by Rick Detorie
That, I knew, would make him out to be an even bigger loser than me.
And I felt good about that.
Suddenly, I didn’t hate everybody so much anymore.
I went into the bathroom and washed my face, then joined my family and friends downstairs for dinner.
MISSING PIECES
While I was searching in the cabinets for some paper for the computer printer, I found the box my dad had brought home that day I’d gone with him to the office.
I opened it up and inside were some VCR tapes and reels of film, eight-millimeter movie film. Each little reel had a title written on it. Some of the titles were Egg Up, Forgotten Promises, The Voodoo Curse, and Destiny with a Side of Fries.
I looked in the cabinet and found the movie projector we’d also brought home that day. I plugged it in to see if it worked, and it did—the fan and light popped right on when I flicked the switch.
Because there didn’t seem to be any flat white surfaces downstairs that would make a good projection screen, I took the projector and films up to my room and set it up on the floor. The wall next to my closet was the movie screen.
The first film I watched was Forgotten Promises. It didn’t have any sound (none of them did), so I had to figure out what was happening from the picture alone. It seemed to be about a guy and a girl who had a fight about a dog, or maybe about a mess the dog made. Then the girl slapped the guy and ran outside. I think she got run over by a car, but I wasn’t too sure because everything was so dark.
At the end, she was walking in a cemetery and it was snowing. There she met a skinny priest. I got a good look at the priest and couldn’t believe my eyes. I had to rewind it and look again. Yes, it was true, my dad was the priest! There he was, just a teenager, playing a priest in a movie. And it looked just like him, only a whole lot younger.
The next movie was Egg Up, and it was about a skinny guy, my dad again, chasing after a car until it ran over an egg.
The third movie was Voodoo Curse, and it showed this girl walking along, all happy and everything.
Then you see an evil girl watching her from a window. You could tell she was evil from all the makeup she was wearing. Again, I had to rewind when I realized the evil girl was my aunt Dorothy! No lie, there she was all young and thin and looking just like Aunt Dorothy, only younger and thinner.
So, anyway, Aunt Dorothy hates this other girl, and we know it because we see her thinking about strangling her. The first girl wipes her nose and drops the tissue, and after she leaves, Aunt Dorothy picks up the tissue and thinks evil thoughts.
Then Evil Aunt Dorothy goes into a room (in my Grandmom Pace’s basement, I think), lights a candle, and says something to a picture of the devil. Then she takes a piece of paper with a drawing of a spider on it and balls it up with the tissue the girl had dropped, and lights it on fire.
In the last scene, you see the first girl waking up in bed covered by little plastic spiders that we’re supposed to think are real, and when she screams, a spider pops out of her mouth.
At the very end of Voodoo Curse were credits that read: “Written and Directed by Marty Pace” and “Starring Dotty Pace and Paula Ruckert.”
My dad made movies! How cool is that?
I watched every single movie in that box, and it was an awe-some experience. I saw pieces of my dad’s life that I never knew existed. I saw my aunts and uncle when they were kids, my grandmom when she had dark hair, and my grandpa when he was alive and walking around.
And I began to think that maybe my dad might secretly be an Accidental Genius.
He probably inherited it from me.
GETTING PERSONAL
I hadn’t seen Dalton for several days after the donut commercial had aired. I figured he must’ve been hiding out or something.
Then on Thursday, I was walking down the hall at school and I heard him yell, “Hey, Flashy Pants.”
Flashy Pants? That doesn’t sound anything like Larkin Pace. I looked down at my pants, and they were totally ordinary. He must be losing it.
He was leaning against the wall. With him were Stinky, Squishy, and Brooke. “Where ya been, Dalton?” I asked. “Hiding from the paparazzi?”
“Cute,” said Dalton, not meaning it. Then he yelled, “Hey, everybody, right there’s the reason my acting/modeling career crashed and burned.” He pointed at me. “Captain Camera here doesn’t know how to ride a skateboard.
“To get from here to there, this is what he looks like on a board,” said Dalton. He flung his arms up and jerked around like a drunk guy in a cartoon.
“And not only that,” continued Dalton. “When his pants fell down, he started crying, ‘Wah! Wah! Wah!’ because the whole cast and crew got a good look at his baby boy Batman underwear.”
Everybody laughed.
“X-Men,” I yelled, “not Batman, and you’re the one who kept messing up, you big liar!”
“You’re the liar,” said Dalton.
“No, you’re lying,” I said, and I got right in his face.
“What are you gonna do, Underpants Boy? Hit me?”
I was so angry that for a couple of seconds I actually considered it, but I knew if I did, he’d hit me back and it would hurt.
