“How’d they get that footage?” I mumble.
“Two guesses,” says Gilda, narrowing her eyes. “And they both should be Donna Dinkle.”
“Jamie Funnie?” Biff says in the video clip. “Not according to my inside sources. Yes, he was amusing in his brief guest shot on SNL because he was working with a true pro, Jacky Hart. But his own show? Sources tell me things look grim for young Jamie Grimm. Grim as in dismal, gloomy, abominable, atrocious, appalling…”
We thumb him off the screen and check out a few more of the one hundred and sixty-seven thousand results to our Google search of the key words Jamie Grimm stinks.
The general consensus seems to be that I’m not really funny. That I just got lucky when I won the Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic Contest. That Jacky Hart, Tina Fey, and Charlie Garner made me “seem funny” on Saturday Night Live. Rumors are flying that the BNC network is either going to postpone or completely cancel the show before it even goes on the air.
“Well,” says Gilda, “looks like you’ve got something to prove again.”
She’s right.
Ever since the accident, a lot of people have made the mistake of underestimating me, the way they underestimate everyone in a wheelchair. Just because we can’t use our legs, they think we can’t do anything else, either.
Time to show them they’re wrong.
Again.
Chapter 43
THE LONG RIDE TO NOWHERESVILLE
I roll into rehearsal and I don’t choke or freeze or bomb.
I’m actually pretty good, if I say so myself.
So, the next morning, knowing there’s only four more days before the big live broadcast on Friday night, I’m raring to go. The more we rehearse, the more confident I feel.
I roll out the door bright and early.
The limo isn’t there. Neither is my tutor, Ms. Warkentien.
Instead, BNC has sent an Access-A-Ride handicapped taxi and a driver named Fred.
Guess there’ve been some budget cuts on Jamie Funnie.
While Fred is hoisting me up on the hydraulic chairlift, Gilda, Gaynor, and Pierce come running up the sidewalk.
“Jamie!” shouts Gilda. “Wait! This is super-important!” She’s waving a sheet of paper.
“Um, can we wait a second, Fred?”
The driver shrugs. “Whatever. My meter’s running.” He ambles over to the driver’s seat, leaving me suspended halfway between the sidewalk and the van.
“Where’s the limo, dude?” asks Gaynor, eye-balling my humble handicapped van.
“This is no way to treat a TV star,” adds Pierce.
“So, uh, what’s so super-important?” I ask Gilda, basically ignoring Gaynor and Pierce.
“I just found out there’s a deadline. For my film. Okay, I could’ve found out, like, last week, but I forgot to read the fine print on the e-mail.…”
Fine print? I can relate.
“I have to send in my finished movie in two days! That means we have to shoot this afternoon so I have at least a day to put it all together.”
“We’ve scheduled the filming for four o’clock,” says Pierce. “On the boardwalk.”
“Cool,” I say.
Pierce checks his notebook, where I see he has drawn up some kind of scheduling flowchart. “You typically wrap your rehearsals around three, so you have an hour for the commute from Queens.”
“You can even get there around four thirty,” says Gilda. “We’ll have to set up the cameras and lights and stuff. Vincent will be getting into his bully costume and makeup around three.”
“But,” says Pierce, checking his chart, “we have to be completely done in time to return all the camera gear to the rental facility by eight.”
“So be there or be square,” adds Gaynor. “Uncle Frankie taught me that. People used to say it in, like, the Civil War or something.”
“But I can’t say for sure they’ll let me out at three,” I tell my friends.
“Why not?” says Gilda. “You’re the star. Hello? They can’t do Jamie Funnie without a Jamie playing Jamie.”
“But it’s not that simple—”
“Then make it simple.”
Finally, Fred the driver starts honking his horn.
“Hey, look at me,” he shouts. “I’m a tooter now, just like you wanted. Can we leave already? I’ve got two more pickups at the old folks’ home.”
