Wood Sprites (8 page)

“Oh shoot,” Louise hissed.

“It wouldn’t be so bad if we did the original Hans Christian Andersen story where the mermaid dies after the prince marries another woman. At least that mermaid was a soulless creature made of water who was really after immortality by exchanging a three-hundred-year lifespan for a soul. The husband was just icing on the cake. No, no, we’ll be doing the story where she gives everything up for a boy, including everyone that she loves dear, screws the world to hell and back and then needs him to kill the villain while she’s helpless someplace else. Oh, God, I’m so sick of these wussy princesses and evil women. We’ve done the evil witches of Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel, the evil queen of Snow White and the evil stepmother of Cinderella. Is this some kind of campaign against femininity? Our choices are the evil and usually ugly powerful female or the helpless princess, desired just for her beauty? And what the heck is this shit about evil stepmothers anyway?”

“Well, it’s following a biological imperative that a female devotes all her attention to the children that carry her DNA as opposed to the DNA of another female.”

“Oh, shut up, monkey girl, we are not cuckoo birds, tossing eggs out of nests and getting someone else to raise our chicks. We’re humans!”

“Okay, Wilbur. What are we going to do about Elle and these damn mermaid zombie chicks?”

Jillian giggled. “Oh, it would be worth it if I could rewrite it to zombies.” She grinned. “The boys would love it if it was a zombie play.”

“They’re never going to let us do a major rewrite of a play again.”

Jillian nodded, thinking. “Too bad there are more girls than boys. That way, if we found a play that the boys liked, they could just outvote the girls. Something cool. Like
Macbeth
.”

“Like
Macbeth
but in plain English.”

“It should have sword fights,” Jillian said firmly.

“Robots. Dinosaurs.”

“Elves.”

“At least try to think like a boy,” Louise said.

“It has to be a real play, not something we write, that boys will like.”

“Do you think they made
Lord of the Flies
into a play?”

“All the characters in that are boys. There has to be at least one or two girl parts, just so we can sway the girls that don’t fall under Elle’s spell. If we can get a couple of the girls on our side, it would work.”

They thought for a moment. Louise found herself eyeing Tesla sitting statuelike inside their locker. Their mother had thought he looked liked Nana, the Darling’s Saint Bernard nanny.

“What about
Peter Pan
? Pirates. Sword fights. Indians.”

“Native Americans,” Jillian muttered, frowning as she thought through the casting. “Elle would want to be Wendy. That would leave Mrs. Darling or Tinker Bell for me.”

“You’d be Peter. He’s usually played by a girl.”

Jillian’s face lit up. “Oh, God, that’s perfect. Elle wouldn’t want to be a boy, and I would have the lead!”

* * *

They had Library as their first-period class, so they spent the hour digging through what had been produced for
Peter Pan
.

“God, I’m starting to understand why Mom never showed us the cartoon. What the hell happened? You take the most manly of boys—he runs around naked except for some leaves, and he fights pirates—and you turn his story into this.” Jillian turned her tablet to show off the big-busted blond Tinker Bell. “In the novel, Tinker Bell dies a year after Wendy goes back to London, and Peter forgets all about her.”

Louise had forgotten that twist. “Ignore her. She’s poison to the boys having any interest in
Peter Pan
.”

Jillian nodded. “We stick to the original play and focus on Hook and the pirates and the ticking crocodile.”

“But what format are we going to use for the pitch? Boys don’t like to read. And most of the movie versions are girly.”

Jillian flopped back from her tablet. “How about a music video? We do all things that are cool with Peter Pan and this ‘I’m a tough guy, don’t mess with me’ fight song with a heavy bass beat.”

“Let the bodies hit the floor. Let the bodies hit the floor.” Louise sung the first song that same to mind.

“Exactly.” Jillian opened up a file on her tablet and started to take notes. “Or at least something like that.”

“So the Lost Boys, the tree houses, the island, the pirates, sword fights . . .”

“Yes, a swordfight on the pirate ship!” Jillian called up her storyboard app. “Start with Peter and the Lost Boys at the tree houses, run to the beach, look at the uber cool pirate ship in the moonlight. Then the Lost Boys board the ship and there’s a big swordfight.”

“In two weeks?”

“We can—could crank out a full episode of
The Adventures of Queen Soulful Ember
in a month, and those have a lot more to storyboard, full original animation, dialogue to dub, sound effects, and a music score.”

“We blew up our studio with all our sets and all our models.”

“We’ll work around that. I can act in front of a green screen for Peter’s part. We can base Hook off of . . . hm.” Jillian considered the boys in their classroom with narrowed eyes. The plays were a combined effort of both classes of their grade. With the exception of “the Prince,” the boys usually had minor roles like dwarves and mice. Reed normally played the Prince for the same reason Elle got to be the Princess. He was tall, blond and handsome. Unfortunately, he was clumsy and as much a social wallflower as the twins.

