Friends till the End (17 page)

“Props aren’t so bad,” Hart whispered as he and Madison lowered their painted plywood Chrysler Building onto the stage. “I could get used to this.”

“Thanks for switching back,” Madison whispered.

Hart grinned, or at least Madison thought he had. She couldn’t really tell; it was that dark out there. There was no doubt, however, about what Hart did next. As they hurried offstage, he put his hand on the small of her back and pushed her ever so gently. Of course, he could have been saying, “Hurry up and move it!” But Madison preferred to think that Hart’s touch was saying, “I like you, with a capital
L,
Madison Finn.”

Either way, they were backstage again in a matter of seconds, and “New York, New York!” started up.

This was Ivy’s big number, so Madison hung around to watch. According to Madhur, Fiona, and Aimee, when the rehearsals had first started, Ivy thought she was going onstage dressed as some kind of urban supermodel, with her red hair teased up and out, and wearing a long dress and heels. Instead, she ended up as the Statue of Liberty, and had to sing her song dressed from head to toe in green, holding a torch in one hand and an encyclopedia in the other.

Ivy was trying to make the most of it; Madison could tell. And Madison was rooting for her, too, for some reason. She hated to see anyone, even the enemy, get embarrassed by a performance. After all, Madison understood jitters and stage fright better than anyone.

But all her good wishes did no good. Ivy strutted her stuff out onto the center of the stage, but on the way there she got tripped up in her green cloak. One moment she was striding forward, head thrown back like a princess’s. The next moment, she fell, fast and hard.

Ivy’s fall gave new meaning to the word
splat,
but somehow she scrambled back up again and smoothed out her clothes.

“Did someone leave something on the stage?” Ivy called out.

“Props!” Mr. Montefiore cried from the auditorium.

Madison was the closest prop person to the site of the accident. She raced onstage and immediately found herself a little disoriented. She glanced out into the audience. The lights temporarily blinded her. But then some kid turned up the houselights, and everyone could see everything.

“Now, this is a big number,” Mr. Montefiore said, gesticulating in exasperation. “So far, this rehearsal is about fifty percent there, and we need
better.
We can’t have props lying around. Could everyone who’s backstage please come out for a moment? We need a cast powwow.”

Mr. Montefiore lectured for about ten minutes, during which Madison had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing. All around, it seemed as though her friends were trying to make her laugh, from Hart (making goofy faces) to Madhur (nonstop eye-rolling). There was something funny and nerve-racking about it all at the same time.

Aimee rushed over. “What did you think?”

“You were fabulous,” Madison quickly said, “but someone else’s dance movements could use a little help”

“You mean Miss Green?” Aimee joked. “Yeah, she’s not exactly a ballerina. She should stick to being mean and stealing boys.”

“Excuse me?”

Madison and Aimee whipped around and saw Ivy, still clad in her Statue of Liberty outfit, standing there.

“I heard what you just said,” Ivy snarled.

“So?” Aimee shot back.

“So, I think you’re rude and cruel and unusual,” Ivy said.

“Unusual?” Aimee repeated. “Doink.”

Madison started to giggle.
“We’re
rude?
We’re
cruel?”

Ivy looked indignant. “You’re not supposed to laugh at people when they’re down.”

Madison didn’t know what to say. Was Ivy serious? Ivy was the queen of knocking people when they were down. Was she
that
out of touch with reality? Or was she just playing Madison for a fool…again? Ivy looked ready to cry, but Ivy Daly
never
cried.

Just then, one of the ninth-grade boys in charge of the backstage area rushed over.

“Um…” he stammered. “We can hear everything you say out on the stage, you know? The side mics are still turned on.”

Madison immediately felt her cheeks start to burn.

Ivy, on the other hand, suddenly got a sly look on her face. Her eyes appeared to tear up. She gave a dramatic sniff as the ninth grader went to turn off the side mics. Then she raced off in the opposite direction.

“Faker,” Aimee said after Ivy ran off.

