Showstopper (3 page)

“So . . . ,” I said, puzzling it out, “you're saying we should pay up front for two weeks and hold rehearsals at the community center? And if the theater isn't ready by the end of the second week, we pay for the third week and have the show in the CCC auditorium?”

“Got a better idea?” asked Susan.

I didn't. “I guess this is what we're doing, then. Now we just have to hope it isn't already rented.”

I reached for Susan's phone and began to punch in the number for the office of the special events coordinator.

I was about to hit the call button when the front door opened and my dad came striding in, holding two large plastic bags from our favorite Chinese takeout place. Judging from the serene smile on his face, I was pretty sure he'd come in from the west end of the street and hadn't seen the fire trucks.

“Girls!” he cried. “Guess who's taking your mother away next week on a long romantic second honeymoon to Paris?”

“Um . . .
you
, I hope,” said Susan, raising an eyebrow.

Dad laughed.

And I put down the phone.

CHAPTER

2

It took some doing to convince Mom she should join Dad on his business trip to France.

To be perfectly accurate, it took some doing by
me
to convince her. Because the minute Dad announced his idea to take Mom out of town, an idea had begun to form in my head.

Austin went home, and Dad called Mom into the family room from her office. He told her he had a surprise, and it wasn't just the delicious dinner he'd picked up from Panda Pavilion. So Susan and I dashed to the kitchen for plates, and we all sat around the coffee table and listened to him explain while we passed out chopsticks and opened the cardboard containers.

Here was the situation: there was an important conference in Paris, Dad's law firm was sending him there to attend,
and he had decided to bring Mom along as a sort of second honeymoon vacation. It was all very last-minute, because the partner who was originally slated to go, Henry Abernathy, had to opt out due to a gallstone attack.

“Somebody attacked Mr. Abernathy with stones?” Susan gasped, wide-eyed.

I had to laugh at that. Sometimes it was hard to remember that, for all her witty insight and advanced vocabulary, Susan was still only eleven years old. So Dad started to explain what gallstones were, but when he got to the word
bile
, Susan held up her hand to stop him.

“Never mind,” she said.

Dad scooped more fried rice onto his plate and gave Mom his most charming grin. “Jennifer, we've been talking about going back to Paris for years. This is the perfect opportunity.”

“I don't know. . . .” Mom shook her head. “It's such short notice.”

“That's what makes it so exciting!” I said, eagerly reaching for an egg roll. “And romantic! I totally think you should go.”

“But what about work?” Mom tapped her chopsticks on the table. “I suppose I
could
move some things around, reschedule a few appointments. . . .”

“Reschedule!” I said, gulping down a mouthful of tea. “Definitely reschedule.”

“But what about you girls? Who'll watch—”

“Nana Adele and Papa Harold can stay with us!” I blurted out. “You know they're always saying they don't get to spend enough time with us. They'd be thrilled.”

“Anya's right,” said Dad, gallantly reaching over to take my mother's hand and kiss it. “So what do you say,
mon amour?
Will you let me carry you off to the city of lights to shower you with love and romance?”

Susan wrinkled her nose at this parental display of affection. “Eww! Speaking of
bile
. . .”

I gave my sister a sharp kick under the table to shut her up. This was going exactly as I had hoped, and I didn't want her to mess it up.

Mom crunched into a piece of crispy beef and sighed. “Okay,” she said, smiling. “The answer is yes.”

“I think you mean
oui
,” quipped Susan.

I let out a shout of joy and sprung up from my seat. “I'll go get your suitcase out of the attic.”

“No, you will not,” said Mom, using her chopsticks to point me back into my chair. “You will sit down and finish your General Tso's chicken and tell me everything you've heard about this water-main break. I only know what Mrs. Quandt told me when she called earlier.”

So I filled Mom in on what Mr. Healy had said about the
pipe bursting and the power being turned off at the far end of the street. I also mentioned a “water issue” in the basement of the clubhouse, but I didn't elaborate.

“We'll probably be okay for the show,” I said, which, thanks to my careful use of the word
probably
, was not an entirely untruthful statement.

“What about auditions and rehearsals?” asked Dad, offering me a fortune cookie.

“Oh, I've got another place in mind,” I replied vaguely. “Hey, did you know you can rent out the auditorium at the CCC for a very reasonable price?”

These, of course, were both completely factual statements, even if the two concepts were not as directly related to each other as I may have made them sound.

I could feel Susan looking at me out of the corner of her eye, but I didn't flinch. I just calmly cracked open my cookie and unfolded the fortune.

“What's it say?” asked Mom. “Something good, I hope.”

“It says, ‘You have a talent for getting what you want,' ” I reported.

“Ain't that the truth,” Susan said under her breath.

It took all my restraint to keep from kicking her again. I popped the cookie into my mouth and said nothing.

“What was
that
all about?”

I looked up from where I was lying on my bed, flipping through my old
Annie
script, which I'd saved as a memento from when I'd been in a regional production of the play a few years back. I gave my sister an innocent look. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean!” she snapped. “You were pushing for Mom to go to Paris so hard, I was beginning to think you'd gone from being a theater producer to a travel agent!”

“Okay, fine,” I said, closing the script. “I wanted Mom to go so we could have rehearsals here.”

“I knew it! You lied to Mom and Dad!”

