by John J. Bonk
Copyright
Text copyright © 2005 by John J. Bonk
All rights reserved.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com
www.twitter.com/littlebrown
First published in hardcover in September 2005 by Little, Brown and Company
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
First eBook Edition: December 2009
ISBN: 978-0-316-08671-4
Contents
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1: If You Can See Them, They Can See You
Chapter 2: Drills, Chills, and Spills
Chapter 3: Famous
Chapter 4: Double Take
Chapter 5: Water Balloons
Chapter 6: Stalled!
Chapter 7: The Castle of the Crooked Crowns
Chapter 8: As Good as It Gets
Chapter 9: You Can Have Your Cake arid Edith Too!
Chapter 10: “It”
Chapter 11: Bankrupt
Chapter 12: Catching the Worm
Chapter 13: Peeling the Onion
Chapter 14: Yankee Doodle Dilemma
Chapter 15: Gone Ape!
Chapter 16: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
Chapter 17: Cahoots
Chapter 18: The Royal Flush
Chapter 19: A Chip Off the ol’ Tortilla Chip
Chapter 20: Row C, Seat 101
Chapter 21: Most Valuable Player
Chapter 22: That’s a Wrap
Acknowledgments
For all the friends, family, teachers, and classmates
who’ve made me smile, laugh, gasp, or holler,
and have (in some way or another)
wriggled their way into the pages of this book
Prologue
(As Heard on Televisions across the Nation)
You’ll crack a rib laughing at today’s encore episode of Double Take, starring Jeremy Jason Wilder! Stay tuned for America’s zaniest, insaniest sitcom twins, Buddy and Bailey Bickford, as they butt their way into Laugh-Pest Saturday Morning!
Double Take is brought to you by Keggler’s Crustacean Crunch cereal—fortified with the forty-five essential vitamins and minerals found in seafood. Dive into a bowlful today! But no channel surfing, kids, ‘cause we’re coming right back.
Chapter 1
If You Can See Them, They Can See You
“TODAY, SIXTH GRADE - TOMORROW, THE UNIVERSE!” was splashed across the hall bulletin board outside our classroom. Below it were index cards saying what we wanted to be when we grew up. If things worked out as planned, Room 2C would crank out two doctors, one dentist, three teachers, a pet hypnotist (don’t ask), five baseball players, three football players, four basketball players, two stay-at-home moms, and one actor. Guess who?
Dustin Grubbs. Age 11. Actor.
I hope to change the world through my meaningful performance in movies, on television, and on the Broadway Stage.
My dad used to be a stand-up comic. Probably still is, for all I know. So I guess show-biz is in my blood. Still, putting actor on that card took guts. It was like writing wizard or superhero - something impossible to become. And it looked totally lame next to:
Elizabeth T. Snodd. Age 10 ½ Neurosurgeon.
I hope To change The world by conTribuTing To
advancemenTs in brain research and saving lives.
With that in mind, a good place to start my story is backstage at Buttermilk Falls Elementary, where I was getting ready to make my theatrical debut in about -
“Fifteen minutes to showtime, people!”
- in about fifteen minutes. That was our principal, Mr. Futterman, disappearing through the red velvet curtain with a “what the heck are we in for?” look on his face. Futterman used to be a gym teacher, once upon a time. He’d traded in his whistle and sneakers for a suit and tie, but inside he was still a big jock. To him, putting on The Castle of the Crooked Crowns was nothing but a royal pain. To me it was everything.
“Betty Batter bought some butter…” I was channeling my nervous energy into a killer tongue twister, worrying myself sick about my best friend, Wally, who’d never made it back from lunch. “But, said she, this butter’s bitter….” I had the starring role of Jingle Jangles the Jester. Wally “the Walrus” Dorkin was playing the King. “If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter.” You’re gonna like Wally - everyone does. When he doesn’t screw things up, that is.
Backstage looked like a loony bin. Our teacher/goddess, Miss Honeywell, was busy gluing mustaches on the girls who were playing men. The rest of the girls were testing out the twirl factor of their long medieval dresses - all except for my leading lady, Pepper. She was on her knees, with three-inch nails sticking out of her mouth, hammering the castle wall. Pepper Pew had a lot more grit in her than most girls. With a name like that slapped on her from birth, I guess she didn’t have much of a choice.
