else is doing. It's kind of scary how often it works. Ivy and Shelby couldn't stand each other, so if I could get some inside Homecoming info right from the horse's mouth, I knew Ivy would appreciate it.

“I heard about that,” I said. “It's kind of a time travel theme, right?”

“No,” Shelby said. “It's decades. Each grade is assigned one. The eighth-graders get to pick, so they snapped up the sixties. Sixth grade is the eighties.”

Like I said. Kind of a time travel theme.

“So what decade will the seventh-graders be?” I asked.

Miko had gone back to tacking the poster up. Shelby stared at me, her hand on one hip, but the look of impatience was partly gone.

“The seventies,” she said. “Which will be way fun. Everyone is supposed to dress in their decade style on Decade Day. Whatever class has the most participation and the best outfit wins the School Spirit Award. And I'm making it my personal business to make sure that the seventh grade wins. The winning grade gets an entire homework-free day. Every teacher has to agree.”

“That sounds really cool,” I said, going for the old butter-her-up thing.

“I know,” Shelby said. “I'm completely psyched. Take one of these flyers and pass the word.”

Then she actually smiled at me as I took the flyer from her.

Score another one for Mom Psychologist.

“So, we're actually doing some stuff on Homecoming for the next
4 Girls
issue,” I said. “It would be really fun to have pictures of people from every grade—like a ‘best of' thing. Everyone would
love
it.” I knew I was laying it on thick, but I also knew that when dealing with PQuits, you had One Chance to get it right. If Shelby dismissed me with a PQuit glare, me, Ivy, and our
4 Girls
article were done for.

“Maybe,” Shelby said. “I'll talk to my people and let you know.”

She would
talk
to her
people
? This was Homecoming, not the Golden Globes.

But Shelby had already lost interest in me. She examined the placement of the poster Miko had hung.

“It needs a border,” Shelby said. “Something to make it pop—maybe pink or orange.”

“In your dreams,” Miko said. “It's done. And this is the way it's supposed to look.”

“But, Meeky, it's got to make a splash,” Shelby protested. “We talked about this at the Dance Committee meeting, remember?”

I felt another flash of irritation. Miko found the time to go to one of Shelby's Dance Committee meetings? That didn't seem too important. Or stress-inducing. Actually, it sounded a lot like . . . hanging out with her best friends.

Maybe I've been wrong about Miko all along
, I thought.

I turned and walked away. And I wasn't really surprised that
none
of the PQuits noticed.

• • • • • • •

I walked into social studies just ahead of the teacher, Ms. Zangeist, and slid into my usual seat in the second row. I had just enough time to notice that Benny Novak was in the seat next to mine before Ms. Zangeist launched into a speech about carpetbaggers and Reconstruction. I felt a very small flutter in my stomach.

Last year I had been completely unable to function whenever Benny was around. This year I'd come a long way. We actually had regular conversations now. And he even played the occasional prank on me. Nothing too involved—your basic fake spider in the locker kind of thing. But I would definitely say we were
friends
.

Benny was looking my way, and when I met his eye, he pointed at a flyer on the bulletin board and mouthed, “Homecoming?”

I nodded and twirled my finger in circles by my head while crossing my eyes in a universal symbol for Totally Insane. Anyone who knew me knew that school spirit stuff like going to dances was not exactly my thing.

Ms. Zangeist began passing out some work sheets, and I realized that she was giving us our homework assignment. I yanked the cap off my pen and started scribbling, hoping I hadn't missed anything.

“No less than five pages, typed please, and it needs to cite at least three sources that do not include the textbook and are reputable. That means no Wikipedia!”

I sighed.

The paper was due on the same day I had to give a book report in English. I circled the date in my homework planner and added a few stars beside it. I'd have to remember to start the book report early if I was going to get both assignments done on time. But I couldn't work on either one today. I had to go to the audition workshop for
Annie
after school and then to Tally's house to watch
Nebula Wars
.

“If you have any questions or concerns, now is the time to speak up,” Ms. Zangeist was saying. “You all know I don't accept last-minute excuses.”

A hand shot up over near the window. I recognized the shiny, gold bracelet. It belonged to Tally's archenemy, Valerie Teale.

“Ms. Zangeist, the due date for the paper falls during tech week for
Annie
. We're going to be having long dress rehearsals that week to get ready to open the showcase. For those of us who have principal roles, will it be possible to get an extension? Because there will be rehearsals every day after school, and some of us have special coaching sessions as well—I need to be able to plan my schedule.”

I snuck a look at Tally, two seats behind me. Her normally creamy complexion had turned bright red.

I could see why Tally would be mad. It was totally obnoxious the way Valerie spoke as if she already had the starring role.

“Yes, Valerie, we can certainly discuss that,” Ms. Zangeist said. “You may see me after class.”

“It's only Wednesday, and auditions aren't until Friday,” Tally blurted out. “Nobody will know who's getting the leads until Monday at the earliest.”

Valerie smiled and nodded, giving Tally a look that seemed to suggest that
she
knew very well who was getting a lead.