I tossed and turned. There was no way I was getting any sleep that night.
After about an hour of this, I was just about to get up and send Indie a message, warning her about the slime, when I heard a noise outside the bedroom door.
It wasn’t a good noise. It sounded like something heavy and metallic being dragged across rocks. Which was kind of weird because we don’t have any floors made of rock in our house. The hall outside my bedroom was just regular carpet.
“H-Hello?” I said.
My bedroom door swung open. There, silhouetted in the doorway, was a tall man dressed completely in a long black gown. A hood covered his face and in his hand he carried a scythe.
“Do you know who I am?” said the black-clad figure. His voice was deep and low, with a bit of a foreign accent. He stepped into the room and the sharp edge of his scythe glittered in the moonlight. “Most people do.”
I nodded and swallowed hard. My throat felt like I’d been gargling with sand.
The black figure reached up and pulled back his hood.
“Mr. Mordantsson!” I gasped.
Knut Mordantsson looked puzzled. “Who did you ssink it vass?”
I coughed. “Er, no one,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.” I pointed to his scythe. “What’s with the scythe?”
“I like to cut grass at night. The old-fashioned way. It relaxes me when I’m filming. I always get my assistant to find me a local field. Wiss long grass.”
I didn’t say anything.
There isn’t much you can say to something like that. But these Hollywood types do some freaky stuff. Midnight scything might be the new Big Thing in Tinseltown. What do I know?
“How did you get in?” I said.
Knut shook his head. “Ziss does not matter.”
He sat down on the edge of my bed.
“What does matter, Mr. Khatchadorian,” said Knut, “izz that Miss Starr remains unaware of what lies in store for her tomorrow.” Knut ran a bony finger along the edge of the scythe. “Not. A. Vord. Izz that clear?”
I gulped and nodded.
Knut got to his feet and replaced his hood. “Exzellent,” he said. He moved to the door. “I can cut my grass in peace. Goodnight, Mr. Khatchadorian.”
He closed the door behind him and I listened to the scrape of his scythe handle as he dragged it across the nonexistent rock floor.
I’M RUNNING.
I’m running fast and I’m in a long, dark tunnel.
And the reason I’m running fast down this long dark tunnel is that RIGHT BEHIND ME is a really big round boulder traveling at the speed of light.
Okay, that’s obviously an exaggeration. But it’s still going waay faster than I want it to. I put on a burst of speed and hurtle round a bend only to find a solid wall right in front of me.
And then I woke up sweating.
I had to tell Indie.
Except I couldn’t because the Grim Reaper, aka Knut Mordantsson, told me not to. He’d even taken the trouble to stop off on the way to his midnight grass-cutting to double-check I wouldn’t say a word.
Of course, all that Grim Reaper stuff hadn’t happened. Not even Knut was knutty enough to do that (I think). No, I’d dreamed it all.
But (remember there’s always a “but”) the thing was…it felt real. It felt as real as Swifty’s Diner, as real as Mom and Georgia and Grandma Dotty, as real as my bruises from Miller the Killer. If I told Indie, Knut Mordantsson might just as well have actually been the Grim Reaper. Cross Knut and my Hollywood “career” would be dead.
I lay back on my pillow and thought about my options.
It didn’t take long.
HOLLYWOOD 101, LESSON No7:
LOYALTY MEANS SOMETHING DIFFERENT IN THE MOVIES.
I RESTED MY hands on the pommel of my saddle and looked down at the dusty town from my position way up on Buffalo Ridge.
There were folks down there who needed me.
Folks who needed someone to stand up to the Grim Reaper himself.
Folks who needed a hero.
I spat out a wad of chewing licorice, pulled down the brim of my battered cowboy hat, and squinted my eyes against the desert sun. I checked I had my trusty six-shooter on my hip and a full canteen of vinegar and orneriness. I looked at my knuckles. They carried the scars of a dozen bar-room brawls (and that was only last week). If things got bad in town I might have to show the Grim Reaper my Two-Fist Special.
