Chapter 32
(4:19pm, Feb 16, 2006)
Ron, Felix and Arnie came back on the stage for the beginnings of the first scene of Act 2.
"Can I continue onwards while my heart stays? I'll be nothing but an empy shell unless I find it.
"Romeo! Cousin Romeo!" Felix exclaimed in the Benvolio role.
Arnie then added "He's' smart. I bet he slipped away and went home to bed."
Felix then replied, "He ran this way and jumped over the orchard wall. Call him, Mercuito."
Arnie added, "I'll conjure him as if I am summoning a spirit! Romeo! Madman! Passion! Lover! Show yourself in the form of a sigh! Speak a single rhyme and I'll be satisfied. Cry out 'Ah me!' or 'Love' and 'Dove'. Say a pretty word to my friend Venus or maybe her blind son Cupid! Romeo didn't hear me. He didn't move. Then I shall summon you by Rosaline! In the name of all tese things, I command you to appear to us!"
Behind the scenes, Kim was holding her Romeo and Juliet script when she got a phone call.
It was James on the other end.
"Hey, Dad! What's the sitch?" Kim asked. "Oh it's no big. We're doing Act 2 right now and I'm about to go up."
She laid down the script on the end table.
Amanda A gleefully swapped out her script for another one while Kim was busy talking with her dad, especially with the trip to Nebraska coming up.
_
"You'll make him angry if he hears you!" Felix countered.
"This won't make him angry!" Arnie insisted, "The things I am saying are fair and honest! All I'm doing is saying the name of the woman he loves to lure him out of the stillness of the night."
"Come on! He's hidden behind the trees to keep the night company." Felix replied, "Romeo's love is blind anyways so it stays in the dark."
"If love is blind, it can't hit the target. Come on, should we go?" Arnie asked.
"Let's go. Romeo doesn't want to be found anyways." Felix replied as the pair exited the stage to set up Scene 2.
_
"Okay, everyone, let's take 5 and prepare for scene 2." Cara insisted, "Let's get the balcony for Possible to stand on!"
Some of the stage-hands, led by Malcolm Nevious, were wheeling in the balcony, which was a wheeled platform about 10 feet high.
"Ready for this, Ron?" Kim asked as she climbed onto the platform with what appeared to be her script.
"Ready whenever you are, KP!" Ron exclaimed.
And so, Ron began to utter his monologue.
"He jokes about scars from wounds he's never felt. But wait! What light is that in the window over there? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Rise, beautiful sun, and kill the jealous moon, which is already sick and pale with grief because Juliet, her maid, is more beautiful than she is. Don't be her maid, since she's jeaous! She's talking but isn't saying anything. Why is that? Her eyes are speaking. I'll respond-no, I am too bold. It's not to me she speaks. If her eyes were in the sky and the stars were in her head..."
As he read the lines, though, his face got more and more red with embarrasment. He stopped in mid-sentence.
"Uhhh...Ron?" Kim asked. Looking through the script, she added, "I'm missing some pages from my script for this scene!"
"Stoppable, why do you have to hold us up?!" Cara groaned loudly from the director's chair. "Okay, let's go over Scene 2 again, and this time, let's be efficient!"
Rufus, from his owner's pants pocket, squeaked, "Oh no."
(5:09pm)
Cara screamed as loud as she could and flung her megaphone onto the floor.
"This is pathetic!" she exclaimed, "I am surrounded by idiots! Scene 2 was supposed to be finished by now and we could BARELY get a few lines of dialogue in!"
"Hey, the blushiness from my face is almost gone!" Ron remarked.
"Look!" Kim exclaimed, "Ron was overtaken by the flowery language in the lines. Don't blame him for not being able for all us to get through the first half of Act 2!"
"Possible, you need to understand the magnitude of the performance!" Cara countered, "You need this to be a success if you were to get that art credit! Without it, you and Stoppable won't get your diploma!"
Vance added, "And Stoppable barely scraped by with a C because of his tree costume!"
"Hey, don't diss the tree!" Ron countered, "Even though it took the Middleton Fire Deparment an hour to get me out of the bathroom on the last play!"
"You people are wimps!" Cara exclaimed, "I want your butts to be in here, same time tomorrow! We will not leave until the ENTIRE scene is done correctly!"
The class all groaned in unison.
"KP, the treehouse?" Ron asked.
Kim agreed, "The treehouse!"
As the students all left the auditorium, Kim noticed a garbage can that had a binder in it. She managed to grab the binder.
Wait a minute! This is my script with all the pages intact! Someone must have sabotaged it! But who? I may get this to Wade to analyze later.
_
(6:58pm)
Both Kim and Ron then approached the treehouse at the Stoppable house.
"So the plan is that we view this treehouse as the balcony, KP?" Ron asked.
"That is the general gist of the sitch, Ron." Kim replied while holding her real script. "Now I'm gonna get up the steps and you try to read the lines."
"But the language in it! It's so...flowery and mushy!" Ron exclaimed. Rufus chittered, "Lovey dovey!"
"Just strip out the mushiness and focus on just the words itself." Kim suggested, "That's how I was able to get through Drama I in freshman year, though the MacBeth one would always be a stain that just cannot be removed."
Kim went up the steps to the treehouse, script in hand.
"Let's do Scene 2 again, with just the words." Kim insisted.
"OK, Kim! I'll do this...without blushing!" Ron replied and then began his Romeo monologue.
"He jokes about scars from wounds he's never felt. But wait! What light is that in the window over there? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Rise, beautiful sun, and kill the jealous moon, which is already sick and pale with grief because Juliet, her maid, is more beautiful than she is. Don't be her maid, since she's jeaous! She's talking but isn't saying anything. Why is that? Her eyes are speaking. I'll respond-no, I am too bold. It's not to me she speaks. If her eyes were in the sky and the stars were in her head, the brightness of her cheeks would overwhelm the stars. And her eyes in the night sky woud shine so..."
But before Ron could continue on the monologue, the Kimmunicator rang its familiar four-beep tone.
Grabbing the Kimmunicator from her CB overall right front pocket, she activated it.
"Hey Wade, what's the sitch?"
Wade came on-screen.
"Hey, Kim! Did I come on at a bad time?" the tech genius asked.
"Me and Ron are rehearsing Act 2 Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet." Kim said, "Ron got chewed out by the Glee Three because he completely flopped on the whole monologue thing."
"I got overwhelmed by the flowery language, KP! Shakespeare is to blame for this, not me!" Ron replied off-screen.
Wade then added, "Anyways, get this! Remember when I told you that Grace Larceny was that fake Middleton Space Center employee that stole the IRCH?"
"Yeah, you did, Wade. A couple nights ago." Kim recalled. "It's kinda funny becuase all of the security cams were working up until that point."
"Yep. Apparently, the IRCH has a GPS chip inside of it." Wade said while pulling up satellite images. "It was accidentally activated by her in...get this...Chicago!"
"The Windy City, huh?" Kim grinned with a raised eye brow.
"And that's not all. I also intercepted a credit card transaction by one of the henchmen connected to a certain Professor located there!"
Kim thought for a moment and took a wild stab.
"Dementor?"
"Bingo! GJ should arrange you with a flight."
"But what about the play?" Ron asked from below.
"We'll get to it after the mission, Ron!" Kim insisted. "Getting that helmet back to Professor Acuna is tops on the list!"