Chapter 30

"How's it going?" I asked, sticking my head into the music room.

Traci jumped up and raced toward me, throwing her arms around my neck. "It's perfect," she whispered.

I looked questioningly at Sally at the piano. "Her second song," she explained.

I hugged my sister, and she kissed me on the cheek.

"Be sure to hug Sally too," I said as I released her. "It's her music."

"I already did."

I swatted her on the butt, then headed for Mrs. Wayne's room.

Toby was plugging his keyboard into the wall when I walked in. Peter was standing next to Mrs. Wayne's desk, shifting nervously.

"Relax," I ordered, then checked on Toby. He sat down and ran some scales, then nodded. I walked over and put my arm around Peter. "I realize nobody asked you the sixty-four thousand dollar question, can you sing? Don't sweat it. We'll just try this. It's the kind of song that doesn't have to be perfect."

"What if I'm no good?"

I shrugged. "Then you can't make out with Traci any more."

Peter turned deliciously red and swallowed hard.

"Peter, relax. Singing is supposed to be fun. If you can't do it, I can rewrite the scene, add a new character and give it to them, or we can have someone else sing and you can lip sync, or we can drop this song completely. This song is probably the least important in the whole thing."

"That why you gave it to me?"

"Nope. Just worked out that way. This song and Traci's first one just move their scenes along, but don't really add to the story."

"Okay."

I smiled, hopefully, reassuringly. "Want me to stay, or do you want to run through it with just Toby first?"

"Uh, Toby," he said, sounding like he was afraid of hurting my feelings.

"Cool. I can check on Monster Girl and Darlene."

As I walked toward the auditorium I wondered how we could possibly do this with only three weeks. Robby and I had football practice, and Darlene had cheerleading after school, so we couldn't start practice till six. Mr. Reed was letting us use the stage two nights a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, since we had a late start. That was something. And we had a couple of classrooms and the music room, too.

"So how come you don't go to school?" I heard Robbie say as I walked in the top of the auditorium.

"I'm sick," Darlene answered as I started down the aisle.

"You don't look sick. You look pretty good."

"Wrong!" I shouted. I was halfway to the stage. "You've got to leer and check out her boobs." I recognized some of Traci and Peter's dialogue from act one.

"I'll be checking out the contusion on the side of your skull if you're not careful," Robbie said without looking up from the script she was holding. I grinned, and Darlene stuck her tongue out at me.

"How's it going?" I asked standing at the foot of the stage.

"Pretty good," Robbie said. She picked up a clipboard and made some notes. "I've got most of the blocking for act one done. We can probably figure act two tonight, and three tomorrow, so that we can walk through it when we get the stage on Thursday again."

"Sounds good," I agreed.

"Most of the dialogue works pretty good, but there are some rough spots."

"Works better when you leer."

"I'll..."