Everyone's a Critic (8 page)

“It's okay. I'm sorry if I overreacted. I guess I got carried away with the Michael stuff.”

“No, never,” I said, joking.

“To tell you the truth, I've been a little jealous.”

“Jealous? Jealous of what? My endless crush on Michael Lawrence that never seems to go anywhere?”

“Yeah, kind of. I mean, I've just never felt that way about a guy.”

“What about Scott? What about Danny?” I asked, mentioning her past crushes.

“I don't even know what those were. And I'm not really friends with them anymore—I mean, not good friends. Even if you and Michael aren't exactly dating, you have a real friendship. Other than me, he's practically your best friend.” She looked down. I was afraid she might even start crying.

“Hailey, why didn't you tell me you felt this way before?”

“Sometimes it's hard to tell the truth,” she said, glancing up at me and looking guilty.

“Ah, yeah, just a little,” I said, and we both started laughing.

“Michael and I may be friends, but you're in a class by yourself!” I said, and we hugged.

My mom walked back from the ticket line and saw us hugging.

“Wish I had my camera,” she said. “I got the tickets; let's go.”

We walked into the auditorium. It was going to be a full house. People were everywhere, and more people kept walking in. There was so much buzz and energy. I wondered what Allie was doing right now. Hopefully, she was taking a lot of deep breaths. Even though she had been hard to take lately, I couldn't believe she had the guts to sing and dance in front of all these people. I could never do it. When Hailey slid past me to get to her seat, Mom touched me on the shoulder and smiled. “See, you guys just needed a little time,” she whispered. I nodded.

We had great seats—third row, center. We arranged our coats and got comfortable. Then the lights went down. A hush fell over the crowd.

The director came onstage and stood in front of the curtain. “Good evening,” he said. “Welcome to our drama club's performance of
West Side Story
. Please shut off all cell phones, cameras, and video
devices. Most important, enjoy the show!”

The lights went down again and the curtain went up. A big number for guys was first. The dancing was great and the outfits popped against the multicolored lighting. There was a huge backdrop of a New York cityscape behind them. The dancers leaped around fake fire escapes. It was like a real Broadway show. Allie came on a little later, in a big dance number. She was fantastic. I was so proud of her. I looked at my mom and she was a little misty, like she gets when she's really, really happy. My sister dances like nobody's business.

In fact, Allie was a lot better than Julia Gowen, who played Maria. Julia's first number was strong, but her second wasn't so great. She tripped once on a fake fire escape while dancing, and her voice cracked in a song. Then, after that, she forgot her lines, it seemed to me, about three times during the show. She would suddenly became silent, and the guy who played the male lead, Tony, would whisper in her ear. It was pretty bad. Then, toward the end of the
show, there was this huge crash offstage. It was hard to tell exactly where it came from, and the audience was so busy craning their necks to see what had made such a loud noise that they didn't really pay attention to the scene. Plus there were a few weird prop problems. At one point, one of the fake fire escapes wouldn't wheel off the stage and just sat there in the middle of the next scene. The lighting went dark on certain characters, and spotlights would show up on the ceiling.

So, needless to say, the play had some problems. The drama club is great, but I think they might have gotten in a little over their heads with this one.

“Did you like it?” I asked Hailey while we waited for Allie to emerge from backstage.

“Yeah, but it was a little rusty in places. Did you hear that crash?” she asked, her eyes wide and excited.

“Yeah. Well, at least no one got hurt. At least I hope not.” It wasn't easy pulling off a production like this, I thought.
School Play Opens, Everyone Survives.
Sheesh. “How about when
Maria forgot her line and Tony had to practically yell it across the stage?” I said. I hoped it was only opening-night jitters and they'd pull it together tomorrow.

“I know,” said Hailey, giggling.

Allie came out, still wearing her stage makeup and her eyelashes. Lots of people came up to her and told her she was amazing. She was. I was glad to see her getting the attention she deserved after all her hard work. I saw Julia Gowen too, but it seemed that not as many people were surrounding her. At one point she walked over to where Allie was standing and kind of took over the crowd. Allie finally left her admirers and came over to us with a sour expression on her face. I gave her a huge hug and told her she'd rocked it.

“Thanks, sis,” she said, brightening up again.

“Do you have time to come with us for ice cream before your cast party? We want to celebrate with you!” Mom said.

“Sure,” Allie said. “Let's go.”

At the ice-cream parlor, we gave Allie lots more kudos. She beamed.

“But Julia Gowen was a bit of a disaster. Memorize your lines much?” Allie said while she took a huge spoonful from the brownie sundae Hailey and I were sharing. I waved her hand away.

“Eat your own,” I said, pointing to the dish of double chocolate chip in front of her.

“Allie,” Mom said, “that's not nice. Maybe Julia just had an off night.”

“Well, it's not like Julia Gowen was that nice to me. She was competing with me the whole time, giving me critiques of my numbers when that's supposed to be, like, the director's job. Did you see how she totally took over my moment outside after the show? During rehearsals, she waltzed around like she was a Broadway diva instead of in a local school play. I mean, seriously, who acts like that?”

