Movie For Dogs (8 page)

“Don’t get me wrong — I’m not asking you to give me my dog back for nothing,” Jerry said. “You paid my dad for him, and I’ll reimburse you. I got a check from Pet Lovers Press, so I can afford to do that. If Red has a chance of becoming a movie star, I want him back.”

Bruce was too shocked to respond. He opened and closed his mouth, but his voice wouldn’t work.

Andi was not affected by any such problem.

“Absolutely
not
!” she said firmly. “We will
never
give up Red Rover!”

“I thought getting your video on this show meant a lot to you,” Jerry said. His smile was now more of a smirk. “Don’t you want your little story to be on TV?”

“Not in exchange for a member of our family!”
Andi said. “Red belongs to Bruce. We will never sell him, especially to somebody who tortures animals.”

Bruce knew that he ought to say something, but he was so choked up with fury that he couldn’t get the words out. Besides, Andi was doing just fine. She was on a roll.

“And I’m never going to marry you,” Andi added as an afterthought. “I wouldn’t do that if you were the only boy writer in the world!”

Now Jerry and Bruce were both too stunned to respond.

“Give me back that manuscript and I’ll erase all my notes,” Andi continued. “You can do your own work or give it to Connor’s friend Sarah.”

“No way,” Jerry said. “I’m keeping it just the way it is. The editor’s going to be impressed by how fast I got the work done. As for marrying you — are you crazy? Where did that idea come from? Nobody will ever marry a fat nerd like you.”

Bruce’s voice clicked on and was working again.

“My sister is
not
a fat nerd!” he shouted in fury.

He turned to look at Andi and realized it was true. She used to be overly plump, but that wasn’t the case now. He had gotten so used to thinking of
her as pudgy that he hadn’t noticed how much she had changed in the past year. She wasn’t as slender as Kristy, but she looked okay. In fact, she looked good.

It gave him a jolt to realize his sister was growing up.

“Get your foot out of the door or I’ll slam it on you,” Jerry said.

This was a major threat, because Jerry had muscles. Since Bruce was showing no signs of moving his foot, Andi bent down and yanked it to safety.

She did that just before the door to the Gordons’ house crashed shut.

Bruce was still holding the unsigned release form in his hand.

“I’m sorry, sis, but I guess that’s it,” he said helplessly. “We’ve used every weapon in our arsenal.”

“Not quite,” Andi said. “We’ve still got Kristy.”

“How does Kristy fit into this?” Bruce asked her.

“She and Jerry are friends,” Andi said. “Maybe she could talk him into changing his mind.”

Bruce’s first impulse was to say, “I don’t want Kristy involved in this.” Then he thought about how loyal Andi had been to him a few minutes ago.
She hadn’t thought twice about giving up her dream to protect Red.

“Okay, I’ll ask Kristy,” he said. “But I don’t think she’ll do it. She’s not going to want to get caught between us and Jerry.”

However, when he phoned Kristy, her reaction surprised him.

“This has to be a misunderstanding,” she said. “Jerry would never do anything that mean to anybody. I’ll go over to his house right now and talk to him. Leave it to me. I’ll get this mistake straightened out.”

A half hour later, the doorbell rang. Bruce opened the door to find Kristy standing on the porch.

“He won’t do it,” she said. “He’s furious at Andi. He says she doesn’t deserve to have her story on television.”

“Did he tell you why he feels that way?” Bruce asked her.

“He said Andi’s so jealous of his winning that writing contest that she tried to destroy his manuscript,” Kristy said. “She begged him to let her read it, because she wanted to see what a prizewinning story was like so she could become a better writer. He let her borrow it, because he wanted to help
her. He said she took the manuscript home and kept it for ages, and when she finally returned it, she’d scribbled all over it. It’s now such a mess he’s afraid the publisher won’t want it. He showed me the manuscript, and it does have writing in the margins.”

“Jerry asked Andi to make those corrections,” Bruce said. “He’s mad at her and me both, but not about that. It’s because he wants Red Rover, and we won’t let him have him. He wants to own a dog that’s a Hollywood star.”

Kristy was silent for a moment as she took that in.

Then she exclaimed, “What a jerk!”

“You mean you believe me instead of Jerry?” Bruce asked incredulously. “Isn’t Jerry your boyfriend?”

“Are you kidding?” Kristy exclaimed. “He’s just a boy from my math class. I thought he was nice, but I sure don’t think so now. I’ll always believe you and Andi. Anybody related to your Aunt Alice must be trustworthy.”

