13 Gifts

  Amanda and Rory look uneasy as they step inside.

  “Sorry, Bettie,” I say. “We just wanted to ask you a question about that basket you gave me last time?”

  “Oh, okay,” she says, obviously disappointed. “What about it?”

  “Do you remember where you got it from?”

  “It was my mother’s,” she says, glancing at a photograph on the wall of an elderly woman sitting on a lawn chair. “She had dozens of baskets. She used to carry her makeup in them when she did her rounds.”

  I pull out the brochure and show her the picture of it in the play.

  “That’s right,” she says. “She used to work at the playhouse, doing the actors’ makeup. She must have lent it to them for the play.”

  “Do you remember this one? Fiddler on the Roof?”

  “I was just a girl,” she says, “but Mom used to bring me to all of them with her. That was the last one they did. Must be about thirty-five years ago. The playhouse closed down after that. Lost their funding or something.”

  “Do you remember the woman who starred in it? Emilia Rose? She was my grandmother.”

  “Of course I remember Miss Rose. She was famous in town. Headed for greatness, they said.” She glances down at the playbill and says, “That was going to be her big break, if I recall correctly.”

  “But what happened?” I ask.

  “I don’t really know,” she says. “She pulled out of the play a week before opening night, and it all fell apart after that. Oh, there were rumors. Some thought Miss Rose and the director fell in love and were going to get married, but then Miss Rose accepted another man’s proposal. I was too young at the time to be interested in that part. Sometimes people, when they’re on the brink of getting what they really want, they decide they don’t want it anymore.”

  It’s a different version from what Emily told me. I wonder if we’ll ever know the real story.

  “And no one wanted to start up the playhouse again in all these years?” Leo asks.

  “The town bought the playhouse building and turned it into the library,” she explains. “Willow Falls used to have to share a library with River Bend, you know.”

  “Why can’t there be both a library and a playhouse?” Leo asks.

  Bettie shrugs. Then she says, “I just got some great eye shadows in the mail, you sure I can’t try ’em out on ya?”

  Ten minutes later, we’ve secured a makeup artist for the play, and Amanda and I have purple, pink, and green striped eyelids. Rory claimed to be allergic to a lot of different kinds of makeup, which is an excuse I wish I’d thought of myself. The next stop is the library, to check if they have any of the theatre’s old stuff. Once we’re inside, it’s easy to see how it could have been a playhouse once. It’s strange to think of all the time my grandmother must have spent in this building so many years ago. When Rory tells the librarian what we’re looking for, she says, “We do have most of the plays, but not all. The Willow Falls Historical Society has a lot of them.”

  “We’ll hope for the best,” Rory says firmly.

  “Yeah,” says Amanda, “we wouldn’t want to bother the nice old lady that works at the historical society.”

  The librarian shrugs and points to the shelves all the way in the back. “Good luck.”

  The shelf is stuffed full of scripts and playbills and memorabilia from decades of plays. And my grandmother’s name is on the front of a lot of them, beginning when she was a kid.

  “Here it is!” Leo says, pulling a copy of Fiddler on the Roof out of the middle of the pile. We crowd around as he flips through it. Every other page has a handwritten note in the margin. “This must have been the director’s copy,” he says.

  “The play is really long,” I say, frowning. “How can people learn all this in such a short time?”

  “What if we just do the songs?” David suggests. “Like, tell the play through the music?”

  “Do you think that would be okay, Tara?” Rory asks.

  “I don’t see why not. That’s the best part anyway.”

  “Hey, look!” Leo holds up the script. Handwritten on the back cover is a list of the crew. “Recognize some of these names?” he asks.

  Most of the names don’t mean anything to me. Then I get down to props. “Look! It’s Big Joe!”

  “Can’t be,” Amanda says. “He’s way too young.”

  “Didn’t Mrs. Grayson say the knife was his father’s?” David asks. “It must be Big Joe Senior!”

  “Speaking of Mrs. Grayson,” David says, pointing to the script. “It says here she and her sister were the choreographers.”

