Leading Ladies #2 (8 page)

Monday mornings are always a challenge. But when you've had the flu for three days and all you've eaten is soup, toast, and a little ice cream, getting through a Monday can feel like crossing the Sahara Desert. On foot. With no sunblock. And no Gatorade. And a very heavy book bag to drag around.

The only good news was that Ms. Zangeist had apparently come down with the flu herself. And so did Mr. Sadler, the English teacher. I guess it sounds heartless to call that good news, but really—who hasn't secretly celebrated when they learn a teacher is going to be out? Not only were our regular classes canceled, but we were being sent to the library for an extra free period.

I walked to the library by myself. A note had been posted on the door.

1ST PERIOD ZANGEIST SOCIAL STUDIES 7 AND SADLER ENGLISH 7: SIGN IN WITH LIBRARIAN AND CONTINUE CLASSWORK.

Someone tugged at my sleeve. I turned, and there was Tally, with a superlong, striped scarf wrapped around her neck so many times it looked like she was being attacked by a rainbow-colored boa constrictor.

“How's the voice?” I asked, opening the library door and letting Tally go in first.

Tally gave me a sad, little orphan Annie stare and shook her head. She held up a steaming travel mug as further evidence.

“Still gone?” I asked.

Tally nodded, then mimed choking herself, her pink tongue stuck out comically.

Tally claimed one of the small round tables by the window and signaled for me to sit down with her. She reached into her bag and pulled out a large notepad and a fat, orange pen with black pumpkin stripes and a tiny bat on a spring stuck to the end. She scratched a note onto the pad, the bat at the end of the pen bobbing around as she wrote.

 

Had to audition in sign language. Cast list might be posted today. I'll be lucky to get anything at all.

 

I made a sympathetic face. Poor Tally. She had been obsessing about getting this part for weeks. She'd even been living Annie in her method acting preparation, wearing that funny undersized, red dress and the shiny patent leather shoes. Now Valerie Teale would probably get the part.

“I'm so sorry. I know what a big deal this was for you,” I said sympathetically.

Tally nodded and wrote something else.

 

It's like a jagged arrow stuck through my soul!

 

“Oh, Tal. Does it help to remember that there will be other parts and other plays one day?”

Tally gave an enormous sigh, pointed to her heart, then mimed scooping it out of her chest, squishing it between her palms, and hurling it to the ground. She may have lost her voice, but she hadn't lost a single drop of character.

“You know, Tal, this would actually make a really moving aspect to my article,” I said. “Do you mind if I mention it? How you worked so hard and then had this laryngitis thing happen at the worst possible time?”

Tally nodded emphatically and gave me a thumbs-up to doubly reinforce her approval of my suggestion. At least she'd be in the
4 Girls
spotlight!

“That would be great,” I said. “And listen—I don't know why I didn't think of this myself, but Ivy suggested that you could just e-mail Mr. Barrymore the questions for your interview. That way you don't have to worry about your voice or even deal with him face-to-face. Plus, the answers will come already typed up and everything. That'll save you some work. And I was thinking that instead of just putting it in regular text, we could have some kind of picture of an audience, and the questions could be coming out of their mouths in talk bubbles or something. To make it kind of fun and theatrical. Right?”

Tally nodded and began writing a message to me on her pad. She wrote very slowly.

I waited, trying to be patient. The library was starting to fill up with students from social studies and from Mr. Sadler's English class. Daphne had plopped her bag onto the table right next to mine and was waving Shelby and Miko over. My eyes met Miko's briefly as she pulled up a chair, but she looked away without really acknowledging me. That was fine—I was still irritated by Miko being on the stupid Dance Committee with the rest of the PQuits.

Tally shoved the notebook at me.

 

Since I have no lines to learn, been doing research, trying to find out name of GB's agent. If I get name, I can Google Image him and find out what he looks like, then I can spot him in the audience! Maybe I could audition for him then!!!!!

 

“Wow, look at you—you're turning into a regulation investigative reporter!” I said.

Tally's face brightened—clearly she liked the sound of that.

I saw Ivy come in the main library door. She headed for our table as soon as she caught sight of us. She looked a little more like herself today—wearing peg-legged cargo pants and a vintage bomber jacket. There was just a tiny bit of puffiness around her eyes. Only someone who knew her really well might think she was a little bit distracted.

“You made it,” Ivy said. “I can't believe you're here—you sounded like death on toast on the phone last night. You had it so much worse than me.”

I laughed hoarsely. “I'm still kind of out of it, but I was going nuts cooped up in my room for three days,” I said. “And Kevin kept sneaking in trying to trick me into infecting him.”

Ivy chuckled. “Was he successful?”

“He was as healthy as an ox this morning,” I said. “He was absolutely furious. Hey, any word from your mom on what's going on?”

“They still haven't officially told me,” Ivy said, her expression darkening. “They know I'm going to go through the roof. They're acting like everything is all normal, which is really irritating me—they even talked about getting season lift tickets to Ski Wyndham—like they're actually going to do that. I cannot even express how angry I am at them.”

“I'm really sorry,” I said, silently adding that I, too, could not express the level of anger I had at Ivy's parents for handing her to me like a gift, then snatching her away.

“Tally, how's the voice?” Ivy asked.

Tally wrote
GONE
in huge letters in her notebook and held it about a foot in front of Ivy's face.

“What a drag,” Ivy said, scooching back in her chair slightly. “Are you sure you don't have this bug Paulie and I had?”

Tally shook her head and wrote:

 

Larringitis from worrying.

