“Okay, Maisie,” Miss Percy finally said. “Come on up here.”
Maisie got that throwing-up feeling as she walked to the stage. She paused and took several deep breaths to calm her stomach. Throwing up in front of everyone would be worse than anything.
Jim Duncan was standing there, grinning.
“So Jim, you read John Proctor, and Maisie, you read Abigail,” Miss Percy said.
Jim read his lines smoothly, but why wouldn’t he? Maisie thought. He’d been standing up here forever practicing.
When Maisie opened her mouth, a strange croaking sound came out. Someone in the audience giggled.
“The town’s mumbling witchcraft,” Jim said again.
“Oh posh,” Maisie said in a voice that did not sound like her own.
Miss Percy walked over to Jim and Maisie with her long, purposeful stride.
“A little louder, Maisie,” she offered, except she said “loud-ah.”
She put her strong hands on Maisie’s shoulders and gave a squeeze.
“You’ll do just fine,” Miss Percy whispered.
When Miss Percy strode off, Jim Duncan repeated, “The town’s mumbling witchcraft.”
Maisie took another deep breath.
“Oh posh!” she said, nice and loud.
She could hear her heartbeat ringing in her ears.
The stage directions told her to get closer to John Proctor and to speak winningly and with a wicked air.
Maisie stood as close to Jim Duncan as she dared.
“We were dancing in the woods last night,” she recited as winningly and wickedly as she could muster.
The room had gone oddly quiet.
“She took fright is all,” Maisie finished.
Jim Duncan smiled, just like the directions told him.
“Ah, you’re wicked yet,” he said, sending goose bumps up Maisie’s arms.
As Jim kept talking, everything except his voice and the words on the page disappeared. It was as if she was Abigail Williams and Jim Duncan was John Proctor.
“Give me a word, John,” Maisie said, moving even closer to him and trying to look feverishly into his eyes like Arthur Miller told her to do. “A soft word,” Maisie finished.
Jim Duncan turned from her. “No—no, Abby, I’ve not come for that.”
For a moment, even though there were no more lines for them, Jim and Maisie both stood, feeling the power of what they had said.
Then, just as quickly, the spell was broken.
“Thank you, Maisie,” Miss Percy said. “Jim, stay up there. Hadley, read Abigail, please.”
For the next hour, Maisie sat in the audience as kids were called up, rearranged, asked to read this part and that part. But Miss Percy never called her back up to the stage.
“Mercy Lewis is a good role,” Felix said optimistically as he and Maisie walked to school the next morning.
He thought his sister had read the part of Abigail Williams better than anybody else. But when Miss Percy didn’t ask her to read anything else, or with any other boys, he knew that she was going to get a tiny part. Everyone knew.
“Mercy Lewis is the smallest, most insignificant part in the entire play,” Maisie said. She knew Felix was trying to make her feel better. But she’d read that whole stupid blue book last night and getting the part of Mercy Lewis would be practically an embarrassment.
“Small,” Felix said quickly. “But not insignificant. None of the girls in Abigail’s group are insignificant.”
“Oh please,” Maisie muttered.
“Actually,” Felix said, changing course, “since you don’t really want to be in the play and Miss Percy knows that, she’s probably doing you a favor by casting you in a minor role. You won’t have a lot to do or say and—”
“Maybe I do want to be in the dumb play!” Maisie blurted. “Maybe I just have stage fright!”
To her surprise, she started to cry. How could she describe to Felix or to anybody how she felt up there reading those lines yesterday? Like she’d become a different person. Once her throat stopped being so dry and her heart stopped pounding, Maisie had felt transported. No. Transformed. By the time she stepped off the stage, she wanted nothing more to be cast in The Crucible. And even worse, she wanted to be Abigail Williams.
Felix was patting her shoulder and cooing, “You read really well, Maisie. Honest you did.”
“Then why am I going to be Mercy Lewis?” Maisie sobbed. She shrugged away from Felix’s hands and made her own lonely way to school. Behind her, Maisie heard Jim Duncan calling for her to wait up, but she just kept walking.