  “And look at the next one,” Leo says. “ ‘Fiddler … Bucky Whitehead’!”

  “Bucky!” we all exclaim.

  “When he gave me the violin he said he hadn’t played it in thirty-five years!”

  “Did he say why?”

  I shake my head. I don’t want them to know that I didn’t even think to ask. I’m sure any of them would have. “Do you think he’d be willing to do it again?”

  “I guess it depends on why he stopped,” Leo says.

  We take the script up to the librarian and ask her if we can make a copy of it. “It would probably be easier to download it from the Internet,” she says. “It wouldn’t cost too much.”

  “We’d really like this copy,” I say.

  She suggests we take it down to the copy shop since it’s so long and have them do it. We get outside and decide to split up. David’s going to get the play copied and then see the best way to fit the songs together. Leo is going to talk to Bucky, and Amanda to Mrs. Grayson. Rory’s going to ask her friend Annabelle to do costumes, and her friend Sari apparently loves nothing more than doing people’s hair. And I get the fun job of convincing Emily to perform in front of the whole town. Or the five people who’ll probably show up. Either way, it won’t be easy.

  “Not a chance,” she says, not even lifting her eyes from her math notebook.

  “But look, it’s you, you’re the star.” I place the playbill on the notebook so she has no choice but to look at it.

  “It’s not me,” she says, pushing it aside. It falls off the desk.

  I pick it up and pace back and forth with it. “But it could be. This could be your big chance. You’d get to show everyone how good you are.”

  “Isn’t the Fiddler the star of the play anyway? You know, since it’s named after him?”

  I shake my head. “Nope. He’s just some guy who plays the violin on a roof. Technically, I guess the guy who plays the father, Tevye, is the star, but this is the biggest female part.”

  She scribbles a few more numbers. “Mom would never let me do it. You know how she feels about all this stuff.”

  “I don’t think we’ll ever really know what happened with Grandma and the play. But that was her journey, this one’s yours.”

  That gets her to at least put down her pencil. “Why does it matter if it’s me? Why can’t someone else do it? I’m sure a lot of girls in town would want to.”

  “I don’t know,” I reply honestly, looking down at the playbill. “There must be some reason you can do the same things Grandma could. And you look so much alike. It would be like finishing something she started.”

  She nibbles on the end of her pencil for a minute, then says, “I just don’t think I can.”

  “Will you think about it?”

  “Okay, but don’t hold your breath.”

  I lie down on the bed wondering if there’s anything else I can do to convince her. My phone rings, making both of us jump. It’s Rory.

  “Did you talk to Emily yet?” she asks.

  “Yup. She said she’d think about it.” Then in a loud voice I say, “I know, she’d be perfect!”

  “Not gonna work,” Emily calls out from her desk.

  Rory laughs. “I heard that. Okay, I have a plan. Have Emily open her laptop. I’m going to send her an e-mail in ten minutes.”

  “And you think it’ll work??
??

  “If this doesn’t, nothing will.”

  Ten minutes later her computer dings.

  “I really have to work,” Emily says. “Is this gonna take long?”

  I don’t answer since I have no idea what Rory’s e-mail says. We open it up to find a link with the words Click Me.

  We click. A small video box opens, then gets larger. The video starts up and first thing we see is waves crashing on a beach. It’s a little shaky and grainy, like someone filmed it with their cell phone.

  “Um, this is pretty and all,” Emily says, “but how is this supposed to convince me to take the part?”

  I’m wondering the same thing. Then the camera pans away from the water. A boy with sandy blond hair and bright white teeth waves at us from a tall beach chair.

  “Hi, Emily! I heard that you might play Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof. If you play Tzeitel, I’ll play the tailor, whatever that guy’s name is. The one who wants to marry Tzeitel.”

  Emily looks up at me, gaping. “Is that … is that Jake Harrison talking to me?”

