Elizabella Breaks a Leg Read online

  Then she paused. “Number five: I need you.”

  Minnie paused. Then shook her head. “I’ve made up my mind.”

  Mr Gobblefrump had made his message loud and clear: No trouble or the play would be cancelled. Elizabella hadn’t planned any particular pranks, but as the next day at school unfolded, they kept popping into her head. It was all she could do not to hurl an open bag of feathers sitting under Miss Carrol’s desk at the spinning ceiling fan during the morning maths lesson. Harder still to stop herself sticking cicada shells to Daphne’s back at recess when a little pile of them had presented themselves to her in the bough of the big oak tree by the tuckshop. But somehow she had made it to lunchtime and her meeting with Mr Gobblefrump to discuss play ideas without getting into trouble. She had even arrived before Mr Gobblefrump and was waiting patiently at his office door for him.

  “Elizabella!” said Mr Gobblefrump, striding over to her. “Congratulations on not being fired as playwright yet.”

  “Thank you, Mr Gobblefrump,” she replied. “It hasn’t been easy.”

  “Hmm,” he replied, not wanting to know any more.

  “I got you an orange juice,” she said, handing Mr Gobblefrump a bottle.

  Elizabella knew how much Mr Gobblefrump liked orange juice and wanted to stay in his good books. Miss Duck, who was always helping Elizabella out, had given her one for the cause.

  “Yummy, thank you!” Mr Gobblefrump said. Then he went on: “Telephone!” he yelled at his phone, which had voice command activated.

  “Make a note to thank Miss Duck for the OJ.”

  “Reminder: Prank Miss Duck with crochet,” the phone said back.

  Elizabella giggled.

  “Harrumph! Silly old phone.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that, can you repeat?” the phone replied.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Mr Gobblefrump said, exasperated, into the phone. “I was talking about you!”

  “Actually, Mr Gobblefrump, a crochet-based prank is not a bad idea.”

  “Elizabella, my tether is short. I meant what I said about getting in trouble. And no amount of orange juice will change that. Now talk me through your initial ideas for the play.”

  “I’m still deciding . . . maybe it will be about dogs who find a talking bucket?”

  “Okay . . . and what will we learn from the dogs and this bucket?” Mr Gobblefrump asked. She thought about it for a minute.

  “Well . . . what about ummm . . . something to do with maths?”

  “Maths?”

  “That’s boring, isn’t it?” Elizabella sighed.

  “Elizabella,” Mr Gobblefrump said. “A play needs to have relationships that shift and change. Take our characters on a journey! Let the audience ride an emotional rollercoaster!”

  Elizabella blinked at him. This sounded hard.

  “Maybe I should ask some other people for ideas,” she said. “After all, this is Year Four’s play, not The Elizabella Show.”

  “True enough,” said Mr Gobblefrump. “Whatever you do, you must do it fast. We’ll need time for auditions and rehearsals and planning. It doesn’t matter how clever you’ve been about saving money. If there’s no script then, well, there’s no play at all!”

  “Elizabella, you have to include pirates in the play,” Evie said as she chomped her peanut butter sandwich. Back in the playground Elizabella’s friends were trying to help her. “They could be the main characters!”

  “Pirates who are obsessed with peanut butter,” said Huck, looking at her sandwich,

  “What about zombies?” said Sandy. “Zombies are mad!”

  “And they have a jar of peanut butter that never runs out,” Huck continued.

  “You should have an evil possum for a villain,” said Ava.

  “And a Queen Bee!” said Evie.

  “But then the peanut butter grows and grows until it spills out of the jar all through the pirate ship and everyone gets stuck in the peanut butter!”

  “Huck, are you hungry?” Evie asked, passing him a quarter of her sandwich.

  “Thanks!” he said, wolfing it down.

  Elizabella looked over at Minnie. She wanted to get her opinion on all these ideas, but Minnie shook her head.

  “I told you,” she said. “I’m not getting involved.”