Then I remembered how mean Dalton’s dad was to him and, well, I don’t know, I sort of felt sorry for him. So I backed up and walked away.
“There he goes,” yelled Dalton. “The baby’s going home because he’s had an accident in his superhero underpants. Maybe you should tell your mommy to put you in a diaper instead, baby.”
When I got home, there was a letter addressed to me on the kitchen table. It had a stamp on it but no return address.
I opened it and when I pulled out the note that was inside, a five-dollar bill fell to the floor. I picked it up and read the note.
I read my name again. Freddie had written my name, and when I read it, in my head, I could hear him saying it.
Okay, it’s kind of weird, and it’s not the same as actually hearing Freddie say my name out loud, but it’s a start.
MY KIND OF CHORE
I was in a bad mood when I woke up this morning.
I didn’t know why I was in a bad mood and I didn’t want to think about why I was in a bad mood, because if I thought about it, I might figure out why I was in a bad mood, and that would put me in an even worse mood.
It didn’t help my mood when I got to the barn and heard a fight going on in the hayloft. Two cats were going at it. They weren’t getting physical or anything, just making a lot of noise.
So I climbed up there, sat down, and tried to reason with them. Cats don’t take to counseling too well, but after I sat with each of them, told them they were beautiful and special, they calmed down.
After I fed the rest of the animals in the barn, then the chickens, I took the Buddies for a walk in the woods. I don’t know whether it was because of the fifteen wagging tails, or because of the way the woods were all dressed up like summer, but I started to feel a little better about things. Just a little.
When we got back, I fed the Buddies and hosed off a couple of rowdy Buds who’d taken a dip the duck pond. Then I climbed onto the roof of the shed and just sat there for a while.
I mostly thought about the future, and in particular, this summer. It was coming soon—Thursday was the last day of school—and it would be my first summer without Brooke. No more snarking on people at the mall or doing movie scenes at the lake or just talking to her about stuff.
I felt bad. Real bad. Without Brooke in my life, it was like, I don’t know, I’d lost the other half of my rainbow.
And then there was the money issue. For what I was getting paid to work once a week for Miss Sadie, it would be a long time before I’d be able to buy the camcorder of my dreams.
Sometimes life really is one big deflated jump house punctured by the slings and arrows of unrealistic expectations and imitation chocolate syrup, or whatever it was Kelly had said last night at dinner when she didn’t like the
dessert.
All that worrying had made me hungry, so I headed to breakfast.
My dad was in the kitchen, and on the table was the box of eight-millimeter films I had secretly watched. I hadn’t told him that I’d seen them, because I thought he’s get mad at me for snooping through his personal stuff.
On the table was another box. It was a smaller one, and it contained all our family photos and assorted home movies on DVDs and VHS tapes. That box has always been stored in the closet under the stairs, and we’d all looked through it a million times, so I knew I wouldn’t get into trouble for recognizing it.
“Hey, Dad,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Larkin,” he said, “I have a project that might interest you.”
He explained that, in his effort to get better organized, he’d been getting prices from professionals about converting the family photos and movies to CDs and DVDs.
“And,” he continued, “I thought, why should I pay some stranger to put together a video version of our family’s life, when I have someone living right here who has the talent to do the exact same thing, and in addition, has a personal interest in it?”
“Who?” I said.
“You!” said my dad.
“Oh,” I said, “but I don’t know how to convert eight-millimeter film strips to DVD.”
“Who said anything about eight-millimeter films?” he asked.
Uh-oh, I was busted.
“Well,” I confessed, “I sort of looked at your eight-millimeter movies from high school and I thought they were really cool, especially the one with Aunt Dorothy putting a voodoo curse on the girl in the short, short pants, and I’m very sorry I messed with your personal stuff.”
“That’s okay,” said my dad. “I figured it was you who’d left the film reel on the projector when you put it away.”
Oops.
“There’s a low-tech method of converting film to DVD,” he said. “You film the image with your digital camera as it’s projected on the screen. Then you can edit it in the computer and add a sound track later.”
“Just like a bootlegger filming a movie in a theater!” I said. “Except we’ll be bootlegging our own movies. I mean, your own movies.”
“That’s fine with me,” said my dad. “And I’m thinking you could do the whole job for, let’s say… eight hundred dollars?”
“Are you kidding?” I said.
“That’s not enough?” he asked. “The guy at Todd’s Video
Connection said he’d do it for seven fifty, but he had a rather bad attitude and—”
“Are you kidding? YES! YES! YES! I’ll do it! Eight hundred dollars!” I shouted. I ran around the table a couple of times, hugged my dad, and kissed him on the face. Then I grabbed a frozen waffle, ran out the door, and yelled at the Buddies, “Back to the woods!”
