The Sea-Quel (10 page)

She smiled at Pradeep. “You know, I heard that Laurence Olivier was very taken with goldfish as well.”

I stomped over to a couple of chairs with Pradeep. As soon as we sat down, I grabbed the backpack back off him. “You might have everyone else in this school on your side, but you don't have Frankie!” I said. Frankie's eyes darted back and forth between Pradeep and me. I couldn't look at him so I zipped up the bag.

“Let's just get on with this,” Pradeep said, looking at his script. It was covered in green highlighter pen.

My script had my one line circled in pencil.

“If you read from page twenty-seven, ‘I'll never surrender…'” Pradeep said. “You can test me on that bit.”

Normally, I would have made a joke with Pradeep about never surrendering to zombies or Evil Scientist brothers, but no jokes came.

We just ran the lines.

*   *   *

Finally it was the day of the play. We were having the dress rehearsal in the afternoon and the performance that night. Mrs. Kumar, Pradeep's mom, had come in to help out with costumes. My costume was on the list as “general peasant's clothes,” which meant I got to wear whatever leftover trousers and shirts were in the back of the costume cupboard, rolled in dirt, plus an oversize baker's hat. I didn't even get to do the rolling in dirt bit with the clothes on. They did that before. Total con!

Mrs. Kumar was straightening Pradeep's tunic and cape. “I'm done, Mom. They need me onstage now. I am Robin Hood, after all—you know, the star of the show?” Pradeep squirmed away from his mom's fussing.

“Oh, someone is getting a big head for a little man,” Mrs. Kumar said.

She hiked up his tights in a way that just couldn't be comfortable, handed him his hat, and said, “
Now
you are done. You can go.”

CHAPTER 4

DRESS-REHEARSAL DRAMA

Once we were all made-up and in our costumes, we had to wait on the stage for our pep talk with Mrs. Flushcowski. Pradeep somehow managed to look cool in his green tunic and hat with a feather in it. OK, so he had to wear tights, but still.

Mrs. Kumar beamed up at us from the front row. Sami, Pradeep's three-year-old sister, was there too. She was watching Frankie for me while we rehearsed, playing with him at the back of the hall.

We all sat on the stage in our costumes and waited. Then Mrs. Flushcowski entered the room. And she made “an entrance,” as she was always telling us kids to do. She flounced in and stood in front of us all, pacing up and down the stage for
ages
before she said anything. Then she took a deep breath and spoke very seriously.

“I have a very important announcement,” she said. “We are having a special visitor attend tonight's performance.”

Then she did one of her really long pauses again. This must have been the person Mark was talking about.

“I worked with him when I appeared as ‘Nurse in Hallway' on
Emergency Hospital
, and he's always remembered me. He is in town and has said he will come to see the rising talent that this school has to offer. He is none other than the acclaimed judge of
Talent or No Talent—
Solomon Caldwell!”

The whole cast gasped. I didn't see what the big deal was. What was Solomon Caldwell going to say to me—“Wow, that walking baker's hat's got talent?” I didn't think so.

“Everything must be
PERFECT
for tonight. Do you understand?” Mrs. Flushcowski looked at me in particular. “Oh yes, one more thing—this will be the first time that the eighth-grade boys will be helping us as stage crew. I've asked them to come in to make sure the special effects and lighting will be just right. Remember that they are doing this to be helpful, so please, be helpful to them.” A group of eighth-graders dressed in black T-shirts stepped out from backstage.

“Hello,” Mark said, striding across the stage with a smoke machine. He put it in its position offstage right. “That's right, we're gonna be
really
helpful.” He grinned.

Oh no! Of all the boys she could get, why did it have to be my Evil Scientist big brother? He was dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans. No evil scientist lab coat today. Maybe that was a sign that he wasn't going to be evil. Maybe he really was just going to work on the show and that was it.

Mark walked over to me and spoke in a low whisper: “They said I had to take off my white lab coat. Gotta be all in black so no one can see me in the dark. It gets pretty dark backstage, moron.” Then he did his Evil Scientist laugh, “Mwhahahaha,” and smiled.

Mrs. Flushcowski turned around, “Very impressive evil laugh, young man. I had to do a laugh like that when I played ‘Female Head in Jar' in the Evil Scientist classic
Help! I've Created a Monster.
It's not as good as mine, but it's good,” she added.

