Fiction: One Magic Step

SYNOPSIS

It’s hard for a kid to decide which parent to live with when they separate, but for 12-year-old Seth Ranney, the decision is made even harder when he discovers his dad living in a different century.

Traveling to see him requires the assistance of a hyperactive and unreliable ghost named Hamlet, who hasn’t quite mastered his ghostly skills yet.  While some of Seth’s adventures with Hamlet don’t go as planned, like accidentally leaving his ex-best friend in London in 1592, nothing prepares Seth for the role he must take in one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies.  A role, history says, is the starting point for theater’s most enduring and deadly myths.  And Seth and his friends must solve the mystery before the myth becomes terrifyingly true.

But time is running out.  Hamlet finally figures out what he must do to fulfill his ghostly obligation in this world, which will end Seth’s ability to travel between his mom and dad.    He must make a choice.  Will this trip be his last?  Or the next?  And does he end up where he truly wants to be?

CHAPTER ONE

The Audition

"Off with her head!  And while you're at it, off with her other head!"

The moment was almost here.  The moment that decided whether or not Seth Ranney would have yet another miserable summer was finally here.  It was all up to him.  And he knew it.

"Wouldn't you agree, Lord Brown Nose?"

His line was next, and he didn’t even need to look down at his script.  He’d been practicing all morning.

Taking a deep breath, he looked up into the theater lights and swallowed hard.  He opened his mouth to speak but then heard a whisper he should have expected.

“Say the line already, turdball.”

Seth forced himself not to react.  He was not going to let Christopher Parker get to him.  Ex-best friend or not.  It didn’t matter.  Not today.

He pictured the words in his head and then said, "Quite right, your Majesty."

"Louder!" a voice called from somewhere out in the theater.

He tried again.  "Quite right, your Majesty.”

Christopher whispered again, this time close to his ear.  “If you get a better part than me, I’m gonna introduce you to my fist.”

Seth jolted a little but stared straight ahead.  If he impressed the director now, he’d have a chance at getting a speaking part.  And getting a speaking part meant he’d have a summer worth talking about.  A summer he’d never want to end.  A summer that would finally mean his dad would have a reason, a speaking-part reason, to come and visit.

Seth wasn’t sure he could handle being stuck in the chorus again as a nobody, just like everybody else who failed to say even one line right.

Seth squinted to see past the overhead lights that dotted the theater like a dozen full moons in the dark sky.  The kids who had already auditioned sat in the first and second rows.  He spotted Ms. Coral, the Children’s Theater director, near the back.  Her voice always sounded twice as scary from the balcony.

She rose from her seat, her flashlight reflecting off her metal clipboard.  "Okay, that's enough.”

Christopher pushed past Seth.  “Wait, Ms. C!  My lines are next.”

“Thank you, but I said that’s all for—”

Christopher was not about to let his chance slip by.  He said, “And I concur with Lord Brown Nose, my Lady,” and then continued on with the rest of his lines.  More lines than Seth had had a chance to say.  Not that he was counting.  Okay, he was counting.

Ignoring him, Seth looked around the theater.  It used to be the lobby of a grand hotel, which had closed many years ago.  The theater owners had installed seats on several new platforms, each one built higher than the next until it reached the second floor balcony.  One hundred and two seats.  Over the years, Seth could probably match that number in bruises from all the energetic games of hide and seek with his friends Cindy and Samantha.

It wasn’t very large, but it didn’t matter to Seth.  He had spent most of his life here watching his dad perform in plays, helping build the sets (mostly just holding a can of nails), and ushering theater goers to their seats, which inevitably ended with a pinch of his cheek from an old lady gushing over how cute she thought he looked in a tie.  So, flaws and all, it was his favorite place to be.

Ms. Coral cleared her throat to interrupt Christopher, who didn’t seem to want to stop.  “All right.  Thank you.  I'll post the cast list in fifteen minutes.”

The cast list.  It was like waiting for your report card to arrive in the mail.  But in this case, everyone in the world would see your grades.  And there was no way to stop it.

Seth tensed as warm air fell on the back of his neck.

“Nice work, butthead.”  Christopher snickered then stepped back as Cindy Gonzalez, his friend and next door neighbor, approached.  This time he spoke so that she would hear.  “Hey, Cindy, wasn’t I great?”  He winked at her.

