Book 7: Stage fright

Ooh, mysterious. They look sort of like Dawn and Mallory on the front, and on the back it looks like Barbie is reading from a dictionary.

Barbie is talking with Selma Devine at Sam's restaurant. Sam and Terri got her there in a hurry, as Selma had something important to tell her. She has some possible jobs for Barbie, as her commercial for Dominique jeans was a success. So Barbie will be considered for a possible role in the new teen TV drama. The series will start in year or two, and they'll keep closely track of Barbie's career until, so she has to get some high profile acting roles. Lee Quigley recommends Barbie to take a role in a play directed by Irene Wang. Irene has seen Barbie's commercial and a tape from the school musical. The play is The Curse of The Calico cat. Barbie loves that play. She will be playing teen detective Lucy Hayes. Barbie has enough time to do this. The profits from the Halloween performance will be donated to the Children's hosptial fund. Barbie has to take over the role quickly, so she must be at the Templeton Children's Theathre in Greenwich Village between four and five PM tomorrow. Selma jumps in a taxi. Sam asks Barbie if she wants an escort(!) on the way home. They buy a paper that says something about tornadoes in Louisiana, but they talk about Barbie's acting break on the way home.

Barbie floats around in a dreamily daze all day. She tells Ana the big news before biology class. Then she has a very enticing lesson about the rainforest. She meets up with the other girls for lunch and they're all very happy for her. Nichelle is suddenly very serious and starts talking about the tornadoes which hit Louisiana. A lot of people are homeless, and Nichelle are worried about her family in Louisiana, as their phone line is down. She wants to set up a collection drive for food and clothing at the school. Chelsie will come with Barbie to the theatre tonight as she's interested in plays and musicals and she will print a performance schedule in the school newspaper.

Barbie and Chelsie take the subway to Sheridan Square. They have no idea where to go from there, as the Village is a patchwork of crossing streets. They find the Templeton's Childrens theatre. There they look around at the pictures of famous stars in the lobby. Barbie and Chelsie get startled as Seamus, the ticket sales manager and set coordinator, suddenly rips the ticket window open. He greets them from inside the booth, then he leads then into the theatre. They look around in the old, charming theatre and then they talk about the lead actress who got pneumonia and then her understudy tore a tendon. Irene Wang comes out and says the she's really pleased to meet Barbie. Barbie replies that she has heard so many nice things about her. Of course can Chelsie come along and it would be great if she could lend a hand.

Backstage everything is filled with chaos. Irene leads the girls around for a tour of the theatre, showing them every room. The theatre is named for Barney Templeton, who bought the theatre with his wife forty years. They ran it together, until Mrs. Templeton passed away last year. Now they also see Barney himself less and less after he lost his wife. Irene's favorite part is the old, rope-and-pulley dumbwaiter which was used to carry props and costumes up to the stage from the basement, but Barney had a freight elevator installed. Barney himself comes up to the girls and tells them about the ghost light. It's an old tradition in the theatre, that when everyone leaves the theatre, one single light must remain on, to soothe the spirits which wanders around the theatre. If the theathre is left completely dark, the ghost will rise. Barbie walks into the room where all the actors hang out during breaks. There she's introduced to Bret Sullivan, who plays the handsome police lieutenant George Sheraton. Julia, who is only slightly older than Barbie, plays Natalie Tanglewood, Larry Stokes plays her evil uncle Winston. Barbie gets her own script, then she and Chelsie gets madly excited to see Barbie name on her own dressing room door. Barbie 's costumes will of course be taken in at the waist, luckily she has some experience with sewing herself as the costume designer came down with chicken pox. Barbie's dressing room is lovely, it's really luxurious and she has to try on a flapper costume. Suddenly, she and Chelsie hear a loud smash, and then a horrible wailing sound. So they run up to the stage, the cast are standing there looking shaken, Bret is sucking on his knuckle. Barbie asks what happened and then she hears a voice saying "That's what I would like to know..."

A woman walks towards the stage. She is wearing a black suit, a trenchcoat and high heels, she's carrying a notebook and speaks like someone from an old New York movie. The name Franny Sparks reminds me of something, but I can't remember exactly what...She's from the New York Gazette. She's supposed to do a story on this production. First she had a interview with Serena Quigley(Lee's daughter then?), but it had to be canceled because she got sick. Then Franny Sparks was supposed to interview her understudy, which was in a skating accident. So she's planning to do a story on everything that went wrong with the production, and as the scenery fell down just this moment, she's starting to wonder if the play is jinxed. Barney and the cast says that it's not the case. Franny wants to interview Barbie, but Irene says that Franny should make an appointment later as it's Barbie's first day. Bret was walking her from stage left to stage the run-through. Then the flat fell down. Luckily it just grazed his knuckle. Barbie asks the others if they heard the wailing sound after the crash. They all think it was really strange, and it was not one of Seamus's sound effects. Barbie guesses it was probably a dog, the wind or the furnace. Yeah... Seamus checks the flat and finds a loose bracket. Chelsie gets Barbie's script and they have a read-through. They're all a little nervous about the "jinx" stuff. Barbie will come back for blocking, which is explained as kind of choreography to make sure the actors stand in the right spot on the stage. Barbie is so tired that she falls asleep in a chair looking at the script. Late at night, she crawls into bed, dreaming of cats.

