Upstaged Read online

  ZACK DELACRUZ

  UPSTAGED

  By Jeff Anderson

  STERLING CHILDREN’S BOOKS and the distinctive Sterling Children’s Books logo are registered trademarks of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

  Text © 2018 Jeff Anderson

  Illustrations © 2018 Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-4549-3315-1

  For information about custom editions, special sales, and premium

  and corporate purchases, please contact Sterling Special Sales at

  800-805-5489 or [email protected].

  sterlingpublishing.com

  Illustrations and design by Andrea Miller

  No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused.

  —Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Play Time

  Chapter 2

  Witness Projection

  Chapter 3

  Abhi Normal

  Chapter 4

  All She Could Manage

  Chapter 5

  Trapped

  Chapter 6

  Bus Life

  Chapter 7

  Snack Delacruz

  Chapter 8

  Internal Conflict

  Chapter 9

  Star Quality

  Chapter 10

  Behind the Curtain

  Chapter 11

  Bah! Humbug!

  Chapter 12

  A Memorable Exit

  Chapter 13

  All Three?

  Chapter 14

  Who’s Who?

  Chapter 15

  The Role of Defeat

  Chapter 16

  Points

  Chapter 17

  You’re Toast!

  Chapter 18

  The Read-Through

  Chapter 19

  Rehearsing Gratitude

  Chapter 20

  The Puppet Master

  Chapter 21

  Rehearsal of Fortune

  Chapter 22

  Bonus

  Chapter 23

  Role Call

  Chapter 24

  The Old Ball and Chain

  Chapter 25

  Cooped Up

  Chapter 26

  Extra Drama

  Chapter 27

  6:03 A.M.

  Chapter 28

  The Raw Deal

  Chapter 29

  Revenge of the Coffee Concoction

  Chapter 30

  The Good Show Gift

  Chapter 31

  The Role of a Lifetime

  CHAPTER 1

  PLAY TIME

  I’ve never figured out why laughing gets you into trouble, but it does.

  Adults spend tons of time worried kids aren’t happy enough, but when you do have some fun, it’s always at the wrong time. Here’s some advice:

  Just zip it.

  Don’t laugh.

  Don’t enjoy yourself.

  Don’t say a word.

  Or the next thing you know, you’ll end up like me, doing something you don’t want to do.

  Mrs. Harrington’s English class was supposed to be browsing for books in the library. I stood by a bank of bookshelves with the usual suspects: Marquis, my best friend; Cliché, who was still crushing hard on Marquis; and the indefinable, original Janie. We weren’t exactly browsing for books as much as in one—our favorite: The Enormous Book of World Records.

  “Híjole! Wow!” Janie held open to the book’s spread on the world’s smallest woman. In the blurry photo, a doll-sized lady stood on a small footstool.

  “Wha’?” Cliché blurted. “It says here, she wears doll clothes from the American Girl shop.”

  “And she’s twenty-three years old!” Janie nodded, skimming the entry.

  “Man, that is old. I bet she’s got a lot of American Girl reward points by now!” Cliché added, fascinated.

  But I wasn’t paying much attention to the smallest lady in the world. She didn’t fascinate me like Abhi did. Abhi was not the smallest, but since the day she arrived a few weeks earlier, she was the most interesting girl at Davy Crockett Middle School. After checking out a Nancy Drew novel, she lounged at a table on the other side of the library, reading.

  She crossed her red Keds and slid them back under her chair, her toes pointing down like a ballerina. Even though we were friends, Abhi was still—like the book in her hands—a mystery. I couldn’t joke around or hang out with her the way I did with Marquis, Janie, and Cliché. I guess because José always gets to her first, or at least gets her attention. I wonder how I could be more attention-getting.

  “Hey, Zack, do you think this lady could ride a Chihuahua like a horse?” Marquis elbowed me.

  Cliché and Janie cackled loudly, and Cliché yelled, “You didn’t just say that, Marquis!”

