“Oh, no problem,” I called. “We’re just trying to put together a few songs for Old Shep, My Pal. We won’t be using amplifiers.”
“Uh-huh.” She sounded disgusted as she disappeared up the stairs.
“Ooh, Mr. F., that doesn’t sound good,” Joey whispered. “You could take a lesson from Wallace when it comes to dealing with women. Trudi treats him with respect.”
I smiled instead of taking it personally. It was all in response to my latest memo.
MEMO: Mellow out.
So I was mellowing. I think it was having a positive effect on me. One afternoon Trudi Davis looked at me in shock and blurted, “You’re young!”
I laughed. “I’m twenty-nine. How old did you think I was?”
She shrugged. “I always thought you were, like, fifty or something. Frowning gives you wrinkles. And those suits you wore. No offense, but the dodo is extinct, and so are your ties.”
Dressing more casually was something I started when I joined the band. But I felt so much more comfortable that I decided to include it under “mellow out.”
Even around Wallace Wallace, I vowed to stay mellow if it killed me. And I found that he wasn’t such a rotten kid after all.
Wallace taught me a lesson: if you force the students to fit into the play, it’ll come out lifeless and boring. But if you mold the play to showcase the talents of the students, the sky’s the limit.
True, our play was going to be a little out of the ordinary, but it was worth it. I’d never seen kids work so hard.
That’s not to say we didn’t have problems: rain through a busted skylight warped our set of the Lamont home into a canoe; five days before the performance, Old Shep’s remote-control car died mysteriously; in the middle of everything, Leo and his family up and moved to California, so I had to recruit a new Mr. Lamont.
The list was endless—burnt-out spotlights, a wasp infestation, a twenty-four-hour flu, a locker room toilet that flooded out the gym floor.
“Football players have it easy by comparison” was Wallace’s comment. “To be a drama nerd, you have to be a wizard, too!”
“Also a carpenter,” I put in. “And a plumber, an exterminator, and an electrician.”
“And a doctor!” Rachel came racing over. “Leticia’s throwing up in the change room.”
I didn’t panic. Panicking wasn’t mellow. And anyway, the problems seemed to bring out the best in those kids.
MEMO: When things start falling into place, get out of the way; it’s a happy avalanche.
Kelly Ramone and the set designers figured out a way to make it look like it was raining onstage for the thunderstorm in Scene Four. They lowered strands of Christmas tinsel from the curtain tracks while our lighting people bathed everything in blue. The effect was remarkable.
Wallace recruited the Old Shep dancers, last-minute volunteers from Mrs. Vasquez’s eighth-grade advanced movement class, to add to our musical numbers. Owen and the Void wired extra speakers into the sound system so our live performance would be coming at the audience from all directions. The rebuilt Lamont house turned out to be a masterpiece, with a real working door, and even a little dog door for the title character of our play.
MEMO: Update Dr. Chechik on recent changes.
I wasn’t bragging; I was warning the poor man. He might not be as mellow as I was. With rehearsals closed, no one had the slightest idea what we were up to in the gym. Crazy rumors about us buzzed all over the school, and even in the faculty lounge.
I thought back to the time my play opened in New York. There were cast parties and press conferences and hoopla, but still I never felt this special.
“Sold out?!” I repeated. “How can it be sold out? We haven’t even printed the tickets yet!”
“Oh, that was my idea,” Trudi confided. “When people hear ‘sold out,’ they beg to come.”
“Well, change it back to five dollars each,” Rachel ordered. “Some people might get the crazy idea that sold out means sold out. It wouldn’t be much fun without an audience.”
“How about ‘Good Seats Going Fast’?” Trudi wheedled.
“That’s just plain dumb.”
I sighed. “Take it easy, people. We’re a week away. The only thing that can sink us is ourselves. We have to stay mellow.”
MEMO: Follow your own advice.