“Well —” Bruce didn’t quite know how to respond to that statement. “Maybe you shouldn’t always totally believe Andi, but this time she’s
telling the whole truth. She didn’t ask for that manuscript; Jerry gave it to her. He said if she made those corrections, he’d sign the release form. Now he says he won’t sign it unless I sell him Red.”

“Can we edit Jerry out of the video?” Kristy suggested.

“I thought about that, but there’s no way to do it,” Bruce told her. “He’s in the background of all the scenes with Mrs. Rinkle in them, and if we cut those, there won’t be any story left. Besides, now that school’s out, we can’t use the editing bay. And we won’t have Mr. Talbert to help us.”

“Is there anyone else who might talk to Jerry?” Kristy asked. “What about his cousin, Connor? He looked so sweet in the picture he sent to my cell phone.”

“Connor!” Bruce exclaimed in horror. “He’s even worse than Jerry!”

“Do you think it would help if I called him anyway?” Kristy asked. “I have his number from his text message. Jerry told him that I’m ‘hot stuff.’ I could offer to send him my picture if Jerry signs that release.”

“Connor’s got pretty girls hanging all over him,” Bruce said. “He’s not going to do you a favor just
to get your picture. The only person who might have influence is Aunt Alice. Last summer Connor pushed her down and dislocated her shoulder. She didn’t press charges, but she did file a report with the police.”

“Let’s go ask her to phone Connor and threaten to charge him with assault and battery!” Kristy cried.

Before Bruce realized what was happening, she had grabbed his hand and was dragging him down the porch steps and onto the sidewalk. He had never held hands with a girl before and had always wondered if his hand would sweat if he did. Kristy’s hand was so cool that it wasn’t a problem. All in all, he found the experience rather pleasant.

Aunt Alice was in her yard, kneeling in the dirt, planting flowers. She looked pleased to see them, but also a little surprised.

Bruce hastily dropped Kristy’s hand and stuffed his own hand into his pocket.

“Hello, Mrs. Scudder!” Kristy said. “Would you please phone Connor Gordon and make him force Jerry to sign the release so
Bobby Strikes Back
can be on television? Maybe you could threaten to have him put in jail for shoving you.”

“Nothing would give me more pleasure than to blackmail Connor,” Aunt Alice said, laying down her trowel. “However, it would serve no purpose. As we learned from Jerry when we were filming the dog-stuffing scene, those boys are too egotistical to take threats seriously. Bruce, you might ask your father to talk to Mr. Gordon, but I doubt that that will work either. Jerry has his parents wrapped around his little finger.”

“So our video can never be aired,” Bruce said despondently.

“It sounds that way,” said Aunt Alice. “I’m just as upset as you are. All those ‘ha, ha, has’ just going to waste.”

“I feel awful for Andi,” Kristy said. “She must feel terrible. Now it will be just my video and Mr. Merlin’s.”

“I don’t think Andi will crash the way she did when she didn’t win the writing contest,” Aunt Alice said. “She’s learning how to deal with disappointment. I’ve also been having some thoughts about Mr. Merlin. I believe the time has come to run a background check on him.”

“How do you know how to do that?” Kristy asked her.

“Aunt Alice is a private investigator,” Bruce said proudly.

He helped his great-aunt to her feet, and she pulled off her garden gloves and led the way into her house and up the stairs to her office.

“Maynard Merlin,”
she said as she switched on her computer. “I’ve been meaning to check him out ever since we got back from Hollywood. I just haven’t gotten around to it. Maynard Merlin — Maynard Merlin —”

She kept clicking from Web site to Web site.

“Why do you want to run a background check?” Bruce asked her.

“I became curious when he gave me his card,” Aunt Alice said. “It had his name and address, but not the name of his business. I started to wonder if he might be a professional ventriloquist and that’s how he makes Gabby talk.”

She clicked around some more.

Then she said, “My suspicions were wrong. Mr. Merlin appears to be unemployed. I see nothing to indicate that he has a background in ventriloquism.”

“So Gabby’s for real!” Kristy said. “I’m glad to know that. I just love Gabby. When I told him good-bye, he licked my hand.”

“He didn’t say ‘Goowye’?” Bruce asked in surprise.

“No, he just licked me like a regular dog,” Kristy said. “Andi said good-bye to him first and whispered in his ear, so maybe he was thinking about whatever it was she said to him.”

