“For someone who doesn’t care diddley-squat for our play,” Nathaniel accused, “you sure seem to have an awful lot to say about it!”
“Hey.” Wallace stood up. “I’m not even supposed to be here.”
“Well, if you’d write your paper, you wouldn’t be!” exclaimed the teacher.
And so on, and so on, blah, blah, blah. Mr. Fogelman just couldn’t see that he’d never get Wallace to write that paper. Which was another thing that was awesome about Wallace. He would stand up to anybody. And being totally gorgeous didn’t hurt either. I’d love to run my hand over that buzz cut of his. I’ll bet it would feel like a very soft brush. A lot of people think nerd when they see a short haircut, but it wasn’t that way at all with Wallace. His hair was more like, if he was in a rock group, the band members would wear really thin ties. Other qualities I liked about him: his voice, his name—other people had two names; he only had one, but you said it twice, kind of like New York, New York, or Bora Bora. Also his posture, how everybody looked up to him, and his shoelaces. Last month, Teen Dazzle did an article called “Learning a Guy’s Secrets from His Clothes.” You can tell a lot from the way someone ties his shoelaces. I’d never get involved with a sloppy-looper, or one of those weird alternative-knot types. But Wallace’s sneakers were simple, neat, and tight. I got goose bumps the first time I took a good look at them.
I was in the cafeteria line, and because I was looking down, I forgot to hold my plate steady. I guess I moved it just as the lunch lady released a humongous scoop-bomb of mashed potatoes. The load dropped past my dish, over the counter, and right onto Wallace’s shoes. I was shocked. One minute the laces were there, all taut and perfect; the next they were buried in food.
Wallace and I both squatted down with napkins to clean up the mess. Our eyes locked, and it would have been pure romance if I hadn’t tilted my tray, spilling just enough cranberry juice to turn the mashed potatoes pink.
As it was, I couldn’t resist blurting, “Do you want to come to the mall with me this afternoon?”
I’ll never forget his reply from the floor as he tried to pick up the slop:
“No.”
What a great guy! On top of everything else, he was so nice! After all, he could easily have said something really negative! That’s when I knew it was more than my third crush of the year. This time it was, like, love. You know?
Rachel definitely didn’t approve. “You’re making an idiot out of yourself, Trudi,” she informed me. “Wallace Wallace doesn’t even know you’re alive. If you keep throwing yourself at him, he’ll probably spray-paint something on you, too: OLD SHEP, DEAD MUTT, THE SEQUEL.”
“You have no proof Wallace had anything to do with that,” I retorted.
“Nothing except motive and opportunity,” she agreed. “Plus who else could it have been?”
“Wallace wouldn’t hurt the play,” I told her. “He’s helping!”
“Just because he’s killing time on his detention doesn’t make him one of us,” Rachel insisted.
“Yeah, well, you’re wrong!” I said accusingly. “And I’ll prove it.”
I could hardly wait for rehearsal the next day. I was all set to talk to the whole cast and clear Wallace’s name—explain what a great guy he was. Only I never got to do it. When I walked into the gym, there was a terrible ruckus going on. Mr. Fogelman was shouting, Leticia was crying, Nathaniel was pointing, and Wallace was denying. Our whole crew, stagehands, set painters, lighting and sound people, were staring in awe up at the stage. There, dead center, was a four-foot-high ball of knots made up of every microphone cable, spotlight cord, and speaker wire in the drama department. They were tied tightly together by the curtain ropes.
It was the great-granddaddy of all knots, a snarl that could take years to untangle.
“Who would do such a thing?” I quavered.
And all eyes were fixed on Wallace Wallace.
Enter…
WALLACE WALLACE
No, I didn’t write that. It was on the typed paper that Rick Falconi placed on my kitchen table after the Giants’ second loss on Saturday.
I stared at it. “What do you expect me to do with this?”
“Hand it in!” our quarterback insisted. “You can’t tell a lie, but I can. So I wrote you a review to get you back on the team. I even signed your name. See? Doesn’t that look like your signature?”