If they needed all the boys, though, they should win over the boys’ leader.

“Iggy,” Louise said. “Iggy should be Hook.”

Iggy’s real name was Ignatius Martin Chen. He was apparently named after a baby of a movie star. His first-generation Chinese parents obviously didn’t realize how uncommon the name was. He was in Mr. Howe’s classroom across the hall, only sharing lunch, recess, and class play with them. He was the acknowledged leader of the boys, perhaps because he was also the tallest boy in the fifth grade and naturally athletic.

Jillian tilted her head, thinking. “Iggy does like to be in front of an audience, and he remembers his lines when he actually gets something to say.”

“We should use all the boys in the video. It wouldn’t be too hard to model their pictures onto CGI skin. We can do half for the Lost Boys and the other half as pirates.”

Jillian was nodding. “We can put the Lost Boys in war paint. Make them look cool. We’ll have to take pictures of all the boys without them noticing us.”

“Or we could tell them we want to cast them for a music video. They’ll be more vested in the end product.”

Jillian winced. “Actually talk to them?”

“If we’re going to highjack the play completely, we’ll have to talk to them a lot,” Louise pointed out. “We work for almost three months on the play. Half of April and all of May and June.” The play represented a massive amount of work, all in the name of learning how to cooperate as a class. Everything was a joint effort, from voting on what play to do, to designing and building sets, to the actual performance. “Either we talk to them or devote all that time to
The Little Mermaid
.”

“Ick! Okay, let’s talk to the boys at recess about this.”

“Today?”

Jillian waved the party invite. “Elle’s party is in two weeks. We vote on the play the week after. We have to get this up and running quickly if we’re going to head off Elle.”

Any time on the video would take time away from their research on finding a way to save their little brother and sisters. If they were going to do it, then they should do it as fast as possible. “Okay, we’ll do it this recess.”

* * *

Perelman School for the Gifted had a rooftop playground with tall perforated metal screens creating a protective enclosure and shade. Through the orange-painted mesh, they had a clear view of all the skyscrapers of New York rising up to loom over the school. Heat of the sunbaked roof battled with the cold April wind off the bay.

The boys played four square at the edge of the playground, taking turns at rotating through the grid as players fouled out of the game. Iggy tended to hold the King’s square for long periods, controlling the large red ball with ease. For some reason, today he was sitting in the shade, just watching the game.

While Jillian was fearless around adults, she tended to be shy of other kids, especially boys. Louise suspected it was because “cute” didn’t work on kids their own age. Or maybe it did, and they only thought it didn’t because when they were younger, what melted adults to helpless puddles utterly failed to impress other toddlers and preschoolers.

Louise marched up to Iggy and asked quickly, “Can we take pictures of you?” before she lost her nerve.

Iggy lifted his head to glare up at her. His left eye was swollen nearly shut and bruised dark purple. “Why do you want my picture?”

“What happened to you?” Louise asked.

“Doh. What does it look like? Some guy hit me.”

“A guy? Like an adult? Why?”

“Yeah, he’s twenty-four. He was one of those protesters that are pissed at the Chinese over the Elfhome thing. The whole ‘China is stealing the heartland of the United States’ bullshit. Like I have anything to do with that!”

“Why would he even hit you? You’re just a kid.”

“All Chinese are short even when they’re full grown!” Iggy obviously was imitating someone older than him. “I think the jerk just hit the first Asian-looking person that was shorter than him. There’s several billion Chinese on the planet, and most of them don’t give a shit about Pittsburgh or Elfhome. My dad says the protesters are a bunch of redneck idiots. The United States makes a hundred times more off the elves than China does, and China is still paying back the loans it took out to cover their original remuneration.”

The Saturday newscast that panicked their mother suddenly took on new meaning. The nine-year-old boy attacked on the subway was Iggy. His three older sisters also attended Perelman School for the Gifted.

Louise realized that the reason he was sitting out of the game was that two of the fingers on his left hand were splinted. “Are you okay?”

He followed her gaze to his fingers. “Oh, yeah.” He blushed and looked away. “My sister tasered him. We all ended up at the police department. They’re calling it a hate crime and throwing the book at him.”

“Good,” Louise said.

Iggy squinted up at her as if she was a miniature puzzle. “You know, I don’t think we’ve ever talked before.”

She wasn’t sure what that meant. “You don’t know our names?”

He laughed. “We’ve been in school together for five years. I know who you are. It’s just that you don’t talk to anyone. It’s kind of freaking me out.”

“We just want to take pictures of you.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s part of the weirdness. Why?”

“We’re making a music video.”

“If anyone else said that, I’d figure that they were setting me up for a viral-meme joke. I think, though, that you two would only do that if I’d done something epic to really piss you off, and I’m fairly sure I haven’t. Have I?”

“No.” Louise cut Jillian off because she saw her starting to consider making up a lie. “Elle is talking the girls into doing
The Little Mermaid
for this year’s play.”

“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.”