The Last Story (2 page)

"Private matters? Subjects Peter and I are unworthy of hearing?"

"We'll just be a minute," Jimmy said. He led me away from the others, into a toy store.

Many of my fans continued to linger in the area, waving and smiling at me when I glanced their way. My brother and I stood near a stack of Ouija boards and I was reminded of the night I died.

Not many people can say that.

"What's up?" I asked.

"It's nothing serious. It's just that I don't see you much these days."

"Is that why you came to the mall today?"

"I didn't come to buy one of your competitors'

books."

I shrugged. "I'm not avoiding you on purpose.

It's just that I've been busy. You know First to Die is going to start shooting in a couple of days, and we still don't know if Universal's going to let us use their large pond for the shark scenes."

"I didn't know that. I hope it works out for you guys. But why don't you just concentrate on your writing? Let your producer do all the worrying.

That's why you hired him."

My defenses went up. I hate being told what to do, especially by my big brother. "I enjoy the movie business. I want to learn as much as I can about it while I have the chance." I paused.

"I want to become a director."

"And quit writing? Is that why you're here?"

By here he meant on Earth. "No. I'll always write. I just want to broaden my horizons.

What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing," Jimmy said.

"Are you upset that I was signing Remember Me today?"

"No. I'm just concerned about you."

"The book is sold as Young Adult. Mom will never even hear of it."

Jimmy's face darkened. "Mom has already seen the book. Yesterday she mentioned it to me on the phone."

I was stunned. "How did that happen?"

Jimmy shrugged. "It says Shari Cooper on the spine. It's on the best-seller lists. How can you be surprised? You wanted this to happen, and you know it."

"That's not true," I lied. Well, sort of. I didn't know what I wanted. Still, I longed to visit my parents and tell them I was back and alive. Yet I knew Jimmy was right when he said they'd never accept the truth, only be tormented by it. Jimmy had opposed my using my original name on my books. He said it violated the Rishi's desire to have me serve as a role model for the Hispanic community.

Maybe he was right, but I liked being called Shari. I lowered my head and added, "Maybe I should have changed more of the names in the story."

"It's done. Anyway, you're right, she'll probably never read it."

I shook my head. "If she's talking about it, she'll read it. She might come looking for me."

"You're not that easy to find. Listen, I'm serious when I say I think you're taking on too much. You don't look good, Shari."

I chuckled. "You're full of compliments today."

He studied me closer. "You took pills this afternoon."

"No. I've been signing books all day."

"You may fool Peter, but you don't fool me. You speak differently with codeine in your system. How bad is your head?"

"Seen from the outside, it seems pretty bad."

"Shari. You have to see a neurologist."

I shook my head. "If there was anything seriously wrong with me, it would have become apparent in the last three years."

"That's not true. Injuries to the head often take time to manifest. I've done reading on the subject.

You may have something wrong that can easily be fixed."

"Yeah, right, easily fixed with brain surgery. No thanks. I trust in the Rishi. If he put me in this body, it must be strong enough to last me."

"Having the Rishi's blessing doesn't mean you're exempt from using common sense."

Jimmy glanced around and sighed. "The others are waiting.

We can talk about this later."

"There's always later," I agreed.

Jo accompanied Peter and me back to our apartment in Venice, which was close to the beach. I sat in the middle. We were in Peter's van, which had been especially outfitted to allow him to drive using only his hands. The van had cost a bundle. Not that I minded. Last year I made over three million dollars, but had promptly given half of it to the government. For me I'd bought a red Jaguar, which sent up a flag for every cop on the Coast Highway.

In the last six months I got four speeding tickets and was in danger of losing my license.

The rear of the van was stuffed with track and baseball equipment. Peter coached a Special Olympics team and also did volunteer work with several handicapped baseball teams. He didn't get paid for

his work, so the only money he brought in was from his business of finding rare books for people. He ran it out of our spare room. How he managed to locate the books for people, I didn't know. But he did well and had a growing list of clients. The trouble was that his commission on his finds was usually low—five or ten dollars. It was more of a hobby than a business, really, but he seemed to get a kick out of it. I just hoped my books never reached his list of hard-to-finds.

