Larger-Than-Life Lara Read online

  All of us actors and actresses marched to the backstage, following Ms. Connolly, with Mrs. Smith bringing up the rear. I felt like we were baby ducks being led to the water so as we could learn to swim. I’ll bet those ducks would be both excited and scared at the same time, which is what I was.

  There were already some people’s parents sitting in the folding chairs set up in the gym. There were a lot of those chairs in that gym, and I couldn’t help myself looking at all of them to see if my daddy was in one of them, which he was not.

  Backstage, which is a thing you say when you’re an actor and you are not on the stage, but just behind the curtain or maybe sideways to people who are, it really did look like a fair. The Ferris wheel turned out so good that even though you couldn’t ride it or anything, you knew exactly what it was supposed to be.

  My favorite part of the scenery was the pigpen stage left, which seemed like stage right to me. And it is very hard to keep that straight. I put the five little piggies of Sara’s into the pen. Then I kissed Theresa’s pig, Hamlet, on his head for good luck and sat him in the pen too.

  Lara was in a different place every time I looked at her. These places were: the balloon game prop, where she set out arrows and prizes; the front, where she checked the lights; the back, where she moved the Act 2 scenery so you couldn’t see it until Act 2.

  “Places, everyone!” Mrs. Smith hollered. She gave us a five-minute warning and counted down each minute like this: “Four minutes . . . three minutes . . . two minutes . . . one minute . . .”

  When she got to zero minutes, she didn’t have to shush us on account of we were too scared to talk. The curtain pulled open like the curtains at Theresa’s house.

  This was the cue for Adeline and Elizabeth to come onto the stage from different sides and meet in the middle, under the fake tree. And this is exactly what Adeline (which was really Sara) did. Only when she got to the fake apple tree, Elizabeth wasn’t there (which was really Maddie not being there).

  Maddie was still backstage beside Mrs. Smith. “I can’t do it!” Maddie was saying over and over.

  “Of course you can,” Mrs. Smith was telling her over and over.

  I didn’t know which one of them was right about that.

  Meanwhile, Sara was doing a very good job of pretending onstage. “Well, I wonder where my best friend, Elizabeth, is,” Sara said.

  This part was not in the real play called Fair Day. This part was not in our dress rehearsal. I didn’t know it right then, but that line was made up by Lara Phelps and whispered out to Sara to cover up for Maddie not being there.

  Finally, Mrs. Smith gave Maddie a little push that made her be onstage, only not by the apple tree.

  “There you are!” Sara said, which was one more line made up by Lara.

  “Elizabeth, have you seen Tom?” Sara/Adeline asked. And this was the first real line of the play.

  It should have been answered right away by Maddie/Elizabeth. But Elizabeth stared at the audience, then at Adeline, then back at the audience.

  “She’s forgotten her line!” Mrs. Smith cried backstage. “Where’s my script?”

  But before Mrs. Smith could find her script, Lara whispered out Elizabeth’s line, straight from her head: “I did see Tom today. He was asking about you.”

  Maddie’s head twitched.

  Lara repeated the line.

  Then, just like when Daddy’s truck has to start slow on a cold morning, Maddie’s brain caught. She opened her mouth, and the words sputtered out. “I did see Tom today. He was asking about you.”

  After that, that scene went off smooth as packed snow.

  But I still got that sled-sliding-down-the-hill feeling because this was not a very good start to our play, if you asked me.

  My part started at the very ending of the first act. I stood offstage, and my stomach got sicker and sicker the closer and closer the play got to my part.

  “Break a leg, Caroline!” Lara said, popping up behind me as quiet as if she’d floated there.

  I turned around and saw that smile and forgot all about being on that sliding-down sled. “Thanks,” I said, trying to give back a piece of that smile because I hadn’t used my own smile in a long time, I think.

  “That’s your cue,” Lara said.

