Drama Queen Read online

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  For Nikki S.

  Mary D.

  Donn H.

  with gratitude

  Dear Diario,

  I can’t sleep. I want to juggle my soccer ball, but I’m pretty sure that would wake everyone else up. I could paint on the walls of my room, but I’m not feeling full of what my artist dad calls “creative expression.” What I am feeling full of is energy—inside and out.

  Sometimes my thoughts are like monkeys jumping up and down in my head saying, “Ooh-ooh, aah-aah!” Sometimes my monkeys are swinging from trees.

  I’m excited for school tomorrow because Ms. Garcia says there will be a surprise. I love surprises. I can’t imagine anything better than the last surprise, which involved worms and garbage.

  My monkeys are getting tired.

  Shalom and buenas noches,

  Lola Levine

  Chapter One

  Walk, Don’t Run

  My name is Lola Levine, and the truth is little brothers are sometimes a pain. At least mine is.

  “Lola! Zola! Granola! It’s time to get up!” yells Ben right in my ear.

  “Ouch,” I say, and pull the covers over my head. Usually I am up way before Ben. Why am I so tired? Oh yeah—I couldn’t sleep.

  “Cow barn,” I mumble into my pillow. I can’t say “darn” because that’s a word Mom would rather I didn’t use.

  “It just doesn’t sound nice,” she says.

  “Dolores! Boris! Morris! Wake up!” Ben keeps going with his awful rhymes until I’m up and out of bed.

  “Ben,” I say, “don’t try to rhyme, you moldy lime.” I like words a lot, and I’m good at rhyming them. I’m much better at rhyming than my brother, Ben, in my opinion, and I have lots of opinions.

  “Dolores!” Ben shouts again. He knows I don’t like being called that—I like my nickname Lola much better. My middle name is Esther and I like that. According to Grandma Levine, my bubbe, Esther means “star” in Hebrew.

  “Wanna hear a joke, Lola?” Ben asks. He likes telling jokes. “What do kitties eat for dessert?”

  “I don’t know,” I grumble.

  “Mice cream!” he says. “Get it? Get it? ‘Mice’ instead of ‘ice.’”

  “I get it,” I say. Ever since Mom and Dad agreed that we could get a kitty this summer, Ben’s started with the cat jokes.

  I stretch my hands toward the ceiling. If I jump up, I can almost touch the stars Dad and I painted on the ceiling a few weeks ago. It was really fun—until I got paint in my eyes. After that, Mom made sure both Dad and I wore goggles when we decided to paint ceilings. Ben thought our paint goggles looked cool, so now he wears them even when he isn’t painting. They’re big and round, and I think they make him look like a bug.

  Now Ben’s trying to touch his hands to the ceiling, too, only he thinks it will be easier if he jumps off my dresser.

  Thwunk! He lands on the floor, hard. Thwunk! Kerplunk! He tries again.

  This time Dad yells. “What’s going on up there? Hurry or you’ll be late for school!” He and Mom take turns driving us to school each morning.

  Mom must have an early assignment for the newspaper, because she’s gone by the time we get downstairs. Dad’s making pancakes, but it’s taking really long because he is trying to make them into different shapes. Dad’s an artist who believes in creative expression—even with pancakes. Sometimes, when I am upset, he gives me a piece of paper and a pencil and tells me to draw my feelings. I like art, but I like words better than pictures when it comes to feelings. Finally, the pancakes are ready.

  “Mine looks like an ear,” Ben complains.

  “It’s a whale,” Dad says. “See the blueberry eye?”

  “I thought that was an earring,” Ben says.

  I’m not sure what my pancake is, but I don’t want to hurt Dad’s feelings, so I say, “Looks great, Dad,” and bite into what I think is a snail. I think Dad’s better with paint.

  In the driveway, we get into Dad’s orange car—what Dad calls his people mover. I guess the people mover doesn’t move very fast, because it takes forever to warm up and we are late for school. I get sent to the office for a late slip.

