He followed her gaze to his fingers. “Oh, yeah.” He blushed and looked away. “My sister tasered him. We all ended up at the police department. They’re calling it a hate crime and throwing the book at him.”
“Good,” Louise said.
Iggy squinted up at her as if she was a miniature puzzle. “You know, I don’t think we’ve ever talked before.”
She wasn’t sure what that meant. “And?” she guessed. “You don’t know our names?”
He laughed. “We’ve been in school together for five years, I know who you are. It’s just that you don’t talk to anyone. It’s kind of freaking me out.”
“We just want to take pictures of you.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s part of the weirdness. Why?”
“We’re making a music video.”
“If anyone else said that, I’d figure that they were setting me up for a viral meme joke. I think, though, that you two would only do that if I’d done something epic to really piss you off and I’m fairly sure I haven’t. Have I?”
“No.” Louise cut Jillian off because she saw her starting to consider making up a lie. “Elle is talking the girls into doing The Little Mermaid for this year’s play.”
“Oh gross, another kissy-face play?” Iggy groaned.
Jillian frowned at Louise for telling Iggy the truth. As long as Elle didn’t know what they were doing, she couldn’t counterattack the twins. Jillian glanced pointedly at Elle playing jump rope with all the other girls from fourth grade. “What will end up happening is the same thing that happened all the other years. Elle and her friends will all vote together and everyone else will split the rest of their votes on a couple different plays and Elle wins by default. If we get everyone to agree on the same play, then Elle can’t win.”
“Girls outnumber the boys.” Iggie pointed out the flaw to the plan.
“We’re not going to vote with Elle. We just need one or two of the other girls to go along with us. Elle doesn’t control them all.” Just most of them.
“What play do you guys want to do?” Iggy asked.
“One with pirates and swordfights,” Jillian said.
“Peter Pan.” Louise got another glare from Jillian. She felt, though, if they mislead Iggy and he turned against them, they’d lose all the boys. “Mr. Howe and Miss Hamilton aren’t going to let us do something like Hamlet or Macbeth. We need a play with at least twenty-five parts for both girls and boys that the school considers ‘a classic’ and thus safe. There aren’t a lot of those.”
“Do you want to be dressed as a hermit crab and sing ‘Kiss de Girl’ or be a pirate captain?” Jillian said.
“Sing with me now.” Iggy raised his hand and snapped his fingers together like a crab’s claw. “Sha-la-la-la, my oh my, looks like de boy’s too shy.” He burst into laughter at their shocked looks. “I have three sisters. The entire soundtrack has been burned into my brain. We’ve even been to the Broadway version twice.”
“You want to do The Little Mermaid?” Jillian cried with horror.
“No!” Iggy cried back. “Captain Hook, eh?” He laughed and held out his splinted fingers. “Look, I’m halfway there.”
“So, we can take pictures of you for Hook?”
He considered it a moment with a great deal of funny thinking faces. “Hook is this weird mix of scary badass and just campy silly. He’d be fun to play. Okay, I’m in.”
They moved against the white wall of the gymnasium to shoot the headshots.
Iggy struck a pose. “I want look more like Captain Jack Sparrow.”
“We’re not doing poufy Hook.” Jillian had gone into director-mode. “Peter is coming with the Lost Boys. It’s all games to him but you seriously want to kick his butt.”
“Who is going to be Peter?”
“Me.” Jillian admitted cautiously.
Iggy broke into surprised laughter.
“Don’t smile!” Jillian snapped. “You’re a badass pirate. Tell Peter he’s a little girly boy in French.”
Iggy laughed again. “Why French?”
“Because you’ll need to think.”
He frowned in concentration. “Vous…etes…une petite…fille. Un singe. Mange…des…toilettes.”
“Yes, good,” Jillian said even though the sentences made little or no sense.
“Stupide…cul…fromage…singe.” He started to giggle.
“What?” Louise couldn’t help to ask since it sounded like he’d said “Stupid ass cheese monkey.”