Barbie wakes up to her clock radio, playing "I love detention!" with the punk rock group Negative Energy. She doesn't get what Tori sees in them. She has put the radio where she can't reach it, so she has to get up. She washes and changes, then she starts to read and highlight the script. She gets very engrossed. Edgar has disappeared from the loft and Lucy, Natalie and George has found that it's not the Slithersbys that are cursed, it the cat who is cursed by Winston Slithersby. In act three when the cat screeches as it's fried from the curse, Terri knocks on the door to ask Barbie if she wants breakfast. She says that it's much easier to rehearse with somebody else, so Barbie will have a friend over.

Barbie calls Chelsie. Chelsie has been up since the early morning. The script is about a hundred pages long. Chelsie was actually planning to call Barbie to ask her to ask her if she needed any help. They agree to meet at theatre in an hour. Barbie changes and meet Chelsie outside the theatre. Barbie says that she should have asked Seamus where the stage door was the last time. Seamus jumps out at the mention of his name and asks them what they're doing here. They will be there early to rehearse. The girls follow Seamus to a black, unmarked door. The light was dim and the air thick with paint fumes and sawdust. They have to go to dressing room to stick out of harm's way. Seamus says that they don't want any more accidents and shows the girls The New York Gazette. The headline on the frontpage reads "Is this play haunted?". Barbie shyly asks Seamus if there are always this many accidents in a production. He says that he doesn't believe that the the theathre is haunted, but that theatre people are just too superstitious and dramatic. Barbie and Chelsie curl up in the dressing room. Then they hear a noise and run out to look for Irene. They see a shadowy, fluttery shape near the ceiling. Ooh! They tell Irene about the howling noise and the shadow. Irene thinks there must a rational explanation, like a squeaky door and a pigeon. Even though the article were silly, it has done good for the tickets sales as people has been ringing all morning. Chelsie stays to watch the long and tedious process that is blocking. They've had an exiting day, but they're really tired, and Barbie hasn't even started Mr. Toussaint's homework yet.

On Sunday, Barbie lounges around in her room, does a lot of homework, even her essay. "Live theatre - an underappreciated art form". Heh. She has only one hour left to study her lines. Before she goes to bed, she plays Spit with Terri. Barbie reads her lines at Monday lunctime. Nichelle and Ana join her. A tree hit the roof of Nichelle's family 's home, but no one was there at the time, so luckily no one got hurt. Nichelle will ask Principal Simmons if she can set up some collection boxes. Barbie has a good routine for getting to the theathre and she's starting to enjoy her character. Ticket sales could have been better, and Barbie hopes the theathre will get some positive press. Barbie and Chelsie look for some posters in Barney's office. They see a beautiful antique lamp and an old scrapbook with yellowed clippings. Barbie and Chelsie can't find any performance schedules or promotion posters, so they'll ask Barney for them later. Chelsie can't stay for tonight's rehearsal, as she has to go home to her parents, who are having a delegation from Ghana. Franny Sparks will interview Barbie as tomorrow's rehearsal. She's nervous, as Franny usually twists peoples words around. Is she a version of Rita Skeeter? Today they'll rehearse the Halloween party scene, but Pru, who plays the English maid, is absent. They have to start the practise without her. Bret is really helpful and Barbie wishes he was five years younger. Linda is in the hospital. She had stomach flu and fell over and passed out and hit her head when she was going to get some soup. Yes, ew. And how much bad luck can one person have? Barbie suggests that Chelsie can take over the part, as it's a small part and Chelsie has been to so many rehearsals.

