Mearsies Heili Bounces Back by Sherwood Smith Page A

dry.”
    “Just a little dance,” I begged, looking forward to the room
full of awe. Nobody could be anywhere near as good.
    “Don’t want to.”
    “But we’ll win . Look at ’em—a bunch of clods, just
like us.”
    “Hey!” Klutz twirled around on her toes with as much grace
as fence slats falling off a roof.
    “Dhana,” I exclaimed, exasperated. She couldn’t possibly
think anyone was better!
     Dhana sidled a step, another step, and vanished out the
door.
    I started after, but Klutz stuck a freckled paw in front of
me. “We can do a play instead! Then we all get to be in it!”
    “Okay.” I fumed for a few minutes, though, while they
discussed play options. I was annoyed with Dhana, and I knew I shouldn’t be.
When I looked Seshe’s way, she studiously spooned up the last of her
pepper-and-potato stew, so I said, “What.”
    “Nothing.”
    “Seshe, you’re thinking something, I can smell it a mile
away.”
    She gave me a weird sort of look. Pained. Then shook her
head. “She’s not a puppet.”
    I clamped my mouth down on a retort. After all, I did ask.
But I was thinking, Obviously!
    Puppet! I groaned inside. If anyone ever thought my dancing good, I would love to be asked. My singing was okay, but nothing
great—I didn’t take lessons or anything, and in the first three or four acts,
there were a couple of singers who did much more interesting music than I could
offer.
    But ... I sensed I hadn’t done right, though arguing inside
my head usually led to me talking myself into thinking I was in the right.
    Puppet. That meant something on strings, that you made
dance—
    Oh. I grinched my way past wanting to be the best in a group
until I found the uncomfortable discovery: pushing Dhana to show off might make
her feel like that’s what she was there for. Euw.
    “... PJ and the goat!” Sherry said, her spoon in the air. “If
only we had Faline!”
    “Well, we’ve seen her making new versions of that play for
the past month,” I said, glad to get rid of my horrible thoughts. “We can put
in the best of her jokes.”
    “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!”
    That decided, we got up and joined the people heading to the
store room behind the dining room, where those who were performing were warming
up, or doing a quick rehearsal as they waited for their turn.
    While the others were deciding who was going to be what, I
slipped out the side door, into the cool night air. Not that it was all that
cool—there was a hot, dry wind from the direction of the hills behind us, but
it was cooler than inside the ramshackle harbor buildings, with all those noisy
people.
    I found Dhana on a wharf, leaning down, looking into the
dark water.
    “Dhana.”
    Her blond head lifted, barely outlined by the distant glow
of lanterns on a parked river raft.
    “Sorry,” I said. “I wanted to show you off. I forgot to ask
if you actually want to be shown off.” And when she leaped to her feet, “We’re
doing PJ meets the Goat.”
    “I’ll be the goat,” she offered.
    “When I left, Puddlenose and Gwen were arguing over who
could do a better goat.”
    “I know all Faline’s best jokes.” She took off ahead of me.
    Inside, a small crowd of kids watched as Puddlenose and Id
and Gwen traded off butting Seshe and Sherry, to see which of the two made the
best snobby PJ. Seshe won hands down—she turned up her nose, turned down her
mouth. She was as good as Irene, who was usually PJ. (Later she told me she
copied Irene.)
    Aware of people watching, I got that show off feeling again.
But I knew I was okay this time, because weren’t we all performers? So I said
to those looking at us, “This is a play about somebody really stupid where we
live.”
    “Help me with the farmer,” Gwen said to me, her eyes wide. “I
forgot all Faline’s stuff.”
    “Just pile on the pocalubes.” I pretended to be shoveling. “The
very best pocalubes.”
    “Pocalubes?” one of the boys asked, in Mearsiean. “Is this a
word from the other