  That afternoon after school, Elizabella stood on her bed in her room, thinking about all the ideas her friends had offered and her own ones too. She’d written them down on sticky notes and had stuck them on the wall. And now she stared at them, trying to make them fit into a narrative somehow.

  Maybe the dogs could travel the world with an evil possum . . . who lives in a talking bucket? she thought. No, that’s terrible . . . What if there was a zombie who eats peanut butter instead of brains? Maybe–

  But her thought was interrupted.

  “Elizabella! Isabeth is here.”

  Whoops . . .

  “Just a minute!” With everything going on she’d utterly forgotten about Isabeth’s visit. And she had to figure out this play ASAP or there would be no play at all.

  What if the zombie has a beehive and–

  Martin opened the door to her bedroom, then knocked on it.

  “Dad!” said Elizabella. “You know you’re really supposed to knock, wait for a response, and then come in!”

  “And you’re really supposed to come and greet your cousin when she’s come all the way from Melbourne.”

  Elizabella looked at her cousin Isabeth. She hadn’t seen her for a few years, and it felt a bit like she was looking into a mirror. A mirror that was just a little bit squiffy somehow. Isabeth had curly, knotty hair like Elizabella’s, except instead of one knot coming out of the top, she had two springing from the sides of her head like extra ears. She wore big red-rimmed glasses and she still had on her school uniform – a dark blue T-shirt and light blue shorts – because she’d had to race straight from school to the airport.

  “Sorry,” said Elizabella, “Hi Isabeth! It’s so cool that you’re here. I’m sure we’re going to do a million fun things. I just have to do some writing quickly then we can hang out. Okay?”

  “Oh cool, what are you writing?” Isabeth asked.

  “We’re doing a play at the end of term, and I’m trying to mesh all these ideas together to create the plot.”

  “Sounds fun! I love play building,” Isabeth replied.

  “Well, anyway, I’ll come out a bit later, all right?”

  Martin coughed and raised his eyebrows at Elizabella. “Well, Isabeth, put your bags down in here. You’ll be staying in Elizabella’s room. And let me show you the rest of the house,” Martin said. “I’m sure your cousin won’t be too long now.”

  Isabeth left her things and followed Martin out.

  “This is Larry,” he said as they passed the lizard in the hallway.

  “Hi Isabeth,” Larry said. “I know you can’t understand me, but I hope you have a great time in Bilby Creek!”

  “He’s a chatty guy!” Isabeth said, looking at the lizard who had been croaking pleasantly at her.

  “He certainly is,” Martin smiled. “If you really want to win his heart, he’s a huge fan of leftovers from your dinner plate. Anything you don’t want, send it Larry’s way.”

  “Noted,” said Isabeth, smiling. He opened the door of the lounge room. Toddberry was there, watching TV.

  “Toddberry, Isabeth is here,” Martin said.

  “Dad, how do you always manage to come in just in time to ruin my show? And for the six billionth time, it’s TODD!”

  Isabeth jumped as he yelled his name.

  “I’m sorry, Isabeth. Usually my children aren’t quite so rude.”

  “Oh, that’s okay.” Isabeth shrugged. “I hate it when Mum interrupts me when I’m watching TV.”

  “Soz,” said Toddberry. “But this doco was about to reveal what really happened to Prime Minister Harold Holt. Now I’ll never know.”

  “You could just Google it.”
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  Toddberry looked at her and rolled his eyes. “Google lies,” he said.

  “Er . . . come on then, Isabeth,” said Martin. “Let me show you Squiggly Manor.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “It’s our worm farm.”

  Over the next hour, Martin tried to keep Isabeth entertained.

  “It’s all right, Uncle Martin,” Isabeth said eventually, after he’d suggested yet another round of Snap, “you don’t have to play with me. I’m sure you have other things to do.”

  Enough was enough, Martin decided. “Stay here a minute,” he said as he marched straight into Elizabella’s room.

  “Dad–” Elizabella protested.

  “Don’t ‘Dad’ me,” he said. “Your poor cousin has been stuck with her boring uncle all afternoon. You will stop what you’re doing and go and play with her!”

