Joey: Huh?
Stevie: You said you were going to help Dad with the Romeo and Juliet props and sets.
Joey: Yeah, Dad says we can build a balcony with a rope ladder and everything. But I"ll be painting and stuff. In the back. I can"t just hang around all day waiting to see if Scott Towel kisses some girl. It"s gross. And boring.
Me: C"mon, Joey. This is super important. Scott could be over there kissing Fluffernutter right this very minute.
Joey: Gross! You know kissing is just spit, right? (Makes saliva bubbles with her mouth.) One person"s spit goes into another person"s mouth and it"s super disgusting. Like, a ten on the Grossometer. I mean, you wouldn"t go around using Scott Towel"s toothbrush, would you?
Me: No, but this is different. You don"t get it, Duck. But someday you will.
Stevie: You know, Joey. It might be kind of . . . interesting. Like a super-secret stakeout.
Joey: Well, all I"m saying is find someone else. I"m not going to be your Kiss Buster. I wish n.o.body would kiss anybody around here.
Stevie: Wait a second. I might have an idea. Hold on, I"ll be right back. (Runs upstairs to attic, clomps back down. Hides something behind her back.) Me: What? What is it?
Stevie: Ta-da! It"s Joey"s old baby monitor. You know, you turn it on and you can hear if the baby is crying from downstairs. I saw it up in the attic one day when I was cloudspotting.
Me: Brilliant! Does it have video?
Stevie: Not that brilliant. Just audio.
Me: Never mind. All we need are batteries and someone to sneak over there and plant it in the exact right place.
Joey: Don"t look at me!
Me: C"mon, Duck, you love this stuff. It"ll be cool. You"ll be like an undercover spy.
Stevie: It"ll be very croak-and-dagger. Get it, Joey? (Slaps her knee and cracks up.) Me: Yeah, like that guy Christopher Marlowe in Shakespeare"s time. I think he got murdered, though. But there were tons of spies back then.
Stevie: We can even give you a cool t.i.tle, like Her Royal Spyness.
Me: That"s way better than just being a royal pain.
Joey: I don"t know . . . maybe. But who wants to hear people kissing? Yuck. What kind of a spy is that?
Me: A kissing spy.
Joey: There"s no such thing. Anyway, that"s cuckoo. Tell her, Stevie.
Stevie: I don"t know, Joey. It might be kind of interesting to, I don"t know, hear what it"s like when they ki - I mean, hear what they say. Think of it like a mystery. And you"re spying to try to solve a mystery.
Joey: Mystery? What mystery? The mystery of boys. Bluck.
Me: Look. All you have to do is take the baby monitor over there and hide it. You don"t even have to listen if you don"t want to.
Joey: But what if they see me? What do I say I"m doing? Or what if Dad finds it and gets mad about spying or something?
Me: He won"t. Not if you hide it. Besides, there"s so many props and stuff over there, how"s he going to know? C"mon, Duck. Please? I"ll do anything. Just name it.
Joey: Oh, okay.
Me: You mean it? You"ll do it?
Joey: Yes. But only if you promise to really call me Her Royal Spyness for one whole entire day. And give me twenty-five dollars.
Me: Deal! Except for the twenty-five dollars part.
Alex and I were kneeling on my bed with our faces pressed to the second-story window. "Stop breathing so much," I told her. "You"re fogging up the window and I can"t see."
I wiped the altoc.u.mulus cloud Alex had made on the window with the side of my fist. "There she is!" Alex pointed at Joey, a.k.a. Her Royal Spyness, sneaking up on the side of the Raven Theater next door to our house.
"What"s she wearing?" Alex asked, craning her neck.
"A raincoat?" I said, straining to see.
"But it"s not even raining, for once." The sky was overcast, but the drizzle had stopped.
"Don"t you get it? It"s a spy thing." We watched Joey reach into her pocket. She put on a pair of dark sungla.s.ses. And a Sherlock Holmes houndstooth hat with earflaps from Dad"s props trunk. "All she needs now is a pipe."
"Um, wrong century, Joey," Alex pretended to call out, even though Joey couldn"t hear her. "I don"t think Shakespeare spies knew about Sherlock Holmes."
"Never mind. Joey gets to be a spy. And you get to eavesdrop on Scott Towel. It"s win-win." I grinned at my sister. It"s not like I"m into kissing - I felt pretty much like Joey did about it, high up on the Grossometer. But I have to admit, I was a little curious. It"s not every day you get to spy on two people when they"re going to kiss. A strange p.r.i.c.kle set the hairs on the back of my neck on end.
"Yeah, but now if anybody sees her they"re going to know she"s a spy."
Just then, Joey bent down and duckwalked along the side of the building, hunching beneath the windows. The monitor crackled. "Testing. Testing. I"m outside the theater. I"m almost to the back door."
Just then her hat fell off.
"Let it go, Joey. Just let it go," Alex willed her out loud.
Joey disappeared around the back of the theater until we couldn"t see her any more.
"What"s that sound?" I asked.
"It"s probably just the creaking of the back steps."