“Four o’clock, Jamie,” Gilda pleads. “Otherwise, I don’t have a movie. And if I don’t have a movie, I won’t have a college scholarship, either.”
I nod.
I understand.
I also know that if I goof up again on Jamie Funnie, Uncle Frankie won’t have a diner.
And I won’t have a house.
Chapter 44
HURRY UP AND WAIT
When I arrive at Silvercup Studios, Ms. Wilder, the producer, tells me to wait in my dressing room.
“Brad will call you when he’s ready for you.”
“Great,” I say. “Thanks.”
And then I sit in my dressing room and wait.
Then I wait some more.
I wait for a very long time.
Finally, around two o’clock in the afternoon, Ms. Wilder comes back to escort me to the set.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. Brad’s been busy.”
“Working out camera moves with Mr. Wetmore?”
“No,” she says. “Holding auditions.”
She slides open the door to Studio B. I do not like what I see. Because I’m not the only kid in a wheelchair with a 1970s haircut and a puffy vest.
“I’m taking out a little antifreeze insurance,” the director says while I gawk at my sea of doppelgangers. “But don’t worry. You’ll get a shot, too.”
I gulp. “A shot?”
“We’re willing to let you audition for the role of Jamie,” says Ms. Wilder. “We figure it’s only fair. After all, you’ve come this far.”
“B-b-but… I’m—”
“Take a seat, Jamie,” says Brad Grody.
All the actors angling for my job snicker. Because I already have a seat.
Fuming inside, I find a parking spot near the front row of seats.
“Okay,” says Mr. Grody, “who’s up next?”
“Shecky,” says Ms. Wilder. “He’s from Schenectady.”
A kid in a wig much too big for his head rolls forward. “And just so you guys know,” he whines, wagging his finger at me, “I almost beat the Grimm-meister in the New York round of the funny kid competition.”
I have my head in my hands.
I cannot believe this.
Shecky from Schenectady was one of the New York comics I defeated in the second round of the Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic Contest. All he had in his routine were recycled Henny Youngman jokes. Like, “I know a man who’s a diamond cutter. He mows the grass at Yankee Stadium.”
Now he might play me? On national TV?
Oh, the horror. The horror.
Chapter 45
I’VE NEVER LIKED ME LESS
My nightmare goes on for hours.
And hours.
I think they see every kid from Uncle Chuckles’ Comedy Boot Camp, a school in New York City that trains young stand-up comedians. They audition kids who’ve been in Broadway musicals. They even give the pizza delivery guy a script and ask him to sit down and say a few lines.
Then they bring in a guy I met (and beat) at the regionals up in Boston: Little Willy Creme, the cousin of a pretty famous comedian named Billy Creme. Dressed in jeans, a white T-shirt, and a black leather jacket (just like Billy), Little Willy always delivers his jokes with a nasty edge, like he’s slashing his audience with his razor-sharp ’tude.
I hunch down in my chair. If Little Willy knows I’m in his audience, he might turn on me the way some comics do when they trash hecklers or make fun of the people they can see in the front rows.
“Yeah, my school has these NO BULLYING ZONE posters all over the place,” he says, doin
g my opening monologue.
Well, it used to be my opening monologue.
Suddenly Little Willy stops.
“Can I rewrite these lines?” he asks the director. “Because, not for nothin’, they stink. Like cheese. The old moldy stuff French people eat.”
“Sure, Willy. Just make us laugh.”
“I’ll try, but no promises. It’s hard to be funny when the words aren’t. Nothing personal, pal, but this script is lame. Almost as lame as Jamie Grimm.”
O-kay. He saw me.
“Jamie Grimm is such a lousy stand-up comic, he can’t even stand up.”
“How about we stick a little closer to the monologue?” says Mr. Grody.