  “Hi, Principal Blot!” I say, peeking into her office. Principal Blot isn’t just my principal. She’s also the mother of my super best friend, Josh Blot. She looks up from her desk.

  “Good morning, Lola,” she says with a frown. Principal Blot frowns a lot, especially around me.

  “Are you in trouble?” she asks.

  “No!” I say. “I’m just late. It’s because my dad was making creative pancakes, and our people mover was slow.” Principal Blot looks up at the ceiling and takes a deep breath. Her ceiling is plain white.

  “I’ve got stars on my ceiling, Principal Blot. You should come over and see them—”

  “Lola!” Principal Blot interrupts. “Aren’t you late for class?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “So, shouldn’t you get going?” she asks.

  “Yes!” I say, and start to sprint to class. But I have my backpack on, and I guess I forgot to zip it, because everything spills out.

  “Lola! No running in the halls,” Principal Blot says. “You know better than that.”

  “Sorry, Principal Blot. I forgot. I hope you’re not exasperated, Principal Blot.” My mom uses the word “exasperated” a lot. She says it is a nice way of saying that you’re annoyed. It’s a cool word, in my opinion.

  “Lola,” Principal Blot says. “If you don’t get going right now, I promise I will be exasperated. Now walk, don’t run, to class.”

  Chapter Two

  Wave like Wheat

  Before I go to lunch, I leave a note on Ms. Garcia’s chair.

  Dear Ms. Garcia,

  Are we going to find out about the surprise today? I’m soooooo tired of waiting. You told me not to ask again in class, but I’m not in class right now, I’m outside playing soccer (I hope—I don’t actually know because I’m not actually outside yet), and I think you are eating lunch at your desk, reading my note. Unless you have yard duty. If you do, please close this note right now, because I might be in class when you find this note and you might be exasperated.

  Shalom,

  Lola Levine

  When I come back from lunch, Ms. Garcia is smiling and I don’t see my note, so I guess she isn’t exasperated with me. Ms. Garcia is the best.

  “Are you ready for the surprise?” Ms. Garcia asks.

  “Yes!” we say. Finally. I couldn’t even concentrate during the soccer game over lunch. Alyssa Goldstein scored on me, which I disliked very much.

  “For the next eight weeks, we are going to have a special drama class, with a special drama teacher who will come twice a week,” Ms. Garcia says. “At the end of the class, we will have a class play!”

  A new teacher? I’m not sure how I feel about that. Ms. Garcia is my favorite teacher ever. And I’m not sure what a drama class involves.

  I have heard Mom use the word “dramatic.” Last time my grandma Levine visited, for example, I heard Mom ask Dad, “Why is your mother so dramatic?” I didn’t know what she meant, so I borrowed Mom’s dictionary. There were a lot of different definitions for “dramatic,” but I picked the ones that said:

  1.
extreme and sudden

  2. attracting attention; causing people to look and listen

  Mom must have been talking about the way Bubbe hugs extremely tight. And now that I think about it, Bubbe does get a lot of attention, mostly because of how she dresses. She looks like a rainbow and always wears colorful shawls and scarves. I think she is why my dad became an artist.

  And it is easy to listen carefully when Bubbe talks, because she talks really, really loud. I talk loud, too. Especially on the soccer field. And sometimes in class. Last year, when I was in first grade, I used to get in trouble a lot for being loud. My teacher would say, “Lola Levine, use your inside voice.”

  “This IS my INSIDE voice,” I always answered. For some reason, my teacher didn’t like that answer very much. But it seemed like when she talked to me, she always used a voice you could hear all the way outside—it was very confusing.

  Ms. Garcia lines us up, and we get ready to go to the gym.

  “Psst. Josh!” I say. “Do you think I’m dramatic?”

  “Definitely,” Josh whispers back, smiling. We get to the gym, where our new teacher is waiting.

  “Students,” Ms. Garcia says, “give a warm Northland Elementary welcome to Ms. Tinkle.” When I see Ms. Tinkle, I’m not sure where to look. I’ve never seen someone with so many sparkles. She has on big, shiny butterfly earrings and about a hundred bracelets, which click and clang together when she moves her arms. And guess what? Ms. Tinkle moves her arms a lot.