Chelsie is cast as the maid, as she has the accent down. Haha. Franny interviews Barbie, she asks many questions about the jinx. Barney joins them. Franny got an anonymous tip to check out the New York Gazette in 1998. Barbie remembers seeing that newspaper in Barneys scrapbook. Franny asks Barney who Jeremiah Boogle was. Barneys face turns white. He explains that Jeremiah was a great actor and magician, and he was in the production here, The Phantom of the tenth avenue. Jeremy liked exposing supernatural hoaxes. The last day of the production, Jeremiah disappeared without a trace, and some people says that his ghost still hunts the theathre, but he must be a good ghost that has never hurt anybody. Barbie gets up on stage. Lucy Hayes should follow Winston Slithersby from the drawing room into the parlor. There will be a storm in that scene, which will blow the doors open and blow the candles out. Barbie will be over there pulling the French doors shut. They have to make sure that the light is just right so Barbie won't hurt herself, but the audience won't see her either. Seamus should turn the lights on and off, and Miss Sparks will sit in the audience to see if she can see Barbie moving towards the French doors. They're going to do this two times, the first time, Barbie will look aroud to see if she can get to the doors without tripping. The next time, Franny will watch to see if she can see Barbie dashing across the stage. The stage goes totally dark. The ghost light went out! Barbie hears a horrible wooden and metallic schreeching sound, and a crash. When the lights are back on, Seamus sees that it was the dumbwaiter, which hasn't moved in fifteen years, crashing down. Barney says that luckily no one was hurt, and he and Irene will check to see if there's more damage.

The school cafeteria is buzzing about the haunted production. Melissa thinks Nichelle's announcement was really good and she'll bring some stuff in. Nichelle thinks people have donated too little stuff. Then they look on the article in the paper. So it basically says that Barbie is nice, through naive. Barbie is more interested in the dumbwaiter at the picture... She smells something fishy... Everybody is in a splendid mood at the theathre as the Halloween production is all sold out, so they can make a nice big donation to the children's hospital. Btw, Barbie likes trigonometry. A shocking level of those girls are maths fans, Lara, Nichelle, Tori and Barbie. Barbie gets a call from Nichelle, who is fed up because people have donated little and useless stuff, like a shirt with the arm torn off. If thats because they don't think homeless people would deserve anything better, it's awful, but I'm a bit of an eco nut myself and "why throw out anything if you can donate it to someone who needs it?" :/ Nichelle is mad. She will write an editorial, which will be put in the school newspaper and webpage. Then Selma calls and congratulates on her on the play and says that all publicity is good publicity.

After three and a half hours of rehearsal, Barbie will stay behind to fix her costume. She also has another reason to stay there... After working on her costume, she's slightly nervous as she takes the elevator down to the basement. She hears the howl again. Then she sees a black cat going out the window. So it was probably the cat making noises. She goes over to check the dumbwaiter, which is lying in a splintered heap. She was right in her suspicions. Barbie goes up to Barneys office again. She tells him that she found out that the rope was cut, the rope was in perfect shape on the picture in the Gazette, and Barney was the only one who was standing close enough to could have cut the rope. The other stuff were coincidenses and Jeremiah is alive and well in Arizona. Barney and Barbie agrees on laying it to rest so people wont get scared. Then Barney says that Wednesday will be a night to rememember.

Nichelle's angry editorial has a big effect on the pupils and they've bought a lot of great stuff to the donation boxes. Barbie and Chelsie come to the Wednesday rehearsal. Barney directs them to take seats around a big round table, which has been set up with a giant candle. Many journalists and photographers are sitting there already, among with Irene. Let the exorcism begin! The "wizard" which comes out, were actually a retired actor friend of Barney, as he admits to Barbie afterwards. Seriously, was he, "E. S. Perry", supposed to be believable with a pyramid shaped hat and purple robe? He will try to bring the spirit to rest. And coughing up "two vulcanic glass stones". get real. Except for that, it's an ordinary seance with hand helding and ooga booga stuff. Yes, literally ooga booga. Then they'll have to come to the Halloween play to see if the spirit session worked.

Chelsie and Barbie are extremely excited before the curtain goes up. All their friends are there. Chelsie is so Frida to Barbie's Agnetha. They tell each other to break a leg, Barbie gets her toy calico cat prop, and up on stage it goes. The play went flawlessly. Barbie almost cries after the applause when she receives two bouquets, one from the Jenners and one from Irene herself. Barbie is so touched by the flowers and sappy letter from the Jenners. All ends well with a huge Halloween Party, the theathre will be making their biggest donation ever, and Nichelle shows Barbie that they received a sweet photo of homeless kids in Halloween costumes which was sent to them. At the end, Barbie and Chelsie starts laughing when Seamus picks up his cat, the black "ghost" cat and says that she has a sweet voice.

Kind of an anticlimax, this book. If Barney Templeton himself was actually a ghost, now that would be exciting. He came back from the grave to save the play...
And what about Ms. Sparks, which also sounds really mysterious? Did she start the whole thing, as the "supernatural" activity started the day she walked in?

In the back you can learn how to make a school newspaper website. Truth=honesty=writing.

The book in one word: Okay.