Me: (Now! Turns switch to ON. Blast of fog gushes onto the stage.) Jayden: Uh! My eyes! (Holds hands up to shield face.) I can"t see! (Waves hand in front of her face, rubs hands across both eyes. Coughs.) Mr. Cannon, she did this on purpose!

Me: (Pokes head through gap in curtain.) Sorry. I was just testing the fog machine for my dad.

Mr. Cannon: Settle down, people. No harm done. Well, at least we know it"s working. That fog"ll come in handy for the graveyard scene. Okay, Juliet. Your line. "You kiss by the book."

Jayden: (Overdramatizes a cough.) You kiss . . . ahem, ahem . . . by the . . . ahem . . . book.

Mr. Cannon: Benvolio, away, begone. Everybody exit but Juliet and Nurse. Jayden, "Come hither, Nurse."

BACKSTAGE, MOMENTS LATER . . .

Scott: Oh, my G.o.d, Alex, did you see her face? (Laughs.) That was too funny. Then she wiped her eyes and they smudged all black, like racc.o.o.n eyes. (Lowers voice and imitates.) Hey, Jayden. Got fog? Pffffff!

Me: I didn"t mean to get you, honest!

Scott: It was worth it. Getting fogged, I mean. Just to see the Jayden freak-out. I don"t know what"s up with her. She"s freaking out all over the place.

Me: Really?

Scott: Yeah, like yesterday. You shoulda heard her.

Me: (Innocently.) Yeah, I wish I could have.

Scott: We"re at the end of Act One, right? Same as today. But she keeps repeating the words "hands" and "palms" and messing up her lines. It was messing me up. Then she says she quits because Shakespeare"s a tongue twister.

Me: Well, it is a lot to learn.

Scott: Hey, maybe she will quit!

Jayden: (Storms backstage.) I heard that! I know what you two are doing back here. For your information, I"m not quitting.

Me: What! We"re just talking.

Jayden: (Fumes.) I know what you did. You came back here on purpose, just to fog me so Scott and I wouldn"t get to - Scott: Finish our scene?

Me: Jayden, I"m sorry. I guess I hit the b.u.t.ton and poof! It just went off. I didn"t even know it still had fog juice in there.

Jayden: Ha. You are such a little liar.

Scott: Hey, Jayden. It"s just a little fog. You don"t have to get so bent out of shape about it.

Jayden: Oh, sure, take her side. She"s just jealous because for once she didn"t get the lead. And now she"ll do anything to wreck it.

Me: (Teases.) Who? Little Miss Woe Is Me?

Jayden: (Hits Scott in arm.) Uh! You told her that? I can"t believe you.

Scott: I didn"t - are you crazy? I don"t know what you"re talking about.

Me: (Shrugs; feigns innocence.) Jayden: I"ll get you for this, Reel. I"m going to talk to Mr. Cannon and make sure you"re not allowed anywhere near this play.

Me: Good luck. I live here. My parents own this theater.

Jayden: (Storms off.) Me: "Farewell, fair cruelty . . ."

Scott: Hey, I better get going, too. I only have about a thousand lines to memorize by tomorrow. Hey, did you write that sonnet for English?

Me: Yeah, you?

Scott: No sweat. I only have fourteen more lines to go.

Me: But a whole sonnet is only fourteen lines.

Scott: Exactly. That"s why I gotta run. See you tomorrow?

Me: I"ll be there.

Scott: For what it"s worth, I think you woulda made a great Juliet. (Rushes through curtain and hops down off stage.) Me: (Sticks head through gap in curtain.) Hey, Romeo. Thanks.

Scott: Hey, Reel. Fog ya later! (Mimes spraying with fog machine, laughs all the way up the aisle.) It started out as just a perfectly ordinary normal Sat.u.r.day. Three sisters in the family room, each in her own favorite chair, which we had named years ago. Joey was flopped sideways across the Blue Blob, drawing frog comics in her notebook. Alex was stretched out on Jabba the Couch, moaning about something that happened in English yesterday. Something to do with her sonnet.

I was in my Thinking Chair, waiting for Wire Rims to show up so we could do our science lab and get it over with. I couldn"t stop shaking my leg. Nervous? Excited? It was hard for me to tell.

"I"m telling you," said Alex, "it was sooooo embarra.s.sing. We had to make up our own Shakespearean sonnet in English and I got called on to read a love poem in front of the whole world. Now I"m sure Scott knows I like him."

"I don"t get it," I said, sitting up. "You like Scott Towel, right? Don"t you want him to know?"

"No. It doesn"t work that way. Because I don"t want him to know I like him before I know for sure that he likes me."

"It"s so obvious he likes you," I said.

"It"s just like in the Sealed with a Kiss movie," said Joey. "See, Romeo likes Juliet, but he tells his friend seal instead of telling her. Meanwhile, Juliet likes Romeo, but she tells another lady seal instead of just telling him. And they think it"s all secret and n.o.body can tell they"re in love, but really everybody can."

"Great. My love life is like a cartoon. With stupid seals."

"Since when are you into Romeo and Juliet?" I asked Joey. "I thought you hated lovey-dovey stuff."

"I do. But it"s okay when they"re seals."

Alex sat up and pointed her rolled-up magazine at me. "Hey, whatever happened when that boy called you, Stevie? You never said."

Joey covered her ears, shook her head, and went, "La-la-la-la-la-la-la!" so she wouldn"t have to hear.