  Hands on his hips, Marquis posed like a superhero. “I am Humor Man!”

  Shhh! I tried to stop the disruption before Mrs. Darling—the world’s loudest, most energetic, and most involved librarian—put us in charge of shelving books or running another school fundraiser, or something worse.

  But my shhhh was too late. My friends and I were going down like dominoes. And on my watch! Were we going to get sent to the office? We’d already been warned once today.

  “Well, well, well.” Mrs. Darling rested her rose-smelling hands on Marquis’s and my shoulders. Using her green eyes like lasers, she targeted each of us. I couldn’t tell if we were in trouble or if we would get away with it. We all grinned at once, trying to put on the charm.

  “We sure do enjoy library time, Mrs. Darling.” Marquis smiled up at her, batting his long eyelashes. Cliché snorted at his obvious insincerity. Then the giggles bubbled up, and the more we tried to hold the snickers in, the funnier it got. Even though we knew we should stop, we couldn’t. Somehow knowing we shouldn’t laugh made us laugh even harder. Dad calls it church giggles. Cliché hiccupped, Marquis snorted, and Janie sprayed spit as her cackle cut loose, causing the four of us to burst into even louder uncontrollable laughter.

  “Yes.” Janie tried to save us. “Books are entertainment, like the movies, Mrs. Darling.”

  “You and your friends like entertainment a lot, it appears.” Mrs. Darling crossed her arms.

  We stopped laughing.

  Was that a question? I wondered. I wasn’t sure what the right answer was. It felt like a trick. By the silence, I don’t think anyone else knew either.

  “You like entertainment, and it’s obvious you already know the art of vocal projection, as evidenced by your outbursts today.” She pulled us in even tighter, so tight it was uncomfortable. “I have just the opportunity for you all to utilize your talents to their fullest.”

  Opportunity was one of those words adults use when they want you to do something hard. What was she going to drop on us now?

  Chapter 2

  WITNESS PROJECTION

  “What do you mean by projection?” Cliché asked, hand on her hip.

  “Great question, Cliché.” Mrs. Darling pressed her hand on an oversized cheetah-print scarf, which swooped around her neck like a medieval shield. “As in, the art of being heard.” She widened her stance and performed to the entire library. “As in the thea-TUH!” She thrust her arms up toward the ceiling tiles. Making eye contact with her audience around the library, she thumped her chest and extended her right arm outward. “As in, projecting one’s voice to the back of the thea-TUH!”

  The class flinched at the sheer vol
ume.

  “Why is she yelling?” Cliché whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Marquis said, shrugging and sticking his fingers in his ears. “Maybe she’s mad.”

  “She’s not mad,” Janie assured us. “She’s talking about the smell of the greasssepaint and the roar of the crowd.” People used to tease Janie about her lisp, but now they just see it as a part of her, like her brown hair. Janie handed the book off to Cliché and joined in Mrs. Darling’s show. “She’s projecting so the audience can hear every sscrumptioussss word of the playwright!”

  It sounded like Janie was now an expert on movies and the theater.

  “Sorry Mrs. D., and no disrespect, Janie,” Cliché scoffed, “but we’re not interested in the thea-TAH, with its smells and greases and whatnots.” She turned back to The Enormous Book of World Records, which she now controlled.

  “Ma says I have a dramatic flair.” Marquis stood straighter, smiling.

  Thud!

  Cliché dropped the huge record book to the floor.

  “Oh, Marquis!” Mrs. Darling cupped his face in her hands. “You are just the kind of man I hope will show up at the auditions tomorrow.”

  “Did I hear someone is interested in . . . a man?” El Pollo Loco, José’s alter ego, interrupted, stroking his imaginary mustache.

  Everybody watched.

  “There is no need for, how you say, an audition.” He gently took Mrs. Darling’s hand. She attempted to pull it away, but José gripped it tighter and stared straight into her green eyes. “I am the man you are looking for, I can assure you, my lovely library lady.” I thought he might bend down and kiss her hand, right on her old library-green fingernail polish.

