Dunces Anonymous (6 page)

“Holy cow, Magnolia, are you sure you want to quit the school play?” Josh said, as they walked home after the chess tournament. They were sharing a bag of chips that Josh had bought at the corner store near the school.

Magnolia took a potato chip out of the bag and rolled her eyes.

“I thought you were on my side, Josh.”

“I am, but, wow! You were great back there! I mean, you're a really good actress.”

“That was different. That was fun. But playing Juliet with Emmett Blackwell…”

“I know, it's pretty disgusting.” Josh munched on a chip. “Still, at least you're good at it. I wish I was
that
good at something.”

“What are you talking about?” Magnolia stopped in her tracks and turned to look at him. “You're a good president!”

“No, I'm not.” Josh scuffed some dead leaves on the sidewalk with the toe of his sneaker.

“Sure you are. Presidents are supposed to help people, aren't they?” Magnolia continued. “And you just helped Wang by going to the chess tournament in his place, didn't you? Even though you could have gotten in trouble for it.”

Josh shrugged. “I guess.”

“Well then, that just proves that you're a good president! Besides,” she added, “you started Dunces Anonymous, and it's the coolest club in the school.”

Josh didn't say anything, and they started walking again, eating their chips. But her words stayed in his head after he left her at her house, and all the way home. When he got to the lobby of his mom's condo building, he didn't take his usual route up the back stairs. Instead he stood right there, next to two adults he didn't know, waiting for the shiny gold elevator doors to open. He rode with them all the way up to the sixth floor. If they ask me who I am, he thought, I'll just tell them I'm the president. The president of the coolest club in the school.

SEVEN
OPERA TION FREE JULIET

E
mmett Blackwell was really getting on Magnolia's nerves. He wouldn't even speak to her when she was just Schoolgirl Number Three, and now that she was Juliet, he wouldn't lay off. Planning to kiss her on performance night! Calling her “my Juliet” in the schoolyard and winking at her at recess! It was gross!

She looked down on him from the wooden platform that was supposed to represent Juliet's balcony. It was six weeks until performance night and they were practicing the balcony scene—again. Magnolia wished they would rehearse Act Five instead, where Juliet commits suicide. It was the only part of the play that Magnolia found satisfying.

Now, as Emmett stood below her on the stage, vowing his undying love, Magnolia felt an urge to pour boiling oil on him, the way old-time knights did when enemies tried to scale their battlements. Magnolia glanced at her mother, who was sitting on her usual chair facing center stage. Mom would not be impressed if Magnolia poured boiling oil on Romeo.

She looked down again at Emmett, who was gazing up at her, love struck.

“‘See! How she leans her cheek upon her hand!'” Emmett exclaimed
.
“‘Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!'”

That was Magnolia's cue. She stepped forward.

“‘O, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou…'”

“Hold it! Stop! Stop!” shouted Mrs. Karloff, walking out onto the stage. “Juliet, darling, it's nighttime. It's dark outside. You walk out onto your balcony. You are carrying…what?”

“A lantern,” Magnolia grumbled.

“Right. So where is it?”

“I couldn't find it.” Backstage was a mess, as usual. The props table, which had started out fairly neat, was now completely covered in a heap of plastic swords from the Capulets and the Montagues. The other props were scattered in and around the swords at random, along with a jumble of things that people had left there after using the gymnasium and which had nothing whatsoever to do with the play: pairs of smelly gym shorts, lost textbooks, orphan running shoes.

“Go and look for the lantern, darling,” sighed Mrs. Karloff. “If you don't practice with it now, you'll fumble it during the performance.” Mrs. Karloff clapped her hands. “All right, everyone. Take five.”

Magnolia clumped down the steps at the back of the platform, holding up the long cotton skirt that Mrs. Karloff made her wear for rehearsals. On performance night, she would be wearing a floor-length princess dress. Mrs. Karloff called it “romantic.” “Romantic!” Magnolia harrumphed, nearly tripping over the skirt. “What's so romantic about a dress you can't even walk in?”

“Oh, Magnolia! I found the lantern!” Hannah Flynn came running up to her, holding a battered camping light.

“Thanks,” said Magnolia, taking it.

