RE: Trailer Trash, 62 pt 5

    To her surprise, Mrs. Hart followed them back through the store room and into Mr. Peterson’s art room, because she had something to announce. As this seemed to be related to the agenda of today’s Art Club meeting, Tabitha hurried back to sit near Alicia, who gave her appearance in the shirt an appreciative look and a silent pair of thumbs up.

    “Ladies, gentlemen—boys and girls…” Mrs. Hart clasped her hands together for their attention. “I am very pleased to announce that we will be performing The Wiz as our spring musical. Now. We always love love love to collaborate with our dear, dear friends here in the Art Club, and your wise and benevolent leader Miss Casey—applause, please—”

    The scattered kids obliged with enthusiastic claps in support of Casey, who threw up peace signs with both hands.

    “—Thank you, the beautiful and talented Miss Casey has once again agreed to host concessions and an art show in conjunction with our musical. Casey, love?”

    “Okay! So,” Casey stood up from her barstool to address the club. “These are just preliminary discussions! The musical is a couple months away, yet. But, yeah. In years past, the theatre kids’d just do their own concessions. They had the big glass popcorn machine… but, it up and died.”

    “If I might interrupt to ask if there was anything—” Mrs. Hart turned a pleading look towards Mr. Peterson.

    “Heating element went kaput, apparently!” Mr. Peterson explained with a grin. “I took ‘er apart and had a looksie, but hell, we’d have to order in some specialty replacement part or other. Except, we don’t know the name of the part we need, and we don’t know who we’d order it from, and we don’t know what make and model of machine we’ve got, ‘cause the tag plate’s gone and over the years the operating manual has been, uh, misplaced.”

    “We’ll find it yet!” Mrs. Hart declared with a sigh and a rather unconvincing shake of her fist. “I do remember having it. We surely have it somewhere or other. Surely.”

    “How much to replace the entire thing?” Janaye asked, pencil poised to take notes. “Like, getting a whole new one?”

    “I dunno, two, maybe three hundred dollars?” Mr. Peterson chuckled. “Let’s just say it’s not in the art department budget, right now. From what I can tell, the one we’ve got is some ancient old popper stand from the sixties or seventies.”

    “I still say we can make do with a little home air popper,” William insisted. “Like, listen. All we need is a clean tank, or like an iguana aquarium that’s got a heat lamp, and a little home air popper to keep makin’ batches, until we have enough for a whole big group of people. We can—”

    “We’re not dumping popcorn in a fishtank!” Matthew laughed. “Jesus.”

    “Byaahhhhhh,” Mr. Peterson made a denial buzzer sound. “No can do anyhow, hombre. Too loud! The little air poppers.”

    “We’ve tried!” Mrs. Hart admitted with a look of distress. “Even all the way outside the auditorium, those air poppers are just so loud! It’s very disruptive for the performances!”

    “Yeaaah,” Casey laughed. “They tried that, back during my sophomore year.”

    “So… no biggie, we plug in at some spot way further away?” William persisted. “Don’t have to pop it all right out there in the foyer. Have a runner rush each batch over towards—”

    “Not practical!” Casey veto’d the idea. “S’an intermission art show! Not a relay race. Principal Edwards, he’s all twitchy about having other areas of the school unlocked after hours, anyways. And! Snacks doesn’t have to mean popcorn. I’m thinking, like—keep it simple. Giant pretzel with a napkin, something like that. Mixed nuts, or trail mix, or pretzel sticks in a paper cup. Principal Edwards said, has to be snacks, can’t be like, actual food. He doesn’t want that kind of mess in the auditorium. Said it has to be something we can just sweep up real quick.”

    Ooh! OOH! I could bake cookies! Tabitha’s eyes lit up. I could bake SO many cookies!

    “For you newcomers, the general idea is—” Mr. Peterson explained. “During the intermission of the play, musical, whatever, all the parents and whatnot can file outta the auditorium, grab a real cheap snack, and wander about our little art show area in the foyer just outside for a couple minutes. Appreciating all of the artwork. S’not a contest, there aren’t gonna be ribbons or prizes, and no, William, we’re not selling art.”

