Musical Mystery by Laura Sieveking

Author:Laura Sieveking
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9781760979188
Publisher: Scholastic Australia
Published: 2020-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

‘Hold it there, Ella,’ Miss Lopez said, lifting her hand. ‘It feels like you are tense. And if you are tense, the audience is tense. You are a dryad—a free flowing spirit of the forest. You need to let the words spill out of you with airiness and wistfulness,’ she said, as she swayed from side to side. In the seats behind Miss Lopez, I saw Saskia roll her eyes. I nodded, ignoring Saskia.

‘OK, so now, Violet, our songbird, you sing the song that directs the children to the secret box buried under the willow tree. Let’s try it.’ Miss Lopez clicked the backing track on and light piano music filled the auditorium. Violet sounded like an actual songbird as she sang, her high notes trilling with that beautiful wavering vibrato.

I could tell from the way Miss Lopez closed her eyes that she was enjoying Violet’s performance immensely. I felt a tiny pang of jealousy. Then I pushed it aside. I didn’t want to be jealous of my own friend. But I so badly wanted to do my part as well as Violet was doing hers.

The girls playing the parts of the siblings followed me, Tilly and Violet through the ‘forest’ and pretended to fossick around at the base of what would be a prop tree in the corner of the stage. Miss Lopez had placed an ornate wooden box there, which would serve as the box holding the magical key in the play. She’d told us that she didn’t have the key prop yet, but we could open the box and just pretend to pull one out. So the eldest sibling ‘discovered’ the box and held it up for the audience to see.

‘Look amazed,’ Miss Lopez instructed everyone on stage. ‘Now gather in tightly around the box as Ashley opens it to reveal the magical key.’

We all leaned in close, and Ashley slowly opened the wooden box.

Then a scream of terror left her mouth. She flung the box away from her, sending cockroaches flying out everywhere.

We all screamed and ran in different directions, shaking our arms and legs and running our hands through our hair in case one of the little brown insects had landed on our heads.

‘IT’S ON ME!’ Tilly shrieked, as a cockroach scurried down her leg. She jiggled around, shaking her leg wildly. I ran up and quickly flicked the cockroach off her, sending it scuttling across the stage.

Everyone either ran for the wings or jumped off the stage itself. Those sitting in the auditorium chairs then leapt up, fearful that the stampeding girls from the stage might be bringing the creepy crawlies down with them.

‘Everyone, outside!’ Miss Lopez bellowed. She knew she would never calm us down while we were still in the presence of the cockroaches. ‘I don’t understand how this happened!’ she cursed, as she followed us up the aisle and out the back doors. ‘There was nothing in that box when I put it on stage a moment ago!’

I looked at all the horrified faces around me.

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