Rule of Three (12 page)

As soon as Dad and Alex were off to Voice
Lesson Land, I took down a clean bowl and started in on a new batch of cupcakes before Mom could stop me from making more mess.

I was tossing and stirring, measuring and mixing, when Joey came back into the kitchen and peered at the dark batter in the bowl. “Those are way-really weird-looking pancakes.”

“They’re not pancakes anymore. They’re cupcakes.”

“Oh, no. Do they have a name this time?”

“Oh, you mean like My-Sister-Is-a-Number-One-Fink-Face cupcakes? I-Want-to-Rip-Her-Hair-Out cupcakes?”

“My-Sister-is-Bald cupcakes. That would be funny.”

“How about My-Sister-Is-Going-to-Take-Voice-Lessons-and-Learn-How-to-Sing-Better-Than-Me-and-Ruin-My-Life cupcakes?”

“Isn’t that kinda long?” Joey asked.

I kept stirring.

“Besides, it’s just one teeny lesson,” said Joey.

“Oh, yeah? Think about it. Dad will meet this Voicemeister guy. He’s probably some struggling actor, and Dad will want to help him out. Next thing you know, Dad’ll figure out some way to pay for Alex to take voice lessons and Voice Man will come over and help her night and day and she’ll be the star of the play and suddenly I won’t be the singer in the family anymore.”

“Yeah, then I bet Alex will fall in love with the Voice Man, the same as Meg falling in love with Laurie’s tutor in
Little Women,
and they’ll have a wedding and get married and everything.”

“Great. At least Alex will be too busy sewing and learning to make jelly and doing wife stuff to be in the play.”

“Ooh, ooh — and Alex will give her glove to the Voice Man, the way Meg gave hers to Mr. Brooke.”

“I hate to break it to you, but Alex doesn’t even own gloves.”

“Mittens, then,” said Joey.

“Forget it. It’s no use. I might as well just stop thinking about singing in the play and concentrate on cupcakes,” I said, furiously knocking the wooden spoon against the rim of the mixing bowl.

Joey reached over and stopped my hand. “You’re going to get the part.”

“Huh? You don’t know that, Joey.”

“Yah-huh.” She sopped up every last drop of syrup on her plate with the last pancake. “I’ll prove it. But you have to come upstairs.”

I surrendered my spoon and followed Joey up the stairs to our room. She marched over to my bed, lifted up my mattress, and pointed. Under the mattress was a lone cat’s-eye marble, sky-blue with a cloud-white ribbon running through it.

“See? Don’t you get it?” Joey said.

“One marble, Joey?” I asked.

“It’s like the princess and the pea. Alex had tons of stuff under her mattress and she slept like a log. But you — all you had was one little, teeny-tiny-weeny marble the size of a pea, and you said yourself that you couldn’t sleep at all. You know the line from the song: ‘For a princess is a delicate thing.’ See? You’re the sensitive one.”

“Joey, just because I slept on a marble doesn’t make me —”

“Yah-huh. It was a test. You passed. Alex flunked. That means you’re the princess. You get the part.”

“And what does that make Alex? Princess Runner-Up?”

“I don’t know. I was thinking a . . . porcupine.”

“Porcupine, huh?” Joey watched me as a slow smile crept back onto my face. It was just a made-up test, but I couldn’t help getting a shiver. A maybe-I-have-a-real-chance-at-getting-the-part shiver.

“You just gave me a great idea, Duck. Now I know what to name my new batch of cupcakes. Want to help me?”

“What are they?”

“OK, how about pumpkin cupcakes with dark icing and almond slivers for quills. My-Sister-Is-a-Porcupine cupcakes!”

Whoever thought up pins and needles
should have called it bed of nails. Waiting all day Wednesday for Mr. Cannon to post the cast list was like sitting on a bed of nails. A Prickle of Pinecones. A Murder of Marbles.

It was way worse than a pea under twenty princess mattresses, I can tell you that. I thought three o’clock might never come. But even though the day seemed to take a year and a half, the bell finally rang.