As soon as she turned to go Mark hissed, “Hey, moron, break a leg! That's what they say in the theater, right?” and he got that creepy smile again.

This was a Code Orange situation at least. I turned to Pradeep to shoot him a look that said, “We're in big trouble because Mark is here and definitely out to get us.” But for the first time since we came up with our code of looks, Pradeep was not looking back at me.

It was no good. Pradeep was too wrapped up in the show to notice that we were in danger. It was all up to me now. I was just about to sneak offstage to see what Mark was up to when Mrs. Flushcowski called out, “Places!”

I'd learned that when she says that she means it's time to get to where you are meant to be at the start of the show. It was theater code, I guessed.

As we were rushing to our places, I peeked under the closing curtain and saw Mrs. Kumar motion for Sami to come and sit next to her in the front row. Sami walked slowly over to the seat, carrying my backpack with Frankie in it. Then I saw it. She was looking at the stage and up her mom's left nostril.

Sami had the Frankie zombie goldfish stare!

CHAPTER 5

SWISHY FISHY FACE

“Ready?” Mrs. Flushcowski called out from her director's chair right in front of the stage. She placed her script and a cup of tea on the table in front of her. “Curtain up … now!” she declared.

The lights went down and the curtain rose. In the darkness I could see two little green glowing points coming from the unzipped backpack on Sami's lap. Frankie must have heard Mark's voice! I could imagine him going all zombie thrash fish inside the bag, his eyes blazing a brilliant revenge green.

Without her mom noticing, Sami quietly got up and moved to the side of the stage. She lifted up the backpack and I could see Frankie roll his plastic bag out and toward stage left. Then the green glow disappeared.

“Thank goodness someone put out those green lights. Action!” Mrs. Flushcowski called.

So now the dress rehearsal was starting, Mark was in charge of the smoke machine offstage right and Frankie was rolling around in his bag offstage left! I needed to stop the two of them from bumping into each other behind the scenes and bumping each other off (well, off the stage at least!).

From my starting place in the crowd of supporting cast members, I waved at Pradeep to try to tell him what was going on, but he just looked ahead, concentrating on his
ACTING
. I
had
to get his attention somehow.

In the first scene he had to rob some rich travelers and then give the money to the poor.

As the travelers rode onto the stage, I tried our “Look at me! There is something important I need to tell you!” yawn, but got nothing.

Then, when Pradeep was jumping out at the travelers to rob them I tried our “There's danger here!” pretend coughing fit. Still, nothing.

If I thought that anyone else would believe that my Evil Scientist big brother was about to undertake some kind of evil plot, then I would have yelled it from center stage. But I only knew one person who would understand what was happening, and that was the one person who wasn't talking to me.

As a last resort, I tried our “random owl calls in a place where there wouldn't be owls to show that something's wrong” noise, but unfortunately I did it right before Pradeep's line about sending a bird with a message to Maid Marian.

Mrs. Flushcowski shouted, “Brilliant bird noise. That's your talent, Tom. Well done!”

Nothing was working!

That was when I saw it. Mark had climbed up onto the metal rigging above the stage where the curtains were hung. He was hooking what looked like a small garbage bag to a pole right next to the rope that Pradeep was meant to swing from in the next scene. The weird thing was, the bag was wriggling.

Whatever Mark was doing, it had evil plan written all over it.

Then I saw Sami on the opposite side of the stage, just out of sight of Mrs. Flushcowski. She was waving and trying to get Pradeep's attention too, but he was turned out to the audience, saying his big speech about how he wouldn't rest until he had stopped the Sheriff of Nottingham and his evil ways. I couldn't help thinking that some real-life evil ways needed sorting out first!

I owl-hooted to get Sami's attention.

“No more birds in this scene, Tom, thank you,
darling
,” Mrs. Flushcowski bellowed.

But it had worked. Sami looked over at me. She didn't look zombified anymore. But she did look very worried.

I shot her a look to ask what was wrong. Now this was risky, as I had never tried communicating in looks with Sami before, and I had no idea if it would work.

She looked scared. Then she looked up at the bag Mark had hung above the stage.

After that she did a pretty good impression of a goldfish face, looked up at the bag again, did a silent “Mwhahahaha” Evil Scientist laugh, and then looked over at Pradeep.

Sami was telling me that Frankie was in the bag above the stage. Mark had put him there as part of his evil plan, and Pradeep was in danger. You could tell Sami was Pradeep's sister. He had taught her well.