    “Oh, so we’re selling pretzel sticks but never actual art—” William groused. “Some art show this—”

    “Shush!” Casey reprimanded. “We would very much appreciate if everyone in Art Club can help prepare, participate and volunteer for this! So, half hour before each show to help set up, help sell snacks before the show, and then also at intermission. After intermission, we break down and cart everything back to the art room. Two shows? Three? Spread out over a couple weeks?”

    “Just two, this time,” Mrs. Hart said. “I’m told there is a home game on the schedule that third weekend, and no oh no, we don’t like to have our performances overlap. Football?”

    “Baseball,” Matthew corrected.

    “Ah, yes!” Mrs. Hart said. “Baseball. So it was.”

    “Um,” Tabitha raised her good hand. “What all is involved with setting up and breaking down an art show? Are we putting all the art on… individual easels?”

    “We’ve got three big easels for large paintings,” Mr. Peterson explained. “In our Paint course, the little ones are sixteen by twenty-four, and then the bigguns are twenty-four by thirty-six. Then we’ve got four small wire display racks, artwork goes up to it with binder clips—some of the real nice little paintings and the posterboards the drawing classes work on fit on those. Each have a cement bucket to put in the bottom, so that they’re not getting elbowed over, or anything—and then we have… our art wall.”

    “Our art wall is like a big wooden changing room divider, it stands on its own just by the zigzag way it stands up,” Casey said. “It’s uh, it’s heavy. It’s real heavy. Six big plywood sections, and it’s as tall as I am. The concrete bucket things for the display racks are heavy as hell, too. So. Whether or not we need everybody there for just selling snacks, it’d be really nice if we have as many hands as possible moving the art wall out and getting it set up.”

    “Are we using both sides of the wall?” Matthew asked. “Or, just one?”

    “Depends, depends,” Mr. Peterson grunted out with a laugh. “We’ll see.”

    “We’ll see?” Tabitha blinked.

    “Our uh, rule of thumb is we take all the outstanding artwork from classes,” Mr. Peterson elaborated, gesturing with his palms as if to indicate placing art on the art wall. “Like, you’re in Art 2D doing still life portraits, I’ve got two of those classes running, so—fifty or sixty kids, all doing still lifes. We take the best few of those, that’ll be one face of the art wall. Ideally, we’ll have the best few from each course assignment, whatever all looks real good we can get in a three-month period. But hey, sometimes none of ‘em exactly turn out to be showpieces.”

    “I’m sure they’re all lovely!” Mrs. Hart said in an encouraging voice.

    “Let’s just say that with some of these kids, gettin’ them to actually spend time on their projects is like pullin’ teeth,” Mr. Peterson chuckled, shaking his head. “Lotsa talk talk talk-ing, not a lot of work work work-ing. ‘Look at this unfinished piece! It’s titled; DISTRACTION!”

    Tabitha couldn’t help but smile and think of Vanessa.

    “It’s mostly gonna be paintings,” Matthew commented. “The stuff the juniors and seniors do usually uh, usually just turns out better? Rather than the stuff from beginner classes or like, the freshman stuff… no offense.”

    “Prejudice!” Alicia growled. “Prejudice! Down with the upperclassmen!”

    Tabitha caught an elbow from Alicia as the girl prompted her to join in, but despite being the other freshman here, she was too embarrassed to speak up.

    “Pencil drawings don’t exactly pop the same when they’re all in an exhibition together with paintings, but yeah, you get the idea,” Mr. Peterson grinned. “I play fair! I do try to select the best-looking ones from each course.”  

    “Question!” Alicia raised a hand. “Tabitha here does fashion, like, designer clothes stuff. Blouses. And, I know there’s a mannequin there in the store room…”

    “Neither of those were questions!” Mr. Peterson chuckled. “Hey—I’m cool with it. Fashion is art. However, that said… I believe our mannequin is male, and I do believe it’s broken at the base? Mrs. Hart?”

    “Our dear Mister Mannequin had a glass baseplate, with a metal rod fixture thingamabob that fit up into one of the legs,” Mrs. Hart sighed. “He was picked up when all those Stewart’s department stores in Louisville closed down—but, a student was moving things, and the baseplate hit something the wrong way, and… poof! The glass part exploded into little itty bitty pieces. Which we still keep finding everywhere. Somehow.”