  “I don’t want to be annoying,” came a voice from the doorway.

  “I can just read a book in the dining room out of everyone’s way.”

  Elizabella felt terrible.

  “Don’t be silly,” Elizabella said. “Come in. We can play a board game or something.”

  “Good,” said Martin, and he left them to it.

  “We don’t have to play a game,” Isabeth said. “I can help you with the play.”

  “Oh, I think it’s beyond help.” Elizabella sighed.

  “Nonsense,” said Isabeth. “What are you trying to do?”

  Elizabella pointed to the sticky notes on the wall. “Trying to make all of these stupid ideas fit together somehow!”

  Isabeth studied them.

  “So far I have this. A zombie owns a peanut butter factory haunted by evil possums and a talking bucket.”

  “Interesting!” said Isabeth. Then she paused. “Where did these ideas come from?”

  “Mostly my friends,” Elizabella replied.

  “Well they’re cool and everything, but have you ever thought about including something from your real life in the play?”

  “What? Real life is boring,” Elizabella scoffed.

  “Is it? What’s the least boring thing you did last term?”

  “Well . . . Minnie and I thought there was a ghost on school camp at Lizard Lake but after a lot of investigating and getting in so much trouble it turned out camp was actually being haunted by a combination of Larry the Lizard (who’d secretly stowed away in my bag), my brother’s old torch and a camp counsellor who’d been fired.”

  “Wow!!” said Isabeth.

  “And back in term two when our principal fired Miss Duck who runs the tuckshop and replaced her with the evil corporation Nutriicorp, Minnie and I broke a Guinness World Record to fix everything.”

  “That’s amazing!”

  “I guess we have had a pretty great year . . . but isn’t using real life in a play cheating a bit?”

  “Not at all!” Isabeth replied. “All the good writers do it.”

  Elizabella scratched her head. Isabeth had certainly given her something to think about.

  Larry had been listening to their conversation, intrigued. He loved the idea of the theatre. Especially of a play written by Elizabella. Of course, being a lizard, he’d never seen an actual play. But he intently watched TV and movies in the lounge room whenever the family put them on.

  If only I could somehow sneak out to see it.

  He let out a lizard sigh. The task seemed undoable.

  Then again, last term I snuck out all the way to Lizard Lake for camp, he reminded himself. Going to Bilby Creek Primary up the road to see a play may just be possible . . .

  “I’m sorry I was so distracted with this before,” said Elizabella. “I should have listened to you earlier – you could have helped me out of this mess!”

  “Oh, that’s okay. I understand. I love plays! I see them all the time because Tallullah does them at high school. She always gets the lead role.”

  “Cool!” said Elizabella. “Last school play Toddberry was in he played Non-Speaking Alley Cat Number Three. Having an older sister sounds much better than an older brother.”

  “Oh, older sisters can be heaps annoying too,” said Isabeth. “Tallullah is constantly accusing me of stealing her clothes. And she gets furious when I’m right and she’s wrong – she totally can’t handle being schooled by a ten-year-old.”

  “Ha!” Elizabella laughed. “I bet she doesn’t gross you out by kissing people in the park though!”

  “That’s true,” said Isabeth. “She kisses her boyfriend in her bedroom. You can’t see it, thank goodness, but sometimes you can hear it.”

  “Ew!” Elizabella laughed.

  “You know how our mums were sisters?” Isabeth asked.

  “Yeah, duh.”

  “Did you know they sometimes wrote plays together when they were in school?”

  “No!” Elizabella exclaimed. She loved hearing stories about her mum, ones she’d heard a thousand times, but especially ones she’d never heard before.

  “Well, they did! They used to write two-hander plays that they’d perform for their parents. They wrote about all sorts of things, but their favourite topic was crime. They put them all in a little book called Rhyme Crimes.”

  “Seriously?” Elizabella was shocked. “Where is it?”

  “It’s at my place. I can post it to you when I get back home.”

  “Wow, thanks!”

