CHAPTER 7: Sam

Stacey McGill. God, as long as I live, I'll definitely never understand her. Okay, so maybe I acted like a big shot during Peter Pan rehearsals, but I was so sure she'd be way over that by now. I also think two other things upset her today. One was my comment at rehearsal the other day when I was playing around with my speech prior to "Sword, Rose & Cape". You know, the "Don Marco de Heminez y Juarez" bit. I didn't mean to mess her up, which I didn't think I did. I was just having a little fun, and what's the harm in that? (Aw, hell, I'm starting to sound like my old man!) The other was something more serious. That, I was sure of, because that's the first time I ever heard her say what she said...

The following Monday after school, I arrived at SMS. We were going to try to go through Act One for the first time, and we knew we had to make it go as smoothly as possible.

Before rehearsal actually started, I was going over my lines when I saw Stacey coming over to me. She had kind of a sour expression on her face, which told me that she was still a little miffed over either the other day, or the way I'd acted during Peter Pan rehearsals—which I thought for sure was water under the bridge. (By the way, I'm talking about how my friends sometimes tease me because Stacey's still in middle school, and I wanted to show my friends that just because of that, it doesn't mean that Stacey and I still can't have a good time. I don't know what Stacey made of it when I explained it to her.)

"Hi, Stace!" I said, as cheerfully as I could manage.

"Don't 'hi, Stace' me," she said sternly. "And don't tell me to say 'Stop this thing', either."

"Whoa, whoa!" I exclaimed. "Calm down. What's wrong?"

"What's wrong?" she asked incredulously. "After what happened the other day, you have the cojones to ask me that? If I were you, Sam Thomas, I'd be on my knees thanking my lucky stars that it was only Mr. Drubek who heard you. And another thing: if you so much as think 'Rosalie darling' around me anyplace else besides here, I'll smack you so hard your children and grandchildren will be born seeing double!" And with that, she whirled around and stomped away.

Damn! I thought. I hadn't seen Stacey that upset since I'd fired that wet Cheerio at her when we were at Shadow Lake. On the upside, she didn't stay angry for long. Anyway, just to be on the safe side, I decided to stay out of her way. I even made a vow to never prank-call another BSC meeting.

Well, at least until the play's over.

Surprisingly, rehearsal started off without any problems, except for the occasional "Line?" You see, Mr. Cheney was encouraging us—no, ordering us to stop relying on our scripts so much. So far, the only ones who were completely off-book were Dawn, Stacey and me (almost), and when they weren't behind the puppet booth, Jason and Pete (for the most part). Like everyone else, I thought we'd be able to get through this without wanting to tear each other's heads off.

Naturally, I was wrong.

Everything was going pretty smoothly, up until "Humming". I was offstage in the wings, following along with my script, and just basking in the beauty of her voice. If Simon Cowell were here, he'd turn into a puddle of mush, I thought.

Unfortunately, when Stacey got to the "He'll be humming" part, I heard actual humming coming from backstage left. I looked back there to see Jackie, Jimmy Bouloukos—who's playing Grobert, and David Michael humming like those three frogs from The Muppets Take Manhattan. (If you ask me, the reason why those three frogs hummed so much is because they'd just barely escaped getting dissected, and were still a little loopy from the chloroform.)

Uh-oh, Stacey was getting distracted. She couldn't look in their direction to tell them to shut up, mostly because the script did not say, "Rosalie looks offstage left to see who is humming," so she tried to sing over them. Charlie tried to help her out when his turn came, but even though he has a pretty strong voice (He has to; I mean, he's Schlegl!), it wasn't strong enough to overpower the humming. I'm also not too sure, but I think I saw him looking at Mr. Cheney like, "Help!"

Well, needless to say, Stacey had finally had enough. She flung down her script and screamed at the top of her lungs, "DAMMIT, WE'RE NOT SELLING FRICKIN' OCEAN BREEZE SOAP HERE!"

Dead silence.

The next thing I knew, Stacey had burst into tears and ran offstage.