Poser (4 page)

[
There's going to be a bunch of these interruptions in the book. Macy just shouts things out whenever she thinks of them, no matter what you're doing. You're just going to have to put up with them. I have to.]

“Hey, BEAUTY BOY,” Macy called from the computer. I was mid-equation in my math homework at the kitchen table, trying to concentrate. “Now
here's
an interesting one!” She sounded excited. I waited, knowing whatever it was wouldn't interest me even a little bit.

“Awsum Ear Critterz! The company needs ‘supercool teen and preteen models.' Check it out!” She swiveled the computer screen toward me. “Cool earmuff cover thingies in cute designs! Squirrels, frogs, BUNNIES! Aaawww, look!”

Her smile faded as she saw the look on my face.

“Nope. No way, Macy. Those things suck. I hate them.”

Okay, I didn't
hate
them. I barely glanced at them, but you have to be blunt with Macy. I've learned this. If I'd tried to be all kind and said, “Yeah, they're sort of cute, but...” I'd have been signed up as chief Critterz model before I knew what was happening.

“I'll take that as a maybe, Mr. Grumpy,” she said playfully, turning back to the computer.

See what I mean?

CHAPTER FIVE

FAKE-SKATEBOARDING TO THE OLDIES WITH CHAD AND CODY

I walked into the studio and stopped. I couldn't believe it. Just my luck. I'm in the middle of a crisis, I'm halfway across the country, and out of all the kids I model with, today's shoot is with Chad and Cody.

I know Chad and Cody well. Too well. We've been in tons of shoots together, playing fake football, fake-laughing, fake-shrugging, fake-pointing, etc. We've been fake friends for several years now. Cody's okay. Chad's completely annoying.

“Hey, Cody, hey, Chad,” I said with a little sigh.

“Lukester! Dude, wazzzuuuuup?” That was Cody.

Cody Radwanski. He's a skinny, goofy redhead with big, super-white teeth and wide, vacant blue eyes. Remember what I was saying about being photogenic? Well, Cody is. He looks
way
better in pictures than he does in real life. Much cooler too. Pictures don't have audio.

“Hey,” said Chad. “We were wondering who the third would be. You're late.”

Chad “The Hair” Adams seemed to think I was his competition in his quest to be the World's Top Boy Model. He's a thin little eleven-year-old with a ridiculous swagger, good cheekbones and almost-natural blond hair. His mom's a hairdresser. Oops, sorry: I'm supposed to say “stylist.” We almost got into a fight about that once. He's dead serious about modeling and talks about it all the time. Almost as much as he talks about The Hair.

The Hair
always
comes up as a topic of conversation with Chad, like it's an important world event or something.
Breaking news at six: The world financial crisis, war declared and Chad's Hair gets highlighted...
“Check it out,” Chad said, pointing predictably at his head.

“Yeah, man, that is one big head you have there,” I murmured. Very witty. It was lost on both of them. Chad always ignored me, and Cody was staring at The Hair, his mouth open, his eyes wide.

Chad patted the spiky tips tenderly with the palm of his hand.

“Highlighted
and
lowlighted,” he bragged. “Golden Sunset and Summer Wheat. You'd be looking at three hundred bucks in a salon.”

“Coool,” breathed Cody, genuinely impressed.

I looked at Cody. He didn't have the natural jerk-o-meter that most people have inside them. The one that shrieks when somebody is lying or bragging or just being a jerk. He took everything at face value. He thought Chad's hair was great because Chad told him it was great. I'm sure he thought we were all good friends. BFFs.

“Okay, boys, let's get at 'er,” called Sandra, the photographer. I swung around with relief. Saved from The Hair.

I liked Sandra. She made lame jokes, but she was pretty nice. She actually talked to us about the shoot's “concept,” like we were adults.

“So it's basically a summer-skateboard theme,” she said.

“Wicked!” murmured Cody, elbowing my arm.
Don't do that, Cody
.

“So what I want,” Sandra said, “is action, action, action! Jumps, kicks—you know, skateboard-type stuff. I'm going to shoot you in the air. Action shots. Don't worry about the boards. We'll add them later.”

Chad grilled her, professional to professional, about the positioning of the skateboards, the mood, the feel, The Hair, blah, blah, blah.

