“Oh, gross, another kissy-face play?” Iggy groaned.
Jillian frowned at Louise for telling Iggy the truth. As long as Elle didn’t know what they were doing, she couldn’t counterattack the twins. Jillian glanced pointedly at Elle playing jump rope with all the other girls from fifth grade. “What will end up happening is the same thing that happened all the other years. Elle and her friends will all vote together and everyone else will split the rest of their votes on a couple different plays and Elle wins by default. If we get everyone to agree on the same play, then Elle can’t win.”
“Girls outnumber the boys.” Iggy pointed out the flaw to the plan.
“We’re not going to vote with Elle. We just need one or two of the other girls to go along with us. Elle doesn’t control them all.” Just most of them.
“What play do you guys want to do?” Iggy asked.
“One with pirates and swordfights,” Jillian said.
“Peter Pan.” Louise got another glare from Jillian. She felt, though, if they misled Iggy and he turned against them, they’d lose all the boys. “Mr. Howe and Miss Hamilton aren’t going to let us do something like Hamlet or Macbeth. We need a play with at least twenty-five parts for both girls and boys that the school considers ‘a classic’ and thus safe. There aren’t a lot of those.”
“Do you want to be dressed as a hermit crab and sing ‘Kiss de Girl’ or be a pirate captain?” Jillian said.
“Sing with me now.” Iggy raised his hand and snapped his fingers together like a crab’s claw. “Sha-la-la-la, my oh my, looks like de boy’s too shy.” He burst into laughter at their shocked looks. “I have three sisters. The entire soundtrack has been burned into my brain. We’ve even been to the Broadway version twice.”
“You want to do The Little Mermaid?” Jillian cried with horror.
“No!” Iggy cried back. “Captain Hook, eh?” He laughed and held out his splinted fingers. “Look, I’m halfway there.”
“So, we can take pictures of you for Hook?”
He considered it while making funny thinking faces. “Hook is this weird mix of scary badass and just campy silly. He’d be fun to play. Okay, I’m in.”
They moved against the white wall of the gymnasium to shoot the headshots.
Iggy struck a pose. “I want to look more like Captain Jack Sparrow.”
“We’re not doing poufy Hook.” Jillian had gone into director mode. “Peter is coming with the Lost Boys. It’s all games to him, but you seriously want to kick his butt.”
“Who is going to be Peter?”
“Me,” Jillian admitted cautiously.
Iggy broke into surprised laughter.
“Don’t smile!” Jillian snapped. “You’re a badass pirate. Tell Peter he’s a little girly boy in French.”
Iggy laughed again. “Why French?”
“Because you’ll need to think.”
He frowned in concentration. “Vous. . etes. . une petite. . fille. Un singe. Mange. . des. . toilettes.”
“Yes, good,” Jillian said, even though the sentences made little or no sense.
“Stupide. . cul. . fromage. . singe.” He started to giggle.
“What?” Louise couldn’t help asking since it sounded like he’d said “Stupid ass cheese monkey.”
“I’m only pulling a B in French,” Iggy said. “My parents are ready to beat me for it.”
Jillian glared at them both, which only made Iggy laugh harder.
“Captain Hook cannot giggle,” Jillian stated firmly.
“Okay, okay, I got this.” Iggy forced himself to be serious. Surprisingly, he managed to look very fierce and determined despite having been giggling a moment before. “Excusez-moi, je peux vous aider? Vous avez des cartes postales?”
It was the practice dialogue from last fall with a customer buying postcards in a shop.
After they’d gotten a full set of headshots of him being serious and menacing, he called over the boys standing in line, waiting for their turn at four square. He told them simply that they were doing a music video and reassured them, “It will be awesome.” He also suggested that they cast all the Lost Boys from “Peter’s” class and the pirates from “Hook’s” class.
They managed to get photos of all the boys before the bell rang, ending recess. Iggy walked with them down to their floor.
“You know,” he said before they split up to their own classrooms. “You two should talk more to people. You’re really cool, but no one knows that.”
7: Much To Do About Nothing
The twins fought boredom every waking moment. Trapped in the classroom eight hours, endlessly “taught” subjects they already knew, they had to invent ways to quietly keep themselves amused, or run the risk of going insane. It was odd but exhilarating to suddenly be overwhelmed by dozens of projects.
For the first time in Louise’s life, she found herself needing a to-do list. She opened a document on her home desktop and started one as she painted backgrounds for the Lost Boys music video.
She still needed to find a Pittsburgh phone directory. If they were really going to contact Alexander for help with the babies, she wanted to hear her older sister’s voice. Besides, it was much the same problem they were having with Nigel; how could they be sure that the person they reached was Alexander if they stuck to letters? Since Shutdown was several days away, though, they had plenty of time to track down Alexander’s phone number.
They needed to save money to buy an adaptor for Esme’s mystery flash drive. With their allowance, it might take weeks, and it meant they would have to delay replacing their broken camera. They still had to identify the people in Esme’s photographs, but that was low priority since the pictures were over eighteen years old. Some of the people might be dead.
They were going to miss their deadline on posting their newest Lemon-Lime video. The raw footage was done. Editing on the music video for school, though, took precedence if they wanted to outmaneuver Elle. It might be good, though, to post a filler video. Louise made a note to do something quick and simple. Maybe just a fake title page that erupted into flames and then Queen Soulful Ember announcing, “Blast it all! That was too silly! Try again!”
Giggling, Louise made notes and moved to the next project. She wanted to do more research on the gossamer call, just in case it turned out to be really Nigel Reid posting on the Pittsburgh forum. She marked the date he was supposed to appear on the Today Show. She added “Rockefeller Center, 5:30” in the hope that they could figure a way around their mother’s edict. What they needed was an adult that they could bully into taking them into the city.
“Do you think we could do a Girl Scout field trip to the Today Show?” she asked.
Jillian shook her head, not looking up from the animating that she was doing on her tablet. “It’s after the vote on the play. If things go the way we want, I don’t think Mrs. Pondwater will be willing to take us anywhere.”
“If it’s already all set up, she might not be able to back out gracefully.”
“We can try.”
Louise added it to her list. And on that note, she added that they needed to deliver cookies to April and her doorman. She considered the possibility of talking April into taking them to the Today Show and then realized they’d have to explain to their parents how they knew the woman. Nope, that wouldn’t work.
The most important thing on her to-do list was the one thing she couldn’t move forward on: saving the babies. They had searched out the trust that had paid for the storage over the last eighteen years. Esme had set up the account, but the funds had run out last year. To take over the payments would require thousands of dollars.