No More Dead Dogs (6 page)

“Well, if it isn’t Jackass Jackass,” he puffed. “What can I do for you, besides a brain transplant?”

I leaned on the barbell, pressing it against my ex–best friend’s chest. “I’m on to you!” I snarled down at him. “Where do you get off telling the team I would have made the difference?”

“You’ve put on a few pounds,” he observed, gasping a little, but not nearly enough to make me feel better.

“If you think you can trick the guys into blaming
me
for their lousy season—”

Slowly, he raised the weight in spite of all my efforts. He was strong as an ox. He said, “How can you think about that when a criminal is loose at school?”

That caught me off guard. I released the barbell, and Cavanaugh racked it and sat up.

“Someone is trying to sabotage the school play,” he explained pleasantly. “I’ve worked up a little profile for the prime suspect. It has to be someone who doesn’t like
Old Shep, My Pal
, has a grudge against Mr. Fogelman, and spends a lot of time in the gym. Remind you of anybody?”

To get any hotter, I would have had to be on fire. “It isn’t me!” I seethed. “And you know it!”

“Don’t freak out, Jackass Jackass.” He lay back down and resumed his bench-pressing. “Of course
I
realize you’re telling the truth. But not everybody knows you so well. So if the teachers get the wrong idea, that could keep you off the team even longer.”

In a rage, I slipped an extra twenty-five-pound plate onto the left side of his bar. And while he was struggling to balance that, I did the same to the right side. Now fifty pounds heavier, the bar pinned him across the chest.

I sat down to observe him squirming his way out of it. That was another weird thing about Cavanaugh. He would rather spend the rest of his life trapped under that weight than ask me for help. He pushed and wriggled and strained and sweated, but the extra iron was just too much for him.

“Need a hand?” I asked finally.

“No.” It was barely a wheeze.

Hey, you’ve got to respect a guy’s wishes. From the stairs I noted that all that struggling had done nothing to spoil his good hair day.

That information was scribbled on the back cover of
Teen Dazzle
magazine. Trudi Davis stuck it right in my face in the gym on Monday after school.

“What is it?” I asked her.

“My survey,” she explained. “You know, on who’s been doing all that stuff to the play.”

If ditziness was snow, this girl would be Alaska. The only thing louder than Trudi was her nail polish.

“Sort of guilty? What does that mean?” I challenged.

“It means guilty, but only—you know—sort of.”

“Well, I’m glad you cleared that up,” I said sarcastically.

“Don’t worry, Wallace,” she soothed. “Out of the thirty-two guilties, twenty-seven said that your advice on the play is so good, they don’t care what you did.”

“But I didn’t do
anything
!” I insisted.

“Just keep pumping out those great lines,” she assured me with a smile framed by tomato-red lipstick. “The tide is turning our way. I can feel it.”

I handed back her chart with a groan. “What does ‘other’ mean?”

“Rachel refused to answer, and Nathaniel used a word I didn’t understand.” She checked her notes. “Disembowelment. What does that mean?”

I sighed. “Remember the last scene in
Braveheart
?”

She winced. “Ooh, that’s nasty. Well, don’t sweat it. He’s only one person.”

I nodded. “Less if you’re counting by chins.”

Why was I helping the actors with their lines? Part boredom, I guess. It was something to do while I was stuck on detention. But to be honest, there was another reason. It was so easy. I’d listen to Zack Paris’s stupid dialogue, and just say the same thing the way normal people talk. I even kind of enjoyed it—you know, the way you can’t help but like bowling if it turns out you’re good at it. Hey, if Zack Paris had used my dialogue, maybe
Old Shep, My Pal
wouldn’t be such a lousy book, and I wouldn’t be spending all my afternoons in the gym.

Enter…
RACHEL TURNER

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my whole life!”

I wheeled to find Trudi reading over my shoulder.

“Are you crazy?” I roared. “This is a private letter!”

“You’re writing to Julia Roberts about Wallace Wallace, and
I’m
crazy?”

I could feel myself blushing crimson. “When I write to famous actresses, I don’t really expect them to read my letters. I just do it as a form of self-expression. It’s almost like keeping a journal or a diary.”

She looked unconvinced. “Do you mail them?”

“Well—yeah,” I admitted.

She was shocked. “Rachel, how could you? Julia Roberts is going to think that Wallace is some kind of gangster!”

“Trudi, I know you like him,” I said patiently. “But after all he’s done to us, how can you take his side?”

“Because he’s a gifted playwright,” she said stubbornly. “Not to mention adorable, a football hero, and someone who could get us invited to all the coolest parties!”

Trudi seemed to think there was this ultra-hip “scene” out there, where rock stars, the rich and famous, and the beautiful people (but not Trudi Davis) hung out together. Oh, I’m sure it existed somewhere, but definitely not at the Bedford 7-Eleven. And I doubt you could could join it by dating a middle-school football player, even the celebrated Wallace Wallace.

I was so upset, I couldn’t enjoy the evening out my dad planned for the whole family in honor of Mom’s birthday. We were driving into New York to see a real Broadway play. I’d been excited for weeks because the theater is my whole life. (Now, thanks to
Old Shep, My Pal
, I got a queasy feeling in my stomach every time I heard the word “play.”)