  I would answer but I think I’m having an out-of-body experience. I grip the back of Emily’s chair. “So what do you say?” Jake continues. “I’m going to be in Willow Falls that weekend anyway — turns out the producer wants to have our premiere there two weeks before the official opening. You know, to thank the townspeople and all. I know I can’t wait to see it myself. Especially the part where Rory walks into a locker!” He starts laughing and his blue eyes twinkle. “Don’t tell her I said that. Okay, I’ve gotta go, they’re calling me to the set. Look forward to meeting you, Tara. See you on stage, Emily!” He waves again and walks away. The camera lingers for a second on the name JAKE HARRISON painted on the back of the tall chair, then pans back to the ocean.

  “Jake Harrison just spoke to me,” Emily says, pronouncing each word slowly. “He said my name. And Rory’s name. And your name. With his mouth. Jake did. Jake Harrison. He wants to play my husband.”

  “I know! How crazy is that?”

  “I’m totally doing this play.”

  “Totally!”

  We jump around the room and squeal for ten minutes straight and then watch the video over and over until we’ve memorized it. If Rory can get Jake to not only agree to be in the play, but to film a video and get it to us in ten minutes, well, I can see why Rory isn’t a fan of Jake’s anymore. She’s much more than that. And I couldn’t be happier for her.

  The first person to arrive at the First Official Meeting of the Fiddler on the Roof Cast and Crew is Rory’s friend Annabelle. She runs into the back room at the community center and gives Rory a hug. I decide that the pang of jealousy I feel is a good step for me.

  “Hey! Remember when we took our babysitting class in this room?” Annabelle asks, pushing her long blond hair out of her eyes. “And that teacher? She was like, ‘You must be prepared for any situation. You never know if the child under your care might spontaneously combust!’ “

  “She was pretty scary,” Rory agrees. “You haven’t babysat since!”

  “True,” Annabelle says. “But that’s because you got the best gig in town with Emily. I’d get the kid who covers the house in peanut butter, then jumps off the roof in a Superman costume.”

  Pointing at me, Rory tells Annabelle, “This is Tara. She’s Emily’s cousin and the reason you’re going to be in a play with Jake.”

  Annabelle rushes toward me and gives me a big hug. “Thank you, thank you!” I don’t know if I’m supposed to hug her back, so I sort of move my arms up and down and say hello. She’s almost as tall as me, which is a rare thing. Even though she’s gorgeous and bubbly, I decide I like her.

  When she finally lets go, she says, “I’m totally excited to do the costumes, but what part do I play?”

  “Leo’s bringing the cast list,” I tell her. “I slept through most of the play when I saw it last year.”

  “No one’s gonna sleep through this one!” Leo declares, coming in the door with his arms full of folders. He drops everything onto one of the round tables in the center of the room. “I’ve got scripts, lists of characters, props, everything. The director is going to have a really easy job.”

  Rory and I look at each other. “Uh-oh,” she says. “We forgot about a director. Leo, do you want to do it?”

  He shakes his head. “Can’t. Too risky. I might wind up talking to Amanda without realizing it. I’d be telling her character to take a step to the right and then all would be lost.”

  “What would be lost?” Annabelle asks casually.

  “You know I can’t say.”

  “Hey, can’t blame a girl for trying.” She looks at me and rolls her eyes. But not in a mean way.

  “Okay,” Rory says, “so that rules out Amanda, too. It should really be someone who knows what they’re doing.”

  “I know!” I tell her. “I’ll go make a call.”

  “Hurry, though; the meeting starts in ten minutes.”

  “Okay.” I run from the room, pulling out my phone as I go. I wave to Bucky Whitehead as he walks toward the room with his violin cradled in his arms, a look of anticipation mixed with uncertainty on his face.

  The phone rings forever, and just as I assume I’m going to have to leave a message, he answers. “Were you serious when you said what you really wanted to do was direct?” I ask Ray. “Because this is your lucky day!”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “G’day to you, too,” Ray says.

  “Seriously, what do you think?”

