Puppet Pandemonium (8 page)

“Richard Drew,” Bubba called out. Mr. Sims put his chalk down and faced the class.

“And who might he be?”

“The guy who invented Scotch tape.” Everyone burst out laughing.

“I don't think he qualifies,” Mr. Sims said.

Bubba opened his desk and held up his tape. “Why not?” he asked. “Everyone uses tape.”

“True,” Mr. Sims said.

“You said we could add to the list,” Bubba argued.

“All right, Mr. LaBoon. If Scotch tape has made a
difference in your life and if the class agrees with you, we can add Mr. Drew to the list.” Everyone laughed again.

Hannah passed me a note.
Maybe we could tape his mouth shut
.

“Students,” Mr. Sims said. “We will spend this class period working in groups and voting on the play's format. After today, we will be working on it after school. We have one month to get ready.” He and Coach Renfro had agreed to stay after school and chaperone us.

Hannah, Murray, Bubba, Samantha, Ansley, and I were Group 4. Hannah warned Bubba from the beginning that we didn't need any trouble. He didn't say he would behave, but he didn't say he wouldn't, either. The five of us worked on ideas for putting all the famous Americans in the same play. Ansley wanted to do a musical.

“You mean like a chorus line of dancing Thomas Jeffersons?” Hannah asked.

“Of course not,” Ansley said. She looked annoyed. “Just a regular musical, with patriotic songs and stuff like that. Everyone loves a musical. That's what they did two years ago when my sister was in fifth grade.”

“Yeah, and they lost,” Bubba pointed out.

“A musical could be fun,” Hannah admitted. “But we'd have to teach people how to dance and sing. Remember the rules? The play has to be original and produced by the fifth graders.”

Murray jumped in. “My mom says I can't carry a tune in a paper sack.”

“That's true,” Hannah said. Murray gave her a dirty look.

“I veto a musical,” Bubba said.

I wanted to contribute too. But Mr. Sims was telling us to wrap it up. He went around the room and called for a spokesperson from each group to share their ideas. Naturally, Hannah stood and spoke for us.

“We should each write a one-page report on the character we'd like to be,” she improvised. “If two people pick the same person, we can audition. People who don't get parts can work with scenery, costumes, tickets, and stuff like that.

“Unless there are special circumstances,” she added. “Like Murray's uncle works for NASA and Murray has been there to see real launches. His uncle gave him an astronaut suit and helmet. It's really cool. So Murray
needs
to be Neil Armstrong.”

Mr. Sims smiled.

The next group suggested a musical.

“See,” Ansley hissed. “Everyone loves a musical.” Bubba crossed his eyes.

I bit my lip. I had decided to stay quiet, but I was getting caught up in the excitement. Mr. Sims let us meet with our group one more time. I took a deep breath. “I have one last idea,” I told Group 4. “What if we did a wax museum?”

Everyone looked at me blankly. I kept going. “I went to Madame Tussaud's in New York City once. Have any of you ever been there?”

Samantha nodded. “I have,” she said. “It's wild.”

“You can ride a bike next to Lance Armstrong. Or put your arm around Will Smith,” I said.

Samantha nodded again. “I posed with J. Lo.”

“No way,” Bubba said. “You want us to sing and dance and ride a bike?” He put his head on the desk and moaned so loudly Mr. Sims asked him to be quiet. “No way am I going to do that.”

“Wax museums are awesome,” I said. “We could have a wax museum and have everyone dressed in the costume of their character.”

“You mean we'd stand there and not speak?” Hannah said. “Like a silent play or something?”

“I veto a silent play,” Bubba said. “That sounds stupid. I vote for the dancing Thomas Jeffersons.”

“No,” I said. “We would look like wax characters in a museum. Some kids would be dressed in regular clothes and visit the museum. They'd pretend to press a button on the wax character, and the wax character would come to life and give a talk.”

Murray raised an eyebrow.

“Our wax museum would be a living wax museum. A talking wax museum,” I added. “Well? What do you think?” My stomach did double flips. I was embarrassed
I'd mentioned it. “Never mind,” I blurted out. “It does sound stupid.”

“Fantastic!” Hannah cried. Her hands flew up in the air. “Mr. Sims,” she cried. “Listen!” She jumped out of her chair and ran to the front of the class. Everyone stopped talking and looked up. “Our group has one more idea to present, if it's not too late.”

“Somehow, Ms. Wilson, I think you would manage to tell us anyway, so go ahead. Tell us the idea.”

“Baker has a great idea.” She insisted I come up to the front and tell the class what I had just told Group 4. So I did.

There was complete silence. Then, from the back of the room, I heard clapping, and it spread to the front of the class row by row. It sounded exactly like the audience clapping when Mr. Fox had scared Ella Pearl away and she had threatened to cry. I felt the same sense of power I'd had then.

“Everyone in favor of a wax museum, raise your hand!” Hannah cried. Everyone except Bubba raised a hand. “Who wants Baker to direct it?” she said. I blinked at her. I'd never said I would direct! But the same hands flew up again.

“We've never had a talking wax museum,” Jake Crutcher said. “It just might work.”

I gulped. What had I gotten myself into?

M
urray and Hannah couldn't quit talking about the wax museum. I had helped Mr. Sims with the auditions and had told him my ideas about the play. Then we started rehearsal in the afternoons, and I started my job as director. Mr. Sims said I was doing a good job. It was hard sometimes to get everyone to listen to my directions. I thought about bringing a whistle like Coach Renfro used in gym. Everyone talked at once! Sometimes it got really confusing.

“Everyone loves your idea,” Murray said. He jabbed me in the arm. “Even Bubba finally admitted it was good.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But only at the last minute. He won't try to ruin it, will he?”

