Broken Strings by Eric Walters & Kathy Kacer

Author:Eric Walters & Kathy Kacer [Walters, Eric & Kacer, Kathy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult, Childrens
ISBN: 9780735266254
Google: cX9_DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 43330905
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2019-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Rehearsals continued at a frantic pace over the next couple of weeks, interspersed with homework. I’d given up all my other extracurricular activities, but it still felt as if there was no break between day and night. Everything just blended into one continuous loop. Our opening in April, only six weeks away, was the reward we all had our eyes on.

One afternoon, I stood at the back of the auditorium looking down at the stage. Up close, it was obvious where there were faults and pieces of the set that didn’t exactly fit together. However, from this distance, things looked remarkably real. Well, as real as a village sitting on a stage could look. Pretty much everything had been put together by the set crew—and they were still building. Any time we weren’t actually using the stage, the noise of hammers and power tools punctuated the air and echoed around the auditorium. There was a barn, stage right, and the house, stage left, and at center stage there was a cart and a pile of hay. The hay had come from the farm where Mindi stabled her horse. Oh, that was another thing about Mindi, the girl had a horse. Of course, she was the sort who would have a horse.

Adding to the noise, the strings and the brass from the school orchestra were in the pit practicing the score. From the bits I could hear they apparently needed even more practice than we did. Strangely, the sounds of the hammers and power tools sometimes seemed like part of the music. I was pretty sure that the people wielding the hammers were deliberately adding a rhythm section.

The sets were supposed to have been finished by now. I think we had Mr. Martello’s absence to blame for that. So now everything else was falling behind. Since we couldn’t use the stage while set construction was happening, Ms. Ramsey had taken the ensemble into the drama room to work with them, leaving the leads to go over our parts and wait for her return. The fact that we were working alone was another sign that Ms. Ramsey badly needed help.

I’d mentioned all of this to my parents. In addition to blaming the problem on cutbacks and lack of funding for the arts, they talked about how “politics” was everywhere. They meant that since Ms. Ramsey was young and newer to the school there might be people who weren’t happy about her suddenly being put in charge of the big school production, and so they wouldn’t want to support her. That all made sense, until I started to think it through. I mean, who else was there who could have stepped up to help out at a time like this? To add to that, Mrs. Reynolds was the new head of the music department and she was still working hard to get a handle on her program.

Ben sat in an audience seat bent over his script. Every once in a while he raised his head and closed his eyes, and I could see his lips move as if he was reciting lines.

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