“C’mon, Lightnin’,” I growled, and leaned back as Lightning slowly picked his way toward Hills Village and my date with destiny.
I was going to tell Indie and nothing was going to stop me.
THE FIRST PERSON I saw when I got to the set was Phroom. She was standing just inside one of the security gates that kept the ordinary people off the set. Since I had my “Access All Areas” pass, I breezed through without a problem.
Phroom being there was kind of odd because, as you might have noticed, Phroom never strayed more than ten feet from Indie if she could help it.
“Hi, Rafe,” said Phroom, smiling pleasantly. “What’s up?”
Phroom’s smile could only mean one of two things. One: She’d turned over a new leaf and wanted to be best buds with me. Or two (far more likely): Phroom knew what I was going to do and wanted to head me off at the pass. I knew enough about how things worked around there that Phroom might have got wind of Knut’s secret slime scene…and had somehow guessed I’d want to warn Indie.
It wasn’t too hard to see how her mind was working: Let Indie get slimed, Indie blames Rafe for not warning her, Phroom is back in as Indie’s Number Two. Simple.
“You’re not going to stop me that easy,” I said. “I’m going to tell Indie.”
Phroom’s smile vanished. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she hissed, and stomped off in the direction of the trailers.
I smiled grimly. I felt like I’d slain my first dragon.
I replaced my sword in its scabbard and marched on toward Indie.
The next obstacle in my path was a shark. Vic DeMartelli. When I came round the corner he’d been talking to Phroom, his arms moving round like a wind-up toy. As soon as they saw me they broke apart and Vic headed in my direction.
From the look on Vic’s face, he was not going to be as easy to get past as Phroom had been. For a start, he had hold of my arm in a grip like iron.
“You got a minute, kid?” said Vic. “I need you to run an errand.”
I held up a hand. “No problem, Mr. DeMartelli,” I said. “But first I have to tell Indie something before they shoot the next scene.”
Vic sucked his lower lip like he was eating a lemon. For a second I thought he was going to have me rubbed out. Then he seemed to recover and replaced his lip-sucking lemon face with something he must have thought looked friendly. He looked about as friendly as a gorilla with toothache.
“Tell her what?” said Vic.
Ah. Okay, here’s the thing: It’s okay for me to tell Indie that she’s about to get slimed, because I’m her friend, but it’s not okay for me to tell Vic that, because Knut swore me to secrecy.
I think. Either way, it didn’t feel right telling Vic. Plus, a little bit of me wanted to be the one to warn Indie. Be the hero or something, I don’t know.
“It’s Indie who wants you to get her something,” said Vic. “She needs you to bring her a flugella and caspardiem smoothie.”
“A what?”
“A flugella and caspardiem smoothie. It’s a thing. Ask the guy in catering. You got plenty of time to speak to Indie before filming starts, so don’t get your undies in a twist. Okay, scram, vamoose, go.”
I looked over in the direction of the gym. Things were happening over there. I heard the floor manager start saying the kind of things he’d say just before a scene started shooting. I didn’t have much time to get this smoothie. Plus, I wasn’t sure if Vic was sending me on this errand to get me out of the way. He’d just been talking to Phroom and the whole thing looked pretty su
spicious from my angle. But what could I do except go? If I refused, Vic would want to know why and I couldn’t tell him without spilling the beans. The only thing I could do was go get this smoothie and get back before the scene started. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was the best I could come up with at short notice.
“Tell Indie not to go on set before she’s spoken to me,” I said, and then ran for the catering truck like my life depended on it.
Which it did.
“A WHAT?”
The guy behind the counter at the catering truck looked at me like I was nuts.
“A flugella and caspardiem smoothie. It’s for Miss Starr?”
“I don’t care if it’s for the President,” said the catering guy. “It don’t exist, son. Someone’s been playing a joke on you.”
I turned and ran.
This was no joke.
“Quiet on set!”