“I’m gettin’ there, pal. Sheesh, give a guy some artistic freedom, why don’t ya? Okay, my school has this stupid no-bullying zone. Some knucklehead vice principal hung up all sorts of ridiculously stupid signs in the hallway. NO BULLYING. READERS ARE LEADERS. You ask me, cheaters are leaders, because they always know the answer. Who cares how they got it? Another sign actually says EXIT, but they won’t let me exit the building. If I do as the sign suggests and skip school, they’ll send the truant officers after me. The cops, too. So why put up the stupid EXIT sign if you can’t exit?”
He’s practically spitting.
“And another thing: Why no bullies? Bullies are people, too. I’ve decided the best way to beat the bullies is to become one. You get in my way, I’ll roll right over you. You ever seen a chariot race? I’ll put spikes in my spokes.”
This is beyond bad.
And then, just like always, it gets worse. The director turns to the producer after Willy Creme is finished demolishing my monologue. “When does Chatty Patty get here?” Grody asks.
“Tomorrow,” says Ms. Wilder. “Midmorning.”
“Who invited her?” demands Little Willy Creme.
“Joe Amodio.”
“Why? He’s already got me.”
“But Chatty Patty Dombrowski made it all the way to the finals,” Ms. Wilder says with a smile.
I muster all my courage, roll out of the shadows, and raise my hand. “What about me?”
Brad Grody smirks. “Tell you what, Jamie—why don’t you take tomorrow off? I want to work with Miss Dombrowski, Shecky from Schenectady, and Little Willy Creme. The rest of you can go home. Thanks for coming in.”
Shecky and Willy do triumphant arm pumps. “Booyah!”
The other Jamie wannabes climb out of their wheelchairs and, dejected, walk toward the exits.
“I’m happy to come in and work with you tomorrow, too,” I tell Grody.
“That’s okay, Jamie. I already know what you can do.”
“Yeah,” says Donna from her perch behind Mr. Grody’s director’s chair. “We all know what you can do: freeze the second the camera comes on.”
There’s nothing left for me to do but head for home.
I roll out of the soundstage and into the lobby.
A giant TV mounted on the wall is tuned to BNC. A promo fills the screen.
I whip my head around to check out the clock.
It’s eight!
Even if we lived in Central time, I’m three hours late for Gilda’s shoot on the boardwalk.
Here on the East Coast, it’s more like four!
Chapter 46
WORLD’S WORST FRIEND? ME
The Access-A-Ride driver, of course, is late picking me up.
“Sorry, kid. It was bingo night at the senior center.”
I ask him to drop me off at the boardwalk. But it’s nearly ten PM by the time we reach Long Beach.
So I ask him to drop me off at Gilda’s house.
I text her to let her know I’m coming.
When we pull into the driveway, all my friends are waiting for me on the front lawn.
Pierce speaks first. “As we told you, Jamie, we had to return the rented equipment by eight o’clock.”
“That was, like, a couple hours ago,” adds Gaynor.
“It was like a couple hours ago because it was a couple hours ago!” says Gilda.
I can tell she’s steamed.
“Look, you guys, I’m sorry. It was a bad day.”
Gilda gives me a look. It’s not a nice one. “Welcome to the club.”
“Despite your absence,” says Vincent optimistically, “I think we came up with some pretty nifty material. See, I played you, Jamie, only we didn’t do it in a wheelchair.”
“I was the bully,” says Gaynor. “I wasn’t really mean, because I’m too chill.”
“So I had to run the camera,” says Pierce. “I used my other hand to hold the lights.”
“Because I had to be in the scene,” says Gilda. “Remember? It was a movie about directing a movie. Or have you completely forgotten your own lousy idea for an even lousier short film?”
“I am so, so sorry,” I say.
You know that second-worst night of my life I told you about? Forget it. We have a new champion. This night.
“What can I do to make it up to you?” I ask. “Can I talk to the film-contest people and ask for an extension?”
“Look, Jamie,” says Gaynor, “we totally get it. Your sitcom dealio is the most important thing in the universe. But other people have universes with super-important dealios in them, too.”
