Wood Sprites by Wen Spencer Page A

called up her storyboard app. “Start with Peter and the Lost Boys at the tree houses, run to the beach, look at the uber cool pirate ship in the moonlight. Then the Lost Boys board the ship and there’s a big swordfight.”
    “In two weeks?”
    “We can—could crank out a full episode of The Adventures of Queen Soulful Ember in a month, and those have a lot more to storyboard, full original animation, dialogue to dub, sound effects, and a music score.”
    “We blew up our studio with all our sets and all our models.”
    “We’ll work around that. I can act in front of a green screen for Peter’s part. We can base Hook off of . . . hm.” Jillian considered the boys in their classroom with narrowed eyes. The plays were a combined effort of both classes of their grade. With the exception of “the Prince,” the boys usually had minor roles like dwarves and mice. Reed normally played the Prince for the same reason Elle got to be the Princess. He was tall, blond and handsome. Unfortunately, he was clumsy and as much a social wallflower as the twins.
    If they needed all the boys, though, they should win over the boys’ leader.
    “Iggy,” Louise said. “Iggy should be Hook.”
    Iggy’s real name was Ignatius Martin Chen. He was apparently named after a baby of a movie star. His first-generation Chinese parents obviously didn’t realize how uncommon the name was. He was in Mr. Howe’s classroom across the hall, only sharing lunch, recess, and class play with them. He was the acknowledged leader of the boys, perhaps because he was also the tallest boy in the fifth grade and naturally athletic.
    Jillian tilted her head, thinking. “Iggy does like to be in front of an audience, and he remembers his lines when he actually gets something to say.”
    “We should use all the boys in the video. It wouldn’t be too hard to model their pictures onto CGI skin. We can do half for the Lost Boys and the other half as pirates.”
    Jillian was nodding. “We can put the Lost Boys in war paint. Make them look cool. We’ll have to take pictures of all the boys without them noticing us.”
    “Or we could tell them we want to cast them for a music video. They’ll be more vested in the end product.”
    Jillian winced. “Actually talk to them?”
    “If we’re going to highjack the play completely, we’ll have to talk to them a lot,” Louise pointed out. “We work for almost three months on the play. Half of April and all of May and June.” The play represented a massive amount of work, all in the name of learning how to cooperate as a class. Everything was a joint effort, from voting on what play to do, to designing and building sets, to the actual performance. “Either we talk to them or devote all that time to The Little Mermaid .”
    “Ick! Okay, let’s talk to the boys at recess about this.”
    “Today?”
    Jillian waved the party invite. “Elle’s party is in two weeks. We vote on the play the week after. We have to get this up and running quickly if we’re going to head off Elle.”
    Any time on the video would take time away from their research on finding a way to save their little brother and sisters. If they were going to do it, then they should do it as fast as possible. “Okay, we’ll do it this recess.”
    * * *
    Perelman School for the Gifted had a rooftop playground with tall perforated metal screens creating a protective enclosure and shade. Through the orange-painted mesh, they had a clear view of all the skyscrapers of New York rising up to loom over the school. Heat of the sunbaked roof battled with the cold April wind off the bay.
    The boys played four square at the edge of the playground, taking turns at rotating through the grid as players fouled out of the game. Iggy tended to hold the King’s square for long periods, controlling the large red ball with ease. For some reason, today he was sitting in the shade, just watching the game.
    While Jillian was fearless around adults, she tended to be