“Your mom’s pretty cool,” said Zack.
“Yours, too,” said Meghan.
“Yeah. I guess I got lucky the second time around.”
“What do you mean?”
Zack figured he might as well go ahead and tell Meghan the truth. “My real mom never liked me.”
“How come?”
Zack shrugged. “I dunno. She said I ruined her life.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, Judy’s a great stepmom!”
“Yeah,” said Zack, feeling weirdly guilty the instant he said it.
“They close at one?” said Meghan, sounding surprised as she read a sign in front of the Chatham Public Library.
“August hours,” said a lady wearing red reading glasses and standing on the stoop outside the library’s front doors. “No air-conditioning.”
“We just want to look up one word,” said Zack.
The lady, who was probably the librarian, started hyperventilating. “You’re Meghan McKenna!”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m—”
“In town doing that new musical.”
“Yes. It’s called Curiosity—”
“Cat! I can’t believe you’re really you!”
Meghan shrugged. “I’m me, all right.”
“Meghan McKenna!”
“Yep.”
“I’m Doris Ann Norris. Town librarian. Is that your dog?”
“Well, actually …”
“Oh, where are my manners? Won’t you children please come in?”
“I thought you were closed,” said Zack.
“Not when a movie star needs a book!”
Meghan scooped up Zipper. “Is it okay if …?”
“Of course. Come in! Come in!”
Zack followed Meghan and Zipper into the building.
The librarian peered at him over the tops of her half-moon spectacles. “Are you somebody, too?”
“No. Not really.”
“He’s Zack Jennings,” said Meghan. “His stepmom is Judy Magruder Jennings.”
The librarian gasped. “She was just here! Just a few minutes ago! Oh, my! Famous authors! Movie stars! What an exciting day this has turned out to be!”
And the librarian hadn’t even been chased by a crazy lady swinging a bloody hatchet.
“Does the word ‘pandemonium’ mean anything besides, you know, the usual stuff?” Zack asked once Meghan had signed a few autographs for various members of the librarian’s family.
“Oh, yes.” She led them to a short bookcase filled with encyclopedias and pulled out the volume marked “M.”
Zack had always thought it was spelled with a P.
“Here we go,” said the librarian. “Are you familiar with John Milton?”
“Not really,” said Zack.
“Milton was an English poet in the 1600s most famous for his epic Paradise Lost. In it, he called the capital city of Hell ‘Pandemonium.’ It’s Greek for ‘all demons.’ In Book IV, all hell breaks loose—literally. The demons scatter across the earth, creating chaos. The city’s name, therefore, has become synonymous with disorder.”
“Beware Pandemonium,” Zack mumbled.
“Indeed. If such a city truly existed, I certainly wouldn’t want to live there or visit it!”
“Can I ask another question? Why is the resident acting company at the Hanging Hill Playhouse called the Pandemonium Players?”
81
The librarian escorted Meghan and Zack into the rare books room, where their mothers had just been.
“These are the playbills from every show presented at the Hanging Hill Playhouse over the past forty years. Maybe in one, we’ll find a producer’s note explaining the acting company’s name choice.” She gave Meghan the 1970s and Zack the 1980s. “I’ll tackle the sixties myself. You two would find the hairstyles far too amusing.”
For half an hour, Zipper snoozed under the table while the three of them flipped through magazine pages.
Zack worked through the shows done between 1980 and 1985. Put On Your Shoes. County Fair! My Man Stan. Still nothing about why they were called the Pandemonium Players.
He opened the program for a musical called Flipperty Gibbet. He scanned the title page and the cast list, then moved on to the cast biographies—short paragraphs of theatrical credits, tucked around yearbook-sized photographs of the actors in the show.
One of the photographs made Zack freeze.
An actress named Susan Potter.
“Here we go,” chirped the librarian. “Found it. Nine teen sixty-nine. The world premiere of a rock opera called Chaos City. ‘We’ve chosen to call ourselves the Pandemonium Players to celebrate the inspired chaos that guides all theatrical journeys.’”
She was beaming.
Meghan was smiling, glad they’d finally found Zack’s answer.
Zack didn’t say a word.
He just kept staring at the photograph of the actress named Susan Potter in a playbill from the summer of 1985.
“It’s my mother,” he said softly.
“Judy?” asked Meghan.
“No. My real mother.”
82
Zack borrowed Meghan’s cell phone so he could talk with his father.
“That’s right,” his dad said. “Before we met, your mother was an actress.”
Zack, Zipper, and Meghan were sitting on a park bench in the small town square in front of the library.
“Did you know that she used to do shows at the Hanging Hill Playhouse?”
“No. She never talked about her acting career. Your mother’s parents thought acting was a waste of her time and her expensive college education. They encouraged her to give it up, which she did, long before I met her.”
“Well, she did like half a dozen shows with the Pandemonium Players. I’m surprised she never talked to you about it.”
“Yeah,” said his dad, sounding sad. “Me too.”
Neither Zack nor his father said anything.
“Guess I’d better go,” mumbled Meghan. “Schoolwork.”
“Dad, I gotta run.”
“Yeah,” said his father. “So, hey, how are you and Judy making out over there?”
“Okay,” said Zack.
“The plumbers came today. Put in new toilets at the house.”
“I’ll tell Judy.”
“Is she there with you?”
“No. She’s still in rehearsal.”
“Tell her to call me before she goes to bed tonight, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Hey, Zack?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too, Dad.” He closed up the cell phone, handed it back to Meghan.
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Kind of freaky, hunh? Finding out your mother had this whole secret life nobody knew about.”
“Yeah. But you know what’s even freakier?”
“What?”
“In that photograph, she was actually smiling.”
“What’s so freaky about that?”
Zack turned to face Meghan and raised his right hand to let her know that what he was about to tell her was the absolute truth: “I have never, ever seen my real mother smile in a photograph.”
“Okay. But have you ever seen any pictures of your mom from before you were born?”
“Yeah. Just now.”
“I mean besides the one in the program. Just her and your dad, maybe, before you came along?”
“Sure. Their wedding pictures. A couple snapshots in the photo album. Vacations and stuff.”
“Was she smiling in those?”
Zack thought about it.
“No.” Even in her wedding pictures, his real mom looked super-serious. “That’s why it took me a while to recognize her in the playbill.”
“See?” said Meghan.
“See what?”
“You didn’t make her stop smiling, Zack. That was something she’d decided to do long before you came along. If your real mom wasn’t happy, I don’t think it was your fault.”