Aunt Alice had continued to pull up Web sites.

“This is interesting,” she said, frowning a little. “It explains how Mr. Merlin can get along so well without holding a job. He’s been married five times, each time to an elderly widow with a house and other assets. Mr. Merlin has apparently inherited from all of them.”

There was a lot of talk at the Walkers’ dinner table that night about whether to watch the show. Mr. Walker voted no. He was irate about the way Mr. Gordon had reacted to his polite request for help in persuading Jerry to sign the release form.

“He refused to take the situation seriously,” he told the family. “His view is that parents shouldn’t get involved in spats between children, and young people ought to work out their problems on their own. When I told him that Bruce and Andi had tried to do that, he said, ‘Well, maybe they didn’t try hard enough.’”

Mrs. Walker was upset about that as well, but she also wanted to watch the program.

“What good would it do us to boycott it?” she asked reasonably. “That’s not going to stop it from being shown. Everybody else in town is going to be watching it, so why shouldn’t we?”

Eileen Stanton was her favorite talk show host. Mrs. Walker never missed her show if she could help it.

Bruce was feeling so miserable about his phone conversation that afternoon with Craig Donovan that the very thought of Jerry made his stomach lurch. Mr. Donovan had been stunned to learn that Bruce was unable to provide the signed release form.

“Your sister assured me the cast would be off by now!” he said.

“The cast?” Bruce repeated blankly.

“The cast on the boy’s hand. Were there further complications? I don’t suppose you have an orthopedic hand specialist in Elmwood?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce said. “In fact, I don’t even know what one is.”

“Where is that poor boy now?” Mr. Donovan asked him. “Perhaps we could get him to make an
X
with his left hand and have a notary public witness it. That would be the legal equivalent of a signature.”

“If you mean the boy on the skateboard, he’s in New York,” Bruce said.

“They have good doctors in New York,” Mr. Donovan said approvingly. “But that won’t help us in this dire situation. We’ll be airing the videos on Dog Appreciation Day, which is only a week away. It’s an hour-and-a-half show, which allows us time for three fifteen-minute videos, three interviews, and the necessary commercials. Now, with only two videos in the competition, what are we going to do with the rest of the time?”

“Maybe you could sell more commercials?” Bruce suggested.

“It’s too late for that,” Mr. Donovan said. “What we need is additional talent to fill the void. I read in the paper about a teenage boy who’s written a book about a circus dog. I’ll try to track him down. Maybe he’ll agree to appear on the show in between the two videos.”

“I can’t tell you how bad I feel about this,” Bruce said.

He had never been so humiliated in his life.

Mr. Donovan was a nice man, and Star Burst Studios had invested a lot of money in bringing Bruce, Aunt Alice, and Red Rover to Hollywood.
He felt terrible about letting them down, but he felt even worse for Andi, who had twice come so close to her dream and now had been thwarted a second time.

Still, he voted yes to watching the
Eileen Stanton Show.
As his mother had said, there was nothing to be gained by not watching it, and he couldn’t help being curious about what Jerry would say.

Andi didn’t participate in the conversation. She knew that the family would end up watching the show.

Which of course they did, although they all cringed a little when Jerry appeared on the screen. He looked even more adorable than he did in real life. His cheeks were flushed from the color applied by the makeup artist, his lashes had been darkened by mascara, and his hair had been sprayed with something that made it glisten.

His flashing smile lit up the studio, and Eileen Stanton, who could usually upstage anybody, seemed a little bit drab in contrast, despite her orange blouse and flaming red hair.

She was obviously smitten with Jerry, especially when he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.

“What inspired you to write your story from the
viewpoint of a dog?” she asked, leaning eagerly forward for his answer.

“I’ve always had a special kinship with dogs,” Jerry said. “It’s as if I can see into their souls. Ruffy’s story poured forth from my fingertips in a magical way. The words popped onto the screen as if Ruffy himself was dictating them. I’ve been told that that’s the way Shakespeare wrote his plays — not on a computer, of course, but with a quill pen. And Hemingway did that too, and Gene Simmons and R. L. Stine and the Gospel writers in the Bible. It’s the sign of — of —”

He paused, as if embarrassed to go on.

Eileen Stanton completed the sentence for him.

“Of
genius
!” she said reverently.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that exactly,” Jerry told her modestly. “I’m just a normal kid with big dreams and aspirations. I want to introduce other kids to the joy of writing and the appreciation of good literature.”