By the time I got down to the auditorium, a Gaggle of Drama Club kids crowded around the bulletin board outside Mr. Cannon’s room. The list was posted, but I couldn’t see it. I tried standing on tiptoe and peering around this tall, skinny white eighth grader with baggy pants and a big mop of curly hair.

After lots of pushing and squinting, I spotted the name at the top of the page. It might just as well have been flashing in neon lights, because once I saw it, I couldn’t stop seeing it.

PRINCESS WINNIFRED: Alex Reel.

My heart thudded. A wave of nausea hit me in the middle of my chest. My arms and legs suddenly felt heavy.

I ran my finger down the list, looking for my own name.

QUEEN AGGRAVAIN: Jayden Pffeffer

PRINCE DAUNTLESS: Alvin Albertson

LADY LARKEN: Zoe DuFranc

SIR HARRY: Scott Howell

My eyes started to blur. Maria Martinez. Kirsten Dunbar. I kept scanning down the list, but I didn’t see my name anywhere.

“Hey, you got Chorus: First Soprano. That’s great,” said a girl next to me. I could barely eke out a simple thanks.

Chorus! After all that, I hadn’t even gotten a real part! I was just one of a whole Shrewdness of Singers.

My ears were ringing. I tried to squeeze through the clump of tall kids in front of the bulletin board.

“Alvin’s perfect for Dauntless!”

“Who’s Zoe?”

“Fluffernutter was born to play Queen Aggravain.”

My head was spinning. Like when you’re a little kid on one of those playground merry-go-rounds and it’s scary to stand up. I needed something to lean on. I went over and stood against a Raft of Lockers, hoping the solid, cold steel would prop me up. I slid down the lockers, crumpling to the floor.

I’d been doing my best not to get my hopes up, but then along came Joey’s princess test, which turned my head around.

It wasn’t till my head stopped spinning that I glanced up and saw Alex. Her eyes were blazing green, but when they landed on me, they seemed to pale to an almost dull leaf brown. They were no longer the green-eyed monsters of jealousy I’d come to know so well these past few weeks.

I tried to forget my own heart-sinking disappointment for a moment, willing myself to smile. But my mouth didn’t seem to be working.

My sister sprang to action. She somehow wrestled her way out of the pressing crowd and slid down next to me on the cold, hard floor of the school hallway.

Alex started talking super-fast, like the people on one of Dad’s old vinyls that we used to spin by hand around the turntable so they’d sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks. “You should have at least gotten Larken. Or Queen Aggravain. Jayden Pffeffer can’t act the warts off a toad. And that Zoe girl, what was Mr. C thinking? It’s like she came out of nowhere. She’s only been in Drama Club for like a few weeks and nobody even knows her.”

“It’s OK, Alex.” I found myself comforting
her
. “You don’t have to say that stuff.”

“It was your first audition. Don’t feel bad.”

Why not?

“I’m sure Mr. Cannon wanted to give you a part. But there were just too many other kids trying out. Seventh and eighth graders, I mean. And they’ve been in Drama Club longer.”

Somehow, Alex cheering me up was making me feel worse.

“A big part of acting is disappointment,” she said. “You deal with it.”

Easy for you to say, Princess Winnifred.

“I don’t know what I was thinking, anyway,” I said. “I’m no actor. You really were the best up there. You deserved to get the lead.”

“You mean it?”

“Yeah. I guess deep down I never really thought I’d get it. I mean, it’s a musical, and you know how I like singing, and I thought there wouldn’t be a lot of lines to memorize. But let’s face it — acting still gives me hives.”

Alex couldn’t help smiling. “Well, I’ve got a lot of work to do on my singing. No matter how much I practice, I’ll never sound as good as you.”

“Hey, Shakespeare,” Scott Towel called, coming over to us. “Princess Winnie. Nice going.”

“You too,
Sir Harry,
” Alex said, her green eyes sparkling. “We both got the parts we wanted! Isn’t it great?”

