Margalo was always impressed by Casey’s ability to eat without looking. She was also curious about the book. It looked old, and often read, and it seemed to be poetry. John Brown’s Body?
“Art Club meets today,” Cassie told them. “Peter Paul’s the advisor. Did you know he shows at a gallery in New York? You should have signed up for it,” she told Jace.
He protested. “You hate activities.” She shrugged. “You hate clubs.” She shrugged again. “Outings,” he reminded her. “Outings on buses.”
“An artist can’t be a hermit. Not if she wants to be relevant to her time.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t even try out for the soccer team because of you. And now it’s too late.”
“Hey, man, don’t blame me. That was your choice.”
“So I guess I’ll try Art Club, since we have until the thirtieth to pick activities.”
“I’m playing tennis,” Mikey told this new audience. They already knew, or would have guessed, and were not interested.
“What’s the book?” Margalo asked Casey.
“My grandmother gave it to me.”
“Is it good?”
“It won the Pulitzer,” Hadrian reported.
“I wouldn’t mind winning a Pulitzer,” Cassie announced. “But they don’t give one for Art. Peter Paul says I’ve got talent.”
“And here I was busting my brain to solve the mystery of your sudden interest in Art Club,” said Jace. “While I should really be trying to figure out who walked off with my Oakleys. Those glasses cost my mom a fortune.”
“Have you looked in the Lost and Found?” Casey suggested.
He snorted, disgusted. “Get real.”
Casey returned to reading while she ate, or eating while she read.
“I wanna show you all something,” Cassie said, and reached down into the knapsack at her feet.
“Not this again,” Jace grumbled.
Cassie pulled out her eight-by-ten sketchbook, telling them, “If Peter Paul can stick around for all four years, I might just graduate high school.”
As if in response to Cassie’s declaration, the cafeteria loudspeakers blared out their Attention! signal, a long whistle call. It silenced all but the most talkative students in the big room, and even those were reduced to whispering. People stared up at the two loudspeakers, one on each side of the entryway, as if they were faces with expressions that could be read. Even ninth graders, by the third Friday of the school year, were accustomed to the crackle and buzz and then the long whistle that halted a class in its tracks. (Announcements were never made during the four-minute changeover times between classes because the hallways were so crowded and noisy nobody would hear them. Also, there were no loudspeakers in the halls.)
A woman’s voice reeled off five names in rapid succession, four boys—Bill Somebody, Walter Somebody Else, a Daniel, and a Martin—and one girl, Janice Timmer. “Report to Mr. Robredo’s office at the end of Lunch A,” the voice instructed the five.
“Way to go Janice!” someone cheered, and a few people applauded and whistled, causing the faculty members on lunch duty to move closer, like a flock of birds gathering in the sky, ready to fly towards trouble.
After a reminder about where the Late Activities buses departed from, the loudspeakers gave a closing whistle and fell silent.
Immediately, conversations roared back to life. The noise of trays being stacked and utensils and plates being tossed onto the conveyor belt added to the confusion.
“Like any ninth grader is going to get to do anything in any activity,” Cassie told them. “Or club, either, unless maybe something like the Community Aid Club.”
Casey disagreed from behind her book. “On the literary magazine everyone gets to help with proofreading. In pairs. And we all vote on every submission.”
“The magazine comes out, what? Twice a year? Art Club is actually an open studio. It’s really just extra studio time. Peter Paul sets up subjects, still lifes, problems to solve, and he’s talking about live models in the spring. He only wants people who are serious about art,” she warned Jace, before saying to the rest of them, “Look at this.” She opened the sketchbook to show them three small sketches, all on one page: one of an ear and the hair around it, one of a braid, and one of a hand.
They passed the sketchbook around, and Cassie watched their reactions as she explained, “The assignment was a portrait, in pencil.”
