Free Encore Edie by Annabel Lyon Page B

you supposed to be, Australian now?” I say. “No worries?”
    “Where should I put these?” He means the pieces of separated ply. I point to my stack on the edge of the tub and he puts his there too. “Tell me some more about King Lear .”
    “Because I’m so amazing?”
    “No,” he says thoughtfully. “Daniel’s pretty smooth, isn’t he? Me, I’m just curious. And stop trying to pick on me, I don’t like it.”
    So I tell him. I tell him about the different ways I tried to include Merry in the production, the way Mom and Dad asked me to: helping with scenery (she spilled paint everywhere); helping with costumes (she stuck a pin by accident in King Lear’s bum, making him scream); helping with lights (she couldn’t make the changes fast enough); helping with the music (she couldn’t understand how to cue the CD player and kept playing the wrong song). I tell him about the actors who won’t adapt their own lines the way weasked them to, the singers who hate the music the jazz band is working on, the scenes that still don’t make sense because we’ve had to cut so much, Mr. Harris who is sardonic all the time and seems to want the production to fail, and the way people whisper when I walk down the hall as if I’m wearing my underwear outside my pants.
    I even tell him about Sam, who’s always too busy with band practice to come over after school, and Dex being icy-polite with me ever since she didn’t get the part she auditioned for (months ago!), and Regan—here I have to backtrack a little—Regan, the one person who seemed to be on my side, who gave me good advice when I needed it and didn’t seem to care what anyone else thought of her, or me, or her being seen with me, who all of a sudden last week told me she couldn’t help with the production anymore and wouldn’t tell me why and Sam and I were on our own but she was sure we would be just fine.
    “That’s odd,” Robert says. “Do you still see her around school?”
    “Not so much. I hadn’t thought about it too much, to be honest.”
    “I wonder if she’s okay,” Robert says.
    I’m ashamed then, because I’d been thinking more about myself being definitely not okay, when maybe she had bigger things than musicals to think about. “I don’t know if I should call her and ask, though,” I say. “She can be pretty weird on the phone. Like she doesn’t quite remember who I am.”
    “Some people are shy about talking on the phone,” Robert says, and then he blushes as if he’s said something mortifying.
    I pretend not to notice. “You’re right. I should call her.”
    “I like some of those old songs,” he says. “My mom has this jazz CD she likes to play when she gets home from work. It’s pretty cool.”
    By this time, we have a pretty big stack of plies. “I guess we should get back to supper,” I say. “My mom made apple crumble for dessert. She didn’t want to try anything too fancy in case she messed up in front of your mom.”
    “They were talking recipes when I left,” Robert says. “I get pretty sick of listening to my mom talk about recipes, to be honest. Hey, could you do me a favour?”
    I shrug.
    “Show me how to take this stuff off.” He means the nail polish. “Seriously. I have enough problems at school without showing up like this on Monday.”
    “What problems?” I get up to rummage in the medicine cabinet for cotton balls and acetone.
    “I wear my underwear outside my pants, too,” he says. “Or that’s what it feels like, some days.”
    “Nothing being seen with my sister wouldn’t cure.” I show him how to splay his fingers and I pour some acetone onto the cotton. “Being in the musical couldn’t have made her any more popular than she already is. I don’t know why she’s still so upset about it. Not like that—you have to scrub.” Igrab his hand and scrub until the cotton is stained orange and his nail is pink again.
    “Stinks,” Robert says.
    I do all his fingers for him. He