Showtime Sabotage

By Verity Weaver and Courtney Huddleston

Green Valley Middle School’s theater students knew their production of Pirates and Lost Boys was cursed. After months of snow days, chicken pox, and flaring rivalries, they have finally made it to opening day. But when the lights go out and props and costumes get wrecked mere hours before showtime, the cast and crew suspect something even worse: sabotage.

But who would do such a thing? Was it a self-absorbed pirate worried about being upstaged by the incredible set? Or a brand-new actor fearful of being outperformed? Or maybe it was rival students annoyed at having their talent show moved to the gym. Unless . . . the play couldn’t actually be cursed, could it?

Crack open a What Happened? book to investigate a preposterous mystery from four different perspectives. See what the witnesses gets right . . . and what they get hilariously wrong. Bet you'll never guess what really happened!

• Language: English
• Publisher: North Star Editions
• Release date: Jan 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781631634178

Book preview

Showtime Sabotage © 2020 by North Star Editions, Mendota Heights, MN 55120. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including internet usage, without written permission from the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Book design by Jake Slavik

Illustrations by Courtney Huddleston

Design Elements: Shutterstock Images

Published in the United States by Jolly Fish Press, an imprint of North Star Editions, Inc.

First Edition

First Printing, 2020

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (pending)

978-1-63163-416-1 (paperback)

978-1-63163-415-4 (hardcover)

Jolly Fish Press

North Star Editions, Inc.

2297 Waters Drive

Mendota Heights, MN 55120

www.jollyfishpress.com

Printed in the United States of America

Chapter 1

Worst. Rehearsal. Ever.

Saturday, May 10, 3:00 p.m.

No one could pinpoint the exact day they’d decided this year’s school play was cursed, but every member of the cast and crew knew for sure it was.

Bad luck had been muttered in low voices since the day the cast list for Pirates and Lost Boys was posted and Madison Aldredge’s name wasn’t next to the lead role. With her curly, blonde hair and stage-ready smile, Madison had played the lead in every Green Valley production since third grade. Yet this year, she’d been cast as Fairy and had been so outraged about that itsy, little part that she refused to play any part at all. Instead, she signed up to work set, giving herself loads of opportunity to snipe at the upstart who’d stolen the role of Pan, the role she thought she deserved.

No one would admit out loud to wanting Madison to land the starring role again. Her turned-up nose and frequent outbursts at rehearsals prompted both eye rolls and tears. Yet there was something comforting about her playing the lead. You knew she’d have every line down. She’d hit every scowl or mischievous grin the script called for. And the audience would laugh in all the right spots, then reward the cast with a standing ovation at the end.

Could the newbie lead win over the audience? Or would the whole play flop?

The whispers of a jinx on the play had grown louder with the snow days. These hadn’t come all at once. They’d just added up, and up, and up, each one canceling a rehearsal until the cast was impossibly behind.

The flu took the situation from bad to disaster-waiting-to-happen. It started when the head of the tech crew missed school ten days ago. Texts flew a day later when she was still out. The news left the theater director worried about whether her replacement could hit all the right spotlights on all the right cues. It also left everyone cringing whenever anyone coughed, wondering who’d be out next.

Then, just as the long rehearsals and stress of tech week had everyone operating in a constant low-level panic, they’d discovered a huge administrative mix-up. The auditorium had been double-booked for the play and the talent show. A few people made snarky jibes that throwing jugglers and magic tricks on stage with Pirates and Lost Boys might actually improve the play. Except no, not really.

In the end, the play had been allowed to keep the stage and the talent show was moved to the gym. But the situation left the cast members shaken and getting the evil eye from any talent show folks they passed in the hall.

The signs were clear: this year’s play was destined to fail.

But as they say in show business, the show must go on, or at least try to. So, with the opening curtain only four hours away, the cast and crew of Pirates and Lost Boys were on stage, working hard to plug the biggest holes in both their performance and the set.

The cast was stage right, trying to get the final scene down. Darius, who played the pirate captain, was dressed in knee-high black boots with gleaming silver buckles, a long crimson jacket with silver buttons running down the front, and a fine pirate hat complete with an ostrich plume. The hat was meant to lend gravitas to the play’s villain, but since the feather bounced when Darius walked, it made him look more like a bad guy in a little-kids’ cartoon.

If Darius noticed that his pirate hat didn’t quite work, he didn’t let on. He told anyone who would listen that his outfit was so extravagant that only a personality equally outlandish could pull it off—that he was an actor made for grand gestures performed center stage.

Darius was dueling Tianna, the upstart who’d stolen Madison’s lead role. The two faced each other on the six-inch-high platform that served as the deck of the play’s pirate ship.

On stage left, Madison crouched over a huge canvas, swishing turquoise and aquamarine strokes to create an ocean backdrop.

Watch out! she warned as Darius took a backward step toward the edge of the platform and, beyond that, her canvas. I don’t want boot prints on my waves.

Darius was retreating from the sword Tianna jabbed at his gut. Turning at Madison’s warning, Darius saw his mistake and came to a quick-but-wobbly halt. His feet stopped, but momentum carried his upper body toward the ocean’s still-damp paint. He threw out a leg for balance. He wavered unsteadily for a moment and could have gone either way—crashing onto Madison’s waves or reversing course and skewering himself on Tianna’s waiting sword. The lost boys and pirates who’d been cheering on the scene’s duel stood with their mouths shaped like Os as they waited to see which horror would befall the pirate captain.

Madison stole the decision from gravity’s hands. She gave Darius a firm shove toward stage right. He stumbled again, missing Tianna’s rough-hewn wooden sword, but it was a near thing.

Klutz, Madison shot out.

Malcontent, Darius shot back as he lurched forward, reaching for the mast to stop himself from face-planting.

"And don’t you dare touch