I skidded to a halt as I came round the corner into the gym. The soles of my sneakers squeaked on the polished floor and a bunch of people looked at me and frowned.
“Complete quiet!”
Knut Mordantsson shifted in his chair and gave me a Scandinavian Death Stare. It was a bit like Phroom’s but with added Viking. He looked scarier than he had in my Grim Reaper nightmare. I spotted Vic and Phroom watching from the shadows. The basketball court—the part of it being used in the scene—was brightly lit and there in the center were Indie and Trey, both in costume. I looked up above the basketball backboard and could just make out the hidden gloop vat. Two members of the crew were in place on either side of it, ready to tip. It was all exactly as I’d sketched out.
Indie sort of half noticed me, I think.
I signaled with my eyes that she was about to get slimed, but that’s a pretty hard thing to do in a brightly lit room standing two feet from another person. Across a darkened movie set it was impossible.
“And let’s go for a take,” said the floor manager. He looked at Knut, who nodded.
“Unt action,” said Knut.
I was too late.
I HAVE TO admit, Knut had a point about keeping the glooping secret from Indie.
If all you cared about was the movie. Which I didn’t…at least not as much as the rest of them did.
Here’s how it all went down…
The first take didn’t get to the glooping stage. In the script Indie’s supposed to grab the basketball, take a shot, miss, and then Trey takes over and does a little “demonstration” of his amazing b-ball skills. Hurp.
On the first take Indie fluffed a line. I hoped there might be some sort of waiting around for the next take and I’d get a chance to warn her, but it didn’t happen. They reset and went for take two. I still had a chance. As long as Indie didn’t make the hoop there’d be no gloop.
Trey and Indie swapped lines and then Indie grabbed the basketball. She gave Trey the line and set herself up for the shot.
I don’t know if Indie was aiming to miss or aiming to score but the ball sailed sweetly through the air and dropped with a soft swish through the hoop.
Indie turned and, before she could say a word, was hit from above by three hundred gallons of lime green gloop. There was so much of the stuff that she was knocked off her feet and was carried across to the edge of the court like a surfer on a wave.
It was incredible.
It was astonishing.
It was The Greatest On-Screen Glooping Ever Seen.
Knut was happy. “Yess,” he said. “Cut zere. Izz satissfactory.”
Indie was in deep shock. This is what she looked like:
I looked at Indie. Indie looked at me. Then Indie looked toward Phroom, who was holding up my sketchbook. The one with the whole glooping scene sketched out in every last detail…
Indie looked back at me. “How could you?” she gasped.
My movie days were over.
THE ELF LORD Mordantsson rolled out the length of parchment. Standing on the battlements of Castle Holy Wood at the very edge of the Kardashian Kingdom, and speaking in a clear voice that carried across the heads of the assembled Nurfgurts, he read out the punishment:
“For disloyalty to Her Most Royal Highness Indiana Starr, disgraced hobbit scribe Rafe Khatchadorian izz hereby banished forthwith and forever from Filmanteevee Land…”
A single drumbeat boomed out and the Holy Wood gates creaked open. Rafe Khatchadorian swallowed hard. There was nothing out there except an endless dust-blown desert populated by Killer Millers and Dragon Principals.
“Please,” Rafe begged as the Hectorian Guards dragged him away. “Please let me stay! I don’t want to leave! I’ll be good, I swear! Just let me stay in Filmanteevee Land…”
As you’ll have figured from all that, Indie didn’t calm down after her glooping.
In fact, she got madder, and it was Indie who demanded Knut throw me off the set. Knut and Vic cornered me about eighteen seconds after Phroom led Indie back to her trailer. Hector the bodyguard stood behind them.
“You gotta go, kid,” said Vic. He shrugged. “When the talent doesn’t want you around, well, that’s it.”
“But it was you who sent me for that flugella smoothie!” I said.
“What izz flugella?” said Knut. “I never have heard off ziss.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Vic sent me away so I wouldn’t tell Indie she was going to get slimed!”
