Emily ignored her brother's comment and stared at me for a long moment, a look of disbelief on her face. “Great. So you're going to be spending even more time at my school?”
“It's not your school,” Grace pointed out. “You don't own it.”
Emily glared at her.
“We can put on a talent show,” I said, the idea taking hold. “Students and their families.”
“That sounds lame,” Emily said, munching on a chip. “No one will go.”
“Everyone will go,” Will told me. “She's just saying that. If you charged like five bucks, everyone would come see people do stupid stuff.”
“And some good stuff,” Sophie added. She beamed at me and her expression made me feel like I really had come up with the best idea ever. “Like, people could play instruments and sing and stuff
I just nodded, listening to them as they shouted out their thoughts and ideas. They were all right. Low admission charge. No overhead because we could use the auditorium to hold it. We could advertise it at school and in the community. And we could take donations at the door. It was a far better idea than anything else I'd come up with.
“Why do you have to be the one to come up with money for the computers?” Emily asked. Her fingers were coated with barbecue residue and she brushed them on her pants. “Shouldn't that be, like, someone who works at school?”
“You'd think,” I said. “But I have no clue. Your
“Yeah, and you should make families participate,” Sophie said. “That way they'd come.”
“Oh, like a requirement?” I nodded. “That's a very good idea.”
“You and Em should do something!” Grace yelled. “Like synchronized swimming!” We'd just watched a documentary about summer Olympic sports and she'd been fascinated by the girls who swam in tandem.
Em's hand, loaded with a new potato chip, stopped halfway to her mouth.
“Oh yeah,” Will said, grinning. “Emily should totally have to be in it if you're in charge.”
“You guys could do something together,” Sophie said, looking at Em, then me.
“No,” Emily said, putting the chip back in the bag as if she'd suddenly discovered she was eating barbecue-coated spiders. “Absolutely not.”
“Oh, come on,” I said, smiling at her. “It will be fun.”
“You could lip synch,” Grace said, jumping off my lap. “I could help pick the song.” She broke into an off-key rendition of Shake It Off .
“Yeah, like a duet,” Will said, giggling. His voice had started to change, the deepness surprising me, but his laugh sometimes still sounded like a little boy 's .
“Shut up,” Emily said. “Just shut up.”
“Yeah, you could each sing different parts,” Sophie chimed in.
Grace was still singing, holding up an imaginary microphone.
Emily tossed the bag of chips on the table. “No. This is stupid.”
“It's to help your school,” Will said. “Why wouldn't you help? I thought you loooooved your school.”
“I'll take tickets or something,” she muttered. “But I'm not getting on stage with Mom!”
“That's mean,” Grace said. She stopped dancing and threw her arms around my neck. “I'd get on stage and swim with you.”
“Thank you, honey,” I said, not bothering to point out the logistical issues with her suggestion, or the fact that I wouldn't be caught dead in a swimsuit in front of the entire school. “But this time it'll just be me and Emily.”
Emily's eyes lit like tiny bonfires. “I'm not doing it.”
“You're going to have to,” I said, still smiling. “If I'm in charge, I get to be the boss. And I say we're going to do something.”
The younger three cheered.
Emily stomped to her room and slammed her door.
It was so good to be home.
THIRTEEN
“I think I have the perfect idea,” I said.
Evelyn Bingledorf, looking fresh and sharp in a kelly green blazer and white blouse, smiled at me from behind her desk. “Let's hear it then.”
Actually, I wasn't sure it was the perfect idea. I knew it was certainly better than any of the other half-hearted ideas I'd come up with until the kids had planted the seed in my brain. I'd spent the better part of the evening bouncing the idea off Jake, who seemed mainly concerned with the idea that my spending more time at Prism might mean more encounters with Derek. When I'd explained that it was going to happen quickly and would also satisfy all of our volunteer hours for the coming years, he warmed to the idea and told me he thought it was good.
So I'd made lots of mental notes in my head, slept restlessly and was out the door early to get to school to share my plan with Mrs. Bingledorf.
“A talent show,” I announced.
Bingledorf's expression didn't change. “A talent show,” she repeated.
I nodded. “Yes. Put on by the staff, the families and the students of Prism.”
She lifted her chin, her eyes narrowing, thinking. “Hmmm.”
“There are a few things that make it appealing as a fundraiser,” I explained. “Low overhead. We could use the school's auditorium to host it, we can get volunteers to take tickets and we'd need volunteers to perform. All of those things would be of zero cost to the school.”
“I like that,” she murmured.
“The only real cost that I can see is advertising,” I said. “But we can do it cheaply. We can advertise on the school website and Facebook page and we can print and copy some flyers and put them up around Moose River. We wouldn't need more than fifty, I'd think. If we could use the copiers here to do that, we still haven't spent a penny.”
“That makes sense,” she said, leaning back in her chair. She folded her arms across her ample chest.
“The only real place we'd need to spend money is for prizes.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Prizes?”
I nodded. “There has to be some incentive for people to perform. Yes, we'd like them all just to do it out of the goodness of their hearts to benefit the school, but let's be honest. We're more likely to get participants if we offer prizes. And I think cash works best.”
“People do love money,” she said.
“So let's say we award the top three places. And, again, we could use volunteers as judges. But let's say we award first, second and third places. I think a hundred dollars to the winner would be fair and throw in fifty for second place and twenty-five for third.”
She uncrossed her arms and tented her fingers. “Interesting.”
“So that would be a total of a hundred and seventy-five dollars,” I said, then realizing I sounded dumb because I figured she could do the math. “We could offer less, but I think seeing that hundred dollar figure would be a good incentive to get people to sign up.”
She nodded slowly. “Yes, I agree with that.”
It seemed as if she'd agreed with everything I'd thrown at her. But I still didn't feel like she'd given me a yes.
“What do you think?” I asked.
She tapped her fingers together, still in their tent formation. “I think it sounds like a lot of work.”
“Do you?”
She nodded. “You'd need to reserve the auditorium. You'd need to find a host, someone who could be the emcee. You'd need to find the performers. The volunteers for the door. And then some folks to help you get the word out in town.” She paused. “That sounds like an awful lot to do if we're working with a short time frame.”
“Wouldn't we be working with a short time frame no matter what we decided on?” I countered. “You said you wanted it done quickly.”
“Absolutely,” she said. “But this seems like a bit much.”
I wasn't about to be deterred, not when she'd essentially forced me into coming up with something. “I'm not really sure how different it is from anything else we might try,” I said. “Signing people up is going to be the largest chore – and that would've been the same with anything we came up with.”
She tapped her fingers together again, thinking.
“How much would we charge for admission?” she finally asked.
“We can do whatever you'd like,” I said. “But my thought is five dollars for adults, a dollar for students and kids. And I also thought we could have a donation jar at the admission table. I'd think that might encourage people to give more. And we could actually take the prize money from the admission fees, so then it would be at zero cost to Prism.”
She nodded, but I could see she was thinking again, lifting her chin up and considering things.
I waited.
“If we brought in every parent belonging to Spectrum, that's over a thousand adults,” she finally said. “That would bring us five thousand dollars.”
“And they would bring kids, too,” I said. “And probably other family members – grandparents and aunts and uncles. I can't think of anything else that might net us that kind of money that quickly.”