“Except that there are two L’s in Wallace,” I agreed.
He slapped his forehead. “I’ll cross it out and sign it again. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to get you off detention.”
I sighed. “Come on, Rick, there’s no way a review written by you is going to look like it came from me. Fogelman would see right away that you didn’t read the book. It doesn’t even say anywhere that Old Shep is a dog!”
Rick looked shocked. “He is? I always thought he was a sheep.”
I shook my head. “You didn’t even look at the cover, did you?”
He bristled. “Hey, man, I did writing for you! You know how much I hate writing!”
“Look.” I took a deep breath. “I wouldn’t hand in somebody else’s work and say it’s mine, even if Fogelman would never know the difference.”
Rick’s face fell. “Are you sure? ’Cause Feather’s working on a really classy one. And he did read Old Shep, My Pal.” He looked thoughtful. “Maybe I should’ve asked him about the sheep thing.”
I faced him seriously. “I hate being off the team. And I’ll be back the second Fogelman gives the word. But, Rick, you’ve got to face facts. You’re losing by four touchdowns a game. I’ve only scored one touchdown in my entire life.”
“But we were so great last year,” Rick protested. “And the only difference this year is you. It’s pure logicalness.”
“It’s not logicalness.” When you spend a lot of time with Rick, the words he invents tend to become real. “Last year we were all in seventh grade. The eighth graders made up most of our starters. Now they’re in high school. The only legitimate star we’ve got is”—and this really hurt, but after all, the truth was the truth—“Cavanaugh.”
Rick was stubborn. “Even Cavanaugh knows the team needs you. After yesterday, he said that if you’d been playing, we probably would have won.”
I was taken aback. “Cavanaugh said that?” If there was one Giant who understood my true value to the team—benchwarming—it was my ex–best friend. I mean, he never missed an opportunity to rub it in my face. So how come I was suddenly Mr. Essential?
That rotten Cavanaugh was probably trying to work it so that the Giants’ two losses would be blamed on me.
I struggled to be patient. “Cavanaugh’s just making trouble as usual. When all this is over, and I come back, Coach Wrigley is going to put me where he always puts me—the bench. And the Giants are still going to stink.”
Rick got so gloomy that he didn’t even try to argue. “You’re never coming back,” he mourned. “You’re going to be on detention till the cows freeze over.”
“Hi, Rick.” My mom breezed through the kitchen, jingling her car keys. “Sorry about the Giants.”
“Mrs. Wallace, talk to your son,” Rick pleaded. “Make him see how much the team needs him.”
Mom smiled sympathetically. “I’d have a better chance persuading a compass to point south. I’ll be right back, Wally. I’m going to the car wash.”
I jumped up. “That’s okay. I’ll wash the car.”
She looked at me. “Are you sure you don’t have something more important to do? Like writing a book review?”
“I’ll wash the car,” I repeated. “Rick’ll help, right?”
Rick flashed his paper. “If you’ll hand this in to Fogelman, I’ll cut your lawn, too. I’ll do anything to get you back on the team.”
We were just unrolling the hose when Feather rode up on his mountain bike, a stick of celery protruding from his mouth like a cigar. He waved a piece of paper of his own. “Hey, Wallace,” he mumbled. “G
uess what I’ve got!”
I took a stab at it. “My review of Old Shep, My Pal?”
The celery dropped to the pavement. “How did you know?”
It was easy to maneuver a polishing rag into Feather’s meaty hands. Recruiting helpers normally put me in an A-1 super-good mood, but this time I was too aggravated to enjoy it. When the car was done and Rick and Feather had headed home for dinner, I marched down the block to the Cavanaugh house.
Mrs. C. greeted me like a long-lost son. She’d never quite figured out that her little Stevie and I were no longer friends. She directed me down to the basement, where Cavanaugh was busy lifting weights. Even flat on his back and sweating, he looked like he had just waltzed off the cover of Male Model magazine.
“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.
Wall
ace 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!”