I stood there with my hands shoved in my boardshorts pockets. The sinking, defeated feeling I got whenever shoots were about to start swept over me.

Cody nudged me hard, his face lighting up with excitement.

“Let's do this thannng!!” he yelled, even though I was only six inches away.
Don't do that, Cody
.

“I am
sooo
going to ollie,” he grinned, pumping his fist in the air. I was very sure he didn't have a clue what an ollie was. He was one of those guys who wears skateboard gear and talks a lot but is fundamentally unathletic. And did I mention uncool?

I looked at Cody's vacant, excited face and wondered if life might be easier without much of a brain.

We moved to the “set”—some bright lights against a sky-blue backdrop.

Sandra pushed a large button on the ancient boom box that she carted to shoots. Some really lame nineties music blared out for our supercool, awesomely rad, action-packed, oldies' boarding party.

Okay, get up. Put the book down for a minute. If I gotta do this, so do you.

Forget about your fake-skateboard. Stand with your knees bent, arms raised and action-posed, then hop into the air and pretend you're doing tricks. Swivel your hips, bend your legs like you've just kickflipped the board behind you; improvise. And smile like you're having the time of your life while you're doing it. Like you're
exhilarated
. Keep smiling and hopping idiotically for at least half an hour.

Cody actually, really, truly looked like he was having the time of his life. Maybe he was. How sad is that?

“Can't touch this!” he screamed with the music as he flailed away beside me.

Chad was more controlled. A serious 'boarder dude, doing serious 'boarder moves. He always stared straight at the camera with a smoldering, direct look.

Chad's already paranoid about his “good side.” Apparently it's his left, the one with the dimple. He jockeys around during every shoot so that his left side is to the camera. Once he gets there, he relaxes and lets the dimple do its magic.

Chad also mutters “Click it” under his breath continually, like he's telling the photographer what to do. It doesn't mean anything. It's just a phrase he repeats
over and over
when he's modeling. I find it unbelievably annoying.

I did my best, hopping and grunting to the oldies. I knew Macy had worked hard to get me this shoot, and I knew it paid a lot.

“And UP and FUN...kicking...big smiles and JUMP...woo-hoo, that's it, that...is...IT!” Sandra kept up a running commentary as she crouched and shot. Cody kept slamming into me, forcing me into Chad, who elbowed me hard whenever he had the chance.
Stuck in the Middle: The Luke Spinelli Story
.

Sandra stopped when we were getting hot and red. In advertising, nobody sweats.

Oh, if you're still jumping and fake-skateboarding like a fool, you can stop now too.

Five-minute break.

CHAPTER SIX

SHAY, THE ART OF BULLYING AND AGLETS

Bullies.

Most books and shows, in my opinion, get them all wrong. They're usually just totally unrealistic. Beefy, sadistic captain-of-the-football-team jocks who live only to slam impossibly nerdy kids into lockers or toilets. Muscle-bound freaks stealing skinny kids' lunch money. Always big, always vicious.

In my experience, though, the big bullying jerks account for only a small percentage of actual bullies these days. Maybe 5 or 10 percent. In fact, I can think of only one in my school: Tyson Kemp, a kid who is
way
bigger and more freakishly energetic than everyone else.

Tyson is the reason my junior high went through this hypervigilant anti-bullying campaign. We now have a zero-tolerance policy on violence.

That sounds good, and it does limit kids like me getting beaten up. And Tyson is out of business and now has to sit still, quietly growing his facial hair and not understanding math ever.

But the anti-bullying policy also means no snowball-throwing or tackle
football. I even got hauled to the office last semester for arm-wrestling at lunch. Ryan
Shewchuk got suspended for throwing a piece of ice against the Dumpster. The
Dumpster
.
Can you even bully a Dumpster?

Anyway, in my school, the days of the big, burly bullies are over. But a new, even more vicious species of bully has taken their place: the mind-bullies. Way meaner. Way, way more dangerous.

Take Shay, a guy in my class. I know, I know: what kind of name is that? I've asked myself that too, and I don't know. Irish? I've never asked him. You wouldn't either.