  “Good afternoon, students!” she says with a wave of her arms. She sort of reminds me of a butterfly, actually, because she is wearing a big orange shirt and green pants. I see that she’s wearing sandals, too, with purple glitter toenail polish. She even has rings on her toes! Wait until I tell Mom.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. Tinkle,” we all say. I think I say it a little louder than everyone else, because she looks straight at me.

  “Welcome to drama class, everyone! We’ll be working together this spring. The word ‘drama’ comes from the Greek word for action, and here you will learn to act and tell a story onstage.” It’s hard to pay attention because I’m thinking about Ms. Tinkle—about her name, actually. Tinkle. It reminds me of something, but I’m not sure what. Then I remember a silly rhyme my mom made up and used to sing to me:

  “My little Lola, with her smiling dimples,

  Tell Mommy when it’s time to tinkle!

  My little Lola, bumblebee,

  Tell Mommy when it’s time to wee!”

  All of a sudden, I really, really have to go to the bathroom.

  “Ms. Tinkle! Ms. Tinkle!” I raise my hand. “May I be excused? I have to tinkle—I mean pee.” Did I just say “tinkle”? Cow barn, I think. I should have said “use the bathroom.”

  Makayla Miller laughs and whispers something to Alyssa. When they whisper, it’s usually about me, and I dislike that very much. I see other kids giggling, too, and even Josh thinks it’s funny. Ms. Tinkle does not look too happy.

  “Fine,” she says. “You may use the restroom.”

  Then Juan Gomez raises his hand and says, “Ms. Tinkle, I need to tinkle, too. May I be excused?” Now everyone is laughing.

  “Silence!” Ms. Tinkle says. “I’ll have you know that the word ‘tinkle’ is a sound, not only an action.” To prove her point, she waves her arms, and the little bells on one of her bracelets make a tinkling sound.

  When Juan and I get back from the bathroom, the class is in a big circle, and Ms. Tinkle’s cheeks are red. I feel bad because I think I’m the reason everyone laughed at her name, and I sure know how that feels: not very good.

  “Okay, class, let’s warm up,” says Ms. Tinkle.

  “I can lead warm-ups!” I say. “I’m the captain of my soccer team, the Orange Smoothies, and I lead warm-ups all the time!”

  “Nobody cares, Lola,” says Alyssa. I try to follow Dad’s advice to ignore people when they are being mean.

  “We are going to warm up with improv games today, class,” Ms. Tinkle says.

  “Why do we have to warm up for drama?” Juan asks.

  “Well,” Ms. Tinkle says, “we need to warm up our acting muscles!”

  I don’t understand. I don’t know what “improv” means, and I have no clue which of my muscles is my acting one.

  “I’m not talking about the muscles in your body. I’m talking about warming up your mind and letting your imagination run free!” Ms. Tinkle explains. “Improvisation teaches you how to create without any preparation. You have to think on your feet. Now raise your hands in the air! Wave like wheat.”

  “Wave like wheat?” I whisper to Josh. “How does wheat wave?”

  “Like this,” he says, and waves his hands and bops me on the head.

  “Now buzz like bees!” Ms. Tinkle says, and the whole class buzzes, which is fun until people start poking one another and yelling, “You’ve been stung!”

  Alyssa doesn’t like that game, I guess, because she yells, “Lola just poked me in the eye, and my mom isn’t going to like this!” I actually poked Alyssa’s cheek, which is very different, in my opinion. Ms. Tinkle quickly tells us to pretend we are frogs, ribbiting and hopping around, but things get a little crazy when Juan tries to leap over Josh and ends up knocking over a trash can. A full trash can, which includes the grape juice someone didn’t finish at lunch and a smelly tuna sandwich.

  Ms. Tinkle, who is looking a little less twinkly, says, “Statues! Stand perfectly still and SILENT like statues.” Then, with a tinkle and a clink and a clang of her bracelets, she walks toward the door of the gym, where Ms. Garcia is waiting.