“Tell us about Ruffy’s circus,” Eileen Stanton begged him. “Please describe it in your own vivid words so our viewers and I can visualize it just the way you do.”

“It was just a regular circus,” Jerry told her, seeming slightly uncomfortable for the first time since he
had stepped onto the set. “You know what they’re like — with elephants and clowns and pretty girls on trapezes. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t go into more detail. I don’t want to spoil the story for people who buy the book.”

“I read in the press release that the second-place winner, Amanda Wallace, is even younger than you are,” Eileen Stanton said. “We had hoped to have her join you on the show but weren’t able to locate her. Have you been in touch with her? I should think the two of you would have a lot in common.”

“No, we haven’t talked,” Jerry said. “When I read her name in the paper, I wanted to call and congratulate her, but I couldn’t find her phone number.”

“We need to take a commercial break, and then we’ll take calls from our viewers,” Eileen Stanton said, regretfully tearing her eyes away from Jerry to gaze into the camera lens. “I’m sure there are lots of people who would love to speak to our guest. What an inspiration he is to the young people of our nation!”

Mr. Walker pushed the
MUTE
button.

“I knew I should have phoned the paper and corrected that error!” he said.
“Amanda Wallace?
Of course they weren’t able to find Andi!”

“I wouldn’t have wanted to be on that show
anyway,” Andi said. “How could I sit there while Jerry compared himself to Shakespeare? And it’s weird the things he was saying about Ruffy’s circus. It didn’t have clowns and elephants and acrobats.”

“No elephants?” her mother exclaimed. “You must be mistaken, honey. Every circus has elephants.”

“Not Ruffy’s circus,” Andi said. “There was nobody in it but dogs. Ruffy did tricks like Lamb Chop does at the retirement home. In the story, the dogs’ master takes them from town to town in a car. How could you squeeze an elephant into a car?”

The commercials were over. Mr. Walker activated the sound again, and calls began to flood in.

The first was from a teacher who wanted to know if Jerry did school visits. Jerry said he might consider that if he was paid enough.

Then a man who raised elephants as a hobby called to inform people that an elephant’s hair was too tough to be cut by razors and had to be shaved with a blowtorch. He wanted to know if Jerry had included a blowtorch scene in his book.

Jerry said no, but he’d be sure to include one in the sequel.

Then, suddenly, there was a voice that all of them recognized.

“I’m Alice Scudder,” the voice said. “I am calling to correct an error. The girl who came in second in the Young Author Dog Lovers Contest, with a brilliant story titled
Bobby Strikes Back,
is
not
named Amanda Wallace. She is Andrea Walker, the daughter of John and Linda Walker of Elmwood, New Jersey. Andi has been writing since she was much younger than Jerry Gordon. She published her first poem when she was ten.”

“I appreciate your setting us straight, Ms. Scudder,” Eileen Stanton said. “That mix-up in names must be the reason no one could find her.”

“It may be the reason that
you
couldn’t find her,” Aunt Alice said. “However, Jerry knows Andi personally. He asked her to do revisions on
Ruffy Dean Joins the Circus.
Jerry made a deal with Andi that if she would do his work for him —”

“Thank you, Ms. Scudder,” Eileen Stanton interrupted hastily. “We appreciate your call, but we need to move on. Our phones are ringing off the hooks!”

The next call was from a girl who wanted to know if Jerry had a girlfriend.

Jerry blushed endearingly.

“I’ve been so busy with my writing that I haven’t
had a chance for that,” he told her. “Maybe now I ought to make up for lost time.”

The audience laughed and applauded, and the girl squealed and tried to give him her phone number. Eileen Stanton told her to leave it with the operator, who would see that Jerry got it after the show. Then five more girls called in to announce that they, too, were leaving their numbers with the operator and wanted Jerry to call them.

One, a drama major at a conservatory for dramatic arts, suggested that she and Jerry get together to read Shakespeare. Jerry said that would be fun, but he was overcommitted.

Music began to play as the show reached its close.

“Thank you, Jerry Gordon, for being with us tonight,” Eileen Stanton said. “I know your book is going to be a bestseller. I plan to buy copies for everybody I know!”

And then she got up and hugged him, right there in front of the camera.

“Yuck!” Andi said, and covered her eyes with her hands.

“Double yuck,” Mrs. Walker said, putting her arm around her daughter and hugging her tight. “I will never watch that ridiculous show again.”