Sugar cookies.
I sometimes forget that I have glow-in-the-dark red hair too.
I duck and watch Annabel roll her eyes, drag Dad back into a seated position and tell him to behave himself. Then they lean over and start chatting animatedly to a very pretty woman with dark hair and a face exactly like Nat’s, except modified slightly by twenty years and plastic surgery.
“Oooh, your mum’s here too,” I whisper to Nat in excitement.
Then I stop.
Nat’s breathing in and out of a paper bag, and her face is now totally bone white. I don’t think she needed make-up after all. She’s looking remarkably skull-like.
“Don’t,” she whispers, breathing faster. “Harriet, I can’t … I don’t … I need to focus.”
I nod in an understanding kind of way. If I wasn’t essentially playing a glorified extra, I probably would as well.
Instead, I put my arm around her.
“You’re going to be great,” I say as Raya wanders past, weeping quietly into the crook of her arm.
“Maybe,” Nat says, swallowing. “Whatever happens, you’ll be there, right?”
What does she mean, whatever happens?
I knew it. If there’s a hamster anywhere in the vicinity, he’s definitely in trouble. “Of course. I’m behind you a hundred per cent.”
“And I’m behind you, Harriet,” said Alexa, walking past in a black pair of trousers and a black vest top. “One hundred and fifty per cent. So don’t you worry either.”
And she gives me a sly wink and disappears into a dark corner.
I suddenly feel dizzy.
“That’s not possible,” I murmur under my breath. “It only goes up to a hundred per cent. That’s the whole point of the expression.”
Then I swallow.
Ten years of memories of Alexa are suddenly racing back at once. A decade of humiliation: of pointing, of laughing, of ripping me apart. Now she’s got the power to do it all unseen. In front of the whole school.
And teachers.
And my parents.
I twitch the curtain slightly and stare out at the crowd. Every seat in the room is full, and everyone is starting to quieten down. The lights have dipped, and there’s a hush descending.
Apart from in my dad’s corner, obviously. He’s stuffing a piece of pizza in his mouth and loudly asking, “What happens at the end of Romeo and Juliet?”.
I swallow and grab the paper bag from Nat.
“OK?” she whispers at me, as Miss Hammond lines everybody up against the wall behind the stage and holds her fingers over her lips.
“Yup,” I lie. “Brilliant.”
“Now,” Miss Hammond says with a jangle of a crushing weight of bangles: she must have very strong arm muscles. “Let the magic begin.”
ow, I know quite a lot about magic.
I know that the word magic is derived from the Persian word magus, which means ‘one of the priestly class’. I know that ‘the bullet catch’ has killed twelve magicians, and that the most expensive magic show cost £20.8 million to stage.
I know that I’ve tried a range of Harry Potter spells to open doors, create light and repair things I’ve broken, and not a single one of them has ever worked.
But I’m starting to think maybe I don’t know everything.
Because as the curtain rises smoothly and the ghost of Hamlet Senior walks solemnly on to the stage, there’s definitely some kind of enchantment going on.
Everything is perfect.
Ghostly blue light is shining directly upon him. A distant owl is hooting; the trees Year 9 art class made are fake-rustling from a stereo in the corner. The crowd is silent.
Everyone and everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be.
“Long live the King!” Hannah shouts. “Look where it comes again, in the same figure like the King that’s dead. Thou art a scholar – speak to it, Horatio.”
And, line by line, the play starts unfolding flawlessly.
Noah’s ghost is fearful and demanding; Ben’s King Claudius is repulsive and creepy; Kira’s Queen Gertrude has a terrifying edge that brings a whole other level to the play.
Hannah manages to seamlessly blend four roles, and Raya’s wobbly, tear-stricken performance is so genuine that at one point somebody in the audience starts sniffling into a tissue and mumbling, “Poor, poor Ophelia.”
“My lord,” she tells Polonius earnestly, “he hath importuned me with love in honourable fashion.”
Her voice breaks.
“He did,” she ad-libs, a real tear rolling down her cheek. “He really, really did. He was so lovely.”
In the meantime, Hamlet stomps around the stage wearing a black cloak and flinging his arms around a lot.
“Owww dude,” the ghost of his father mutters as he gets accidentally smacked in the face. “Calm it down, buddy, or you’re going to get thumped.”
Finally, I feel a gentle hand on my arm and I know it’s my turn.
“Good luck,” Nat whispers, squeezing my shoulder.
And I clench my sweaty palms together and walk on to the stage.
I blink in the lights a few times.
Somewhere in the distance, I can see Dad standing up with his video camera light flashing.
I try to ignore it and take a deep breath.
“God save you, sir,” I say as clearly as I can.
An apocaholic is a person obsessed with the possibility of imminent disaster, and I think that can definitely describe me right now: every muscle in my body feels like it’s made out of galvanised rubber.
Silence.
“What make you at Elsinore?” Christopher asks, patting me stiffly on the shoulder.
I swallow and glance to the left, where I can vaguely see the dim outline of Alexa sitting by the music system. She seems to be focusing intently on a magazine in front of her and paying no attention to us at all.