Apparently I had turned invisible. “Yeah, great,” I mumbled.
Am I smiling and nodding too much?
“Just-just-just great,” I heard myself say.
Stop stuttering!
“Really great.”
Stop saying “great.”

“You too, Steven.” Scott Towel was nodding his head like that Shakespeare bobble-head doll on Dad’s dashboard, making me feel nauseous again. “First soprano. Not too shabby, huh?”

“It’s just chorus. I mean, I don’t even know if I’ll do it.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” said Alex, leaping to her feet and looking down at me like I’d just said we should set the school on fire or something. “Of course you’re taking it. You worked hard for this. And you have a beautiful voice. You can’t just up and quit before you even start, just because you didn’t get the part you wanted.”

“Chorus isn’t a part at all!” I said.

“Alex is right. You can’t quit,” said Scott Towel. “I just bumped into Mr. C outside his office, and he said he’s gonna break you out of the ensemble to sing a lot of solo parts that tell the story. Like that scene when I go running off to find the Swamp Princess. C’mon, bail me out here, Steven. Don’t make me sing up there all alone.” He shook his head as if to say
not pretty.

“I guess I could. I mean, I did try out because I wanted to sing,” I said.

“Cool! It’ll be like that scene we did together last year in
Beauty and the Beast.
”

“At least you won’t be so hairy this time,” I teased.

“Nope, just
Sir
Harry.” I couldn’t help it. I cracked up.

“That’s great, you two. Just great,” said Alex, faking enthusiasm. Suddenly it was the Green-Eyed Monster again, not my sister, who flashed her eyes at me.

SHAKESPEARE MONKEY

Starring Alex

Sock Monkey
: You are a flap-mouthed wrinkled witch. A toad-spotted vile worm. Lower than dirt. You are like the dirt on the worm under the dirt.

Me
: Wait a minute. Since when do you get to start conversations? You wouldn’t even be able to talk if it weren’t for me, don’t forget. So who’s calling who dirt?

Sock Monkey
: How can you possibly be feeling bad? You got the part. The lead. You beat your own sister. You beat everybody. You win. Don’t you get it?

Me
: Then why do I feel so lousy?

Sock Monkey
: Oh, maybe-possibly-kinda because you ratted out your own sister? You toad-spotted rat-nosed foot licker!

Me
: Ha! Who are you, Shakespeare Monkey? You know not of what you speak.

Sock Monkey
: Yes, yes, I do. I know plenty. I can tell when you feel guilty, and you should — after telling Mr. Cannon that Stevie was soooo very, very busy! Too busy to, say, handle a
lead
role?

Me
: I did not say that! I said she might have trouble making such a big commitment. You have to practice like every afternoon and on Saturdays for weeks and weeks. How can she do that AND the cake-off?

Sock Monkey
: That’s not up to you.

Me
: Yeah, so? It’s up to Mr. Cannon. I didn’t make the rules.

Sock Monkey
: No, but you know what you said. And don’t try to tell me you didn’t do it on purpose. If you hadn’t said anything, Stevie may have had a chance at getting the lead. Then where would you be?

Me
: Can’t you just shut up for once?

Sock Monkey
: And still you’re acting jealous? Just because Stevie jokes around with your boyfriend?

Me
: He’s not my boyfriend! And besides, now I have to be a loud-mouthed Swamp Princess and learn to sing all those silly songs and hang with Alvin the Chipmunk during practice every day, while Stevie gets to rehearse songs with Scott Towel.

Sock Monkey
: Uh! I don’t want to hear it! You know what you are? You are a beef-witted boar pig.

Me
: Ha!

Sock Monkey
: Say it!

Me
: I’m a beef-witted boar pig.

Sock Monkey
: Well, just so you know.

Me
: OK, OK. So I’m a horrible person!

Sock Monkey
: And sister.

Me
: And sister.
(Putting Sock Monkey on dresser and facing him toward the wall so I don’t have to look at him!)