  I ran out onto that stage. At first I couldn’t see because of the bright lights there. Then my eyes started seeing. I saw rows and rows of people sitting in folding chairs, waiting on me to say my lines.

  And then I saw Luke. He was on the very back row in the very farthest-over chair. But he was there. My littlest big brother was there to see me.

  I walked front and center, where Hamlet the Pig was waiting with five of Sara’s little piggies. “There you are, Hamlet,” I said. And just like another Laney was on the inside of me, she said all her lines loud and clear and exactly like they ought to have been, according to that Fair Day script.

  There was one strange minute during that time onstage, and I didn’t think of it until later. Only I’m telling you about that minute now because that’s more chronological. I thought I saw a spider web, or part of a web, hanging down from that stage ceiling. And the funny thing is that I thought I saw a pig in it. But that picture was in my head for less than a flash, like a school-picture flash on school-picture day. And most of me was being Caroline and saying her lines. So I didn’t even think about that picture until later on.

  And I wish I had of.

  17

  YOU SHOULDN’T BE CONFUSED about having this other chapter called “Climax.” There really aren’t two of these climaxes. There’s one, and I’m right in the middle of that.

  Only if you noticed, there are chapters in this book. And books do that so you can stop reading and go to the bathroom or get a drink or maybe go out to recess, and then find your way back to where you left off in your book. Only that last chapter on climax was taking too long, and so I made this one. And that’s all there is to that.

  Only maybe that’s not all there is to that. Because I’m having me a lot of trouble getting to what happened next. And so maybe that’s part of it.

  Acts 2 and 3 of Fair Day went off pretty good. I think not so good as in dress rehearsal, but pretty good for fourth grade. The people in the folding chairs clapped and laughed mostly at the right places.

  There were some scary times, with kids forgetting their lines. But not Ms. Connolly and not Mrs. Smith had to look at their scripts to help those kids that forgot. Why? Because Lara Phelps had that whole script with everybody’s parts up in her head. When somebody messed up or forgot a line, Lara was there to get them back onto the right words. She did that for all of these people:

  Maddie

  Carlos

  Roger

  Brianna

  Tamara

  2 unnamed girls

  1 unnamed boy

  The only reason I’m not on that list is because Lara had taught me how to learn all my lines by making them into poem songs. So I didn’t forget anything.

  Right before Act 3, when there was nothing going on, which is called intermission, I peeked through those curtains to see if Luke was still in that chair, and he was. I wondered if he liked Caroline and thought I did a good job as her.

  “Did they come?” a voice behind me asked.

  I turned to see Lara smiling at me.

  “Luke came,” I told her. “He’s my brother.”

  “That’s great, Laney,” she said.

  “Yeah.” That’s what I said because it really did feel like great.

  After intermission, I got to be Caroline again, only at the fair, instead of on the farm. Right before I was about to go onstage, I just happened to see Joey Gilbert a ways off. And there was a funny thing about him. Before the play started, Joey reminded me of a balloon blown up so big it could bust. He ran around backstage more than Eric Radabaugh, shouting orders louder than Wayne Wilson himself. But as our play kept going on, I could have sworn on my middle big brother’s eyes that something was wro
ng with Joey Gilbert. He looked more and more like the air was leaking out of his balloon.

  I admit that I didn’t think so much about this as I’m making out now. This is because I know now what was about to happen. And I guess I’ve put off telling you as long as I can, with a whole extra chapter.

  Our play got over, and all of us actors lined up at the front of the stage and took a big bow, just like we did at dress rehearsal, when nobody was clapping. We did this three times because people in folding chairs were clapping like crazy. And each time I stood up from this bow, I looked back at Luke, and I think he was clapping like everybody else, but it was hard to see with all those lights. I remember that I had this thought. And that was that this could be the happiest I had ever felt in my whole life.

  Just like in dress rehearsal, Mrs. Smith said, “And thanks to our backstage crew. Without them, our play couldn’t have succeeded.”