Shay's not your stereotypical bully. He's puny— probably under five feet tall—wiry and skinny. Sounds completely harmless, right? Wrong. Shay is smart, cunning and absolutely ruthless. He's kind of a combination bully-jerk. A burk.

Last week, Shay convinced a substitute teacher that he was a
hearing-impaired student. That poor woman yelled her way through our math class, gulping water
like crazy while we all killed ourselves laughing behind our books. Shay sat there
poker-faced, sort of tilting his right ear toward her and saying loudly, “I'm
sorry, I didn't get that.” He gets away with these kinds of things.

When he gets bored, he looks for evil ways to brighten his life. Like, he'll call across the room to a shy, quiet girl named Madison and say, “Madison, that's enough! Shut up already! You talk WAY too much.” She'll get a really red face and stare down at her desk. And he'll keep it up, turning around and shushing her all period. It's stupid stuff, I know, but he always gets everyone to look. It's even worse when he gets everyone to laugh.

He gets sent to the office all the time. I don't know if our teacher, Ms. McCoy, just wants to get rid of him for a while or really sees it as a punishment. He loves it. He'll even suggest it. “Ms. McCoy, I really think I should be sent to the office.” She hates that, but she's trapped. She needs him gone so we can get some real work done. I don't envy her at all.

Shay is a kind of roving bully. This is really a stroke of genius, bully-wise, because everyone knows they could be a potential victim. You never know when he's going to pick on you. Today I was the target. It started early: 8:25 AM.

“Well, well, Mr. Spinelli,” Shay called out as I walked into class, “good of you to
finally
join us.” I had missed a couple of days for the shoot with Chad and Cody.

“Um, good to be here,” I mumbled.

Part of the problem is that I can never think up smart things to say. Shay always makes me feel dumb and slow and clumsy.

He was standing over near Edie's desk, pestering a group of girls. Edie's got long brown hair and brown eyes, and she draws on her jeans. She's very cool without trying to be. Edie's probably the only one in the class who talks back to Shay, who doesn't care what he does. This, of course, drives him crazy.

“You've missed two days, Spin. Again. These absences are starting to look suspicious. Where have you been?” he asked.

All the girls looked over at me expectantly. All of them but Edie, who was drawing on her binder. She draws really well. Mostly dragons and wizards and castles, with bolts of lightning.

My mind went blank. I froze, forgetting which excuse I had used last time. Usually I rehearse on the way to school which excuse I'm going to use. I should really write them all down, and note the days I've used them. Sort of an excuses catalog. You can only have so many grandparents' funerals to attend until someone does the math. I frantically searched my mind for all the other relatives I'd invented in my large, imaginary Italian family.

Edie looked up at Shay and said in her slow, bored way, “What're you, his
mom
?”

Everyone laughed. I laughed too and said, “Yeah, good of you to care, Shay.” I edged away, over to my desk. Shay looked murderous. I'd pay for this.

What're you, his mom?
It was the perfect retort. Why couldn't I ever think of things like that? I would have stammered out some kind of excuse, as if I
owed
it to Shay to tell him where I'd been. Or, more accurately, to lie about where I'd been.

Imagine, just imagine, if I'd said, “Well, Shay, as a matter of fact, I was doing fake ollies and kickflips with a couple of other boy models.” My life would have been
over
.

Shay watched me as I wandered over to Chan and Frey.

Oops, sorry—you haven't met them yet. The little guy with glasses is Daniel Chan, and the big, sloppy guy with the food stains on his clothes is Andrew Frey. But I never call them Daniel and Andrew, or even Dan and Andy. We've been one-syllable-last-name friends for years.

“Spin!” said Chan. “Can you
tell
this guy”—he gestured to Frey—“what that little thing at the end of your shoelace is?
Tell
him.”

“It's an aglet,” I answered.

“See? Frey, see? I told you it had a name.” Chan is an excitable guy. A details guy.

“I didn't say it didn't have a name,” said Frey slowly. Everything about Frey is slow. He talks slowly. He blinks slowly. He shuffles slowly. His three brothers are the same, only in varying sizes of huge. Right now, Frey was slowly tying his shoelace. Both aglets, incidentally, had burst or fallen off, so the ends were fuzzy and frayed. Aglet-less.