“To visit you, my lord,” I say, starting to relax slightly. “No other occasion.”
“I know the King and Queen have sent for you.”
I can feel my neck starting to soften, then my shoulders, then the top of my arms. “To what end, my lord?”
“That you must teach me. If you love me, hold not off.”
Everything in my body slowly starts to unwind. “My lord, we were sent for.”
“I will tell you why,” Hamlet snaps moodily, and then throws his arms in the air and launches into a long and kind of unprovoked monologue all about canopies of air and a majestic roof fretted with golden fire.
I blink a few times as he pounds around the stage and look around the room in shock.
Have I done it?
Have I actually managed to get through a scene without ruining anything, breaking anything, forcing anyone to fall over or destroying the entire show in the process?
More importantly, did Alexa just let me?
There are about 700 muscles in the human body, and every one of mine suddenly melts until it’s warm and floppy.
I did! I did it!
Beaming, I glance at Nat, standing in the shadows behind the curtains, and subtly stick my thumbs in the air. Then I start mentally preparing myself for my final line.
“What a piece of work is a man,” Christopher continues, charging to the right of the stage. “How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable.” He charges to the left. “In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!”
A dog barks.
Christopher pauses in confusion. “I said how like a god,” he says crossly. “Not a dog.”
Then he turns to me.
I’m still staring off stage, wondering vaguely if somebody’s brought a pet with them.
“It’s your turn,” Christopher reminds me aggressively under his breath. Then he turns back to the audience and shouts again, “How like a god!”
“Oh,” I say, blinking at him. “Umm, my lord, there was no—”
A lion roars.
r /> “Th-there was no …” A cat meows. “No …”
The lights turn on and off; the crowd has started giggling. My entire head has emptied completely, like an upturned penny jar.
Just pick the next line you can remember, Harriet. “To think, my lord, that—”
Cheep cheep. Ribbit. Cockadoodle do.
“That—”
Oink oink. The lights flash a few more times. Oink.
The students in the audience are starting to laugh loudly now, and one quick glance to the side confirms it: Alexa’s face is a picture of innocence.
Which means it’s totally her.
People are starting to clap, parents are starting to mumble at each other and Miss Hammond is crouch-running like a hobbit across the floor in front of the stage to get to the other side as quickly as possible.
Christopher’s face is going steadily purple.
“If you …” I stutter. “If you, umm …”
And then I hear it. With everybody’s full attention on the stage, the volume suddenly gets a little louder.
“Harriet Manners stinks,” a familiar voice booms from the speaker as a bright white light settles on my head.
Every single blood vessel in my body feels like it’s draining into my feet.
Where do I know that from?
Oh my God: the cheese. It wasn’t just planted there to ruin my morning – Alexa was recording the class on her phone.
“I …” I stutter. “I …”
There’s a type of pygmy seahorse that is virtually indistinguishable from the coral it lives in. At this precise moment, I’d give anything for that kind of camouflage.
Or just being tiny enough to become invisible.
Every single pair of eyes in the room is now focused on me.
“Uh,” I manage, then there’s a burst of disco music as red and green and blue lights start pulsing.
And Hamlet finally has enough.
“I will not tolerate this,” Christopher yells, ripping the crown off his head and throwing it on to the floor. “This is MY PLAY. I’m the PRINCE OF FLAMING DENMARK.”
And before I can stop him, with one smooth gesture, Christopher flings his cloak over his shoulder, jumps off the stage and flounces out of the hall.
Leaving me, alone and flashing like a smelly rainbow, on the stage behind him.
here’s a long silence.
The kind of silence you could drink, should you be interested in drinking silences.
Then two hundred eyes spin back round and focus on me. I can feel the heat from my cheeks steadily making its way into my ears, my throat, my neck, my eyes.
“Umm,” I say slowly, getting hotter and hotter. “Well. Right.”
This is worse than I could possibly have expected. Alexa hasn’t just destroyed me this time. She’s destroyed everyone else and the entire play in the process.
When I glance to the side, she’s already disappeared. I think Christopher’s extreme diva reaction was a bit of a surprise, even for her.
“Err,” I bleat nervously as the silence continues to stretch on. Quick, Harriet. Don’t let her win. “Goodness me, how stressedeth out Hamlet is these days.” I flush a bit harder. Stressedeth out? “By my word, he is mad north-north west. So, umm …”
A heckler from the crowd makes an oink oink sound.
“I don’t get it,” one of the parents mumbles audibly. “Is it a post modern version or something?”
“So,” I continue in a trembling voice, “uh, why don’t we … umm … have a little break while Hamlet gets his head together and then …”
And I falter to an abrupt stop.
How on earth are you supposed to perform Hamlet without Hamlet? It’s like going to McDonald’s and ordering a salad.
“Wooooo!” I hear my dad shout supportively from the back. “This play is thoroughly excellent and I am very much enjoying this pretty redhead’s acting.”
That totally didn’t make it worse at all.
