Play It Again by Laura Dower Read Free Book Online Page B

be fine by myself.”
    She turned around once at the auditorium doors to look back and see everyone singing at the piano.
    Not even Aimee seemed to notice she had gone.

Chapter 7
The Wiz
    Rude Awakening: Why do they call it a play when it’s so much work?
    Friday Mr. Gibbons made me go into the hideous dark dungeon that is our school basement. It was like walking into a bad movie. Mr. Boggs, the janitor, wasn’t around, so I started looking through boxes on my own.
    BIG mistake.
    There was a spiderweb near the boiler room that was bigger than my head.
    Now, I love animals of all kinds and I don’t really mind spiders, either. Most people don’t even realize how good spiders are because they eat all the bad bugs. But that web freaked me.
    Mr. Gibbons keeps sending me around the school building to get all these things he needs. Most of the time, I bring these “props” up, and the box just gets shoved in the corner of the stage. He isn’t even using all of them!!!
    I thought being stage manager was important. And fun. But it’s mostly just hard work. And I’m running around doing all this stuff like I’m invisible or something while everyone else sings and dances. The show feels like a nightmare sometimes—with the spiders and without.
    But I didn’t give up on the school election Web site, I didn’t give up when I fell off a horse at camp two summers ago, and I won’t give up on The Wiz.
    M ADISON COULDN’T REMEMBER A weekend that whizzed by faster than this one. All day Saturday she worked to cross off items on the prop and costume list.
    Mom was a huge help. Madison was luckier than lucky to have a mom with connections through Budge Films. Mom called a few friends from a costume company, and they agreed to loan Far Hills some of the more complicated costumes like the Lion suit and the Tin Man’s limbs, even in smaller “junior high” sizes.
    Saturday night, Mom had to run over to the Tool Box hardware outlet at the mall to buy lightbulbs and a new broom. Madison tagged along.
    “Look at all this stuff,” Madison said as they walked in the store. Madison’s brain nearly blew a fuse when she saw an entire wall with just hammers and spied paint cans piled into pyramids. There was even a special aisle just for nails.
    Normally, a hardware store would make Madison say “Boring.”
    Something was different today. Being stage manager made her think differently.
    Against one wall were samples of floor tiles. A sign on one bin read SALVAGED LINOLEUM. Madison plucked out some yellow squares. They glistened when the light hit them the right way.
    “Mom,” she said. “Do you think we could use these for the yellow brick road?”
    Mom gasped. “What a great idea, Maddie.”
    In addition to the tiles, Madison found a bowl that looked like a fortune-teller’s crystal ball when you turned it upside down, a tin can for the Tin Man, and a clear plastic rod that could double as a magic wand for Glinda.
    “You could decorate that, too,” Mom suggested.
    “With glitter glue, maybe,” Madison said. Every new idea she had was leading to two or three other new ideas.
    The Finn living room turned into a prop room once they got home and unpacked the bags.
    “Just think, Maddie, two weeks ago you weren’t even going to be a part of the show, and now look.” Mom pointed to piles.
    Later on, Madison went online to surf the Internet for even more brilliant ideas. TweenBlurt.com had a search link on its home page. She plugged in some key words to see what interesting sites would turn up.
    When Madison entered the word wizard into the search engine, it gave her the addresses to an odd assortment of destinations. One link sent Madison to a Wizard of Oz fan club page, while another page linked up to a role-playing game page on magic. She even found the hyperlink for a page on “Muggles Who Like Harry Potter and Other Wizards.” She was having so much fun surfing the Net that she lost complete track of time.
    More than half