"Shari told me the pitcher on your baseball team is blind," Jo said to Peter as we cruised toward the beach. Our apartment was in a nice area of Venice and had a wonderful view of the ocean. Still, I was thinking of buying a house in Malibu, where my producer, Henry Weathers, lived, but was worried about tying myself down. For some reason I felt I would be traveling soon.

Peter nodded. "His name's Jacob and he's seventeen.

He's been blind since birth."

Jo frowned. "I can understand that he can throw the ball as hard as anybody, but how can he throw strikes? In fact, how does it get anywhere near the batter?"

"He orients himself by the catcher's voice. As Jacob winds up, the catcher talks the whole time."

Peter added, "The catcher's deaf."

"And the batters are all retarded," I quipped.

"Yeah," Jo said with a chuckle. "Doesn't Jacob hit the batters half the time?"

Peter shook his head. "He hasn't hit anyone in

the last six games. His strikeout percentage rivals that of big league ball players. He's a phenomenon."

"He's probably just nearsighted," I said.

"He has no eyes," Peter said softly.

Boy, did I feel stupid. I touched Peter's leg. He could not feel the gesture but at least he saw it. "I'm sorry," I said. "I'd like to see him pitch sometime."

"You can come to any of our games," Peter said, quietly reminding me that I had never showed up yet. I enjoyed playing sports, but sitting and watching them somehow made me feel like a failed cheerleader. Visions of an old high school acquaintance, Candy, came to mind. She had been

deaf and virtually blind. On the "other side,"

during my review of my previous life, I saw how important Candy had been to me. The few times I helped her at school had brought me better karma than the four years I studied to get good grades.

"The first chance I have," I said, "I will go see Jacob."

CHAPTER

II

VV HEN MY FIRST Young Adult novel came out and jumped on The New York Times best-seller list—the first YA book ever to do so—I was approached by numerous studios who wanted to buy the rights to film the book. They came to me with names of movie stars and forty-million-dollar budgets. I was wined and dined and finally settled on a large studio that swore the book would be on the screen within nine months, a year at the outside.

Of course, nothing happened with First to Die, or the books that followed. They were optioned, I was paid a nominal fee, and then the stories sank into development hell. Such a slow-moving hell nothing ever happened there. Hollywood's a strange place. All the cliches about it are true: executives like to make deals. They like to "do"

lunch. They do not like to make movies. Movies might bomb. They might get fired.

Better to just option stuff, pretend they're going to make it. I got tired of the scene.

I met my producer, Henry Weathers, by chance. I was buying popcorn at a movie theater in Westwood near UCLA. Peter and I went to two or three movies a week—at least we did before I became an executive producer. Anyway, Henry was standing behind me and he made a joke about how slow the line was, comparing it to how long it had taken to get the movie we were about to see on the screen. As it turned out a friend of Henry's had produced the movie, and even though it turned out to be a turkey, I liked Henry. We got to talking. I told him who I was and the experiences I'd had rewriting scripts for executives who needed readers to translate the labels on their afternoon bottle of mineral water. Henry was sympathetic, but otherwise didn't say a whole lot. We exchanged numbers and I thought that would be the last I saw of him.

Yet a month later—after he had researched me and read all my books—he called to say he knew some people who had ten million dollars and wanted to get into the movie business.

Was I interested in making First to Die into a picture? "When do we start?" I asked.

"Right away," he said. "We just have to sell them on the idea."

I liked that answer.

That had been three months ago. We had sold the idea to the investors, and things were moving fast.

We had a director and cast, and the cameras were ready to roll. Well, almost. Our director, although highly talented, was insane. He had a pregnant wife who did astrological charts, and a gay lover who painted billboards with food coloring and a broom.