  The audience applauded even louder then, and everybody who’d made signs or scenery or anything stepped up and formed a line, while we all stepped back.

  Lara Phelps was in the exact middle of the stage, and this was on account of Joey telling everybody where they should stand. I felt real good about this, too, because people were clapping for Lara, and she had worked harder than anybody. And I even thought it was a good thing that they were clapping for Joey Gilbert.

  That’s when I noticed that Joey was not in this line.

  I got a chill going down my back, just like if I had been on that sled sliding downhill.

  I looked to both sides of backstage. Joey stood at one end, and Roger Steeby at the other. Roger was waving wild to Joey and shouting, “Now! Do it now!”

  Joey, he looked like he’d eaten bad mushrooms and was feeling it. But he grabbed a rope, or a string, and I’m not sure about that part, and he pulled.

  I heard Roger Steeby shout something. And just like that, all the stage crew on the left side of Lara stepped left, and all of them on the right stepped right. And this left Lara Phelps standing front and center, larger than life. And faster than you can shout, “Break a leg!” down came things from the ceiling.

  These things were balloons and pigs.

  I saw the balloons first because they sank like rocks, instead of floating like balloons ought to. Then I saw cardboard pigs fall too. And Sara’s small stuffed pigs. Only the balloons hit first. They slapped the floor at Lara’s feet. Water shot up. All around the front center of the stage came the plop, splash, smack of balloons crashing.

  And there was Lara.

  Lara covered her head like she was under a bomb attack. One balloon hit her arm and bounced off.

  She screamed. Lara screamed.

  She got wetter and wetter, until she was as wet as she could get.

  I looked up to see if the balloons were done falling and crashing. And I saw a sign hanging above Lara, and this sign was crooked. What it said was this:

  I remember thinking that sign was probably supposed to be funny.

  And there was Lara.

  The cardboard pigs lay on the ground, stuck to the wet floor. They looked dead, like on a cartoon when something gets run over and turns flat. Sara’s pigs had skidded in puddles of water and lay scattered over the stage.

  And there was Lara.

  She was shaking.

  When the first pigs and balloons fell, the crowd laughed, like they thought it was all part of the show. Then when the balloons hit Lara and soaked Lara and still more balloons fell, the laughing stopped. Then other sounds, sicky sounds, sprung up, gasps and groans and the like.

  I think Ms. Connolly was screaming something. I think Mrs. Smith was sobbing. I think I didn’t move or do anything or scream or cry.

  But there was Lara.

  Then it was quiet.

  Over. In a way. Nobody moved. Nobody went to Lara. Not that I saw. I heard water drip from her head to the stage floor. It felt like we were all stuck in one of those frozen moments. I wanted it to be over. I wanted it not to have happened.

  And there was Lara. Larger than life.

  She turned and looked toward stage left, to Joey Gilbert. Then stage right, to Roger. Then she looked at us. Slowly. At all of us, one by one. And I couldn’t tell, when that gaze came to me, I couldn’t tell if she was sad for her or sad for us. And maybe with mad mixed in there too. And there weren’t any words she could have shouted at us what would have been louder than her eyes and her lips that were pressed into a straight line and not smiling.

  And that’s when she did what she did.

  Lara Phelps stood herself up straight and turned back to the audience. She smoothed down her wet dress that was stuck to her. She pushed her wet hair out of her face.

  From where I stood, I watched her smile creep back, slowly, in starts and stops, sputtering kind of, like a drowning person who gets the water pumped out of him so as he can breathe again. She shuffled up to where that microphone still was. And clear as the Fourth of July, she began:

  “We ask you to forgive us—”

  But she stopped. She stared down at her wet hands. Then she tried again:

  “We ask you to be kind . . .”

  Her voice was soft, so as everybody on both sides of that stage leaned in, straining to hear her.

  “Forgiving others instantly—”

  She stopped again. I wanted to help. I wanted to shout out rhymes for her: Kind . . . Find! Bind! Blind! Behind! Peace of mind!