“She—what else, right?—she did something entirely different from everybody else,” Jace remarked, but whether it was pride or irritation in his voice wasn’t clear. When, like Jace, a person has become a cynic by osmosis, not nature, it isn’t always clear what his sarcasm means. “Like this,” and he pulled out his own sketch pad, opening it to a drawing of Cassie’s face—a lot like her in the eyes and hair. You’d recognize her easily if you knew she was the one Jace was likely to want to draw. Nobody said anything.
“That’s Mikey,” Hadrian said, turning back to Cassie’s sketches and indicating an ear you could barely see behind a section of thick braid. Although it wasn’t shown in the picture, there was probably a hand pulling the braid forward, but the braid was the star of the sketch. That braid knew its own mind. That braid knew where it was going and how to get there. “It is Mikey, isn’t it?”
“And that’s me,” Margalo said of the ear with hair tucked smoothly behind it, everything neat and orderly, except that the whorls of ear seemed to curl into secret places and disappear there.
“See?” Cassie asked Jace.
“But who’s that, the one with the finger like God’s finger on the Sistine Chapel?” asked Casey, and then she guessed, “Peter Paul?”
“You should have done the top of his head,” Jace said. “With that bald spot he tries to hide.”
“Those are really good drawings,” Hadrian said.
Cassie nodded, agreeing. She folded the sketchbook closed.
Not to be outdone, Mikey reminded them, “Coach Sandy wants the team to get to the regionals this year. We might even win and go to the statewides. Because this year I’ll be on the team.”
“Right,” said Cassie. “I’m sure she won’t notice that you’re a ninth grader.”
“Sports are about how you play, not what grade you’re in,” Mikey told them, not mentioning the speech Coach Sandy had made to the people who came to sign up for tennis on the second day of school. About learning the game and doing the drills. About serving your time on the bench to earn your position on the team. Once the coach saw the kind of tennis Mikey played, she’d change her tune. “Coach Sandy knows how to win. She played pro tennis.”
Cassie was the cynic by nature. “If she’s so good, what’s she doing coaching a high school sports team?”
“A person might ask the same about Peter Paul,” said Jace.
Cassie shook her head pityingly at him. “Art’s different. Art’s harder.”
Casey looked up from her book to ask, “What’s easy?”
Responses surged at her from both sides, and from across the table, too. “Cheerleading.” “Computers.” “Cooking.” “Football.” “Business.” “Teaching.” “Politics, once you’re elected.” “Math.” “Science.”
Everyone named things they had no interest in trying to do or talent for doing.
Casey didn’t add anything. She put on her glasses and looked at them all, letting the variety of responses speak for themselves.
They were speaking to deaf ears. “Reading,” Mikey concluded, glaring at Casey.
– 2 –
All the World’s a Stage
Drama Club met in the Drama classroom, which was as large as one of the labs, but instead of being filled with high tables, tall stools and locked cupboards, the room was mostly empty space. Beside the door was a big wooden teacher’s desk, and benches were stacked up along the opposite wall, ready to be set out in rows. A triangle-shaped wooden platform built out from one corner covered about a quarter of the floor space, making a low stage. On the w
alls hung framed posters advertising famous plays—Death of a Salesman, King Lear, Hedda Gabler, Our Town, Carousel, Into the Woods, Blithe Spirit. Some of these Margalo had heard of, but most not. She studied the posters while she waited just inside the doorway for Hadrian.
People moved past her, upperclassmen mostly, old hands at Drama. They dropped their knapsacks behind and beside and in front of the teacher’s desk before settling themselves down on the carpeted floor, facing the stage. When it became apparent that Hadrian was not going to arrive, Margalo sat down alone at the back of the room. The only other ninth graders there were not people who wanted to be seen sitting with her—Shawn Macavity and Heather McGinty, one of the few girls who still had a leftover hopeless crush on him.
As they waited to begin, the people in the room were talking, entirely relaxed, planning to enjoy themselves. Drama had the reputation of being a lot of fun. The last teacher, Mr. Maxwell, had been young, and single, and he drove an old MGB sports car with the top down, winter or summer, as long as the skies were clear. But Mr. Maxwell had handed in his resignation the day after Labor Day, the last day before the first day of school, causing something of an uproar. After a frantic search, the school had found someone new to town, just out of college with a drama degree. People were curious about her. But she wasn’t in the room, so there was a brief exchange of information while they waited, for the teacher to arrive and let them find out for themselves about her, for the bell to ring. “Young, pretty, engaged,” were the basic bits of information they knew about her, plus, “This is her first teaching job.”