“Oh, Magnolia!” Hannah continued breathlessly. “Is it really true that you're Emmett's
girlfriend
?”

“Where did you hear
that
?”

“It's on the
Rapsheet
. I saw it this morning! I thought I was going to die!”

The
Rapsheet
. That figured. The
Rapsheet
—
www.rapsheet.org
—was the most popular student blog at Oakview Public School. It was part school news, part school sports and mostly school gossip. Magnolia didn't know who ran the
Rapsheet
, but she strongly suspected that this little piece of “information” had been passed on to whoever-it-was by Emmett himself.

“Well, it's not true,” said Magnolia. “Emmett and I have a purely
professional
relationship.”

“That's what
you
say. That's not what everyone else says.” Hannah giggled. “Isn't he cute? Doesn't it make you want to die when he calls you ‘my heart's dear love'?”

“No,” said Magnolia. Actually, it made her want to puke.

“Emmett Blackwell's girlfriend!” Hannah sighed.

“I'm not his girlfriend!” Magnolia shouted. Why couldn't Hannah get that through her dorky head?

“Places everyone!” Mrs. Karloff clapped her hands.

Magnolia looked out onstage, where Emmett lurked in wait for her.

“‘What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!'” Emmett proclaimed.

Maybe, Magnolia thought, jumping off a roof wasn't such a bad idea, after all.

After rehearsal, Magnolia called an emergency meeting of Dunces Anonymous at the jungle gym in the schoolyard.

“I've got to get out of this, you guys,” she said to Josh and Wang, after filling them in on Emmett's escalating romantic intentions. An October wind brushed the back of her neck, and she pulled her jean jacket tighter around her.

“I know!” said Wang, jumping up to swing on the monkey bars. “What if one of us pulls the fire alarm on performance night?”

The idea was tempting.

“We'd get in trouble if we got caught…,” Magnolia hesitated.

“And it would ruin the play for everyone else, which wouldn't be fair,” said Josh.

“Yeah, I guess you're right,” Wang admitted. “And the fight scenes are going to be really cool.”

“Lucky you, you don't have to kiss anyone,” Magnolia grumbled.

Josh swung slowly on the swing, dragging his feet through a pile of dead leaves that had fallen from the big maple tree in the corner of the schoolyard. Wang jumped down from the monkey bars.

“Maybe you should just quit. Tell your mom you're not going to do it!” Wang said.

“Are you nuts?” Magnolia said. “She'll have a total meltdown. First she'll cry. Then she'll say, ‘Playing Juliet was my lifelong dream! Now you have the chance, and you're throwing it away!' Then she'll make me feel like I'm ruining her life all over again.”

Magnolia crossed her arms.

“I can't do it,” she said. “I'd rather get kissed by Emmett Blackwell.”

Wang jumped back onto the monkey bars. Josh spun the swing clockwise until the chains were twisted together; then he dangled his legs in the pile of leaves while the swing slowly unwound.

“Mr. Xiu says, ‘Know the mind of your opponent,'” Josh reflected. “What do we know about your mom, Magnolia?”

“Well, she loves acting—movies,
TV
, the stage, it doesn't matter. She says she loves being swept up in the drama,” Magnolia began. “And, of course, she believes in True Love. Like that soap opera she watches. It doesn't matter how ridiculous the plot is, if it's about True Love, she'll fall for it.”

“True Love,” Josh repeated, scuffling his sneakers through the leaves. “So if we could convince her that Emmett had found the One True Love of His Life, she'd want them to be together, no matter what?”

“Yeah, of course,” said Magnolia.

“Even if it wasn't you?”

“Yeah, as long as it was the Love of His Life.”

“Then I think I've got a plan,” said Josh. “We'll call it Operation Free Juliet.”

EIGHT
ROSES FOR EMMETT

J
osh's plan for Operation Free Juliet required cunning and courage. Naturally, Wang had volunteered for the mission. “Cunning is my middle name,” he'd told Josh. Now it was time for him to live up to his bold words.

