Magic, Madness, and Mischief by Kelly McCullough

Author:Kelly McCullough
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

11

Smoke and Mirrors

IMAGINE A PIE in the face, one of those big heavy restaurant banana cream pies that’s just begging to be used to smack someone. It hits with a sound like a foot going deep into mud at the edge of a lake, kind of splooshy and mooshy and schlorpy all at once. Imagine the squish as your world goes white, and thick streamers of cream shoot past your ears to splash the walls and people behind you. Imagine.

I did. I let the weight of it knock me backward so that I stumbled and went down, rolling along my back and up over my shoulder to land on my chest and stomach.

In the darkness beyond the black box’s stage lights the room erupted in laughter. Pushing myself unsteadily to my feet, I scooped pie out of my eyes and blinked around wildly. That’s when Dave hit me with another pie. This time, when I went down, I stayed down, TKO’d by a pie. A few moments later, the bouncy music coming from Evelyn’s digital music player came to an end and Dave was there, offering me a hand.

“That was beautiful, man. I could almost see the pie!”

“Me too.” I mimed wiping more imaginary cream from my eyes, and we both laughed. “It helps to have done the real thing in the play last fall.” Dave and I had been the clowns in a Shakespeare-inspired piece, and I’d gotten hit with ten pies over the course of dress rehearsal and performances—all donated by a parent who owned a bakery. “There’s something really satisfying about a good pieing even when it’s imaginary.”

“Maybe especially then? I remember you complaining about getting that stuff in your sinuses for two weeks after the show.”

I snorted. “That was pretty miserable. Wish I’d known rule one of getting hit with food before that first pie.”

Dave grinned and recited, “Close your eyes and your mouth and breathe out through your nose.”

I nodded and we hopped down off the stage and took a seat on the floor while the next group of performers climbed up and got ready to improv. But now that I was offstage, I started to worry again, shifting around nervously instead of giving proper attention to the performers. That’s because today was it.

Oscar had gone to work at some construction site this morning for the first time in weeks, and I was finally caught up enough that I could afford to slip off for most of a day, and I planned to do just that after improv finished. It’s really hard to skip your first class when it’s with your advisor and you checked in with her right before breakfast. It’s especially hard when it’s your favorite class and acting with Evelyn basically saved your soul.

I’ll take anything she teaches that I can fit into my schedule, but I especially love group improv. I’ll do straight-up acting for plays too, but there’s something about the freedom of making it up as you go along that’s like no other feeling in the world.

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