Читать книгу Ellen Hart Presents Malice Domestic 15: Mystery Most Theatrical - Karen Cantwell - Страница 11

Directing kids at the Phoenix’s Drama-Rama summer theater camp should be fun. Unless you have to deal with a 12-year-old psychopath.

I love kids.

Really, I do.

Even—especially—theatre kids. Omigod, their energy—I caught two of them literally swinging from a chandelier last week—but when that energy is channeled, they amaze me with their creativity and touch me with their vulnerability and make me laugh hard enough that I snort Diet Coke out my nose. (BTW, do not try this at home. The bubbles sting.)

But try as I might, Henry… well, Henry was hard to love. In fact, at times I wanted to kill the kid. Sure, he was creative and imaginative, but his ideas tended toward the gross and scary, like rat zombies. He was a born leader, but one who would merrily walk his followers into the deep end of the pool (which he nearly did before I stopped him). He was smart and talented and charismatic, but in all the wrong ways, like a twelve-year-old Lex Luthor. Henry was going to grow up to be either a super criminal or a star.

I first met Henry last year, on the opening day of summer theatre camp for Phoenix Parks and Rec. It was my third year running the camp, so I was feeling pretty confident as I walked onto the stage of our school-sized auditorium. “Welcome, theatre geeks!” I said to the assembled middle schoolers. “Are you ready to have an awesome time at Phoenix Drama-Rama?” A few yesses from the kids, most of whom were buzzing with energy. “I can’t hear you,” I said. “Are you ready to have an awesome—aah!” Whatever had landed on my head was gloppy and green and running down my face so I couldn’t see—and was that a spider inside it?! “Aah!”

The kids laughed as I frantically wiped at my face. “You got slimed!” said a voice from above me. The little demon I’d later come to know as Henry had managed to sneak up to the definitely out-of-bounds catwalk with a Big Gulp cup full of slime. When I learned that he’d made the gooey stuff himself and added a few plastic spiders to it, I was impressed in spite of myself.

That was just the beginning. Besides the slime and the aforementioned aborted pool escapade, during the three weeks of camp, Henry:

 Pretended to barf all over his friend’s lunch, using a jar of cooked oatmeal he’d secreted away in his backpack (surprisingly realistic).

 Filled a piñata with SpaghettiOs and blew it up with contraband firecrackers. You can imagine what that looked like.

 Convinced all the kids I was a private investigator (I am, part-time) with the FBI (I am not) who was trying to uncover a kangaroo smuggling ring (kangaroos? How do you smuggle kangaroos?).

And of course, Henry never missed a day of camp, always arrived early, and often stayed a few minutes late. (His parents frequently picked him up at the last minute. I completely understood. If I had to have Henry with me 24/7, one of us wouldn’t live long.)

So, I was simultaneously worried and relieved when Henry wasn’t at camp on time one morning. “Anyone seen Henry?” I asked. Head shakes all around. When he showed up an hour later, he wore a sling on one arm and a hoodie (even though it was a hundred and ten outside). When asked what had happened, all he’d say was, “You should see the other guy.”

And omigod, was he in a mood—frowning and touchy and ten times more annoying than usual, and that’s saying a lot. “We should be doing Blood Eaters,” he must have said a half dozen times while we were working on props. (Blood Eaters was Henry’s movie script—he was a budding psychopath and filmmaker.) “Snow White and the Seven Aliens is the stupidest play ever.”

“Too bad. And stop that.” We were cleaning up after making props, but Henry was careening around like a bumper car, purposefully running into the walls. Yes, literally bouncing off the walls. I stood up, dusted the glitter off my jeans skirt, and clapped my hands. “All right, everyone. Finish cleaning up and get ready. Places for the top of the show in five.”

The kids put the last prop materials into the cardboard boxes marked “Drama-Rama!,” and then walked, ran, and skipped backstage. Henry followed them, scuffing his feet so that his sneakers squeaked loudly on the wooden floor. “Stupid play.”

It hurt that he kept saying that. Yes, I was getting defensive over a twelve-year-old’s comments, but Snow White and the Seven Aliens was my baby. I wrote it specifically for the class so everyone could have a speaking part, and I thought it was pretty clever. I borrowed the space parody idea from a Wizard of Oz production I’d worked on, but put my own spin on the idea: Snow White dressed and acted like a spunky Princess Leia, the Doctor from Doctor Who was the woodsman who let her get away, and the prince who found her was…

“Captain Kirk is stupid.” Henry stood in the middle of the stage, even though his character didn’t appear until the end of the play. “Why do I have to be old Captain Kirk? Can’t I at least be Jean-Luc Picard?”

“It works better with the story,” I said. “Snow White needs to be woken up by someone who likes to kiss women, and —”

“Jean-Luc Picard likes to kiss women.”

“—and old Captain Kirk, as you call him, was that kind of guy,” I said. “A ladies’ man.”

“What’s a ladies’ man?” asked Amelia, the youngest in the group.

“It’s a man who likes to wear ladies’ clothes,” said Rylan (eleven and big for his age).

“No, that’s—”

“That’s a transvestite,” said Chloe (big eyes and a great singing voice).