    “Oh…” Tabitha’s shoulders drooped. “Well, if it was a male body mannequin anyways, then I guess it wouldn’t have mattered.”

    “Not so, not so—no big deal!” Casey shook her head. “We can make mannequin forms ourselves. Wrap a uh, volunteer in some cling wrap, go around that with a stupid amount of duct tape. Easy peasy, just lots of layers. Then, you basically have to cut them out of it, and tape the empty shell back together. Uhh, with the inside filled with like, stuffed up newspapers. We did it at youth group a while back to make scarecrow-sorta things for a Halloween display thing. We will have to figure out a way to keep it standing up on your own, though. We lashed ours with twine to a fence post we stuck right in the ground back then, but yeah. You won’t be able to do that there in the foyer.”

    “Bucket of concrete again,” William suggested. “Just stick a post or a pipe or something in there before it’s set. Have the post go right up through the mannequin’s keister.”

    “Ughh,” Casey growled. “I really hate using the cement in a bucket thing for everything. They’re so stupid and heavy. And, the handles always break, too! Plus—I mean c’mon, they don’t exactly look great. They look like crap.”

    “But, they do work,” William argued with a laugh. “And, they’re cheap! We still have a bag of concrete?”

    “Oh yah, we got a bag or two in the store room,” Mr. Peterson confirmed. “We’ll need new buckets, though, so—”

    “Whelp, there goes the whole art budget again,” Casey laughed, fishing the ten dollar bill she’d taken from Tabitha and slapping it down on the table. “Damnit.”

    “Wait, really?” William asked. “That’s all we’ve got left?”

    “Nah, I’m kiddin’,” Casey said. “Think we’ve still got like, thirty-some bucks? It goes fast, though! I mean, even doing super basic concessions—the auditorium seats what, two? Three hundred people?”

    “They’re not gonna fill every seat—” Mr. Peterson began to mutter.

    “Mr. Peterson!” Mrs. Hart scolded. “You take that back. It’s the spring musical! I expect we’ll be performing to a full house! There’s just so many parents who’ll rush over to come in and support—”

    “I know! I know! I’m just sayin’—” Mr. Peterson grinned and held up his hands. “You’ve had good turnouts, before. But… you’ve also had some disasters. Starlight Express—”

    “We don’t talk about Starlight Express!” Mrs. Hart huffed, crossing her arms with a pout. “Oh, and that wasn’t really anybody’s fault, anyways! Mistakes were made. That’s all. It was an accident!”

    “Poor girl broke her freakin’ arm—” Mr. Peterson chuckled, shaking his head.

    “Mistakes were made!” Mrs. Hart snapped. “And—she made a full recovery! The show went on! We finished that performance, you know. Technically.”

    “Do I even want to know?” Casey glanced from one teacher to another.

    “Let’s just say we’re not allowed to roller-skate on stage in the Springton Auditorium anymore,” Mr. Peterson leaned back in his chair and spread his hands in a well, what can you do gesture.

    “Wait, what?” Matthew asked.

    “Yeah, forget The Wiz, let’s do that!” Alicia giggled. “Roller skates? It’s a musical?!”

    “We’re doing The Wiz, and everyone’s going to love it, and that’s final!” Mrs. Hart insisted with a laugh. “Moving on~!”

    “Buckets,” William reminded them. “If we’re gonna have a mannequin, we need cement in a bucket for the base.”

    “With the wire racks we can at least put the buckets like, inside the rack though, to where you can barely see it,” Casey deliberated. “Harder to hide an ugly cement bucket, if we’ve got one as the base of a mannequin.”

    “We can paint them? Maybe?” Alicia frowned. 

    “Hey, I’m just the club advisor,” Mr. Peterson grinned. “But, I think I can probably grab some spare odds and ends from the art room storage and kludge together some kind of wooden base that helps it stand up? Mrs. Hart, you okay with us borrowing leftover material from your side? Then figure when it’s all said and done, you can use the mannequin forms to keep your theater costume stuff on?”

    “Deal!” Mrs. Hart agreed right away. “In fact, if you can also get our current Mister Mannequin back on his feet again, that would be lovely! Take whatever things you need, we have all kinds of boards and nonsense just stacked up in the one corner.”