“No, I didn't,” I said. “I told them we had another place in mind. I didn't specifically say what that place was.”

“You said the community center.”

I shook my head. “I
implied
the community center. They didn't press the issue, so I never actually had to tell them anything that wasn't true.”

“Still pretty shady,” Susan said, folding her arms in disgust. “Mom told us we couldn't have the play here.”

“She told us we couldn't have the play here because it
would interrupt her work. But if she's in Paris, there'll be no work to interrupt, will there? So the way I see it, the rule about no play in the house no longer applies,” I finished with a satisfied smile.

“I think that's what Dad would call a slipknot.”

“Loophole,” I corrected, my smile fading slightly. Because, technically, she was right. I
was
playing fast and loose with the rules. But it was such a lucky coincidence (for me, even if not for Mr. Abernathy) that the conference in Paris would be taking place during the same two weeks I would be without my clubhouse theater, I had managed to convince myself the universe was going out of its way to make things work in my favor.

And I couldn't very well say no to the universe, could I?

“There's a flaw in your plan, you know,” said Susan, giving me a smug look. “You need to hold rehearsals here for two weeks. Mom and Dad are only going to be gone for one.”

“I know that,” I said. “But I'm counting on the fact that when they come back and they see how hard we've worked, and that we haven't destroyed the house, they'll let us continue for the second week until the clubhouse is ready.”

“Seems risky.”

That was because it
was
risky. But sometimes entrepreneurs have to face that sort of thing.

“Let's talk about
Annie
,” I suggested, steering the subject away from loopholes and house rules. “I think we could put on a great production. Wouldn't Travis make a perfect FDR?”

“I guess,” said Susan, sitting down on the bed. “What does Austin think about doing a full musical instead of another revue?”

I wasn't sure. His initial reaction had been that it would be cool, but we'd really only just started discussing the possibility when Susan had stormed into the coffee shop.

“Let's Skype him and see,” I suggested, reaching for my laptop.

A moment later the cheerful
bing-bong
chimes of a Skype call filled the room, and Austin appeared on the screen.

“Hey, Anya,” he said. “Susan. What's up?”

“We never got to finish discussing what play we wanted to do,” I reminded him. “I say we go all out and put on
Annie
. I remember all the dance routines they taught me, and I have my script. We'll have to make copies of it for everyone, but how much can that set us back, right?”

“You'd be surprised,” said Austin.

“What do you mean?”

“When I left your house, I did a little research.”

“About what?” I asked.

“I started thinking like a writer,” he explained. “And I
asked myself, ‘How would
I
feel if just anybody who could get their hands on something I'd written used my work without my giving them the okay?' So I went online and checked it out and, sure enough, there are laws to prevent that kind of thing from happening. A play is considered ‘intellectual property,' which means whoever wrote it owns it. Which is why it's illegal to put on a play if you don't license it from the owner.”

“License?” said Susan. “You mean like to drive a car or own a dog?”

“Sort of,” said Austin. “Basically, it means you have to get permission. You have to pay whoever owns the rights to the play in order to be allowed to perform it. It's kind of like renting.”

I thought about this for a minute. “So if I were to use my script to put on
Annie
without getting the proper permission from the licensing people, it would be almost like stealing?”

“Not
almost
like stealing,” said Austin. “
Exactly
like stealing. And there's more. The same goes for songs.”

It took me a second to get the gist of what he was saying. When I did, my stomach knotted up. “Are you saying we were supposed to get permission to use every single song we performed in
Random Acts of Broadway?
”

On the computer screen, Austin nodded.

I'd had no idea! And from the guilty look on Austin's face, neither had he.

“Great,” said Susan with a heavy sigh. “Mom and Dad are going to Paris, and
we're
going to jail!”

I had never felt so horrible about anything in my life. I had
stolen
the songs for the revue—unintentionally, of course—and my theater company had performed them without permission. And that was wrong.

So I wasn't a producer
or
a travel agent. I was a criminal.

“Here's the plan,” I blurted out. “We get a license, and then we use the profits from our second show to settle up with the people or companies who own the songs we used in
Random Acts of Broadway
.”

Austin nodded. “I agree. Honesty is the best policy.”

“Oh yeah?” grumbled Susan. “And what are your thoughts on bankruptcy? Ya know, as a policy.”

I let the comment slide. I knew it was going to be a difficult thing to do, but I also knew the only way I'd be able to sleep at night was if I paid back every last cent of what I owed.

“Okay,” I said, shifting gears, “how much does it cost to license a play?”

“That kind of depends,” said Austin. “There's a pretty specific formula that determines what you'll be charged for any given show.”

“Sounds like math homework,” grumbled Susan. “Bottom line . . . a lot or a little?”

“For
Annie
, a lot,” Austin confirmed. “A real lot.”

“I had a feeling,” said Susan with a sigh.

“So that leaves us without a play,” I said heavily.

“Maybe not,” said Austin. “In my research I discovered lots of plays based on material in the public domain.”

“Translation, please,” said Susan.

“Nowadays all written work is copyrighted,” said Austin patiently. “But the term
public domain
applies to work published before the current laws went into effect.”

“So . . . old stuff?” I guessed.

Austin nodded. “Material in the public domain basically belongs to everyone. So if we wanted to, we could write our own play based on Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet
, or Anna Sewell's
Black Beauty
.”