“I think we’re getting off track here,” I said.

“Is a trainsvestite like a trainsexual?” asked Amelia.

“Okay. Time to get back to the pla—”

“Captain Kirk is, I mean, I’m a trains-sexual?” Henry had a devilish look in his eye. “Does that mean I get to have sex on a trai—”

“No sex!” I shouted

A couple of the girls got wide-eyed. Nice, Ivy, scaring them like that. “I mean… sex is fine. At least between two consenting adults.”

“What about three?” asked Rylan. “Is sex between three consenting adults okay?”

“Um…”

“Ivy, can I see you outside?” Lupe, the summer programs director, must have come in to the room unbeknownst to me. Henry smiled like the devil he was.

“Now,” said Lupe.

“Of course,” I said, wishing Henry wasn’t twelve so I could plot revenge. “Mia,” I said to the teen volunteer who acted as my stage manager. “Why don’t you play ‘Character Bus’ with the kids until I get back?”

After a dressing down about inappropriate subject matter (which I didn’t deserve) and an admonition about not allowing kids to undermine my authority (which I did deserve), Lupe sent me back to the auditorium. “It went pretty well,” Mia said. “So I let them go to lunch a few minutes early.”

Good, I’d have time to chill a little. It was stupid, how much I let Henry get to me. He was just a twelve-year-old kid, for God’s sake and I was an adult, a theatre professional. I should be able to—

“Miss Ivy! Miss Ivy!” Chloe ran onto the stage from the left wing, her big eyes wide with fear. “Come quick! Rylan’s hurt, real bad!”

I jumped the three feet onto the stage, Mia right behind me. We ran across the stage and followed Chloe to a dressing room backstage. A clump of kids stood near the entrance, staring into the room and blocking the door. “Let us through!” I shouted. Little Amelia turned as I passed, her face streaming with tears.

Oh no. Oh no.

Henry stood in the middle of the small room, shaking, his hands covered in blood. More blood—lots of blood—pooled around the prone Rylan’s head. “Mia!” My assistant looked like she might be sick. “Call 911 and run to the office, tell them what happened.” She turned on her heel and ran.

Oh my God, oh my God. Rylan. He was just a kid.

“I didn’t mean to.” Henry’s voice came out in gulps. “We were just messing around, and then he shoved me, so I shoved him back and he fell and hit his head on the counter… I didn’t mean to hurt him.” He began to cry, big heaving sobs.

“It’s okay,” I said to Henry, though it was anything but. “I’m sure he’ll be okay.”

There was no way this still and bloody boy was okay. Omigod, what was I going to tell his parents?

I crouched down beside Rylan, on the floor sticky with blood. Henry’s crying escalated into a wail. Several kids joined him in a hellish chorus. “Quiet!” I yelled. Was Rylan breathing? I couldn’t tell. A familiar, sweet smell assaulted my nostrils as I put my face close to his, to see if I could feel his breath or—

Stage blood. The smell I recognized was stage blood. This was all a hoax. Yes, Rylan’s eyelids fluttered just a bit. No. No way. I was going to kill the little—wait.

Ha.

“Omigod, omigod,” I said, crumpling into the pool of blood and clawing at my throat. “My inhaler. I can’t breathe,” I wheezed. I learned to make that noise when I was trying to learn to yodel. It’s a long story. “Help. Get my inhal—” I collapsed, eyes closed, still clutching at my throat, wishing I had thought about my shortish skirt before sprawling on the floor.

Silence for a moment. Then a jumble of voices:

“Her inhaler?”

“Oh no!”

“She has asthma?”

“Omigod, did we kill Miss Ivy?”

Footsteps pounded down the hall, probably to search my backpack for the nonexistent inhaler or to get someone from the office. The light behind my eyelids got darker as someone came close, blocking out the overhead light. It was Henry—I could tell by the scent of the Bubble Yum he always chewed. I waited until he was kneeling next to me, then…

“BOO!” I sat up, spattering fake gore everywhere.

“Aah!” Henry fell back into the pool of blood. Then he laughed. “Perfect!” he shouted. “Cut! Did you get that?” he asked a tall kid I recognized as Henry’s older brother. He was standing with the group at the door, using his iPhone as a camera. “Got it,” he said.

“Nice job, everyone,” Henry said. “Great crying, especially you, Amelia.”

“Thank you,” she said modestly.

“And Miss Ivy,” Henry said, “It wasn’t in the script, but you were awesome. I should have known you could act.”

Should have known his theatre teacher could act? Little turd.

So that’s how me and my bright pink underwear ended up on the big screen at the Phoenix Film Festival Summer Camp. Henry later explained how he and the kids had been planning the, uh, event for weeks, rehearsing the kids’ reactions, making their own stage blood, and setting up the scene in the dressing room, which is why Henry was late that morning. “The sling and the hoodie were character development,” he said. “You know, so you’d think I was especially troubled that day.” Like I said, a super criminal or a star.

And yes, I signed a release so Henry and his brother could use the scene in Blood Eaters. After all, it’s my job as a theatre teacher to encourage creativity, right?

I still want to kill that kid.