 

“But the auditions were Friday, right? So shouldn't the worrying part be over?” Ivy asked.

Tally scribbled some more.

 

Not until cast list goes up.

 

Tally was pointing at her notebook with one hand and making a little “talkity-talk” gesture with the other, her fingers opening and closing like a mouth.

“What does that mean?” Ivy asked. “Does she want someone to draw a lobster?”

Tally made an exasperated face and pushed the notebook toward me, pointing at the thing she'd written about Gideon Barrymore.

“Oh, I think I know what she wants,” I said. Tally gave a sharp sigh of relief. Not being able to talk must be agonizing for someone like Tally, who usually spat out thousands of words a minute.

“Tally is trying to find out what Gideon Barrymore's agent looks like, so if her voice is back when he shows up, she can sing a song and recite a soliloquy for him,” I said. “So he can discover her.”

Tally clapped and nodded way too enthusiastically, like Anne Sullivan when she was trying to teach Helen Keller to say
water
.

“All she has to do is get his name and find his picture,” I said. “But she hasn't been able to find anything yet.”

“Mysterious,” Ivy said. “And speaking of mysterious, Paulie, Benny Novak has made two swoops past this table in the last four minutes.”

“What? Really?” I asked. I usually had a pretty sophisticated Benny radar. “Now where is he?”

“Lurking behind the new fiction stack,” Ivy said.

“Just ignore him,” I said. “He's probably trying to pull a prank. His new joy in life is sneaking up on me and scaring me half to death. Last week he put two rubber mice in my book bag.”

All three of us fell silent for a moment. I tried to scan the library for signs of Benny without appearing to do so. I was determined not to be startled into making a squeal like I had at my locker the other day. Bits of conversation from the next table, now growing a little louder, drifted over.

“But that's the whole point,” came Shelby's voice. “We're just going to have to do double the work in half the time—we'll be better organized than them on Decade Day. Posters, flyers, e-mail blasts. We should have a Facebook page for it. Somebody should be tweeting. It's only a few days away, people.”

“Yeah, well, sorry, Shel, but I don't agree,” Miko responded. “It's Decade Day and Homecoming, not a scholarship to college. I have too much to do already.”

“Not so much that she can't be on some stupid Dance Committee,” Ivy muttered. I shushed Ivy, but I felt the same flare of irritation. It did sting a bit to have Miko choose them over us. How could you even compare a dumb dance to our magazine?

“Well, no, Meeky,
I'm
sorry,” Shelby countered, in her dangerously silky be-very-careful tone. “But this has to take priority over everything. We have to win that School Spirit Award on Decade Day, and the only way to do that is to make sure everyone is working on their costumes. It's coming up at the end of this week—we've got to move on this. It's time for a major publicity blitz.”

I didn't want to get caught eavesdropping, but I couldn't resist looking over to see how Miko was reacting to all this.

She was pressing her lips together tightly, looking like she was going to explode. I'd seen that look before—when we were trying to finish our first issue and had too much to do in too little time.

“Okay, so we'll need a design for an e-mail blast and some kind of logo to create a Facebook page. Plus, we need a list of everybody's numbers and e-mails,” Shelby said.

Miko stood up so quickly her chair fell over. Without a word, she grabbed her bag and strode out of the library.

“Where's she going? She's not allowed to do that,” Daphne complained. “We're supposed to stay here until the second period bell.”

“Don't worry about it,” barked Shelby.

Then she caught me looking at her. I looked away, but it was already too late.

“Incoming PQuit,” murmured Ivy as Shelby stood up.

I sighed. A year ago I would have been flat-out scared to have called attention to myself from an angry PQuit. I'd come a long way in the last month, especially with Ivy's example. Ivy was somehow able to get along in school without getting too wrapped up in what people thought about her, said about her, or said to her face. She had a small smile on her face as Shelby flounced over to us.

“Paulie,” Shelby said. “I've been looking everywhere for you.”

What?
There were so many things WRONG with that statement. Shelby had never called me Paulie in either of our lives. My locker was only three down from hers, and I had, in fact, been sitting within twelve feet of her for the last twenty minutes.

I decided not to point out any of these things and just gave Shelby a half smile.

She sat down, not even glancing at Tally and Ivy.

“So about this Homecoming feature we've been working on for
4 Girls
,” Shelby said.

We?

“Uh, it's actually Ivy that's–”

“I've been thinking it would be a
lot
better if we focused the whole thing on one grade,” Shelby said. “Say, the seventh grade. I mean, if the magazine is going to be the same length as the first issue, you don't really have that much room for lots of long articles. It would be much better to do a detailed piece on one grade than a vague one on the whole middle school.”

“There's no way that—” Ivy began as Shelby stood up quickly.

“Great, Paulie. I'll text you later, and we can go into more detail,” she called as she headed back toward her table.

Ivy and I watched, speechless, as Shelby took her place beside Daphne. They all leaned their heads together to whisper, presumably about Miko's unauthorized departure and their new Publicity Blitz—our magazine.

“Hello?” Ivy asked me. “Do I have laryngitis, too?”

“Apparently we both do,” I said. “Either that, or our voices have morphed into some frequency Shelby's ears can't pick up. That was so obnoxious.”

“What was she even talking about?” Ivy asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. But apparently Tally did. She scribbled furiously, then shoved her pad toward me and Ivy.

 

Norah Alford posted on her Facebook page that the eighth-grade's Decade Day costumes are so awesome they are totally winning School Spirit Award this year. The winning grade gets an entire homework-free day, every subject! Shelby's all nuts about it now.