  “She’s telling us about the theater, El.” Janie nudged herself between Mrs. Darling and José. He stepped back as if Janie were radioactive, releasing Mrs. Darling’s hand.

  “It’s about acting—not about who you are.” Janie thumped her chest as Mrs. Darling had. “Theater is about who you could be.” She may not have been radioactive, but something had infected Janie, and it was the acting bug.

  “Not being yourself? That could be a good role for you, Janie,” José jabbed, flipping up the red collar on his uniform shirt. “Ha! HA!” When no one laughed, he put his collar back down. Disappointed, José added, “Justkidding.”

  For the last couple of weeks, after multiple detentions, whenever José insulted or pranked anyone, he immediately added a quick justkidding at the end, all at once, as if it were one word, and as if it were an eraser that made his harsh words disappear into little dark rolls of nothing. He was changing a little, I guess. “Awareness is the first step,” the school counselor, Dr. Smith-Cortez always said. At least José was trying to erase his mean jokes, but even so, his victims were still left hurt.

  “Acting is a way to entertain people without hurting feelings.” Mrs. Darling mussed José’s hair.

  “Hey, Miss Library Lady, don’t touch my do!” El Pollo Loco raised his hand to protect his part.

  Ignoring him, Mrs. Darling picked up a large gold bell and raised it above her head. José ducked. “Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye!” Mrs. Darling rang the bell, like the town criers we learned about in fifth-grade American history. “For the fifteenth year in a row, as sponsor, director, and playwright, I’m happy to announce the Actin’ Alamos’ annual production of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.”

  “My nana’s name is Carol!” Chewy Johnson said as he joined the growing group.

  Mrs. Darling slammed the bell on a shelf, sighing, “Be that as it may, I am searching for people who can project for onstage roles.”

  Not me, I thought, trying not to make eye contact with Mrs. Darling. I wouldn’t want an onstage role to save my life. I know how this works: I get volunteered to do something I don’t want to do. Can’t do. And then I’m supposed to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and I don’t even know what bootstraps are. I don’t even own a pair of boots. I definitely needed to stay away from this. I tried to step away. I could hear my heart thumping, and it wasn’t a good kind of excitement. My survival instinct was kicking in, like Mr. Stankowitz taught us about. I was choosing flight instead of fight.

  “What about backstage roles?” Bossy Blythe Balboa asked. Now that Blythe was taking the focus, I felt relieved and was able to slip back a few steps. Blythe continued, “I want to be in charge of stuff.” Her eyes widened. Besides being the sixth grade’s student council representative, she was always trying to be in charge of stuff like cooperative groups. In her eyes, cooperative groups were created so that everyone would cooperate with whatever she decided.

  “There will be both onstage and offstage roles.” Mrs. Darling tried to keep moving forward, but the questions flew at her, splatting on her surprised face like bugs on the windshield of Mom’s Honda.

  “What do you mean roles?” Cliché asked.

  “It’s like a part in the play, like a starring role.” Janie’s eyes glazed over and her shoulders rolled back.

  I took a few more steps back and leaned on a bookshelf. Count me out. I wasn’t going to star in anything. I turned toward the nonfiction shelf and pretended to browse.

  “I have more of an onstage look, don’t I?” El smoothed his black hair.

  Now even I shortened José’s nickname to El. Only a few months ago, he was the school bully. Now he was looking for other ways to get all the attention—especially from Abhi. So I guess now he’s the type that goes out for parts in plays, performing for everybody. Not me. Not ever.

  “How much does this theater gig pay?” El asked, squinting.

  “We’ll all be paid through the adoration and applause of an appreciative audience, like on those singing competition shows you watch.” The class gathered closer to Mrs. Darling, leaning in.

  “Is A Christmas Carol that movie with that goofy kid Ralphie with glasses?” Marquis asked, zipping his powder-blue warm-up jacket up and down.