Madison remained silent. She was thinking. Was Ivy just messing with them to get sympathy from the other kids? And teachers?

Just then, Fiona ran up to Madison.

“Maddie, I heard everything out front. We all did. What happened?” Fiona asked.

“I don’t know,” Madison said. “I guess Ivy had on a microphone, and she fell and…I feel kind of bad.”

“You should
not
feel bad,” Aimee said.

“What else did I miss?” Fiona asked. “I wish I’d been to rehearsal on time.”

“Why
are
you late?” Aimee asked.

“My dad,” Fiona grumbled.

“What about your dad?” Madison asked.

“Oh, he wanted me and Chet to stay home this afternoon so we could meet this guy he works with. I think it might be his new boss. Dad’s been interviewing for that important job on the West Coast I told you guys about.”

“In California, right?” Madison said.

Fiona nodded. “He’s flown out there a few times. This guy works in an office in Manhattan, though. He needed to meet Dad, too.”

“So, you think your dad is really going to move?” Aimee asked. “I mean, you’ll move too, right?”

“I guess. Maybe,” Fiona said. “He never really tells us anything. Neither does Mom.”

Fiona seemed super secretive all of a sudden. Madison wondered why.

“Fiona, I know I keep saying this, but you’d tell us if your family was really planning to move, wouldn’t you?” Madison asked.

“Totally!” Fiona said. “You guys are my BFFs. You’d be the first to know.”

“Hey, who’s in the ‘Corner of the Sky’ song?” some kid yelled out backstage. “We’re missing the green and yellow leotards.”

Aimee let out a gasp and ran off. Fiona started to move away, too, but Madison grabbed her hand.

“You can’t move back to California, Fiona,” she said dejectedly. “Not when I just found out my dad is moving, too.”

“Your dad is moving?” Fiona said. “Wow. Where?”

“A half hour away. Into a house. He says he and Stephanie will still be close to Far Hills and New York, but I don’t want him to go anywhere…”

“I don’t know, Maddie,” Fiona said with a shrug. “Dads can be so weird about moving and all that. Like mine, for instance. He hasn’t told me everything that he’s planning, and Chet and I know something’s up.”

“Why would you leave your house in Far Hills?” Madison asked. “You have that old Victorian, and your dad has painted and fixed it up, and we even chased away the ghosts…”

“Yeah,” Fiona chuckled. “I know.”

Madison and Fiona heard a piano go badly out of tune onstage. Something crashed. It sounded like a thousand nails scattered upon the stage at once.

“What was that?” Madison asked.

“Places! Places!” someone shouted.

A few kids elbowed their way past Madison and Fiona onto the stage.
“Do, a deer, a female deer…Re, a drop of golden sun…Mi, a name I call myself…Fa, a long, long way to run
…” Some of the kids were singing a chorus from
The Sound of Music.

“Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, Do-o-o-o-o-o-o!”

“No-o-o-o-o-o!” Mrs. Montefiore screamed out in the auditorium; she didn’t sound happy. The last note of that chorus had been more than a little bit off key.

Mariah raced by, and Madison grabbed her arm.

“What’s going on out there?” Madison asked.

Mariah grabbed her hair by its pink streaks and broke into maniacal laughter. “It’s the end of the world as we know it!” she cried, half joking.

Madison felt a case of the nervous giggles coming on.

And the actual revue performance was only two hours away.

Friends till the End


I guess the saying goes that a bad dress rehearsal means a great performance.


We were no exception. The revue rocked.


Every prop was put onstage at the right time. No one was too off key (except for this one 8th grader named Evan something who sounded like a sick garbage truck when he sang). The biggest surprise of all: Ivy didn’t fall in her ugly green Statue of Liberty dress. She actually got a standing O. Go figure. Even J was clapping. Poison Ivy belted out these few high notes like she was some kind of Mariah Carey wannabe, but it actually worked. Hey, gotta give a girl her props even if she IS the mortal enemy.