  “I think we’ve had enough drama, I mean, learned enough about drama today,” Ms. Tinkle says. “Class dismissed.”

  Chapter Three

  Sizzle, Pop

  On Friday, we have drama class again, and Ms. Tinkle has us do even more exercises. She explains that we will be “mirroring” another person. Unfortunately, Alyssa is my other person, and she’s got a great big frown on her face.

  “Remember,” Ms. Tinkle says, “one of you is the mirror and one of you is the person, and the mirror has to reflect what the person is doing.”

  “You’re the mirror, Lola,” Alyssa says. “I’m the person.” Then she flips her hair, so I do, too, but I don’t have nearly as much hair to flip.

  “Are you making fun of me?” she grumbles.

  “No, I’m mirroring you,” I say.

  She raises her arm, so I raise my arm. She moves her feet, and I try to move my feet in the same way, but I’m bored, so I do a little jump and spin.

  “Lola Levine, you are so weird!” Alyssa says with her hands on her hips.

  “I’m not weird. I’m dramatic,” I say with my hands on my hips just like hers. I think of the definition in Mom’s dictionary. “I attract attention!”

  “Yeah, because you’re weird. And loud, too. I’m going to be an actress when I grow up,” she says, stomping her foot. I stomp my foot, too.

  “Well, maybe I’ll be an actress, too,” I say, raising my voice. “My middle name means ‘star,’ you know.”

  Just then, Ms. Tinkle raises her arms and says, “STOP! It’s time for our next activity. Everyone lie down on the floor.”

  I’m happy the mirror game is done, and I go lie down next to Josh.

  “Now, students, this is called the popcorn game. I want everyone to pretend they’re popcorn kernels and the floor is a great big pan filled with oil.”

  “Yuck,” I whisper to Josh.

  “Lola! Pay attention!” Ms. Tinkle says. I guess I have a loud whisper.

  “Now, students,” Ms. Tinkle says, “imagine the pan is getting sizzling hot.”

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! I’m burning up,” I scream, because I want Ms. Tinkle to know I’m good at acting.

  “Please, no screaming, Lola. You’ll scare the kindergartners next door,” Ms. Tinkle says. Ben is in kindergarten, and it would take more than a few screams to scare him, I think.

  “Impro
vise!” Ms. Tinkle says. “You are popcorn kernels—what do you do?” Alyssa jumps up and claps her hands.

  “That’s right, Alyssa!” Ms. Tinkle says. “You pop! Well done.” Soon everyone starts to jump and pop and clap, and it does sound pretty cool. I wish I had thought of popping.

  I’m happy when the bell rings and drama class is over.

  I go to Josh’s house after school.

  Josh and I have lots of fun playing soccer in his backyard, but we have to be extra careful not to smush the plants in Josh’s mom’s vegetable garden.

  “Lola,” Josh says, “can you wave like wheat while dribbling a soccer ball?”

  “No!” I say. “But I can buzz like a bee! Bzzzzzzzzzzz!” We try to get Josh’s cat, Milo, to play soccer with us, but he’d rather nap in the sun.

  “Guess what, Lola?” Josh asks between soccer juggles.

  “What?” I say.

  “I’m really excited about the class play,” he says.

  “It will be fun,” I say. I’m secretly hoping to be the star!

  After a while, we get hot and hungry and go inside for a snack.

  “Would you like something salty or something sweet?” Principal Blot asks us.

  “Salty,” Josh says.

  “Sweet,” I say.

  Josh gets celery sticks sprinkled with salt, and I get carrots. I have to admit they are pretty good carrots, so I tell Principal Blot that very thing.

  “These are the sweetest carrots I’ve ever tasted, Principal Blot—I mean Josh’s mom!” I say.

  “You think so?” she replies.

  “Yes! Can I have some more?” I ask, and then remember to add, “Please?”

  “Of course. I grow them in my own garden!” she says, and then Principal Blot does something I’ve never ever seen her do. She smiles.