Showstopper Page 2

  “Don’t suppose that’s a message from the city officials telling us the floodwaters have miraculously subsided?” Austin joked.

  “Nope,” said Susan. “It’s from Maddie. She sent me a selfie.”

  “Well, unless it’s a picture of her signing a three-week lease on the Minskoff Theatre,” I said, “I’m not interested.”

  Susan rolled her eyes. “Yeah, like they’d really bump The Lion King for us. But, hey, it’s still a cute picture.” She turned the phone so Austin and I could see the photo. “Look.”

  There were Maddie and Jane standing in the lobby of the Chappaqua Community Center, holding their little origami projects and smiling their heads off.

  Then I spotted a small notice posted on the wall just over Maddie’s shoulder, which (thanks to Susan’s thumb and forefinger and the magic of iPhone technology) was now big enough for me to read.

  “Summer rental prices,” I read out loud.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Susan.

  “There’s a sign on the wall outside the auditorium door,” I said. “I forgot the CCC auditorium could be rented out.”

  “Hey, that’s right,” said Austin. “My mom was in a charity fashion show there last year.”

  “And my Brownie troop had our Fly-Up ceremony there back in first grade. Remember, Anya? There’s a stage with curtains, and spotlights and a sound system and plush audience seating.”

  “That can be rented out,” Austin said meaningfully.

  I was utterly thrilled for the space of one second. Then I shrugged and let out a heavy sigh.

  Susan gave me a sideways look. “Why don’t you look more excited?”

  “Because,” I said, “it’s a possible solution, but it’s far from ideal.”

  “Perfectionist,” said Susan.

  I refused to take that as an insult.

  “What does the sign say exactly?” Austin asked.

  “It says, ‘Chappaqua residents may rent this space for the following rates by signing up with the special events coordinator.’ ”

  “We’re Chappaqua residents!” Susan pointed out unnecessarily.

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

  Austin used his own phone to log on to the CCC website and consult the fee schedule. “The prices are pretty reasonable,” he pronounced. “We can afford this, as long as we’re careful about our other spending.”

  “I guess,” I said with a grimace. “But one of the best things about the clubhouse, other than the fact that it’s ours, is that most of the cast can walk there. Only a few of the kids have to get a ride to rehearsal.”

  “Maybe we can work around that,” said Susan, turning on the optimism. “You know the moms in this neighborhood are car pool geniuses!”

  She was right, of course. I still wasn’t crazy about the idea, but I also knew it was the only option we had at the moment.

  So we switched from Austin’s phone to my laptop, scanning the CCC website for more information. Unfortunately, that information included the following words: Nonrefundable payment required in advance.

  “That’s a problem,” I said. “If we pay up front for the whole three-week session, and then the clubhouse is ready in time for rehearsals, we’ll be out a fair amount of money.”

  Austin considered this. “Mr. Healy said we definitely couldn’t get in for three weeks. This week we’re off, so that means even though we’ll be without the clubhouse theater for the first two weeks of the session, there’s a chance we’ll be in for tech week and the show.”

  “So … ,” I said, puzzling it out, “you’re saying we should pay up front for two weeks and hold rehearsals at the community center? And if the theater isn’t ready by the end of the second week, we pay for the third week and have the show in the CCC auditorium?”

  “Got a better idea?” asked Susan.

  I didn’t. “I guess this is what we’re doing, then. Now we just have to hope it isn’t already rented.”

  I reached for Susan’s phone and began to punch in the number for the office of the special events coordinator.

  I was about to hit the call button when the front door opened and my dad came striding in, holding two large plastic bags from our favorite Chinese takeout place. Judging from the serene smile on his face, I was pretty sure he’d come in from the west end of the street and hadn’t seen the fire trucks.

  “Girls!” he cried. “Guess who’s taking your mother away next week on a long romantic second honeymoon to Paris?”

  “Um … you, I hope,” said Susan, raising an eyebrow.

  Dad laughed.

  And I put down the phone.

  CHAPTER

  2

  It took some doing to convince Mom she should join Dad on his business trip to France.

  To be perfectly accurate, it took some doing by me to convince her. Because the minute Dad announced his idea to take Mom out of town, an idea had begun to form in my head.

  Austin went home, and Dad called Mom into the family room from her office. He told her he had a surprise, and it wasn’t just the delicious dinner he’d picked up from Panda Pavilion. So Susan and I dashed to the kitchen for plates, and we all sat around the coffee table and listened to him explain while we passed out chopsticks and opened the cardboard containers.

  Here was the situation: there was an important conference in Paris, Dad’s law firm was sending him there to attend, and he had decided to bring Mom along as a sort of second honeymoon vacation. It was all very last-minute, because the partner who was originally slated to go, Henry Abernathy, had to opt out due to a gallstone attack.

  “Somebody attacked Mr. Abernathy with stones?” Susan gasped, wide-eyed.

  I had to laugh at that. Sometimes it was hard to remember that, for all her witty insight and advanced vocabulary, Susan was still only eleven years old. So Dad started to explain what gallstones were, but when he got to the word bile, Susan held up her hand to stop him.

  “Never mind,” she said.