“I can't imagine,” Mom said, and gave me a secret smile.

“It's just because she knows you should have gotten the part of Maria. She's just insecure,” Hailey said, her mouth stuffed with ice cream and brownie.

“There's a reason I've always liked you,” Allie said to Hailey with a wink. Then they high-fived. Oh boy, now I was starting to feel a little sick, and it wasn't because of all that ice cream.

The next morning I jumped out of bed. Today was the day before the night of my almost first date with Michael Lawrence. How was I going to eat? What was I going to wear? I couldn't do this alone. I was so glad Hailey and I had figured things out, because I didn't think I'd get through this day without her.

After breakfast I called her.

“I need outfit advice,” I cried when she answered the phone.

“I'll be over in an hour,” she replied, and hung up.

Mom let me use her digital camera so we could take pictures of each outfit I tried on. We pulled out a bunch of choices from my closet. Long skirts, short skirts, jeans and blouses, scarves,
everything I had that would possibly be almost Saturday-night dateworthy. We played music and did rounds of combinations, and Hailey took pictures of all my looks. Then we downloaded them on the computer.

We were looking at two pictures side by side on my computer screen, comparing a pink embroidered T-shirt with a long gray skirt to skinny jeans and my silky green tunic, when there was a thud at the door.

“What are you guys doing in here?” Allie said frantically when we opened the door. “I can't hear myself sing!”

That would probably be a first.

“You don't want to wear yourself out. You still have two more shows,” I said, in the nicest possible way I could. I really didn't want to set Allie off now. She had two shows today, one in a couple of hours.

“I know,” Allie said, sitting down on my bed and heaving a big sigh. “Maybe you're right.”

I'm
right
? Did Allie just say I'm right? I wish I could have recorded it.

“So what's going on?” Allie demanded, getting up again and examining the clothes that were thrown everywhere, picking up the silky pale pink T-shirt with the flower embroidered in the same color on the front.

“Is this mine?” she said. Before I could answer, she went on. “Wait a minute . . . wait a minute, I know what's going on here. You're going to the play tonight with Michael Lawrence!” she said, and poked me in the chest.

I turned beet red. Hailey looked at me and back at Allie, opened her mouth to say something, and then seemed to think better of it.

“It's just a . . . thing for the paper,” I said, shrugging. Now I completely regretted mentioning this to her casually the other night after dinner. Allie hadn't teased me for it then, probably because she was so wrapped up in rehearsals, but now I had a feeling she was going to make up for lost time.

Allie had a big smirk on her face. “Yeah, just a thing. Uh-huh.”

“Whatever, Allie. You're in a different mood
every other second, and you haven't been that nice to any of us. I know the play is a lot of work, but it has kind of, well”—I thought for a moment, both Hailey and Allie staring at me, waiting for what I would say next—“taken over your life. And not always in a good way. So if you're going to be obnoxious about it, just leave us alone.” There! I'd said it. I wasn't afraid of Allie's reaction, either. She needed to hear it. I glanced at Hailey, and her mouth was hanging open. She quickly closed it. At first Allie looked surprised; then a little hurt; then her face softened.

“Show me your top outfits. We'll get you looking so good, Michael won't be able to pay attention to the show,” she said as she started holding up shirts against me.

My shoulders relaxed. Maybe she'd actually heard me for once. “And you promise you're not going to freak out and starting screaming at us about something?” I asked her.

“Just as long as you don't upstage me!” she said, and we laughed, but I think she might have only been half joking.

I tried on the top two outfits again. Allie chose the green tunic and skinny jeans, but added my brown suede boots, silver hoops, and a silky gray scarf. She stood back.

“Wear your hair down,” she said. “And wait!” She ran out of the room and came back with a clear lip gloss and smoothed it on me. “Perfect!”

“You look awesome,” said Hailey.

“Thanks,” I said, suddenly feeling shy with both of them admiring me. I turned around to check myself out in the mirror.
Not bad, Martone
, I thought.
Frazzled Reporter Cleans Up Nice.

Chapter 9

“Sammy!” my mother called from the kitchen. “Let's go. Don't want you to be late for your big night!”

I came out in my outfit, lip gloss shining and sticky on my mouth.

“Wow,” she said. “You look so cute!”

I smiled and blushed a bit, but I was kind of hoping for more than “cute.” Oh well, she was my mom. We headed out to the car and drove once again to the high school auditorium.

“So, are you excited?” she asked me.

“About the play?” I asked back.

“No, silly, about going to the play with Michael!”

“Please, Mom. It's just something we have to do for the paper,” I said for the hundredth time. Maybe the more I said it, the more I'd believe it.

“Oh, okay,” she said, and didn't say another word until we were almost there. I gazed down the long street that ran past the school and could see the crowds gathering in front of the auditorium entrance. It looked even more crowded than it had on opening night.

“Mom, can you just drop me off here?” I said in a rushed tone, feeling the nervousness take over my body. My hands felt shaky and my stomach started doing backflips.

“Really, this far away?” she said.

“It's okay, I don't mind walking,” I said, smoothing my hair. Now I was starting to feel sweaty.