  “Yeah, I love that movie,” I nodded, stepping toward the group again, “that blond kid keeps wanting a Red Ryder air rifle the whole time.”

  The class laughed and nodded.

  “A goofy kid with glasses?” El zoomed in on me like an airborne drone. “Well, well, well, Zack.” Target identified. “That sounds like it was written just for you.”

  Embarrassment missile deployed.

  Not justkidding.

  Chapter 3

  ABHI NORMAL

  “No!” Janie shook her head. “Absolutely not! You’re talking about the classic holiday-time feel-good film, A Christmas STORY, nineteen eighty-three, starring a bespectacled Peter Billingsley,” Janie, the movie and play expert, explained. “A Christmas CAROL has been made into multiple movies and TV specials far too numerous to name. But I can say this with certainty: A Christmas CAROL is far, far older and more dramatic than A Christmas STORY. In fact, in twenty seventeen A Christmas Story was performed live on TV.”

  That’s right, Janie. Keep talking, I thought. Everyone would forget all about El’s humiliating drone attack on me.

  “You mean like old from when Mrs. Library Lady was a kid?” José popped his head toward Mrs. Darling.

  “I guess,” Janie squinted, trying to do the mental math.

  For a few seconds, everyone looked Mrs. Darling up and down, from her swooped-up-like-a-tropical-storm red hair to her lime-green jumpsuit, ready for space travel. Her fingerlike toes struggled to free themselves from their gold sandal prisons. The finger-toes looked like tentacles, with their painted orange heads reaching for the library carpet, undulating like the pink squid in the science video we saw in Mr. Stankowitz’s class.

  “Wooow!” the shocked class sighed. Nobody could wrap their heads around a time so ancient as when Mrs. Darling was a kid.

  Abhi walked up, all smiles. “A Christmas CAROL is the play about a cheapskate named Ebenezer Scrooge.”

  Finally! When Abhi talked, I listened. I loved the way she said the character’s name: Ebenezer Scrooge. It sounded poetic, like
when she said my name, too: Zack Delacroooz.

  Blythe barged in between Abhi and me, holding a blue notepad like a reporter in an old-timey movie. “When did you say the auditions were again, huh?”

  “I didn’t.” Mrs. Darling cleared her throat. “But so glad you asked, Blythe. Auditions—tryouts for the play—are tomorrow after school.” Mrs. Darling glided toward the bulletin board with a red sheet of paper.

  The class rushed behind her to see what the sheet said. Mrs. Darling stuck white and green pushpins into each corner.

  Blythe shoved her way to the front and began reading the bulletin aloud, even though nobody had asked her to—or wanted her to.

  AUDITIONS FOR

  The Davy Crockett Actin’ Alamos’

  Annual Production of

  A CHRISTMAS CAROL

  By Charles Dickens

  November 12th

  After School in the Cafetorium

  Adapted, Produced, and Directed by Judith K. Darling, MIS

  Blythe stood so close behind Mrs. Darling that she was unable to step away from the sign. “What do you need me to be in charge of? I’m student council representative for sixth grade, so of course you want me to do something that requires upper management skills.” In her white cardigan, Blythe looked like a life-size pushpin, pinning Mrs. Darling to the bulletin board.

  Mrs. Darling struggled to free herself. Wiggling herself free, she grunted, “So very helpful.” But it didn’t sound like she thought it was helpful at all.

  “I used to fancy myself an actress in my day.” Mrs. Harrington, our English teacher, pulled her hair behind her ears, stepping away from her guard post at the checkout desk. “If it helps, I’ll give extra credit to anyone who works on the play.”

  “Wonderful idea, Mrs. Harrington,” Mrs. Darling said, breathing easier now that she wasn’t pinned to the bulletin board like an announcement. “Every little bit helps. Huzzah! Team library and language arts unite!”

  “Seriously?” José walked up to Mrs. Harrington. “Because I need whole lot of points for not turning in my at-home reading log.”