They charged after me, and we spent the rest of the morning and a good part of the afternoon thrashing about out there and whooping it up.
I even jumped in the duck pond a few times.
SCHOOL’S OUT
Okay, this just happened, so I’m writing it down right now. It’ll be my last post in this blog.
I was in the quad looking for Freddie, because he’d left his hat in the cafeteria and I wanted to give it to him. Just then, Brooke came up to me and told me that she knows that all that stuff Dalton was saying about how I screwed up the donut commercial wasn’t true.
“Why?” I said. “Did he tell you what really happened?”
“No,” she said. “It’s because I know him and I know you and I know who’s telling the truth.”
I felt a little better.
Then she told me how much she loves Stella, and what a great dog she is, but she thinks Stella misses being with the Buddies. So, could she, like, bring Stella to the farm for a visit, maybe on Sunday, and we could hang out together?
I’m like, “Yeaaaah.” And I thought to myself, hey, this might not be such a bad summer after all.
As she started to walk away, she turned and said, “Nothing succeeds like excess. You should know that, Tony.”
It was from Scarface.
“Oh, yeah?” I said. “Would you kiss me if I wore the hat?” I put on Freddie’s hat.
She moved up close to me, like she was going to tell me a secret, and whispered, “No.”
Then she kissed me on the cheek and went down the steps.
I watched Dalton take her hand, and the two of them walked away.
I took a deep breath and said to myself, “Well, at least they’re not doing the Love Dance.”
LARKIN PACE’S READING GROUP GUIDE
1. Early in the book, Larkin lists the ten things that bug him about his dad, and ten things that bother him about his sister, Kelly. List some of the things that bother you about certain members of your own family. Also, what do you find amusing about some of your family members? For example, my dad always says, “Ahh, that felt good. I ought to do that more often,” every time he comes out of the bathroom after having made a deposit. My sister finds that annoying, but I find it very amusing.
2. Larkin describes his sister Kelly as a “total thug,” and complains that she always gets her way. Kelly gripes that Larkin is the one their parents favor. Who’s right? Name a few of Kelly’s nicer qualities. Give yourself some time. Try harder.
3. Larkin dislikes the high-fiber cereal his mom buys, saying it tastes like “critter kibble.” What is critter kibble? What are your favorite breakfast cereals? What’s the grossest pizza topping you ever ate, or almost ate? Would you eat a pizza with pineapple on it? Raisins? M&M’s?
4. As they are leaving the skating rink, Brooke implies that she doesn’t consider herself to be Larkin’s girlfriend. A surprised Larkin can’t figure out how to respond to her, and so he clams up and says nothing. Later he thinks he should have acted all macho and given her a big, sexy kiss. Do you think that method would have worked? What do you think he could have said or done to change her mind? Something short of creating a hostage situation, that is.
5. Kelly names her cat Pandora, which is the name of a mythical Greek woman who opened a box that unleashed a world of hurt. Do you know any interesting or funny cat names? For example: Dizzy, Tumbles, Cheeser, Destructo, Wasabi, Space Cadet, Catzilla …
6. Larkin describes Bethany Weaver’s breath as smelling like sheet spit. Explain sheet spit. What’s a nice way of telling someone their breath stinks? What’s a not so nice way?
7. While waiting for the ghost cat to make an appearance, Larkin mentions three scary movies: The Shining, The Blair Witch Project, and Paranormal Activity. What’s the scariest horror movie you’ve ever seen? What’s the scariest non-horror movie you’ve ever seen, other than The Sound of Music?
8. When he goes to lunch with Drew Carey, Larkin orders the fanciest meal he can think of: shrimp cocktail, filet mignon, and Caesar salad. If someone were paying for your dinner at an expensive restaurant, and you could order anything you wanted, what would it be? Note: not on the menu are PB&J sandwiches, fries, or breakfast cereal.
9. Mr. Bivic, Larkin’s French teacher, has an interesting way of turning a phrase. For example: “Before you leap, you should look what is on your feet.” What do you think he meant to say by that? Can you translate the following Bivications? “Every picture has big ears.” “There’s no time like the gift that keeps on giving.” And “Two wrongs don’t make the customer always right.”
10. When Larkin realizes his scene had been cut from the TV commercial, he gets all sad and moody. Then, when he realizes that Dalton is probably experiencing the same feelings, he feels a lot better. When you’re feeling a bit down, what can usually cheer you up? Your favorite pet? Finding a ten-dollar bill in your jacket pocket? Chocolate?
OUTTAKES
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