    “Fix the popcorn machine, Mr. Peterson. Build the Mannequins, Mr. Peterson! Grade the artwork, fill out the forms! Nothing but work work work, all the time,” Mr. Peterson griped with a good-natured smile. “S’always the same.”

    “Well… I think that’s it?” Casey shrugged. “We have a couple months on this one, still. No worries.”

    “Thank you so much everyone for your time!” Mrs. Hart gave them a parting wave.

    “So—what do you think?” Alicia asked Tabitha in a low voice. “This was like, a real meeting, with stuff to discuss and everything. Only one of the other ones was, for this stupid big mural thing that almost no one showed up for. On the other side of the administrative offices. And, they paint over it with a new one every year, anyways! It’s so dumb.”

    “I thought it was interesting,” Tabitha promised. “I can bake cookies? That’s something I could do. I um, I honestly didn’t expect the ah, the mannequin thing to even turn into a whole actual in depth conversation? I guess I assumed even on the off chance we were allowed to show off fashion stuff, we would just ask someone to model it?”

    “Hmm,” Alicia gave her a serious nod. “You mean like, have it be its own show? A fashion show, with a catwalk and everything?”

    “No no no! Nothing like, that big,” Tabitha laughed. “I mean. I don’t know. The stuff my grandma and I do, it’s not from scratch or super interesting? It’s just repurposed old other things, like turning expensive dresses into blouses.”

    “Guys,” Casey whispered, dropping down to sit next to them. “I don’t like the cement buckets.”

    “No one likes the cement buckets,” Alicia said. “They weigh a bajillion pounds, and we have to lug them the whole way across campus. And, they’re ugly!”

    “What if, and hear me out, here—” Casey did a dramatic pause. “What if we made like, covers for them? To hide them. Like, cardboard and paper mache. So, the cement bucket would still be underneath yeah, and that’d all be the same, but we could do up this fake outside for it that looks like, I dunno. Like a roman column uhh, pedestal top sorta thing? Something super fancy and nice.”

    “Oooh~!” Alicia sat up. “That’d be rad. Can we?”

    “Maybe?” Casey admitted. “We uhh, we do still need the cement buckets to be inside, so we will still need to lug them. The wire racks, especially. Once you clip a bunch of art pieces up there, they just fall over super easy if there’s no weight at the bottom. We’ve already got a lot on our plate with the stupid concessions thing, too. Ugh. We need to figure that out next week, I guess, do a vote or something. S’gotta be something easy. Pretzel sticks, or trail mix or—”

    “I’m going to bake cookies,” Tabitha decided. “Just—get a box of wax sheets, or even just napkins we can hand them out with. How many do we need? If I can get a rough count. I uh, I mean if I do extra we can just eat them, but. Yeah.”

    “Yeah?” Casey blinked. “Just like—sugar cookies?”

    “Whatever kind we want,” Tabitha shrugged. “I can bake.”

    “Are you dropping out of Cheer?” Casey asked.

    “I’m not even in Cheer, yet!” Tabitha laughed. “I won’t be in shape for tryouts for weeks, yet. The cast comes off this weekend.”

    “But… are you still gonna try out?” Casey asked, putting on her pleading puppy-dog eyes. “Because, like. You don’t have to put yourself through that! You can just be with us in Art Club, instead, you know?”

    “I think I can manage both,” Tabitha said with a wry smile. “I want to be here for Alicia and help, and I want to be there in Cheer and help support Elena, too.”

    “Ugh, Elena,” Alicia scoffed. “She didn’t even come to Art Club today! We could be dumping some of these problems on her!”

    “You guys tell her!” Casey insisted. “Just thirty bucks for an Art Club shirt, and she’s in! We could definitely use more help. William and Ethan are super flakey whenever we’re supposed to actually get together and do something, and Janaye’s probably gonna be in The Wiz, being the pampered prima donna rather than out in the foyer struggling it out with us.”

    “If my mother catches wind of any of this, she’ll want me to audition for The Wiz, too,” Tabitha mused.

    “Wait, really?” Casey slumped down across their table. “Fuuuuck. Not you, too!”

    “Hah, I don’t think I’m quite ready for that!” Tabitha assured her. “But. Maybe next year? Let’s see how this year goes, first.”

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