Enter…
RACHEL TURNER
I ran straight to the gym first thing Tuesday morning. Mr. Fogelman and the Dead Mangoes had finished their final song, “Farewell, Old Pal,” and had promised to perform it for us before school. Also, the director had printed brand-new, updated scripts. With the performance coming up on Saturday, I knew my lines (and everybody else’s). But some of the actors were getting a little confused by the dozens of changes and inserts scribbled on the old copies.
I wanted my new draft, too, but for a different reason. The new script would make the ultimate souvenir. I was positive that Saturday would be the first day of my real acting career.
There was a ruckus going on in the gym when I got there. Everybody was standing on the stage, knee-deep in what looked like snow. Upon closer inspection, I could see that the white piles were made up of tens of thousands of long, thin strips of paper—barely a quarter inch across.
“What is it?” I asked in bewilderment.
Mr. Fogelman supplied the answer, and his face was pure anguish. “Our scripts! Forty-five copies!”
I was astonished. “What happened to them?”
As if on cue, the P.A. system burst into life. “Would the custodian please come to the office. The paper shredder is missing.”
I felt my blood turn to ice water in my veins. Another attack on the play! Just when it looked like all that was behind us! And only four days to opening night!
That was the very moment that Laszlo, wading through the piles, stubbed his toe on something hard. He cursed out a long sentence in Hungarian, dug in, and came up with (you guessed it) a paper shredder.
“I can’t believe it!” raged Mr. Fogelman. “I spent all weekend at the photocopier! I was collating last night until three o’clock in the morning!”
“There’s something else,” said Laszlo, foraging around the paper drifts. “Got it!” He pulled the object up, and held it for all to see.
It was a Giants football jersey, the kind the team wore in practice. The front read PROPERTY OF BEDFORD MIDDLE SCHOOL ATHLETICS; the back said one word: WALLACE.
Oh, wow.
I’d heard silence before, but nothing like this. It was so quiet that the footsteps approaching across the wood floor resounded like gunshots.
“Hey, everybody!” exclaimed Wallace. “What’s all that stuff?”
“Wallace,” breathed Vito, shaking his head. “It was you. Right from the very beginning.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Wallace. “What are you doing with my old scrimmage shirt?”
“I think,” Mr. Fogelman began evenly, “that shredding forty-five scripts is sweaty work. So you took off your jersey and forgot it under all that paper.”
“Wait a minute.” Wallace took a step backward. “You think I did this?”
“The shirt proves it!” Leticia managed tearfully.
“I haven’t seen that shirt all year!” Wallace protested.
I was in shock. It was like I wasn’t part of this, but I was watching it on TV. I waited for someone to stand up and take Wallace’s side. Surely one of these Wallace fans would defend him. Surely Trudi would!
I looked at my longtime friend and saw she had tears in her eyes. “Oh, Wallace!” she quavered. “We trusted you! We followed you! We liked you so much! And it was you the whole time!”
Wallace looked shocked. “The whole time? You mean you think I did all that other stuff, too?”
“I was just starting to believe in you!” exclaimed Nathaniel.
“This is awful!” moaned Joey. “Man, it’s like, homework, allergy shot, dentist, bummer!”
Wallace was ve
ry white and still. “I thought you guys were my friends.”
“We thought you were ours,” Trudi barely whispered.
Mr. Fogelman stepped forward, and half a pound of shredded paper spilled off the stage. Our director was even paler than Wallace. “I don’t want to believe this,” he said sorrowfully, “but the evidence is right in front of me. Wallace, we can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for our play. But this is the strangest situation I’ve ever run into. The kind of person who could build with one hand while tearing down with the other needs to take a long hard look at himself.”
That’s when I caught a glimpse of the old Wallace Wallace, the ramrod-straight back, the stubborn outthrust jaw, the steely resentful expression. “I see myself just fine, Mr. Fogelman.”
“Then we don’t agree,” the director stated gravely. “As of this minute, Wallace, you’re banned from all rehearsals. And I don’t want to see you at the performance.”
Instead of the gasp of horror that I expected, there was a huge, melancholy sigh. It sounded like the wind moaning through the trees outside a haunted house.
