Free The Sea-Quel by Mo O’Hara Page A

started to say, but then she leaned over and put the hat on my head.
    â€œIt’s noble of you to stand up for your friend, Tom, but actions have consequences.” I think she could tell that I didn’t really get what that meant, so she added, “People have to pay for what they do.”
    â€œBut what if they didn’t do…” I began, as she took Pradeep’s bow and quiver of arrows from him and handed them to me. Suddenly all the words in my head dried up. Normally there is an ocean of words in there, but now there wasn’t a drop. All I could think was that I could be Robin Hood.

    â€œI can’t…” A few words dribbled out of my dry brain.
    â€œYou are the only one who can , Tom. All the rest of the cast have important … I mean, more vocal roles, and you are the only one who knows all the lines, from practicing them with Pradeep,” Mrs. Flushcowski said.
    She was right. I did know the lines. I knew the fighting with the sticks, I knew the hanging on the rope, and I definitely knew the shooting of the arrows. I could do this part. I could be Robin Hood. OK, so it wasn’t actually Pradeep’s fault that the bag fell on Mrs. Flushcowski, but maybe he could have stopped it from happening if he had even looked at me once when I was trying to warn him. Maybe this was payment for what he did.
    Pradeep walked over to me. He took off the green tunic his mom had made him and handed it to me. “I … um … won’t give you the tights, um.… Mom has a spare pair,” he mumbled.
    Sami stood next to him with Frankie in the sippy cup. I gave Sami a look that said, “Maybe we should get Frankie out of here?” She understood right away. She put Frankie behind her back and ran over to her mom, who was just coming back into the hall with the school nurse. The nurse headed straight over to Mrs. Flushcowski while Mrs. Kumar took Pradeep and Sami out to the dressing room. I heard her saying, “Why on earth did you bring that goldfish onstage? I’m so disappointed in you. What were you thinking, Pradeep?”
    The nurse gave Mrs. Flushcowski a fresh (fish-free) cup of tea with sugar in it and in a couple of minutes, she was back in director mode.
    â€œLet’s take it from the top. Reset for Act One.”
    While we mopped up the mess, propped up the cardboard scenery, and got ready to start again, Mrs. Flushcowski sent all the high-school boys off for a break until the real show that evening. I saw Mark breeze out of the back door. He didn’t look at all upset, which got me thinking. If his evil plan was to ruin the play, it had failed (even though it ruined things for Pradeep). If it was to bump off Frankie, then that had failed too. So why wasn’t he angry? I didn’t have time to think about it now though. I was Robin Hood, after all.
    We ran the dress rehearsal without stopping. I remembered every line, every move, and I started to notice that people were looking at me differently. And by “looking at me differently” I mean they were actually looking at me, not through me like they usually did. Guards One, Two, and Three didn’t push past me as if I wasn’t there. OK, so they still pushed past me, but now at least they looked at me first. Ladies-in-Waiting One, Two, and Three giggled when I walked by, but in a good way, not a laughing-at-you kind of way. And Merry Men One, Two, and Three actually looked merry when I told them a joke. Best of all, when Katie Plefka sang “Greensleeves,” she looked right at me. I didn’t like the song as much as Frankie did, but no one had sung to me since I was, like, three years old. I liked this feeling.
    Because we had to start over, the dress rehearsal finished late and we barely had time to get fixed up again before the actual performance started. Sami ran over and gave me her sippy cup, which still had Frankie safe inside. Then I went to the dressing