Seeing Cinderella (18 page)

Stacy led me backstage as she talked, past a group
of students dressed as mice, and into an old storage closet that had been converted into a makeshift dressing room. Ellen, whose face was a pretty funky shade of green, sat slumped in an old barbershop chair. She stared glumly at her reflection in a gold-framed mirror mounted to the wall.

“She’s sick,” Stacy said.

Ellen spun her chair around. “I am not.”

“Mr. Angelo said he thought Ellen would have to drop out of the play,” Stacy continued.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not even that sick,” Ellen said, “I just—”

Ellen broke off and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Excuse me.” She stood up shakily and dashed out of the room.

“She’s been puking all day,” Stacy said.

“When did she get sick?” I asked.

“Beats me. But you know what this means, right? You’ll have to take over. You’re Cinderella now.”

The thought of going onstage made me want to join Ellen in the bathroom and barf my guts out too. “No. No way, not going to happen. You guys will figure something out.” I took two steps backward and bumped into Mr. Angelo, who held a box of props.

“Callie! Stacy! Just the girls I wanted to see.
I heard you were looking for this.” Mr. Angelo pulled out a plastic wand and handed it to Stacy. “As you’ve no doubt heard, Callie, we’ve a situation on our hands.” From the box he pulled out a plastic pair of glass slippers, and a plastic tiara.

While he talked, I took my glasses out of my pocket and put them on. If I was going to argue myself out of this, I wanted every advantage.

The air shimmered and the screen appeared by Mr. Angelo:
We’ll have to adjust the costume for Callie, but I think it’ll be okay. Good thing Ellen insisted on writing cue cards.

“Yeah, I heard,” I said. “And I’m telling you right now, I’m not doing it. Find another Cinderella, because I’m not going onstage, cue cards or not.”

“Must I remind you that I once did something really nice for you?” Mr. Angelo said. “This is why we have understudies. You
will
go on as Cinderella tonight. And that’s that.” Mr. Angelo squashed the tiara on my tangle of curls and thrust the glass slippers into my hands. “Now start getting ready.”

Ellen returned, her face now a very unnatural shade of gray.

“Ellen,” Mr. Angelo said, placing an arm around her. “This is a terrible, terrible thing. To lose our Cinderella right before the curtain goes up. How horrible.”
Mr. Angelo left, but not before I caught his last thoughts:
Oh thank heavens. That girl was going to ruin my play.

“What is he talking about?” Ellen asked. Her eyes widened when she saw me wearing the tiara and holding the glass slippers. “He gave my part to
you
?”

She said it just like that. Like anyone in the world would’ve been a better choice than me. Like the entire play should be cancelled because she was sick. Which, I realized from reading the screen hovering next to her, was exactly what she thought.

“They can’t cancel the play just because you’re sick,” I said.

“Yes, they can,” Ellen said, not missing a beat. “And they will if they have no other choice.”

“What do you mean?” I glanced at Stacy, who shrugged and shook her head.

“I mean, they’ll cancel it if there’s no one to play Cinderella. They’ll have to reschedule the play for when I feel better. Cinderella’s the lead, it’s not like they can just give the part away at the last minute and expect someone to learn the lines—right?”

Ellen looked over at Stacy. “No offense.” Then she turned back to me. “Tell Mr. Angelo you never memorized your lines.”

Okay, that was actually a good excuse. I sort of wished I’d thought of it myself five minutes ago. But then I looked at Ellen, who crossed her arms over her chest, like she was just waiting for me to obey her, and I felt mad all over again.

“You want me to lie to Mr. Angelo?” I asked.

“I want you to help me.”

“But memorizing those lines is half my grade.”

“Since when have you ever cared about your grades? Or tell him something else. Tell him you’re getting sick too. Please, Callie? Best friends forever, right?” Ellen held out her pinkie.

I looked over at Stacy, and the screen hovering beside her showed me she was picturing herself back in Oregon, with the braces and the dull hair. She sat alone in a classroom, while everyone around her clustered their desks together and worked in groups. The picture changed then, now Stacy was onstage, a spotlight causing her Fairy Godmother costume to sparkle and shine, while the audience below sat mesmerized. The picture changed again, and one thought scrolled across the blue screen:
No. Please, I want them to see me.

“Please, Callie?” Ellen said, her pinkie still raised. “Do this for me?”

Ellen was asking me to do a horrible thing.
But courtesy of my super freaky glasses, I could tell she was too caught up in her own thoughts to realize it:
I did not work this hard and have Tara fly down for the weekend so Callie could play Cinderella. I’m tired of hearing how great Tara is. She never had the lead in the school play. And I bet she would’ve stunk at playing the guitar if she tried.

For as long as I could remember, Ellen seemed fearless to me. But watching her now and reading her thoughts, I realized she worried what other people thought about her just as much as I did.

And when I looked at Stacy, I saw that, in her thoughts at least, she wanted me to stand up to Ellen:
Please. I want them to see me.

When I caught Stacy’s eye, she opened her mouth to say something, then gulped and closed it quickly. Then she looked down, her cheeks turning red. No matter how much she wanted to be in the play, Stacy wouldn’t tell Ellen what she really thought. She’d choose to stay silent and let Ellen get her way. I understood that. Wasn’t I usually the same way?

But not this time.

“No.” I couldn’t believe the word actually came out of my mouth.

Ellen couldn’t believe it either. “What did you say?” She lowered her arm.

“You heard me. I’m not doing it.”

“Why not?”

I glanced at Stacy. “Because we’ve all worked too hard for one person to ruin everything, Ellen. Even if that person is you.”

“Come on, Callie. Best friends help each other out,” Ellen said.
And if you don’t help me out, we are soooo not best friends. We won’t even be friends.