Wallace started for the door. Then, almost there, he turned back to face us. “I have one last suggestion.”
“You’re not a part of this anymore,” warned Mr. Fogelman.
“Old Shep shouldn’t die,” he announced. “Think about it.” And he was gone.
Wallace ate his lunch in total isolation in spite of the fact that the cafeteria was packed. I almost dropped my tray when I saw him, a single dot in the center of the room, no one within twenty feet of him. He was being ignored by football players and drama club members alike, not to mention everybody who got their news from the Bedford Middle School Weekly Standard. Wallace Wallace, hero and superstar, was now a leper.
I carried my tray in a half circle around no-man’s-land, and plunked myself down across from Trudi.
“Hi,” I said into the silence.
“Rachel, I’m so sorry!” Trudi blurted. “You were right all along!”
“I don’t know,” I mused. “Do you think there could be another explanation for how that football jersey ended up on our stage?”
“That’s another thing that burns me up,” Trudi muttered. “‘I haven’t seen that shirt all year!’ What a lame excuse! Does he think we’re idiots?”
“Unless he lost it months ago,” I said thoughtfully. “I lose sweaters and things all the time. Don’t you?”
Trudi slapped her tray, sending a shower of hot mustard into my milk. “Well, I’m breaking up with him.” She seethed. “We’re finished!”
“Maybe he’s telling the truth,” I suggested.
She stared at me. “Are you crazy, Rachel? You were the only person who saw through that sleaze! He was the one who hated Old Shep, My Pal! He was the one who had a grudge against Mr. Fogelman, and detention, and the play! We were such saps to believe him! He was rotten then, and he’s rotten now!”
“I’ll bet Wallace Wallace joins up with the Giants again,” Dylan announced at dinner that night.
“He just quit the Giants,” I said peevishly.
“Yeah, but now he’s kicked off the play,” my brother argued. “So there’s no reason for him not to be on the team.”
My mother cocked an eyebrow. “I thought you hated Wallace Wallace now. Remember what you said when you and Dad were picking all your football things out of the yard?”
“Oh, I’ll need that stuff back,” Dylan said seriously.
My father looked up from his plate. “But I just spent an hour making room for it all in the garage!”
“Listen, Dylan.” I sighed. “If Wallace goes back to the team, I will personally eat the biggest bug in your chamber of horrors.”
That shut Dylan up (he knew I didn’t joke about insects). After dinner, while he sulked, I went for a walk. I wandered in circles that got smaller and smaller, spiraling down to the center point—the neat little house on Poplar Street with the well-raked yard.
I rang the bell, and when Mrs. Wallace saw me, her face lit up, like she was drowning and I was here with a life raft.
“Hi, I’m Rachel,” I greeted her. “I was one of the rakers last Sat—”
She pulled me inside. “Thank goodness! What happened at school today? He hasn’t left his room since he got home! Not even for dinner!”
“Well, it was kind of a…” How could I explain it to her?
Mrs. Wallace bailed me out by calling up the stairs, “Wally! Rachel’s on her way up!” To me, she said urgently, “Talk to him. Please straighten this out, whatever it is!”
It’s a stupid thing to admit, but I’d never been in a guy’s room before. I guess I kind of expected it to look like Dylan’s chamber of horrors, only worse (because an eighth grader had three extra years to collect horrifying, disgusting things). But Wallace’s room was cleaner than mine, and there were no vampire coffins or tarantulas anywhere in sight. Even the football pennants and pictures were relegated to a corner. Wallace sat at the desk under a large poster of a young George Washington chopping down the cherry tree (weird decoration for a sports hero). If he was all broken-up over today, he didn’t show it.
He said, “Your shoelace is untied.”
Flustered, I blurted, “I want to believe you!”
He pointed to my feet. “Take a look.”
“No, I mean about shredding the scripts!” I insisted. “But how else could that scrimmage shirt have found its way to our stage?”
He shot me a sharp glance. “Someone must have planted it there to frame me.”