“You both were terrific.”  She rolled her head until her chin pointed to the ceiling and sighed.  “But I was divine.”

Even though Cindy acted like she wasn’t nervous, Seth could tell otherwise.  She had ripped tiny pieces from the edge of her script and let them float to the floor around her.

Christopher escorted her down the side steps into the first row, pretending to be friendly and charming.

To avoid Christopher, and anybody else for a while, Seth pushed the end of the enormous curtain out of his way and stepped into the darkened wings of the stage.

He had blown it again, just like last summer.  He always said his lines too loud or too soft.  His mom had even helped him, a little, when she had called from the kitchen this morning.

"Seth!  Breakfast is ready!"

He had stopped brushing his hair and said, "Quite right, your Majesty!"  It had been, in his opinion, at the perfect volume.

"Oh!  Well, I like the sound of that.”

“It’s one of the lines, Mom.”

"Quite right, your Highness.”

Seth sat down in the corner, fiddling with the curtain's drawstrings.  He felt like an idiot.  It would mean another year as a nobody.  And another year his dad wouldn’t have a reason to visit.

Last summer he had played a Munchkin.  Two years before that he was Urchin Boy #13.  The best he could possibly hope for this year was Crowd Member #27.  He hit the wall with his elbow.

"Seth, is that you?"

"Maybe.”

His friend Samantha, the only girl he knew who could beat any boy in a fight, pushed the curtain to the side and dropped her backpack on the floor.  "It wasn't that bad of an audition.”

He looked up and saw the forced grin on her face, the kind of grin you might give the teacher if she caught you passing a note in class.

"Define bad."

She hesitated, biting at her fingernail.  "Not as bad as the time when you fell off the stage?"

"Did I ever tell you how incredibly sweet you can be sometimes?”

She kneeled beside him, the rips in her jeans parting like eyelids.  On each knee she had drawn a black dot with eyeliner—the only time she used makeup.  When she bent her legs, two eyes stared back.  It caused everyone to look twice.  And Seth knew that her day wasn’t complete without doing something that required a second look.

"You need to think positive,” she said.  “Maybe Ms. Coral will let you be the Queen’s henchman.  You’ll get to chop off all the heads.”

Christopher’s head would be the first to go.

She punched him in the shoulder.  “Stop worrying.  At least until Ms. Corral posts the cast list.  I’m sure it’ll be fine.  Come on.”  She twisted her hand past the edge of the curtain and held it back for him.

He stood up and squeezed past.

“Fine?  It’ll be fine?  How can you say that?  Once she posts the cast list, that’s it.  When someone asks, ‘What are you doing this summer?  Anything fun?  Exciting?’  You can’t answer until the list goes up.  And then you either say, ‘Oh, I’m gonna have a great summer, loads of stuff to do.’  Or, ‘Oh, I’m gonna have a crappy summer, get bossed around, made fun of, and other general things that suck.  Thanks for asking.’”

Samantha rolled her eyes.  “Well, you’re certainly dramatic enough for a bigger part this year.”

“Ha ha.  I’ll catch up with you.  I promised to call my mom.  I’ll be there in a second.”

“Okay.”

On his way to the box office lobby, he passed the best part of the theater – the main staircase.  It had an incredible banister for sliding.

He picked up the phone and dialed his mom's work number.

"Ernesto's Fiesta Grill.  This is Rachel.”

"Hi, Mom."

"Hi, honey.  How did the audition go?  Did you break an arm?"

She was being a dork.  She knew the right way to say it.  But he couldn’t let it pass unnoticed--it was just something they did.  "That's break a leg, Mom."  He searched for the right word to answer her question.  "Uh, it went good."

"Do you think you'll get a speaking part this year?" 

"Hope so.  Maybe we can let Dad know.  I’m sure he’d want to see that.”

He heard her sigh, probably louder than she had wanted.  The air distorted when it hit the receiver.

Finally, she said, “That would be nice, honey.  Listen, some customers just walked in.  I gotta run.  Don’t forget I have a doctor’s appointment, and then I’m going to the grocery store. Any messages on the answering machine there?”

She earned a little extra money by acting as the theater’s box office secretary.  He looked down.  The light wasn’t blinking.  “Nope.”

“Okay, good.  And, Seth?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t think about it too much.  I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“Quite right, your Majesty.”

“See you later, honey.”