Fiona was great as always, too. She nailed her songs. I don’t know why, but she never seems to get worked up about things like this. Lindsay was only performing one song (w/Fiona, actually), but she had a small solo part and she sounded finer than fine. She looked so good in stage makeup, like a model. Aimee danced and spun her way through all her musical numbers just like she wanted, and she got a lot of claps at the end. I bet she really does become a pro dancer someday. She sure likes all the attention. Madhur wasn’t a bad dancer, although she kept laughing during some of the songs when she couldn’t
quite
keep up. Even I, queen of the nonperformers, know that you have to keep your composure when you’re onstage. One thing’s for sure: those four are my super pals. I felt so proud. Wait. Does that make me sound like some kind of weird mommy hen? Er…cluck!


No, no, here’s what’s REALLY weird: Mr. and Mrs. Montefiore both cried (yes, I did say cried) at the end of the entire revue. It was some serious soap-opera stuff, I swear. These ninth-grade kids (incl. Egg’s sis, Mariah), who’ve been doing this for 3 years, brought them these huge bouquets of sunflowers at the very end. My mom and dad (sitting in—NEWSFLASH—the same section!) both told me there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. I’d be willing to place bets, however, that Mariah was shedding no tears. I have to admit that I wasn’t either.


Wow. Have I been spending too much time these days with the always-cynical Aim and Maddie One? And why did I never really get into the whole revue thing? I would have expected to end the year as a blubbering fool, getting emotional about everything and everyone at the drop of a hat. But instead, I feel weirdly stuck in this
muck.


Rude Awakening:
My birth certificate says Madison Francesca Finn, but my real name is MUD.


MUD (aka Moving Up Day) means I’m graduating. I survived seventh grade! But I feel sadder than sad. Why does the most important day of my life mean I have to say good-bye?


Madison hit
SAVE
and surfed to her e-mailbox. It was still early on Thursday morning, so she had time to mess around on the computer a little bit. This was a good way to calm her nerves, which had been fully frazzled since the previous day. She would take her time that morning, carefully putting on her new purple dress, fixing her hair in a pretty twist, and slowly gathering together everything else she needed to bring to school, like Thank You and Good-bye cards for all of her favorite teachers. Madison didn’t have to call Aimee and Fiona for at least a half hour or more. That was when Mom would be driving the three BFFs, plus Fiona’s brother, Chet, over to school for MUD. The parents, though, were invited for later.

Despite getting up before anyone that day, Madison wasn’t the only one in her house with a chronic case of nerves. Mom was as wound up as a fully stretched rubber band. And Madison knew she was probably downstairs at that moment, getting the house ready for guests
and
getting ready to
snap.
She’d been anxious about the party for a while. Now that the actual day had arrived, Mom was channeling her anxiety into Clorox, Ajax, and Windex. She’d gone into cleanup overdrive. The air inside the house reeked of bleach and pine. In that situation, the best thing to do (other than volunteering to vacuum or dust) was to steer clear.

Gramma Helen knew how to steer
way
clear. She turned all of her attention away from Mom and toward Phin. Madison could hear her grandmother and her pug just then in the kitchen, making cooing noises at each other. Gramma was probably giving Phinnie too many of the little bacon doggy treats he loved so much—the ones that made his belly fat. And Phin was probably dancing around on his hind legs, begging for more.

The rest of Madison’s family members had arrived the previous evening, but Madison wouldn’t be seeing them until the official start time of the party, which was around four o’clock. Uncle Rick and Aunt Violet had spent the previous night with Dad and Stephanie at their apartment. Uncle Bob and Aunt Angie were coming to Far Hills on a mid-morning flight. For a fleeting moment, Stephanie seemed to think that her niece and nephew might come from Texas for a special trip (and for the big occasion), but they had their own moving-up and graduation ceremonies to attend back home.

Madison clicked on her e-mailbox to see if she’d gotten any mail since the last time she had checked. There were at least ten spam e-mails in there. But there was one e-mail, from Madison’s keypal.