“No way,” Hannah said. “He wouldn't dare.”

“If he did, he knows the whole town of Franklin would be after him,” Murray said. “He couldn't make enough water bombs to save himself.” However, I wasn't too sure. I didn't know Bubba as well as they did. So far, I didn't trust him at all. He kept changing his mind about what he wanted to do for the play.

Mom had said I could invite my friends over for a snack after our rehearsal. We headed for my house.

“You won't be using chilis again, will you?” I had asked her before going to school.

“Maybe,” she'd said, grinning. “But I'll stuff them with peanut butter so you'll like them better.”

I couldn't believe what I saw when we walked into our kitchen. There were dozens of cakes everywhere.

“Mom, what's going on? Are you opening a bakery?”

“These are my experiments,” she said. “What do you think?”

“I think you've lost your mind! Experiments for what?”

“Your mom is entering her cakes in the festival contest,” Gram said.

“It smells great in here, Mrs. Kennedy,” Hannah said, sniffing. “Wish my mom would bake some experiments for the festival.”

“Your mother gave me the idea,” my mom said. “She convinced me to enter the baking contest. And I think it's going to be a great way to meet people. No sense in you kids having all the fun.”

It was like old times, having my mom and Gram baking together. They had baked some awesome stuff in the past for holidays and parties, and it was good to see them doing it again. I was glad that Gram had come for a visit. Our old Victorian house was beginning to smell like home.

Mom let us decide which cake we wanted to try for a snack, and we headed up to my secret room with a plateful of Buttercream Bavarian Wonder. Mr. Sims had given us an assignment on literary devices, and I didn't know a metaphor from a simile. Hannah and Murray admitted they didn't know much about them either. We planned on studying together.

“Who's that?” Hannah pointed to Waldo when we went into my room.

“Uh, that's Waldo,” I said. “He's my dummy friend. The puppeteers gave him to me as a going-away gift since I worked in the puppet theater.”

“Can you talk for him?” she asked.

I hesitated. “A little bit,” I said. “I'm not very good. I practice with him every day, though.”

“That's perfect!” Hannah cried. “No one has ever used puppets in the play, that I can remember. We're going to win this competition! I just know it.”

“Give us a demonstration,” Murray said. “We can study later.”

“I don't know,” I said. “I need more practice first. I'm a little rusty.”

“We don't have time for you to be rusty.” Hannah snapped her fingers, then handed me Waldo. “Showtime.”

She ran downstairs to ask Gram to join us. Gram sat over in the corner with Ricky Raccoon to watch. I knew I could depend on Ricky for help if I needed it. I sat Waldo on my lap.

“Hello, folks.” Silence filled the room.

“That's it?” Hannah asked. “ ‘Hello, folks’? Is that all you can say?”

“Of course not,” I said. “Waldo said hello to you guys. So what do you say back?”

“Hello?”

“No,” I said. “You say hello,
Waldo
. Let's try it again. Hello, folks!”

“Hello, Waldo!” they yelled.

“How are you?”

“Fine,” Murray said. “How are you?”

Hannah got up right in my face. She was so close I finally saw her contacts. “How do you do that?” she asked.

“Do what?” Waldo said. Hannah jumped back. I knew the feeling. The first time Leo had spoken to me, I had jumped ten feet.

“This is so cool,” Murray said.

“Tell me about iambic pentameter,” Waldo said. Gram chuckled.

“I feel like we're in English class,” Hannah said.

“Well, you're not,” Waldo told her. Hannah jumped back again. Murray cracked up.

“Being funny helps distract people from the letters that are not said correctly,” I said. “Another way to do it is to let the ventriloquist say the hard words first, and when the puppet actor repeats them, the vent says the word quickly.

“Example,” I said. “I love Mother.”

Then Waldo said it. “I love nother.” I said it so fast that it sounded like
mother
.

“You've got to bring him to school on Monday,” Hannah said. “Everyone will love him.”

“I hate school,” Waldo said. “I'm not going there.”

“You've got to come, Waldo,” Hannah said pleadingly. She didn't even look at me. She was talking to Waldo. I had the feeling she and Murray were both hooked.

“Maybe you can help me with more than just the lights for the puppet show at school,” Gram suggested later, after Murray and Hannah had left. She had arranged a classroom visit with Mr. Sims. “Looks like you and Waldo are ready to make your acting debut.”

“Me?” I asked, both nervous and surprised. I knew I was getting better with Waldo, but I wasn't good
enough yet to be in Gram's show with him. “I think I'll just work the props and the lights like I used to.”

“That's fine too, Baker,” Gram said. “But I think you're ready. Sometimes you've just got to face your fears. Think what Mr. Fox would do.”

Crawl into a foxhole?
I thought. But somehow I didn't think that was the answer Gram was looking for.

The next morning, I found Gram and Mom sipping tea in the backyard.

“I have to admit, I do miss my garden in Seattle,” Mom said longingly.

Gram patted her hand. “It just takes time to get things started.”

“But I'm learning what works and what doesn't. See those periwinkles over there?” Mom pointed to her garden near the well. “They love the sun, and the man at the garden center said they'll bloom all summer long if I remember to water them. But the geraniums just wilt unless they're in the shade. They can't take too much heat.”

“Who can?” I said. “I hope this doesn't last until winter. I'll wilt too.”

“Did I hear someone mention winter?” Dad asked, laughing as he came around the corner of the house.
“Don't hold your breath for winter. I'll be glad to dig the flower beds, and you and Gram can plant all day” he offered. “It's time to plant tulips for spring, anyway.”