  Dad scooped more fried rice onto his plate and gave Mom his most charming grin. “Jennifer, we’ve been talking about going back to Paris for years. This is the perfect opportunity.”

  “I don’t know… .” Mom shook her head. “It’s such short notice.”

  “That’s what makes it so exciting!” I said, eagerly reaching for an egg roll. “And romantic! I totally think you should go.”

  “But what about work?” Mom tapped her chopsticks on the table. “I suppose I could move some things around, reschedule a few appointments… .”

  “Reschedule!” I said, gulping down a mouthful of tea. “Definitely reschedule.”

  “But what about you girls? Who’ll watch—”

  “Nana Adele and Papa Harold can stay with us!” I blurted out. “You know they’re always saying they don’t get to spend enough time with us. They’d be thrilled.”

  “Anya’s right,” said Dad, gallantly reaching over to take my mother’s hand and kiss it. “So what do you say, mon amour? Will you let me carry you off to the city of lights to shower you with love and romance?”

  Susan wrinkled her nose at this parental display of affection. “Eww! Speaking of bile …”

  I gave my sister a sharp kick under the table to shut her up. This was going exactly as I had hoped, and I didn’t want her to mess it up.

  Mom crunched into a piece of crispy beef and sighed. “Okay,” she said, smiling. “The answer is yes.”

  “I think you mean oui,” quipped Susan.

  I let out a shout of joy and sprung up from my seat. “I’ll go get your suitcase out of the attic.”

  “No, you will not,” said Mom, using her chopsticks to point me back into my chair. “You will sit down and finish your General Tso’s chicken and tell me everything you’ve heard about this water-main break. I only know what Mrs. Quandt told me when she called earlier.”

  So I filled Mom in on what Mr. Healy had said about the pipe bursting and the power being turned off at the far end of the
street. I also mentioned a “water issue” in the basement of the clubhouse, but I didn’t elaborate.

  “We’ll probably be okay for the show,” I said, which, thanks to my careful use of the word probably, was not an entirely untruthful statement.

  “What about auditions and rehearsals?” asked Dad, offering me a fortune cookie.

  “Oh, I’ve got another place in mind,” I replied vaguely. “Hey, did you know you can rent out the auditorium at the CCC for a very reasonable price?”

  These, of course, were both completely factual statements, even if the two concepts were not as directly related to each other as I may have made them sound.

  I could feel Susan looking at me out of the corner of her eye, but I didn’t flinch. I just calmly cracked open my cookie and unfolded the fortune.

  “What’s it say?” asked Mom. “Something good, I hope.”

  “It says, ‘You have a talent for getting what you want,’ ” I reported.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Susan said under her breath.

  It took all my restraint to keep from kicking her again. I popped the cookie into my mouth and said nothing.

  “What was that all about?”

  I looked up from where I was lying on my bed, flipping through my old Annie script, which I’d saved as a memento from when I’d been in a regional production of the play a few years back. I gave my sister an innocent look. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean!” she snapped. “You were pushing for Mom to go to Paris so hard, I was beginning to think you’d gone from being a theater producer to a travel agent!”

  “Okay, fine,” I said, closing the script. “I wanted Mom to go so we could have rehearsals here.”

  “I knew it! You lied to Mom and Dad!”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said. “I told them we had another place in mind. I didn’t specifically say what that place was.”

  “You said the community center.”

  I shook my head. “I implied the community center. They didn’t press the issue, so I never actually had to tell them anything that wasn’t true.”

  “Still pretty shady,” Susan said, folding her arms in disgust. “Mom told us we couldn’t have the play here.”

  “She told us we couldn’t have the play here because it would interrupt her work. But if she’s in Paris, there’ll be no work to interrupt, will there? So the way I see it, the rule about no play in the house no longer applies,” I finished with a satisfied smile.

  “I think that’s what Dad would call a slipknot.”

  “Loophole,” I corrected, my smile fading slightly. Because, technically, she was right. I was playing fast and loose with the rules. But it was such a lucky coincidence (for me, even if not for Mr. Abernathy) that the conference in Paris would be taking place during the same two weeks I would be without my clubhouse theater, I had managed to convince myself the universe was going out of its way to make things work in my favor.

  And I couldn’t very well say no to the universe, could I?

  “There’s a flaw in your plan, you know,” said Susan, giving me a smug look. “You need to hold rehearsals here for two weeks. Mom and Dad are only going to be gone for one.”

  “I know that,” I said. “But I’m counting on the fact that when they come back and they see how hard we’ve worked, and that we haven’t destroyed the house, they’ll let us continue for the second week until the clubhouse is ready.”

  “Seems risky.”

  That was because it was risky. But sometimes entrepreneurs have to face that sort of thing.

  “Let’s talk about Annie,” I suggested, steering the subject away from loopholes and house rules. “I think we could put on a great production. Wouldn’t Travis make a perfect FDR?”

  “I guess,” said Susan, sitting down on the bed. “What does Austin think about doing a full musical instead of another revue?”

  I wasn’t sure. His initial reaction had been that it would be cool, but we’d really only just started discussing the possibility when Susan had stormed into the coffee shop.