  “What do I think about what?”

  “Would you like to direct a production of Fiddler on the Roof that some people I know are putting on?”

  “People you know … would those be your mates?”

  “Yes, fine, my friends. I have friends. And some grown-ups, too. So what do you say?”

  “Is this out of pity because I didn’t get the commercial?”

  “Is saying no more likely to get you to agree, or less?”

  “I’m not sure,” he says. “Try me.”

  “Okay, then no, I just think you’d be great at it. Everyone likes you, and you’re good at doing a lot of things at once.”

  “I am a good multitasker. So sure, I’ll give it a burl.”

  “That’s a yes?”

  “Too right!”

  “Can you make an effort to speak American as much as you can in your role as director?”

  “Don’t fret your freckle,” he says. “I’ll try my best.”

  “And can you get down to the community center in ten minutes? We’re in the last room at the end of the hall on the first floor. I’ll give you all the details then.”

  I can hear him opening and closing drawers. He was still in his pajamas when I left. “Do I get paid for this?” he asks.

  “No … but you get to boss people around and get your name on the playbill.”

  “Good enough!”

  I hurry back inside and tell Rory the good news. “Great!” she says. “Now all we need is a place to put on the play, and a star. What about Emily, has she told your aunt yet?”

  “They went out to breakfast and she said she’s going to tell her then.” At least I hope she is. I look around the room, which is quickly filling up with both familiar and unfamiliar faces. Emily has been trying for two days to get up the courage to tell her mom about the play. I offered to come with her, but she said she wanted to do it on her own.

  David comes in the room next, dragging the red wagon behind him. He has all the props piled on there, except for the trunk, which is still at his house. “Guess what?” he says, hurrying over to us. “I know where we’re having the play!”

  “Where?”

  “Here!”

  I look around the room. “We’d have to move the tables out, but I guess this would work.”

  “Not in this room,” he says. “Out there, in the main room. On the stage! Since my bar mitzvah party is here the next day, the owner of the center said he’d already hav
e rented all the chairs. All we’d have to do is set them up in rows. And we have to promise to take all the sets and props down at the end.”

  In my head, I’d pictured something a lot smaller. A real live stage is even more pressure to make it good. Besides Emily and David, most of the people who’ve agreed to be in the cast can’t actually sing or dance, although no one has seemed willing to admit that out loud.

  Rory beams at him. “Good job, Hamburglar!”

  “What did Bee Boy do now?” Amanda says, coming in with a girl I haven’t seen before. She’s wearing a green and yellow shirt that says WILLOW FALLS GYMNASTICS TEAM with a cartoon of a girl doing a backflip.

  “He found us a way to hold the play here on the stage,” Rory says.

  “I did not look like a bee!” David insists.

  “Yes, you did,” Amanda says, turning away from him. “Tara, this is my friend Stephanie. She volunteered to be one of the daughters in the play.”

  Stephanie reaches over and pinches Amanda’s arm. “You volunteered me, is how I remember it.”

  “That’s one way to look at it,” Amanda admits.

  “What’s the play about?” Stephanie asks.

  “Good question,” Amanda says, looking at me.

  “Um, well, I didn’t catch all of it, but basically, it’s about this milkman guy named Tevye from a long time ago in, like, Russia I think, and he has all these daughters, and some of them want to get married to people he doesn’t want them to. And they’re Jewish, and their whole community is being driven from the town. And there’s dancing and, um, singing.”

  Stephanie faces Amanda. “I have to sing? If you weren’t my best friend, you’d owe me big time for this. In fact, you do owe me big time for this.”

  “All right, everyone,” Ray’s voice booms through the room. “The director has arrived. Let’s all take a seat.”

  Clearly he’s got the bossy part down. He must have broken a few speed limits to get here.

  “Where’s Emily?” Rory whispers as we find seats.

  I’m about to reply that I’m sure she’ll be here any second when in she walks. She scans the room until she spots me. Her eyes light up as she makes her way over and sits down next to me.