Free Stagefright by Carole Wilkinson

done.”
    The hockey coach gathered up his team and herded them out of the hall. Velvet put on the dressing gown that was making do as Lady Anne’s dress and walked onto the stage. They acted out the scene where Richard wooed Lady Anne. The others sat in the front row and shouted encouragement. Drago handed Velvet his sword and put the point over his heart. Velvet made as if she would stab him, but didn’t. Drago gave Velvet his ring (a cheap plastic thing with a skull and crossbones). The others applauded.
    It wasn’t exactly a great performance, but it was a start.

C H A P TE R 13
    It was a beautiful late-autumn day. Velvet was sitting on the oval frowning at the Chinese characters that she was supposed to translate for homework. They made no sense at all.
    Drago joined her for a lunchtime script meeting.
    “I don’t get it,” she said. “How come you have trouble reading English, but you can read this?”
    Drago shrugged. “I’ve got a good memory. I just remember them.”
    He was eating a pie that he’d just stolen from a Year 7 boy. Velvet looked around to see if anyone was watching. She didn’t want people to think she and Drago were going out.
    “With English, if you come across a new word, at least you can have a guess at how to pronounce it,” Velvet said. “With a Chinese character, there aren’t any clues as to how it should sound. I don’t understand how Chinese children ever learn to read.”
    They worked on Clarence’s murder scene. Drago wanted to make it funny, and it worked out well.
    Velvet had an idea. “Drago, why don’t you learn English words the same way that you learn Chinese characters?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “When you come to word you don’t know, don’t try to read it letter by letter. Just look at it like it’s a Chinese character, and remember it.”
    Drago didn’t look convinced. Velvet pointed to a word in her script.
    “That’s the English character for ‘winter’. This one,” she flicked through the pages, “means ‘palace’.”
    “But Mrs Dwyer writes the new characters on the board and tells us what they mean.”
    “I’ll point out words as we go through the play and tell you what they are. All you have to do is memorise them.”
    Drago shrugged.
    Peter wandered over to them with his lunch.
    “Act one is going to be okay,” Velvet said. “There’s a lot happening – the soliloquy, the prophecy, Richard wooing Lady Anne, Margaret’s curses, Clarence’s murder.”
    “Yeah, but act two is boring,” Drago said. “Nothing happens.”
    “King Edward dies.”
    “That’s not exactly an action scene, is it?” Peter said. “He doesn’t die in a fight or anything. He just … dies.”
    “Actually, it’s not a scene at all. It happens offstage.”
    Jesus and Roula came over and joined them, sharing chips and Twisties with the others.
    “It needs some romance,” Roula said.
    “A sex scene!”
    “Shut up, Drago.”
    “It’s boring. People will fall asleep. Can we have some special effects?”
    So far, the extent of the special effects was when the murderers put Clarence in the barrel that’s supposed to be full of wine. Taleb had to drink a mouthful of Ribena from a jar inside the empty barrel and come up spitting it out as if he was drowning.
    “What about when Clarence dreams that he’s underwater?” Drago said. “We could have a dream scene.”
    “Have you been reading the play, Drago?” Jesus asked.
    Drago didn’t say anything about Velvet reading it out for him. He saw Taleb near the bike shed and called him over.
    “He’s right,” Velvet said, thumbing through her copy of the play. “But that’s in act one as well. Clarence dreams he’s on a boat and falls into the sea. He sees sunken ships and skulls and fish eating dead bodies. Then he dreams he’s dead and he goes to the kingdom of night where there’s an angel covered in blood.”
    “Sounds awesome.”
    Hailie came out of the girls’ toilets and joined