  “Let’s Skype him and see,” I suggested, reaching for my laptop.

  A moment later the cheerful bing-bong chimes of a Skype call filled the room, and Austin appeared on the screen.

  “Hey, Anya,” he said. “Susan. What’s up?”

  “We never got to finish discussing what play we wanted to do,” I reminded him. “I say we go all out and put on Annie. I remember all the dance routines they taught me, and I have my script. We’ll have to make copies of it for everyone, but how much can that set us back, right?”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Austin.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I left your house, I did a little research.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “I started thinking like a writer,” he explained. “And I asked myself, ‘How would I feel if just anybody who could get their hands on something I’d written used my work without my giving them the okay?’ So I went online and checked it out and, sure enough, there are laws to prevent that kind of thing from happening. A play is considered ‘intellectual property,’ which means whoever wrote it owns it. Which is why it’s illegal to put on a play if you don’t license it from the owner.”

  “License?” said Susan. “You mean like to drive a car or own a dog?”

  “Sort of,” said Austin. “Basically, it means you have to get permission. You have to pay whoever owns the rights to the play in order to be allowed to perform it. It’s kind of like renting.”

  I thought about this for a minute. “So if I were to use my script to put on Annie without getting the proper permission from the licensing people, it would be almost like stealing?”

  “Not almost like stealing,” said Austin. “Exactly like stealing. And there’s more. The same goes for songs.”

  It took me a second to get the gist of what he was saying. When I did, my stomach knotted up. “Are you saying we were supposed to get permission to use every single song we performed in Random Acts of Broadway?”

  On the computer screen, Austin nodded.

  I’d had no idea! And from the guilty look on Austin’s face, neither had he.

  “Great,” said Susan with a heavy sigh. “Mom and Dad are going to Paris, and we’re going to jail!”

  I had never felt so horrible about anything in my life. I had stolen the songs for the revue—unintentionally, of course—and my theater company had performed them without permission. And that was wrong.

  So I wasn’t a producer or a travel agent. I was a criminal.

  “Here’s the plan,” I blurted out. “We get a license, and then we use the profits from our second show to settle up with the people or companies who own the songs we used in Random Acts of Broadway.”

  Austin nodded. “I agree. Honesty is the best policy.”

  “Oh yeah?” grumbled Susan. “And what are your thoughts on bankruptcy? Ya know, as a policy.”

  I let the comment slide. I knew it was going to be a difficult thing to do, but I also knew the only way I’d be able to sleep at night was if I paid back every last cent of what I owed.

  “Okay,” I said, shifting gears, “how much does it cost to license a play?”

  “That kind of depends,” said Austin. “There’s a pretty specific formula that determines what you’ll be charged for any given show.”

  “Sounds like math homework,” grumbled Susan. “Bottom line … a lot or a little?”

  “For Annie, a lot,” Austin confirmed. “A real lot.”

  “I had a feeling,” said Susan with a sigh.

  “So that leaves us without a play,” I said heavily.

  “Maybe not,” said Austin. “In my research I discovered lots of plays based on material in the public domain.”

  “Translation, please,” said Susan.

  “Nowadays all written work is copyrighted,” said Austin patiently. “But the term public domain applies to work published before the current laws
went into effect.”

  “So … old stuff?” I guessed.

  Austin nodded. “Material in the public domain basically belongs to everyone. So if we wanted to, we could write our own play based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, or Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty.”

  My eyes lit up. “We could?” Black Beauty was one of my favorite novels.

  “We could if we had more than a week,” Austin clarified. “It would take some time to adapt a story into a play, plus it would also require writing an entire score of original songs.”

  “Too bad about Black Beauty,” Susan observed. “I would have given anything to see Sophia Ciancio play the back half of a horse!”

  I shot Susan a look and she left the room, grumbling.

  “So if we can’t adapt something in time, how is this public domain stuff helpful?” I asked.

  “Check your phone,” said Austin.

  On the screen he picked up his cell and hit a few buttons. In the next second, my phone dinged with a text: a link to a website called drama-o-rama.com.

  “Drama-o-Rama?” I giggled. “I like it.”

  Drama-o-Rama was amazing. It had at least fifty kid-friendly (and, even more important, kid-budget-friendly) options to choose from. Straight plays, musicals, holiday specials—even one-acts. And for a relatively low price, a theater company like ours could rent scripts and scores.

  “Austin, this is amazing!” I cried. “And cheap. We can afford to license one of these with pretty much our dues money alone.”

  “Now all we have to do is pick one,” said Austin.

  As my eyes scanned the available titles, I really had to hand it to the Drama-o-Rama writing staff. They sure knew how to spin things, and with a sense of humor. For example, Totally Rad Riding Hood was really just Little Red Riding Hood set in the radically tubular decade of the 1980s. And Journey to the Center of the Mall was clearly the story Jules Verne would have written if he’d understood the concept of the food court.

  Also in our price range: Dr. Jekyll Plays Hyde-and-Seek; Jane Airhead; Fence Painting for Dummies (based on Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer); Robin Hoodie (comes with the sweatshirt); and Tarzan Goes Ape: A Real Swingin’ Show.