He put the phone down then peered into the theater for Ms. Coral, but she must have found a quiet place to work on the cast list.  Now was his chance to steal a slide down the banister.

The hard part was the high-speed landing at the bottom.  He reached down and scratched the week old scab on his left knee but never stopped gazing into the darkness beyond the last step.  A smaller staircase continued up to the old hotel rooms.  At the top, a homemade plywood door kept trespassers out.  Once in a while, they could hear noises up there.  Ms. Coral said that pigeons would fly in through the broken windows and flap around the rooms trying to find a way out.  But it still seemed spooky.

He decided to save the slide for after all the parts for the play had been given out.  No need to risk Ms. Coral’s anger.

He walked out the back door and into the courtyard.  He sat next to Cindy on one of the concrete benches.  In the center of the courtyard, a fountain trickled water from a small bowl on top into several increasingly larger ones.  Between bites of her peanut butter sandwich, Samantha tossed pebbles over her shoulder into the fountain.  Most of the other kids were gathered in small groups, sitting in the shade of the small red-leafed trees or leaning against the brick walls of the old hotel that surrounded the courtyard on three sides.  It provided a peaceful spot where, normally, theatergoers would spend intermission mingling and drinking refreshments.  Seth opened a bag of potato chips.

Samantha said, "I think Ms. Coral wrote the play herself."

"Whether she wrote it or not,” Cindy said, “I love my part."

"What do you mean your part?  She hasn't even—"

"Do I not make the perfect Queen?"  She hopped up on the bench and posed, waving like the girls on the Royal Raisin Court float at last year's Grape Festival parade.  "The Queen of Everything!"

Cindy jumped down and blew kisses to an imagined audience.

Samantha tried to clap while still holding her sandwich.  "But who ever heard of a two-headed Alice?"

Seth laughed. "Well, it is called Alices’ Wacky Adventures in Wonderland.”

Samantha raised her right eyebrow and lowered the left, tilting her head forward a bit.  It was her favorite expression.  “Wacky is right.”  She bent her knees to reveal the black dots, which were now drawn closer together as though cross-eyed.  “That woman is out of her mind.”

They all laughed at the same time, and the burst of sound bounced off the brick walls of the old hotel and echoed upwards.  It was as though there were thirty people laughing instead of three.

Seth looked from window to window.  He thought of all the people who had stayed in the hotel rooms before the first floor had been converted into a theater.  So much dust had accumulated on the windowpanes over the years that it was difficult to see if there was anything behind the glass.

A pigeon landed on the sill of a second-story window.  Seth watched it dance along the edge until it reached the end.  It bobbed its head a few times then vaulted suddenly into the air.  Seth stared at the spot it had just occupied only to see a face, a face that was staring back at him.

He inhaled with a gasp.  No one should be up there.  No one.  He looked toward Cindy and Samantha.  They hadn’t heard his gasp; they were still laughing.

The old hotel rooms had been off limits since before he was born.  Had someone broken in?  Someone who wouldn’t want to be found or seen for some reason?  A criminal perhaps?  The police would want to know about this.  And if that man had gotten in, maybe when the front doors of the theater were open and nobody was looking, how would he get out?

Seth forced himself to look again. In the bottom corner of the dusty window, a man's face, from the nose up, still stared back.

“Hey, look!” Samantha said, pointing to the back door.

The face vanished.  Seth yelled out.  “Did you see it?”

“It?  What do you mean ‘it’? I see him!”

Cindy’s friend Wally was waving at them.  “Come on,” he said.  “She’s posting the list!”

“Let’s go!” Samantha shoved the rest of her sandwich into her mouth.  The ends of the bread stuck out on either side, making a crust smile.  She grabbed Seth by the sleeve.

He tried to catch a glimpse of the window, and the face, one last time but didn’t see anything before Samantha pulled him under the awning over the back door.

It must have been a trick, he told himself.  Between the dust and the sunlight and his nervousness and the—

He stepped inside.  The theater already seemed different.  The shadows seemed longer, the ceiling farther away.  It had always been like a second home, and now it felt...strange, full of...secrets and uncertainty.  Like waking up from a dream and seeing someone in the corner of your darkened room, but no one’s actually there.

But face or no face, part or no part, he threw his backpack on his favorite seat, A5, and followed them anyway.  Chances already seemed good that this summer would be an even bigger disaster than the last.