  She didn’t finish. The whole gym was silent. The only sound was a laugh from Joey Gilbert. But that laugh sounded like somebody broke it in two and twisted it up all weird. I looked around our stage and saw Sara Rivers crying. And there were other kids crying too. But this is something I can’t say for sure because I couldn’t see so good.

  Then Lara was not there.

  The curtain came down, and I think it was Lara herself who pulled that curtain, because the rest of us hadn’t moved. One by one, kids drifted away, not saying “Bye” or “See you” to each other.

  I wanted to get far away from that place. I wanted Luke. I ran to the curtain and peered out to where Luke had been sitting. Only he wasn’t there.

  And that sled crashed all the way down.

  Tears burned in my throat, clear down to my stomach. I turned back and ran across the stage, down the back steps, and out through that back door that goes to my secret step, where Lara had taught me about poem songs. Only I didn’t stop there. I kept running. Down the step, around the bushes, around the school building.

  . . . And smack into somebody.

  My brain wanted it to be Joey Gilbert so I could beat on him until one of us couldn’t stand up. I swung at the person in the dark, believing I was hitting Joey, making him hurt.

  “Laney.” The voice was quiet. Hands held my wrists and kept my fists from landing. “It’s okay, Laney.”

  I looked up into the big brown eyes of my brother Luke.

  “You did good, Laney. So did she. You did us proud.” That was what Luke said to me.

  I burst into tears, like a balloon breaking open its sides. I cried and cried on my littlest big brother’s shoulder. And he didn’t push me away or call me a big, fat baby.

  My daddy says there’s no such things as miracles, but I say he is wrong. I do believe in those miracles, of which this was one.

  18

  I WARNED YOU RIGHT UP FRONT in chapter 1 that this story might not turn out as good as a made-up story, where you can put in the happily-ever-after parts. Mrs. Smith says stories have “resolutions.” A resolution is what happens at the end, where things get solved. That word, resolution, almost has solve inside of it. And this makes me think of a play inside of a play, which is what you get in that Shakespeare story called Hamlet. It was a play its own self, but in that play they were putting on a play. And that can give me the chills if I think about it too much.

  But like I said, this story doesn’t get all solved at the end. And I’m sorry about that, but that’s just the way it is. And you can’t say I didn’t w
arn you.

  But here is what happened next. Most of this action happened without me. But here is what I know anyway:

  Principal Russell got real mad at all of the whole entire fourth grade.

  She was a dead man’s eyelash away from kicking all of us out of Paris Elementary on account of ruining the play, the wood floor on the stage, and a whole lot of other things besides that.

  On Saturday, Principal Russell and Lara and Lara’s parents had a very serious talk in the principal’s office. Lara’s parents roared like lions and said they knew something like this was going to happen.

  Principal Russell tried to make Lara tell who dumped water and pigs and balloons on her in the play.

  They tried really, really hard to make her do this.

  Lara did not do this.

  Principal Russell said Lara had to tell what she knew—or else. Lara chose “or else.”

  Finally, Principal Russell got so mad that even though she and Lara and Lara’s parents and everybody else in Paris, Missouri, knew Lara hadn’t done one thing wrong, she “had no other recourse.” And that’s where the stories got mixed up because I don’t know about everybody else, but I had no idea what “recourse” meant.

  Some kids were saying that the principal kicked Lara out of Paris Elementary. Some were saying that Lara got a bunch of detentions, which is the opposite of getting kicked out because you stay even longer. I don’t know if either of these parts is true or maybe neither one.

  Lara’s parents got madder at Principal Russell and Paris Elementary than Principal Russell and Paris Elementary got at Lara or anybody else.

  This was the gossip I knew before going to school on Monday.

  On Monday when I got to school, not only was Lara not there, her special-made desk wasn’t there neither.

  “Where’s Lara?” I asked, glancing back at the door, where she’d first walked in.