It was that last that made her such a big question mark for everyone. Nobody wanted to take part in someone’s bad play, a play that people might make jokes about afterwards, or think you were a jerk to be in. Most of the people in the room were in wait-and-see mode, ready to check out of the activity if it looked to be un-cool.
It was a good sign that the teacher arrived at the center of a small group of seniors, probably from the acting class, one of them carrying a big cardboard box. The box was taken up to the platform while the knapsacks were dropped on top of the pile, and then the four students came to sit at the front of the room, while the teacher stepped up onto the stage and they could all get a good look at her.
For once rumor was accurate. She was young and pretty, with soft, wavy brown hair and big eyes. A diamond flashed on her left hand, so that, too, was accurate. But what rumor had not mentioned was that she shone with happiness. In loose-fitting slacks and one of those styled t-shirts that adults wore, she was certainly easy to look at, but it was the smile on her face that captured you. It lit up the whole room. You wanted to smile right back. You thought that at any minute you were going to start having a really good time, and even if you didn’t, you were going to be happier than before. Because this teacher was really glad to see them, and really glad to be there in class with them.
Her cheeks were a little pink, so they knew she was nervous, and she jammed her hands down into her pant pockets the way a nervous person does. But her voice was strong and confident, and happy, too.
“Hello. Good afternoon. Let’s see—my name is Jeanette Hendriks and I prefer to be called Ms. Hendriks, if you would, please.” She grinned then, as if suspecting that the title was too dignified but still, she hoped they would try using it. “And this as you know is Drama. Drama Club. Out of which we will put on the three productions of the year—one of which I promise you will be a musical. Okay, that’s the really important and interesting thing to cover today, our plans for the year, but if I remember high school correctly, you’ll want to hear a little about me before we settle down to work. Yes?” and she smiled approvingly at them.
They smiled approvingly back.
Ms. Hendriks was just finishing up telling them about the course requirements, and thesis requirements, for a drama major when Hadrian Klenk scuttled into the room, keeping low as he took a place beside Margalo. Margalo glanced at him, not paying much attention, thinking about the chances of getting any kind of a role in a play, and about the chances of anybody else wanting to be assistant director.
Then she looked again. Hadrian was tucking his shirt into his khakis, awkwardly. It isn’t easy to tuck in your shirt when you’re sitting on the floor, and it’s even harder if you are trying at the same time to unobtrusively wipe tears from your cheeks. “What happened?” Margalo whispered.
Hadrian shook his head. “Nothing.” Then he shrugged. “Nothing new.”
“You okay?” Margalo whispered.
He nodded.
Ms. Hendriks was looking in their direction as she told her story about moving to town because it was where her fiancé lived—and here she took her left hand out of her pocket to show them the ring. Margalo met the teacher’s gaze with a bright, attentive face. Probably Hadrian did the same, since her attention moved on, away, as she reported to those who hadn’t heard the news, “Mr. Maxwell has taken a job in California.”
This was explained by Richard Carstairs, the senior who had played every male lead for the last couple of years, usually with Sally King (who happened also to be his girlfriend) getting the female leads. “He wants to act. He wants to be in movies, but the job’s not acting. It’s just another teaching job. But it’s in L.A. He’ll be on the spot.”
Ms. Hendriks reclaimed their attention. “I myself always wanted to direct. For my senior thesis I directed—entirely on my own, casting, costumes, sets, everything, which I guess makes me a producer, too. I did have an advisor, for when I had doubts, which,” she admitted with another happy smile, “did happen, and not infrequently. Anyway, the play I chose was The Lady’s Not for Burning, which I understand some of this year’s ninth graders were in a production of last spring? Were any of you involved in that production?”
Four hands went up and she nodded. This was good news.