I stared at Ellen’s thoughts and started to lose my nerve. I didn’t want to be onstage, anyway. Wasn’t that why I passed on being Cinderella in the first place? Was I ready to lose my best friend? But then again, hadn’t I been losing Ellen all semester anyway? We didn’t have much in common anymore—actually, I couldn’t even remember the last time Ellen called me her best friend. And did I even want to be best friends with Ellen, if it always meant doing
what
she wanted,
when
she wanted?

I decided I didn’t.

I hugged the glass slippers to my chest; they felt slippery in my sweaty hands. “Then I guess . . . we’re not best friends anymore.”

Ellen looked stunned. The screen hovering next to her went black and disappeared in a puff, like someone hit the kill switch. She turned and ran out of the room, muttering “traitor” as she passed me.

Stacy and I were both silent as Ellen’s footsteps died away. With a sigh, I stuck the glass slippers on my feet. Then I toddled over to the barber chair and picked up Ellen’s abandoned script.

“I’ll just leave you alone to study,” Stacy said.

“Okay.” I looked up, and Stacy hurried out the door.

But not before I saw the smile on her face.

“Ten minutes till curtain!” Mr. Angelo yelled.

I tugged on my costume—a dress made mostly of rags—that hung too tight and too long since it was originally fitted for Ellen. I tucked a stray hair under the kerchief I wore and headed stage left to peek out the curtain.

“Word on the street is you’re the new Cinderella,” said a voice behind me.

I turned around and saw Charlie, dressed in his Prince costume. “So it seems,” I said, bowing. “Will you be my Prince tonight?”

Charlie laughed, but then his face became serious. “Hey, are you going to the Sadie Hawkins dance tonight? I know it’s short notice, but I was wondering . . .”

I lost track of what he said because the air shimmered and the screen appeared next to him. Inside, I saw an image of Charlie buying a box of Red Hots. The picture changed,
and Charlie talked to a sulky-looking Raven while she held the door of our locker open and he slid a chunky red envelope inside.

Those Red Hots were for me, after all. They just hadn’t come from Scott.

Did that mean Charlie liked me? Like,
liked
me, liked me? Could I like him back? Last year, Charlie Ferris was the nasty boy calling me Polka Dot. But this year, could he be someone else? I thought about how easy it was to talk to him, and how much he made me laugh. Charlie’s dimple showed as he grinned at me. Why had I never noticed his cute smile?

“So, will you?” Charlie asked.

I snapped back to attention. “Will I what?”

“Go to the dance with me?”

“Oh—yes. Yes, definitely.”

Charlie looked down, and rubbed an invisible spot on the floor with his shoe. “You know, I always thought Polka Dots were cute.” He stopped talking then, but the screen hovering next to him showed me he had wanted to say more:
And I love your hair.

Charlie liked my crazy-frizzy-dead-leaf-colored-hair? I wanted to tell him he needed to get his eyes checked. But then I had another thought. What if there
was nothing wrong with Charlie’s vision? Or my hair. What if
I
was the one who needed to change the way I saw myself ? Maybe that was what Dr. Ingram had been trying to tell me all along. Maybe in so many ways, I really did need vision correction.

“You’re up,” Mr. Angelo said, coming to stand next to us.

“See you at the ball,” Charlie said, scampering away before I could say anything.

“See you,” I said weakly.

Mr. Angelo showed me where to stand, and I gulped as he slid in front of the curtain and began addressing the audience.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Pacificview Middle School’s seventh grade presentation of . . .
Cinderella
!”

Applause poured from the crowd, and I peeked through the curtain, trying to make out faces in the audience. Mom sat in a nearly deserted row with three empty seats to her right, where Ellen’s family should have been. With a pang, I realized the seat to her left was empty, too—where my father should have been. The screen appeared by Mom and I read her thoughts:
I could kill Nathan. I told him three times what time it started. Who cares if Callie wasn’t actually going to be onstage?

I felt my stomach drop. I was a few seconds away from stepping onstage. In front of a roomful of people. Was I insane?

Just pretend you’re alone in your room acting out one of your stories,
I told myself.
It’ll be okay.

“And I must tell you, ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Angelo continued, “we’ve had quite a bit of drama backstage as well. There have been some last minute casting changes. The role of Cinderella will now be played by Calliope Meadow Anderson . . .”

Mom paled and her thoughts changed:
Oh my poor girl. She must be so nervous. What’s she going to do?

The air shimmered frantically then and screens launched up by every single person in the audience. I shielded my eyes from the overpowering blue glare and felt dizzy from reading everyone’s thoughts:

Man, does this guy ever stop talking?

I should have gone to the bathroom before we got seats.

How long is this thing anyway?

I’m hungry.

I’m thirsty. …

On and on it went, until my head hurt so much I had to take my glasses off. I panicked then, because if I couldn’t wear my glasses onstage, I wouldn’t be able to read the cue cards, which were written in Ellen’s cramped handwriting.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you . . .
Cinderella
!” Mr. Angelo finished, and the curtain began to rise.

At that moment, I figured out my favorite part of Cinderella’s tale. And I realized it wasn’t the pumpkin carriage, the killer dress, the Prince, or even the ball—magical as that all was. No. My favorite part was when Cinderella chose to step out of the attic. When she walked down those stairs to the Prince’s men below and showed everyone her true self. When she chose a future different from what she’d always believed was possible.

Quickly, I slipped my glasses into my pocket. And I remembered something Ana once said to me:
“I’ve seen you practice. I think you could do it.”

Ana was right, I thought as I crossed to center stage and spoke my first line.

I
could
do this.

Chapter 19

Super Freaky Glasses Rule #
₁₈

With great sight comes great responsibility.