My brother didn’t make things any easier. “Why do we have to go to a dumb old play?” he whined for most of the hour-long drive. “I hate plays.”

“You love the theater,” my mother said in surprise. “Remember how much you enjoyed
Cats
?”

“That was before a stupid play ruined the Giants,” Dylan growled, “and stuck Wallace Wallace on detention.”

There it was. Wallace Wallace was following me to New York (courtesy of Dylan).

“Your hero is on detention because of his own big mouth,” I said sourly. “And if Nathaniel Spitzner had his way, he’d be on death row.”

My father was astonished. “You know Wallace Wallace? What’s he like?”

“Wallace,” Vito called the next day at rehearsal, “this speech doesn’t sound natural to me.”

Mr. Fogelman stepped in. “We’ve changed that part.”

“I can’t get into my character’s mind,” Vito insisted.

That made Nathaniel wince. “Two weeks ago, you tried out for this role to make up for an F in art. Now, suddenly, you have to get inside Morry Lamont’s head?”

But Wallace was already climbing up the stairs to the stage. My back teeth were clenched so tight that I could feel the tension headache coming on. These were the moments I had come to dread the most. Fix this! Cut that! And nobody seemed to be able to stop him.

Wallace took Vito’s script. “Let me see.”

“No way,” the director persisted. “You’ve already rewritten this speech. Every single word. All ten lines.”

“Well, that’s the whole problem,” Wallace explained. “It’s too long. Nobody does this much talking without something else going on.”

“Like what?” Mr. Fogelman demanded.

“Something real people do,” Wallace said thoughtfully. He reached around and pulled the yo-yo out of Vito’s back pocket.

“Here.” Wallace popped it into his hand. “Try playing with this when you give that speech. Be distracted. You’re talking, but at the same time you’re ‘rocking the cradle.’”

The strangest feeling began to come over me. My ears burned, then roared. I started fidgeting because I couldn’t keep my feet still.

“Now, just one minute!” ordered Mr. Fogelman. “There are no yo-yos in
Old Shep, My Pal.
”

“It’s just something for the audience to watch,” Wallace insisted. “I mean, this whole play is nothing but a bunch of knuckleheads standing around talking.”

My script slipped out of my clammy hands and hit the gym floor.

“That’s not true!” Mr. Fogelman countered angrily. “They’re nursing Old Shep!”

“And where’s Old Shep?” the creep argued. “You’ve got a basket with a blanket in it. This is a dog play with no dog.”

I was going to faint, or die, or something! I had to let it out somehow!

Mr. Fogelman chuckled. “That’s just for rehearsals. Of course we’ll use a stuffed animal for the performance. Old Shep’s been hit by a motorcycle before the play even starts. All he has to do is lie in the basket.”

“That’s the biggest problem of all,” Wallace told him.

And suddenly, the pressure that had been building up inside of me let go with the force of an atomic bomb.

“OH, YEAH?!!”

The shocked silence that followed was so total, I could hear the echo of my scream bounce off every wall in the gym.

“Tell us, Mr. Expert!”
I howled at Wallace.
“Let’s see what kind of writing talent a person gets from diving on a football! Let’s hear it, since you know better than the whole drama club, better than our director who had a play produced in New York, and better than Zack Paris himself, who ONLY wrote a classic, and never fell on a football once!”

Wallace Wallace may have been a star athlete, but I guess he’d never seen anybody go berserk before, because he looked just plain scared. I wasn’t expecting that. And after all my shouting, I found myself almost at a loss for words.

“I—I’m sorry,” was all I could manage. “I mean, I’m not sorry—but I’m sorry for yelling.”

“Rachel’s right,” said Wallace, very subdued. “This is none of my business.” He started off the stage.

And it would have been over—all of it!—if Vito hadn’t opened up his yap.

“Wallace, don’t go! We need your help! What were you going to tell us about our play?”

Wallace sighed. “It’s been a very long afternoon.” He turned to Mr. Fogelman. “Can I leave now? I promise I won’t go anywhere near football practice.”

“But you were going to tell us about a problem!” Trudi shrilled. “The biggest one of all, you said!”

The whole cast and crew started encouraging Wallace.

Mr. Fogelman held his head. “All right, let’s hear it.”

Reluctantly, Wallace spoke up. “I’m no expert, but this seems like common sense. In the story of
Old Shep, My Pal
, the most exciting event is when the dog gets run over by a motorcycle. And you’ve taken out that part before the play even starts. Which means no one gets to see any action, ever.”

“This is a school play, Wallace!” exploded Mr. Fogelman. “What do you want me to do—buy a thirty-thousand-dollar Harley? Hire a stunt man to ride it? And a professional stunt dog, along with his trainer? Where do I send away for that? Hollywood?”

Inside, I was applauding, but I never said a word. I was planning to keep my mouth shut for a good long time.

“You know, it doesn’t have to be a real motorcycle,” Vito put in. “My mom has an old moped she’d probably let us use.”

“It doesn’t matter!” Mr. Fogelman insisted. “We don’t have the resources to hire a trained dog, or to train one of our own. Let’s get real here, people, and do what we
can
do.”