“Well,” says Vincent, “I, for one, think the final film will be terrific!”
“No, Vincent,” says Gilda, sounding dejected. “I scrolled through the takes. It’s bad. Plus, the judges only let me jump to the finals because I promised them that my ‘good friend,’ the big-shot TV star Jamie Grimm, would be the star of my short. Ask me how well that worked out.”
No one says a word.
“Good night, you guys,” says Gilda, sounding exhausted. “I need to go to bed.”
She slumps her shoulders and sort of trudges up the walkway to her front door. Gaynor heads right, Pierce heads left.
“Well,” says Vincent, “guess I better make like a banana and split.”
Even he walks away.
I want to run after them. To promise I’ll make it up to them. To tell Gilda that I haven’t ruined her chance for a scholarship to her dream school.
But I can’t do anything.
I can’t run, I can’t walk, I can’t even play myself in a sitcom about my own life.
Yep. This is definitely the second-worst night of my life.
Chapter 47
IT’S ALWAYS DARKEST BEFORE IT GETS DARKER
I start the long and lonely trek home to Smileyville.
It’s so late, nobody else is on the streets of Long Beach. I have the road to myself. The potholes, too.
I’m alone with my thoughts.
How did I get myself into this mess?
Why did I ever want to be famous?
Wait a second. Fame was never really my goal. I just wanted to laugh. To wipe away some of the pain that came from remembering what happened that horrible night on the rain-slicked highway.
The truck. The car crash. Losing my parents and my baby sister.
I figured if I could learn to laugh after that, maybe I could help other people laugh their way through hard times, too. Laughter is the best medicine. Until it isn’t anymore. Then you’re, more or less, left with tears. Even if you use baby shampoo.
Trust me. I tried. It didn’t work.
When I’m home and safely locked inside my garage bedroom, my phone starts ringing.
It’s Donna Dinkle.
“Hiya, Jamie. So, did you hear the news? You’re off the show. They’re going to give that girl from Minnesota an audition tomorrow morning, but they’ve pretty much decided that Little Willy Creme should play you. He got my vote, too. He’s a good kisser. Have a great night. And, Jamie?”
I’m so bummed, all I can manage is a very weak “Yeah?”
“Choose your friends more carefully next time. Pick people who can help you get where you want to go. I made the same mistake you made right before Fox canceled Ring My Bell.
But, trust me, I’ll never make it again. Ciao for now.”
I’m glad when she hangs up. I’ve definitely heard enough.
I’m off the show.
I’m not Jamie Funnie anymore.
I also owe Joe Amodio one million dollars. What am I going to tell Uncle Frankie? Maybe I could carry a tub of hot dogs in my lap and hold an umbrella, and together we could open up our own rolling food cart.
My phone rings again.
“Jamie? Rose Skye Wilder from Joe Amodio Productions. We’ve cleaned out your dressing room, but you need to turn in your costume.”
“What costume?”
“The sweater-vest. They tell me you wore it home?”
“This is my sweater-vest!”
“Really? Looks just like the one our main character always wears.”
“Because I am the main character!”
“Not anymore. We need it back. Little Willy ripped the head hole in his. Buh-bye.”
She hangs up.
Feeling lower than low, I know I can’t go to sleep. I wheel myself out to the boardwalk.
Even though it’s past midnight, Cool Girl is there, just like I hoped she would be.
“How come you always know when I’m going to need to talk to you?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I might have a sixth sense. Or I might just read the gossip blogs.”
She shows me the screen of her phone. According to the headlines, I’ve reached my “Grimm End.”
“That’s the problem with a name like mine,” I say with a sigh. “It’s so easy to make puns out of it. Tomorrow they’ll probably say Grimm’s fairy tale doesn’t have a happy ending.”
“So, they’re hiring someone else to play you?” says Cool Girl.
“Yes. A meaner, nastier version of me.”