"I"m on the back stairs," Joey reported.
"She"s in!" I said proudly.
"She better stop reporting her every move. They"ll hear her. And I"ll be busted before I even get to spy on Scott and Jayden."
"Shh. Who"s that?" I asked, motioning for my sister to be quiet.
Dad.
"Hi, honey." Rustle, rustle. "Everything okay?" Clank, clank, clank. "I"m just sorting through a bunch of old props for Romeo and Juliet. I have swords, a dagger, a vial of poison, a bunch of grapes . . . but I can"t find that dozen roses with the dew on it, and this wedding cake, I think, will have to be painted." Crackle, crackle. "It"s looking a bit shabby, don"t you think?"
"Sure, Dad."
"So, what brings you over?"
"Um . . . I am here . . . um . . . because . . ."
"Just say anything, Joey," my sister urged, even though Joey couldn"t hear her. "It doesn"t matter if it"s lame. Say something."
"I"m not spying or anything," said Joey.
"Joey!" Alex put her head in her hand. "I give up," she said to me.
"Don"t worry. Dad"s hardly listening. I can still hear him rifling through stuff. There"s, like, a million boxes in that props closet."
"Stevie, um, asked me to come over. Not Alex. Alex didn"t ask me. Yep. It was Stevie."
"Me?" I exclaimed. "Thanks a lot. Don"t go blaming me, little sister."
"Uh-huh," said Dad, still half listening. "What did she want?"
"She, um, she, well, she . . . made you a sandwich!"
What!
"Great. What kind?"
"What kind? Technically, I"m not sure."
"Doesn"t matter. I"ll take it, whatever it is."
"You know, funny thing is, I forgot to bring it over. So, I"m just going to go back over there, to the house I mean, and get it. And then I"ll come back over here. So, I"ll be back."
"Are you sure you"re okay?" Dad.
"I"m sure. I"m just going to go now."
"Okay, I"ll just be a little while longer, if anybody needs me, you know where to find me. I"ll wait till they"re done practicing in here and then I"ll lock up."
"Can I go out there, Dad?"
"Not today, honey. I don"t think Mr. Cannon would like us interrupting practice."
"How about if . . . can I just take a peek from backstage? I"ll stay behind the curtain."
"Sure. I don"t see why not."
Silence. More rustling. More crackling.
Alex held up the monitor and we glued our ears to it, trying to hear. But all we could hear was a lot of rustling and clomping and crackling and static.
Somebody coughed.
"What"s happening now? Do you think it died?" asked Alex.
"It didn"t die," I told her. "I just heard a cough."
"What cough? Who coughed? Was it a guy cough?" Alex asked.
"How should I know a guy cough from a girl cough?"
"Well, you know, was it deep like a man teacher"s do you think? Or was it just, you know, heh-heh, like a younger person?"
"You"re seriously warped, you know that."
"Why can"t we hear anything? It"s not working. Do you think Joey b.u.mped it? Or turned it off or something? What if she put it behind the curtain, like I told her, and now we can"t hear."
"Take a chill pill. Just wait till Joey gets back. She"ll tell us what"s going on."
Alex started biting her fingernails. I pulled her hand away and she stuck her tongue out at me.
"This is so cool," I said. "It"s kind of like that Hitchc.o.c.k movie."
"The one where they have a chase scene on Mount Rushmore?" she asked. "Or the one where millions of birds attack people? Wait, it"s the one where the creepy guy has a skeleton in the bas.e.m.e.nt, huh?"
"Psycho? You"re psycho. I meant the one where the guy is holed up in this room in a wheelchair. All he does is stare out the window all day. And he thinks he sees a murderer in the building next door. So he sends somebody over there to find out."
"The only murder around here is going to be Joey"s if she doesn"t get back here soon."
Just then, Joey Reel, Her Royal Spyness, burst into the room with a mud-streaked face and a hole in her jeans.
"What happened to you?" I asked.
"Stevie. Hurry. Quick. You have to make Dad a sandwich!"
It had been three days. Three days of listening in on play practice with the baby monitor. Three days of watching Alex mouth the words as Scott Towel and Jayden struggled through their lines.
Joey yawned. "Why do they call it eavesdropping? Why not ears-dropping? My ears are dropping off. Even kissing would not be this boring."
"Shh! Joey! I can"t hear," said Alex.
"So? All they ever do is go, "perchance, perforce, blah-blah. Anon! Anon!""
"Yeah, how come we never get to hear Scott Towel and Jayden say stuff to each other?" I asked. "Un-Shakespeare stuff, I mean." I could hear Shakespeare anytime, but I never got to spy on a boy and girl talking before.
"Because they"re practicing for a play? How should I know? Maybe they talk to each other all the time, but they don"t stand near the baby monitor. Maybe they have Pianophobia. Shush, you guys. I mean it."
Alex flipped through her script book. "It"s the party scene at Juliet"s house. They"re in Act 1 Scene 5. Mr. Cannon only has two kisses in Romeo and Juliet and this scene has one of them. And this is the one where Juliet"s not dead."