  And the cousins talked for hours. Elizabella asked her every single question she could think of to get as much new information about her mum as possible. She learned about a pet rat named Agatha that her mum and Aunty Anna had owned as kids and how their grandmother had once given them both terrible haircuts by getting a cake mixing bowl, putting it on their heads and cutting right around it.

  That night Elizabella dreamed about her mum. But in the dream her mum was ten like Elizabella and they went camping together and told each other scary stories.

  “So this is where the ice skating rink is,” Elizabella said, moving a piece of toast into the middle of the table. “And over here is L’Escargot Bilby,” she continued, marking the spot with a salt shaker. “That’s the fancy new restaurant where adults go on dates when they really want to impress.” She had been creating a map of Bilby Creek for Isabeth on the dining room table while they ate breakfast.

  “Have you heard of the internet?” Toddberry asked through his hair curtains.

  “No, what’s that?” Elizabella said sarcastically, rolling her eyes at Isabeth.

  “Oh, just a big place where you can get literally any map you want.”

  “I like the breakfast map,” Isabeth said with a smile.

  She’d only been around for a day, but Isabeth and Elizabella discovered they had so much in common.

  “Maybe tomorrow you can make me a breakfast map of Melbourne!” Elizabella said.

  “Alright, Elizabella,” said Martin, entering the dining room with Elizabella’s backpack. “Time to go.”

  “I’ll come home straight after school and we can play Kangaroos and Staircases and we’ll make epic hot chocolates,” said Elizabella, shovelling in a final spoonful of cereal.

  “Sounds fun!” Isabeth replied. “Maybe you can take me on a tour of Bilby Creek?”

  “Definitely!” said Elizabella, as she grabbed her backpack and headed for the door.

  “See you this arvo!”

  “So, how many zombies are in the play?” Sandy asked as he hung up his backpack on a hook outside their classroom. The morning bell had gone and Elizabella and her friends were heading to their morning lesson.

  “Who cares about zombies. What about the evil possum?” asked Ava.

  “And the Queen Bee!” Evie piped in.

  “Umm . . . I still haven’t figured it all out,” said Elizabella as she hung up her own bag. She had been thinking about what Isabeth had said. She’d had a point – real life was actually really interesting. But she did love Huck’s idea of a talking bucket, and lots of the other suggestions too . . .
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  “Hello young playwright,” that familiar voice boomed as Mr Gobblefrump approached Elizabella in the hallway.

  “Hi Mr Gobblefrump.”

  “How’s that play coming along? We’ll need the script quick smart if there’s any chance of putting it on before Year Four draws to a close!”

  “I’m thinking of combining some made-up ideas with . . . some things from real life?”

  “Very interesting,” said Mr Gobblefrump.

  “And the main characters are two friends who are dogs. Coco and Ralph.”

  “Here’s a little tip. In a great story, our main characters must lose something.”

  “Like a shoe?”

  “No, something special.”

  “Like an expensive shoe?”

  “Maybe . . . But maybe something more important than that. You think about it. And get writing!”

  Elizabella scratched her head.

  Maybe Coco or Ralph could lose a gold bullion? What’s more important than gold?

  In class, Miss Carrol had gone back to attempting a lesson on bees. She explained that Australia had over 1700 species of native bees. And that some bees were “social” and lived in colonies, but most of the species preferred to be alone. Bees were so fascinating, Elizabella began to wonder whether she might incorporate them into the play somehow.

  In fact, ever since Isabeth suggested using real life, she’d been seeing ideas for the play everywhere. The tuckshop could be the perfect setting for a play, she’d thought while she queued up for her lunch. A high stakes handball competition where someone is accused of cheating? The idea crossed her mind watching Ava and Evie bicker over a particularly heated match.

  By the time the final bell rang signalling the end of the day, Elizabella couldn’t wait to race home to tell Isabeth all her new thoughts about the play. She’d felt bad that her cousin had probably spent the day wandering around Bilby Creek by herself and doing boring homework her school in Melbourne had sent away with her. Elizabella headed for the school gates where a large group was gathering. They were hovering around someone dressed up like a giant robot.