"What boy? Oh, him. Nothing. Just - we have to do this thing for Science."

"What thing?" Alex asked.

"We have to do a hands-on weather experiment. So we"re going to figure out some way to simulate a cloud."

"Oh, yeah, I know some people who did that too. Mr. Petry"s cla.s.s, right? Wait a second. You"re going to need water and ice and - you"re doing that project with a boy?"

"Yeah. He"s coming over. So what?"

Joey took her fingers out of her ears. "Here? He"s coming here? To our house? Bluck! Why can"t you just do it with a normal person, like Olivia?"

"Because Olivia"s not even in this cla.s.s."

"Wait a second," said Alex. "He"s coming over here to do the cloud thing? This is big. This is huge. This is - we have to get ready. You know, prepare."

"Prepare for what?"

"First we have to clean the whole house. Then, we work on you. Find you a purple shirt to wear."

"What"s wrong with the shirt she has on?" Joey asked.

"Stevie looks good in purple. And we have to fix your hair. And borrow a little blush."

I blushed at the thought of putting on blush.

"It"s Science. It"s not a date."

"I have an idea," said Joey. "Just wear your pajamas, and don"t have him over here."

"Stevie, have you even thought about this for two seconds?" Alex asked. "That cloud thing is messy, and you need a lot of water. I"m pretty sure you have to do the cloud thing in the bathtub!"

"So?"

"Bath. Tub," said Alex. "The bath tub is in the bathroom."

"Why? Is it a mess in there?"

"Not that. There"s, you know, girl stuff in there."

"Yeah, like my rubber ducky collection," said Joey. "Promise you won"t do any science experiments on my rubber duckies. No melting them or anything."

"Girl stuff? Like, are your days-of-the-week undies hanging in there or something?"

"Yeah, or shirts with words on them?"

"Joey!" I gave her the evil eye. But Alex wasn"t even paying attention.

"I just mean soap and shampoo and toothbrushes and stuff. Do you really want a boy seeing your toothbrush?"

"What"s wrong with my toothbrush?" I asked. Maybe I shouldn"t have said he could come over. But I sure didn"t want to go to his house!

"And . . . there"re probably hair b.a.l.l.s in the drain," said Joey.

"Eeww," I said.

"Never mind. Boys love hair b.a.l.l.s. Boys are hair b.a.l.l.s."

"Stop saying "hair b.a.l.l.s,"" I pleaded.

"Hey, I just thought of something. You know why a boy can"t see your soap?" Joey joked. "Because boys smell. They don"t like soap. They don"t even know what soap is. So if a boy comes over, you"d have to be, like, "Boy. Meet Soap. Soap, this is a boy."" She laughed herself silly.

"Joey, this is so not helping. I already feel kinda weird as it is," I admitted.

"Kind of weird?" said Joey. "You"re weird if you don"t know how weird it is."

"Stevie, it"ll be fine," said Alex. "Just don"t let him near the bathroom."

"But what if he has to, you know, go?"

"Tell him to find a tree," said Joey.

"Joey! I"m not going to -"

"Send him over to the Raven," said Alex.

"Okay, what else? We"re going to need a big giant tub of water."

"Ask Dad to blow up the old kiddie pool. And put it in the backyard," Alex suggested. "And don"t let him in the family room because it"s just so embarra.s.sing with Dad"s old props. Like, who has a knight in their living room? And there"s zucchini all over the kitchen, so don"t let him in there. And promise me you won"t wear those pants! And no slippers!"

"What"s wrong with my pants?" I had on my favorite jeans with holes in the knees. They looked fine to me. This boy thing sure was complicated.

I made a T with my hands. "Time out, time out, you guys. Alex, I"m not wearing makeup or anything! It"s not like I like him, like him. He"s just a friend. If that. I barely know him. So I"m just going to be myself. And Joey? Boys aren"t that bad. They don"t all smell and burp and punch you and stuff. So just think of him like Olivia. Only with gla.s.ses."

Alex looked down at her hands. Joey stared at the carpet. Neither sister said a word for close to three minutes.

"I"m just saying. If he has to come over, stay outside and don"t let him inside the house," Joey said.

"What"s wrong with him coming in the house?"

Joey hit her hand to her head in exasperation. "One. I"m here. Two. Boy cooties!"

I was already waiting for him in the back-yard when Wire Rims showed up. With m.u.f.fins. And a party bag of ice. He was wearing a faded T-shirt that said TRAILER PARK SANTAS.

Between bites of m.u.f.fins, Wire Rims and I stood under an overcast sky, staring at the orange clown fish and pink starfish on the bottom of Joey"s old kiddie pool. The morning fog had never burned off, making the edges of things fuzzy. Kind of how I imagined it would be if you wore gla.s.ses but you were looking at the world without them.

Every time I glanced back at the house, I saw Mom looking out the kitchen window. At us. Embarra.s.sing!

"Okay. Here"s the plan," I said, trying not to think about Mom checking up on us. "When I throw in the last bucket of hot water, you get the camera ready to take a picture. Then I"ll quick grab the black towel and hold it up in the background, so our cloud will show up really good."

Wire Rims raised his eyebrows at me over his gla.s.ses.

"Was I being too bossy?" I asked. "Sorry. I"m just saying."

"Okay. On the count of three. Ready?" said Wire Rims. "One, two, three." I leaned over and poured the bucket of hot water into the pool. Then I grabbed the towel and held it high. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Wire Rims snapped a bunch of pictures.