Our director talked to the cameras when he thought no one was looking. Our leading man was addicted to cocaine. Our villain had just gotten out of jail for hot-wiring a car and driving it off the end of the Santa Monica pier. And we had no place to put our sharks. Yes, we had rented a pool full of sharks. We needed them to eat a few of our characters. You can rent anything in Los Angeles if you know where to look. Henry did; he was an old-time Hollywood producer. He could make a few million look like a hundred million on the screen, and, as he was fond of saying, he knew a hit the moment it collected two hundred million. Henry had had his ups and downs over the years. I was supposed to be his last great up. He thought he could build a dynasty from my work.

Before Henry and I gave our presentation to the investors, he had me prepare a scene-by-scene summary of First to Die. God forbid the businesspeople who wanted to give us millions should actually have to read a book. I would have read the blasted thing before spending seven bucks to see the movie. Maybe I'm cheap. Anyway, this summary turned out to be the outline from which I had prepared a shooting script because I had to cut large portions of the three-hundred-page novel to fit a hundred-minute film. While heading to Henry's for my meeting and Jo's rehearsal, I asked Jo to drive so I could reread my initial summary to see if there was anything I could do to improve the story at this late stage.

FIRST TO DIE

by

SHARI COOPER

The story opens on a sailboat twenty miles off the coast of Florida. A group of seven high school students has been invited by Bob, the class nerd, to enjoy a weekend of sailing around the Florida Keys. What these seven do not know is that Bob has planned this weekend for many months. He plans to take revenge on these popular kids because he has hated them for years.

In the first scene our hero, quiet and shy Daniel, and our heroine, sweet and pretty Kathy, are talking inside a cabin when a scream brings them running up onto the deck. It is head cheerleader Susie who has cried out.

Bob is holding a gun to her head and is demanding to have a meeting.

"This boat is rigged to sink in a few minutes," Bob says. "There are two lifeboats on board. Both are equipped with small outboard motors. Both are tiny; they will hold only two people, three at most. If you put more people in them, they will sink. In two minutes I am going to head back to shore in one of the lifeboats. I am going alone. That will leave the seven of you to decide who is to live and who is to die. The lifeboat I'm leaving is equipped with a compass and enough gasoline to reach shore. With any luck, whoever departs in it will make it safely back. The hull of this boat is rigged to blow in two places. The seven of you can choose to stay and try to plug these holes. That way, working together, maybe all of you will survive. But the odds will not be in your favor.

Because you cannot survive in these waters for even a few minutes. For the last two hours, while you've all been gossiping and eating, we have been trailing slabs of beef in the water. The blood has attracted a large school of sharks." Bob pauses to smile, to gesture to the surrounding fins. "The beef has only whetted their appetites."

Hearing the setup, football quarterback Todd swears at Bob and rushes him. Calmly, Bob lets go of Susie and shoots Todd in the head. Todd's blood soaks the deck as he dies. Bob shoves the body into the water. While the others look on in horror, the sharks begin to feed.

"Now you only have to decide among the six of you who is to die," Bob says.

From below deck come two sharp explosions. Water begins to pour into the sailboat.

Taking his time, Bob climbs into one of the lifeboats. Smirking, he roars off toward the shore.

Now the tension escalates.

Susie wants to leave in the remaining lifeboat immediately.

Because she is head cheerleader, and homecoming queen to boot, she feels she automatically deserves a place. The others do not agree with her, particularly class valedictorian Randy. It is his belief that the three guys—Carl is the third male—should go in the lifeboat.

They are stronger and the girls—pleasant Mary is the final character—won't be able to stop them from taking it. Carl doesn't agree with this. He is captain of the basketball team and Susie is his girlfriend. While the water gushes in and the boat begins to wobble, Randy and Carl get in a fight. Good guy Daniel has to scream to shut them up.

"Let's at least try to plug up the holes," Daniel says.

"A boat this size will take a few minutes to sink. Maybe if we work together we can stop the water."

They head below as a group, but they are not a cohesive group. They do not trust one another. They cannot concentrate on fixing the holes because they are concentrating solely on each other. It is only now they appreciate the cold cruelty of Bob's revenge upon them.