“I thought I’d asked you not to tell Miss Starr about the slime?” said Knut. “Ziss wass an extremely expensive shot we make in ziss moment, yes? I needed Miss Starr to react as she did, so it izz a good thing you didn’t tell her. Vic did you and me a favor, Mr. Khatchadorian.”
Knut patted Vic on the back and Vic nodded shyly, like he was some kind of war hero or something.
“Someone’s got to pay,” said Knut, “unt I am afraid it izz you.”
“It’s not fair!” I said.
“Welcome to Hollywood,” said Vic.
HOLLYWOOD 101, LESSON No8:
IN THE MOVIES, “FAIR” IS A HAIR COLOR.
I SPENT MOST of the next week in my cave being miserable. I was good at it, and the longer I was in my room, the better at it I got.
Mom, Grandma Dotty, Georgia, and Leo all made big efforts to get me to come out, but I was going to stay in my cave forever and that’s all there was to it. My getting booted off the set was all over Hills Village. (I still had my computer so I wasn’t entirely cut off from the outside world.) What a loser was about the nicest thing anyone was saying about me. Maybe I shouldn’t have been quite so proud of my “Access All Areas” laminate? Rumors were flying around about why I’d been booted off, but no one knew the real reason. Megalith Movies was keeping the Average Joe super-slime sequence under wraps until the movie was out. I had thought about spilling the beans to the press, but Knut had warned me not to. He said if I mentioned a single word about Indie being slimed he’d send a plague of carnivorous flying zombie-monkeys after me. Or possibly lawyers. He might have said lawyers.
Life sucked.
I was one of the ordinary people again.
IN THE END, I did come out of the cave.
There’s only so long you can shut yourself away, because it gets kind of boring, no matter how miserable you want to be. Besides, I was missing what was left of the summer, even if that did mean facing going back to working in Swifty’s and dealing with the people in HV who didn’t like me.
Which was pretty much everyone.
The Average Joe crew had gone. “My” slime scene had been one of the last ones they shot, and the entire production had slipped out of town without leaving a trace. I was beginning to think the whole thing had been a dream. Or possibly a nightmare—I couldn’t decide. One minute I was besties with a movie star, the next I’m back swabbing grease off the dishes in Swifty’s. Some summer.
I’d been following the progress of Average Joe online and it looked like it was going to make a trillion dollars or something. Indie’s glooping had been leaked online and went viral. It’d b
ecome a thing; up there with videos of farting cats and surfing chickens. A “glooping” trend had started with people glooping other people all over the place.
And there were rumors that Indie Starr and Trey Kernigan were now “an item.” Like I said, some summer.
“Hey, Hollywood!” yelled Swifty. “Get your head back on the job!”
“Hollywood” was now my nickname at the diner.
I plunged my hands back into the deep, black, scummy water and thought deep, black, scummy thoughts.
HERE’S ANOTHER OF those time-travel FRRRRPs coming up. Ready? Okay.
FRRRRRRRRP!
One Tuesday night, three months later…
I was back at school. I don’t need to tell you all the other stuff about how I felt and all that kind of thing because once I said the words “I was back at school” you’d know exactly how I was feeling.
Anyway, like I said, it was a Tuesday night. I was kind of half watching a rerun of an old TV show: Hawaii Surf Squad. Yep, the one with Miss Indie Starr playing the daughter of one of the Hawaii PD detectives. Don’t judge me.
Indie had just helped solve who had killed one of the judges in the big surf competition when the phone rang. My phone, I mean, not Indie’s in Hawaii Surf Squad.
“Is that Rafe?” said a voice.
It was Shelley, the Average Joe art director.
I played it cool. “Hey,” I said. Iceman or what? It was Shelley, after all, who had said zip when I got the boot off Average Joe. Shelley knew I’d been put in an impossible position: either ratting out by telling Indie she was going to get glooped, or saying nothing and betraying a friend. I wasn’t going to let her get off easy without, I don’t know, apologizing or something.
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