“Who would do that?” I asked.
Wallace threw up his arms. “I’m not exactly Mr. Popularity these days.”
“Well, when was the last time you saw the shirt?”
He shrugged. “Not since—I don’t know—last season at least.”
“Did you lend it to anybody?”
“I lent it to everybody!” he exclaimed. “These jerseys—they get passed around like chicken pox. It’s a miracle if you finish out the schedule with all your own stuff. The whole world came tramping through that locker room after we won the championship. I had to wear my football pants home because somebody picked up my jeans by mistake.”
“So it was someone in the locker room—” I mused.
“It has to be a Giant, but I don’t know which one. If it’s Cavanaugh, I’ll rip his lungs out!”
“Think, Wallace!” I urged. “How can I help you if—”
Wallace stood up. “Help me?” He glowered. “Help me? When Laszlo pulled that shirt out of the paper, do you know why everybody blamed it on me?”
“Because it was your shirt—” I stammered.
He cut me off. “Because ever since day one you and that deer tick Spitzner have been building a case against me. ‘Wallace is trying to mess up the play!’ You must have said it fifty times. So when everybody saw my name on the jersey, they just plugged it right into what was already in the back of their minds. And now you want to help me? Listen, Rachel, you’ve helped enough!”
Determined to set things right, I showed up at football practice the next day, waving the scrimmage shirt like a battle flag.
“Of course I’ve seen it before,” said Feather Wrigley. “Everybody has.”
“Where?” I asked excitedly.
“On Wallace,” the big guy explained. “See? His name’s on it.”
“I can read!” I informed him. “But did you notice anybody else with it?”
Suddenly, the other Giants thundered down the practice field, and Feather went right along with them. That really burned me up! Just because he was a football player didn’t mean it was okay for him to treat me like I didn’t exist.
Incensed, I ran after that rude slob, planning to give him a piece of my mind. “Excuse me!” I called ahead. “Hey, I was talking to you!”
Without slowing, he turned his head. He seemed shocked to find me matching him stride for stride. “Get off the field!” he yelled.
“You conceit
ed jock!” I panted. “I’m the president of the drama club—”
“Look out!” he shouted, pointing behind me.
I turned my head just in time to see a football screaming at me like a guided missile. Blindly, I threw my arms up to protect my face. I felt the pass thump into my hands. The force of the catch knocked me over, and I slid across the turf into the end zone, the ball clutched tightly to my heart.
There were three sharp whistle blasts, and Coach Wrigley ran onto the field, cheering. “Great catch! That’s exactly how I want you to execute—” His eyes fell on me, and he stopped in his tracks.
Rick Falconi galloped down the field, dancing with excitement. “Sign that skinny kid up!” he cheered. “Who is he? Who made the grab?”
“The president of the drama club,” Feather supplied.
“Aw, man!” cried Rick. “How come they get all the best players?”
I stood and brushed at the grass stains on my sweater. This wasn’t how I’d planned it, but I had the attention of the entire team. “One of you had Wallace Wallace’s scrimmage shirt from last year,” I said. “Who was it?”
“What are you, the laundry police?” the coach asked in disbelief.
I stood my ground. “It’s really important. Wallace is in trouble.”
From the chorus of disgusted snorts, I got the idea that Wallace was about as popular with this crowd as he was with the cast and crew of Old Shep, My Pal.
“You’re that chick from the paper!” Rick accused me. “Wallace’s girlfriend!”
“You’re thinking of Trudi Davis,” I defended myself. “And she’s not his girlfriend either.”
The coach sighed. “Wallace is a big boy. He can look after himself. Now get out of my practice.” He added, “Unless you want to put in some quick weight training, and we can start you at wide receiver on Saturday.”
“I’ve got the play that night,” I replied. But I guess it wasn’t a serious offer because everybody laughed at me.
A few of those rotten Giants were stomping Wallace’s scrimmage shirt into the wet grass, but they scattered when they saw me coming. I picked up the muddy jersey, shaking off the clumps of turf.