It was Wednesday afternoon at four o'clock. Onstage, the rehearsal was in full swing. They were practicing the scene between Romeo and the priest. Josh stood at his post beside the curtain pull-cord. Around the gym, the other actors were doing homework or memorizing their lines, waiting for their turn to come onstage. Some had gone out to the corner store to stock up on snacks. No one would miss Wang if he snuck out for a few minutes.

Stealthily, Wang pushed open the door to the boys' change room. The coast was clear. Moving quickly, he opened his backpack and took out a dozen roses that Magnolia had salvaged from her cousin's wedding that past weekend. Emmett's backpack with the
Anne of Green Gables
logo on the front pocket was sitting on a bench. Swiftly, Wang opened the backpack and placed the roses inside, arranging them so that the blooms stuck out of the top and sent a girly perfume wafting over the change room's usual smell of stinky socks and old gym shoes. He tucked a pink note amid the flowers. Then he retreated to the gym and waited for the end of rehearsal.

As Wang had expected, the flowers were the first thing the boys noticed when they crowded into the change room at 5:00 pm. Wang and Josh brought up the rear of the crowd, sliding quietly onto a bench in the far corner to watch the action unfold.

“Hey! There's a note!” shouted Declan, the redheaded, cat-faced boy who played Juliet's cousin, Tybalt. He pounced on the backpack and grabbed the folded pink notepaper before Emmett could stop him. Then he jumped up on a bench, and read aloud in a mocking tone:

“I sit and watch you every day
And wish I knew the words to say.
I'm too afraid to let you know
I wish you were my Romeo.

—A Secret Admirer”

“Emmett's got a secret admirer!” someone shouted. Catcalls erupted from all corners of the change room.

Emmett looked down his nose. “All great actors have secret admirers.”

He snatched the note back from Declan. Then he plucked a rose from the bouquet, held it to his nose and sniffed it loudly.

“Ahh! ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet!'” he exclaimed. He swung his backpack onto his shoulder, raised his chin in the air and marched out the door.

The boys broke into laughter and jeers, but Wang looked at Josh and grinned. Operation Free Juliet had begun.

Two days later, Wang snuck into Emmett's class at recess and left a package of candy hearts on his desk. The following week, he wrote a poem in chalk on the blackboard of Emmett's classroom at lunch hour:

Lovely Emmett, tall and fine,
Oh, how I wish that you were mine!
Very handsome, eyes so blue,
Emmett Blackwell, I love you!

—A Secret Admirer”

The school was abuzz, trying to guess the identity of the Secret Admirer. The
Rapsheet
had started an online poll where kids could vote for their favorite suspect. But Dunces Anonymous had even greater schemes to make Emmett believe that someone at school was his One True Love.

“You ready for this?” Josh whispered to Wang the next day, as they hid in a back stairwell at the end of the second-floor hallway near Emmett's locker. There was no rehearsal that day; the gym was being used for volleyball practice. The end-of-school bell had just rung, and though the hall was filled with kids jostling to get out of school, the stairwell itself was empty. That was because at the bottom of the stairs there was a heavy door with a notice affixed to it:
Emergency Exit Only. Alarm Will Sound If Door Opened
.

“Are you sure of the combination?” Wang whispered back.

“I told you: nineteen, thirty-five, fifty-one,” said Josh. “Look.”

Josh pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He pushed a button on the phone and a video appeared of Emmett's hand, turning the combination lock from his school locker.

“How'd you get that?” Wang hissed.

“Magnolia got it. She went to talk to Emmett at lunch hour. She said it nearly killed her to stand that close to him!”

“Awesome!” Wang whispered. “Let's check our supplies.” Wang opened his backpack, and the two of them looked inside. A powder blue stuffed teddy bear that Wang had bought from a dollar-store remainder bin sat there with a note pinned at its heart:

Roses are red,
Poems are clever,
Kiss me once
And I'm yours forever!

—A Secret Admirer”

“Okay,” whispered Josh. “Let's do this.”

The noise in the hallway had died down. Josh opened the stairwell door a crack, and he and Wang peered out. The hall was empty. Emmett's locker was about ten steps away. Twenty steps beyond that, the hallway turned a corner, leading to more classrooms.

“The coast is clear!” said Josh. “I'll stand guard at the corner. If I see anyone coming, I'll shout and you run for cover.”