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other day. He’s always the first one to the cafeteria, so I figured I’d get there before the rest of the team and try to smooth things over.”
    Faith shuts her locker and leans on it, looking at me. “Apologizing is always a good idea,” she says.
    I raise my eyebrows. “You think I need to apologize to him?”
    “You did kind of stomp all over his suggestion,” says Faith.
    “It was hardly stomping ,” I say as we start down the hall. “Besides, nobody’s ideas are perfect on their own. That’s why we’re a team. Asha changes our suggestions all the time to make them better, or sometimes she rejects them completely. You don’t see me getting all huffy when she doesn’t like my ideas.”
    Faith shrugs. “Maybe he takes that kind of feedback better from Asha than from you. He is in grade eleven, after all.”
    “Yeah, but he’s only been on the team since last year, the same as us,” I say. “I’ll just start a cheerful conversation, to get him out of his mood and remind him that we’re friends.”
    Vern and Nigel are the only ones at our usual table when Faith and I join them. Within minutes the four of us are chatting, and Vern seems back to his normal self.
    Suddenly Faith sits up straight. “What the heck?” she says, looking over my shoulder.
    I turn to see Ziggy standing like a mannequin in a clothing store on one side of the hallway leading into the cafeteria. His body is bent over slightly, his face is scrunched up, mouth open wide, and his hands are gripping some imaginary object near his chin.
    “Ooh!” Faith cries. “He’s starting a tableau! We should join him…but what’s he doing?”
    We’ve created tableaus as a team before—where one of us strikes a pose that suggests a scene, like people in a restaurant or something, and as soon as the rest of us recognize what it is, we join in, holding poses that make sense in that scene—but we’ve never done one in the cafeteria before. This could be interesting.
    The kids coming in are stopping to stare at him. Something about his posture looks familiar. I look again at the expression on his face and the thing he’s holding near his mouth…and I get it.
    “He’s a rock star with a microphone,” I say, jumping up from my chair. “So I’ll be…a backup singer who wants the spotlight. Come on!”
    The three of us rush over to Ziggy and take up our own silent positions around him—musicians, fans, whatever. Soon Asha and Mark and then Hanna arrive and add to the tableau. Each addition makes the picture clearer, and it’s a pretty good picture. I feel a ripple of pride in my team.
    Judging by the comments I can hear, the students watching think we’re insane, which is fine by me. It’s hard to keep a straight face as they struggle to understand what we’re doing and why. I notice that a few kids from improv class linger, trying to figure out what role each of us is playing in this frozen scene.
    Finally, Ziggy bursts back into action and hops out of the tableau. “That was a blast, but I’m starving,” he says. “Let’s go eat.”
    The rest of us break the pose and follow him. Hanna giggles. “You’re the last person I expected to see standing perfectly still.”
    “That’s me,” says Ziggy, walking backward to face us. “Defying expectations is my life.”
    “Such a nutbar,” Nigel says, shaking his head.
    As we each grab a spot at the table, Hanna asks, “Do you guys do improv tableaus in the caf very often?”
    “Nah,” says Mark. “Only when the rest of the school starts to think we’re normal.”
    “For a minute there,” Faith says, “I thought old Mrs. Pilker was going to send us down to the office, but then she backed away.”
    Mark nods. “She never gets too close. I think she’s afraid the crazy might be contagious.”
    Nigel asks Asha about the chemistry test they had last period, and we settle into our usual lunchtime routine. Between sandwiches, carrot sticks and cookies, the conversation skips