JULIET
Er, just an old friend?
ROMEO
From school?
OTHELLO
Yeah, I taught her a few things. Did her flaming youth let virtue be as wax and melt in her own fire? And were you consumed by her heat? Now you know how she learned her skills.
JULIET
Othello, did Dr. Iago tell you why we’re here today?
OTHELLO
Yeah, you’re looking for a reason to ditch this dude. Like you said in Las Vegas, we had something going on that he can’t even touch.
HAMLET
Do you live in Vegas? You could move to New York into a great little condo.
ROMEO
Las Vegas? I thought you went to Las Vegas to that cosmetic convention with the girls — the Avon ladies or something?
JULIET
They couldn’t make it.
ROMEO
All five thousand of them?
JULIET
Don’t overreact.
ROMEO
I’m not overreacting, I just don’t confuse the word “convention” with the word “rendezvous”!
JULIET
Romeo, when you think about it, a convention is a kind of rendezvous. It’s just a name. I mean, a name, a name. What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
HAMLET
Something smells rotten here. I think the two of you should break up.
OTHELLO
But as far as you two breaking up, I’m against it. Things broken in two are not easily put together again.
HAMLET
If you’re going to stay together you need the condo. It’s 2B or not 2B. If you stay together, it’s got to be 2B.
JULIET
So what’s your vote, Hamlet? We stay together or we break up?
HAMLET
What’s your credit score?
ROMEO
I’ll — I’ll take that as a no! We won’t break up. Juliet, I love you. (falls to one knee) And I’ve always loved you!
JULIET
You’re on your knees and you’re begging me, but you’ve done that before and nothing’s changed.
ROMEO
This time it’ll be different, my love. This time I’m coming from a different place, from the very bottom of my heart.
JULIET
Yeah, yeah, the light is breaking through the window and I’m the sun. I’ve heard it all.
ROMEO
Look, I’ve gone more than halfway on this. I’m not the one hanging with the homeboys!
OTHELLO
I hear the echo of the green-eyed monster. It’s time I excuse myself from this sorry crowd.
JULIET
Let’s call Iago back and tell him what happened, but also that we want to stay together. Romeo, I do love you.
HAMLET and OTHELLO leave and IAGO reenters.
IAGO
And what have we decided?
ROMEO
We love each other and we’re staying together, no matter what.
JULIET
Love lifts itself like a banner above our heads and we bravely follow! If life is indeed a battle then we are armed with sweet affection one for the other.
ROMEO
I’ll get a job!
JULIET
And for me a tummy tuck.
IAGO
O what a curse is marriage! That two young people drown happily in the sea of love while older, wiser souls sit barren by the cliffs. But in the end they will grow old and fat while my solitude holds me forever firm and fast. It is my nature’s plague to spy into abuses and oft my jealousy shapes faults that are not. Still, looking upon their glowing faces, they will not understand their defeat. Ah, what fools these mortals be!
The End
In the next book of the Cruisers series, when Ashley Schmidt, the editor of The Palette, decides to upgrade the school’s official newspaper by running articles from the British paper The Guardian, the Cruisers respond by adding “across the pond” stories in their own paper. They begin a serial story, invite guest articles by kids from a gifted and talented school in London, and add photos to their paper. But when Kambui photographs a group of kids at the mall, it leads to major complications.
Check out this excerpt:
OH, SNAP!
So let me get this straight,” Bobbi said. “You were just taking random shots and you saw Phat Tony and snapped a picture without saying anything to him?”
“Because every time he sees a camera, he starts mugging and putting on his gangster poses,” Kambui said. “I was just looking for casual shots.”
“Right, and now you have a casual shot of Phat Tony with those three dudes they arrested for sticking up the jewelry store in the mall,” LaShonda said. “The papers said that they got three of the holdup guys, but one got away. Isn’t that what we read, Zander?”
“Yes, but we don’t know that Phat Tony was the fourth guy,” I said. “And they’re pleading innocent, anyway. They said they weren’t even at the mall that night.”
“So what do we do?” Bobbi said. “We keep the photograph to ourselves and let them get away with a crime?”
“Or do we turn the photograph over to the police and get them and Phat Tony arrested?” I asked.
“We don’t know that Phat Tony was the guy with them,” Kambui insisted.
“What we know, Kambui, is that something bad happened at the mall and that we might have the key to it,” I said. “Now we have to figure out what our responsibility is and to whom. Do you feel right just doing nothing?”
And that’s the dilemma. The Cruisers have a photograph that could absolutely be the key to a conviction, but will it also be a conviction for Phat Tony, the loud, bragging, but usually good-doing student at Da Vinci? Should they be the hidden jury that convicts or frees someone who has committed a felony? And even if Phat Tony wasn’t involved, do the Cruisers really feel safe in providing evidence against a desperate crew of robbers?
Walter Dean Myers is the critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of nearly one hundred books for children and young adults. His extensive body of work includes Sunrise Over Fallujah, Fallen Angels, Somewhere in the Darkness, Slam!, Jazz, and Harlem Summer. Mr. Myers’s many awards include two Newbery Honors, five Coretta Scott King Author Book Awards, the first Michael L. Printz Award, and the 2010 Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. In addition, he the 2012–2013 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. He lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Copyright © 2012 by Walter Dean Myers
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
First edition, August 2012
Cover art copyright © 2012 by Leo Espinosa
Cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi
e-ISBN 978-0-545-51268-8
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Walter Dean Myers, A Star is Born
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