“So I am not without experience in producing and directing a play,” Ms. Hendriks went on. “And I am especially not without . . . I guess you have to call it enthusiasm.” For some reason this made them all laugh. “As I see it, the director takes all the different ingredients—script and actors primarily, but also sets and staging, lighting . . . The director gets all of these component parts to work together to bring her vision of the play alive, onstage, and it’s . . . It’s wonderful,” she told them, her eyes glowing, “to see a play come alive. To be part of that.”
Every student in the room was smiling back at her, and at the possibility and excitement of working on a play with her. She went on. “The first thing you need to do for Drama Club, then, is pick up your copies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That’s Shakespeare, of course.” She indicated the box beside her. “Some of these are the Folger edition, some the Cambridge University Press. Both have good notes,” she reassured them, misunderstanding the sudden silence in the room. “For the first few weeks in here we’ll study each scene and talk over the characters and their motivations to be sure we understand the lines. Shakespeare can be difficult,” she explained, in case they didn’t know this. She smiled around at all of them, to include everyone in the excitement of it all.
“So if you’ll each come up to get a book, and sign the book assignment sheet? Then, if there is any time left, I’ll give you the historical background of the play. Do you know the layout of Shakespeare’s theater? The Globe?”
Only one hand went up, Hadrian’s. This puzzled the teacher, but she went on to ask, “Does anyone have any questions?” at which Hadrian’s hand went down and Richard Carstair’s hand went up. “Yes, Richard?” she asked.
“Mr. Maxwell promised we’d do comedy this year.”
“Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy.”
“We did Romeo and Juliet last year and Macbeth the year before,” Richard tried to explain, and a few sympathetic groans greeted the memory. “Macbeth, that was”—“Grim.” “But the witches were fun.”—“dumb.”
Ms. Hendriks considered this for a long moment, while they watched her. Then s
he made her own explanation. “You know, Shakespeare is a real actor’s writer. Anyone who is serious about acting studies Shakespeare. Anyone who wants to learn about theater. His characters, his language, his . . . the drama of his works. I wouldn’t feel right not giving you this opportunity,” she concluded happily.
“I get enough Shakespeare in English class,” somebody protested.
“He’s not relevant,” someone added.
“He’s not funny.”
“Mr. Maxwell said.”
Ms. Hendrik’s smile didn’t fade. She was entirely sympathetic to this point of view. “Then probably there’s no point in your staying in Drama, is there? If you feel that way.”
At that a lot of people stood up and left, maybe half of the crowded room. Shawn Macavity explained to Heather as they left that it would be a better career move for him to take Martial Arts, no matter what the teacher said. “These days you have to know karate moves, you know? To get work,” he added, in case she didn’t follow his reasoning.
Only thirty-four people remained in the room. Ms. Hendriks looked around at them eagerly, saying, “Before you come to get your books, we should get acquainted.” She came to the edge of the platform and sat down on it, making everyone almost equal.
Margalo and Hadrian were the only ninth graders in the group.
“You already know my name and my theatrical experience,” Ms. Hendriks said. “It’s your turn now to tell me about yourselves. Who wants to start off?”
Neither Margalo nor Hadrian volunteered.
– 3 –
At the Bottom of the Pecking Order
“Where’s Hadrian?” Casey looked up from a copy of Murder Must Advertise. “Lunch is half over and—have any of you seen Hadrian?”
It was the fourth Friday of ninth grade, and certain concerns were beginning to establish themselves, like seedlings taking root. Hadrian was just such an established concern, right up there with grades and boy/girl-friends. Less major were: Louis Caselli’s chances of passing any of his courses in the first marking period; what was wrong with Tanisha Harris; Rhonda Ransom’s mother refusing to let her daughter take sex education because that was something a child should learn at home (“And we all know what that means,” Cassie remarked); whether Ralph had really copied his History report off the Internet and, then, if he’d get caught; and—back to sex, many things got back to sex—why the school thought ninth grade needed to start off the year with sex ed. But nobody wanted to talk about that.