“You could all go for a cup of tea while Hamlet calms down,” I suggest, going slightly redder. “Or a coffee.” That’s it: I’ve lost my head. This hydra has totally disintegrated. “Maybe some biscuits, chocolate ones. Or …”
“OK,” Mr Bott says gently, stepping out from behind the curtains as I go into verbal meltdown. “Thank you, Harriet.” He turns to the audience. “We’ll have to call it a day on this performance, I’m afraid. I’m sure you’ll all be thrilled to hear that the government are considering taking Shakespeare off the syllabus in the near future.”
“I’m not sure about this school,” somebody mutters at the front. “That wasn’t how I remember Kenneth Branagh’s version.”
Suddenly – in the middle of the confused murmuring – there’s a voice from the side. A voice I know well.
Possibly too well.
“To be or not to be,” it says loudly. “That is the question.”
And a skinny boy in a red T-shirt with THIS SHIRT IS BLUE IF YOU RUN FAST ENOUGH written on it in large letters walks up the stairs on to the stage.
“Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” he continues, “or to take arms against a sea of trouble and by opposing end them.”
“Toby?” I say in astonishment.
“Or not Toby,” he says, looking very pleased with himself. “That is another very good question, Harriet. Hahaha.”
Then he looks back at the audience and continues the speech easily. There’s no intonation in his voice at all – he sounds like a robot – but every word is perfect.
The crowd has gone totally silent, and some of them have started sitting back down again.
I look at Mr Bott.
It’s the wrong bit of the play – Toby’s skipped right ahead to the next act – but it doesn’t actually make a lot of difference in Miss Hammond’s ‘free jazz’ version.
Mr Bott shrugs, makes a go for it gesture with his hand and steps back behind the curtains.
“Oh, Hamlet,” I say woodenly. “How, umm, nice of you to come back with a different, err, face and outfit.”
“I’m the Dr Who of Shakespearean heroes, Rosencrantz-hyphen-Guildenstern, who, for the record, does not smell at all,” Toby says, nodding. “For who would bear the whips and scorns of time …”
Still blinking, I mentally scan through the play in my head. I’m not in this bit: it’s Hamlet and Ophelia. So I run off the stage and quickly grab a blinking Raya.
“What’s going on?” she sniffles into her tissue.
“Act three, scene one,” I say as I gently push her on to the stage. “Good my lord, etcetera.”
“Oh,” she says, still looking confused. Then she straightens her shoulders and lifts her chin. “Good my lord,” she says to Toby, and her bewilderment is absolutely perfect, “how does your honour for this many a day?”
And the play begins again in earnest, except this time Hamlet doesn’t punch anybody in the face, kiss anyone or throw a wobbler and jump off the stage.
Of all the people in the world who might know a Shakespearean play without actually being given a part, it would definitely be Toby.
Or Kenneth Branagh. Obviously.
I slip behind the darkened curtain, and then look at the space where Alexa was a few minutes ago. Instead, Miss Hammond is standing there with her arms crossed.
“So many detentions,” she says, with an expression I’ve never seen on her face before. “I am quite, quite furious.”
And as she storms off, necklaces tinkling, I suddenly go very still.
Alexa is standing silently in the dark, with her hands wrapped around the curtain ropes. She hasn’t seen me, but is obviously not done yet, and frankly – after ten years of knowing her – I can’t believe I thought for a second she might be.
To be, or not to be. That is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of trouble and by opposing end the
m.
There’s a word for an inability to make decisions: it’s called abulia.
That’s what Hamlet is really about, isn’t it?
Choosing to stand up against your enemies, or not. Choosing to fight back, or to duck your head and just put up with it. And the ultimate lesson is: the longer you fail to make a choice, one way or another, the more damage is done.
The more people get hurt.
So, in that split second, I make mine.
“Hello,” I say calmly as Alexa starts tugging on the rope and the curtain directly above Toby starts gradually inching downwards.
She smiles smugly.
“Hello, geek,” she says back. “This is such a fun play, isn’t it?” She grins and pulls on the curtain rope. “I did tell you I’d always be behind you.”
“You did,” I say, leaning forward and pulling open a door slightly to the left of her. “But do you know what that logically means, Alexa?”
“What?”
I put a hand gently on her shoulder. “It means I’ll always be in front.”
Alexa looks in amazement at my hand.
“Excuse me, but are you actually touching me?” she splutters in shock. “Like, with your real fingers? What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m taking arms against a sea of trouble,” I say calmly, pushing her firmly back a few metres. “And by opposing, ending them.”
Then, as Alexa stares at me with her mouth open and a torrent of cutting words about to tumble from her lips, I firmly swing the door in front of her face.
And lock her in the cupboard.
he rest of the play goes as follows:
• Toby kills Polonius, attacks the Queen, shouts at his King, dumps Ophelia and fights Laertes.
• Toby sends out orders to have me killed.
• Then apologises profusely in a loudly improvised piece about how awesome I am.
• Ophelia cries herself into a sleepy stupor and then drowns herself on a big blue sheet dragged grumpily across the stage by Hannah.
• The ghost gets caught kissing Horatio behind the curtain.