“Hey, Pep, have you seen Wally?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“For cryin’ out loud, where’s the Walrus?”
“Shhh, Miss Honeywell’ll hear,” Pepper said. “You don’t want to get him in trouble, do ya?”
“Well, she’s gonna find out eventually. We can’t do the play without the King!”
“Oh, right,” she said, looking up at me, brushing her red bangs out of her eyes. “Shouldn’t you get changed?”
“I can’t. Wally’s bringing my costume.”
“Oh,” Pepper said, giving the scenery another whack.
“You should wrap that up,” I told her. “The audience is coming in.”
“You got it, chief.”
I ran to Felix Plunket, who was tugging on his tights and rehearsing his Prince lines to a potted plant. I swear his face was nearly as green as the ficus. Felix was the fidgety type, but he was the only other boy who’d agreed to do the play besides Wally and me. (And only after I bribed him with a brand-new NBA all-surface basketball.) He hadn’t seen Wally either.
I was about to start banging my head on a piece of scenery when Wally rushed in, all blotchy faced. He was lugging a load of costumes over his shoulder and carrying his bassoon case. Oh, in case you don’t know, a bassoon is a woodwind instrument that looks like an old stovepipe and sounds like a strangled duck. Wally’s head turned purple and inflated to three times its normal size when he blew into it. That can’t be healthy.
“Finally!” I said.
“Sorry, Dust -,” Wally said, gasping for air like a drowning man. “Ran home for lunch… to pick up the costumes. My ma was just finishing the last one…. I was halfway back to school when I realized… I forgot my bassoon!”
“So?”
“I have a lesson right after school.”
“How many costumes do you need, anyway? The King is only in, like, three scenes.”
Mrs. Dorkin must’ve cleaned out Sew What?, the local fabric store. Wally wasn’t exactly petite. Then again, I was a stick. Together we formed the number 10.
“They’re not all mine,” Wally said, holding out the pile of costumes. “The striped one on top is yours. Take it.”
I grabbed the first hanger and ripped through the clear plastic that was covering my costume.
“I took that shortcut through the park and made it back in, like, twelve minutes - carrying all this stuff,” Wally said, checking his watch. “That’s got to be a personal best.”
“Uh-huh. Oh, that reminds me.” I turned to the rest of the cast. “Take off your watches, everybody,” I announced. “
They didn’t exist in the Middle Ages.”
Believe it or not, Buttermilk Falls Elementary hadn’t put on a play since around the Middle Ages. Okay, the mideighties. We had a basketball team, cheerleaders, our own mini-Olympics - but no plays. What started out as a class project was about to be performed for the whole school, thanks to Miss Honeywell. She said the play was just too good not to share with the world. I owed her big time. Not only did she cast me in the lead, she made me her AD. That’s short for assistant director.
In a secluded spot behind the back curtain, I wriggled into what were probably a pair of Mrs. Dorkin’s yellow panty hose and a stained pillowcase with armholes. I’d made my own jester’s shoes out of my aunt Birdie’s pointy house slippers, and braided three of my dad’s old ties into a nifty belt. I’d found them in the attic, in a box marked Destroy! They were left over from when he used to work at Apex Plastics - usually referred to by my father as “the job that’s slowly sucking the life out of me.”
“Dustin, how darling you look!” Miss Honeywell said in her Southern twang when I stepped out from the shadows.
“Darling” wasn’t exactly the look I was going for.
“I really should check on our class,” she said, standing at the prop table, looking frazzled. “They’re just sitting out there unattended. Do you think you could finish this prop check for me?”
“Sure thing.”
She handed me a clipboard, and I held it up against myself (where - if I were a statue - a fig leaf would be). Nothing was showing, but I still felt exposed.
“Oh, and be a sweetheart and make sure Leonard has his cues?”
One “sweetheart” from her and my legs got all noodley. She was prettier than any teacher should be, but she still had a lot of “spit and vinegar” in her, as Granny Grubbs would say.
“One rubber chicken - check. Six juggling balls - check. One paper scroll -”
Darlene Deluca, who was doing leaps across the stage, did one leap too many and rammed into me. My clipboard went flying.
“Oww!”
“Sorry,” she said, handing the clipboard back to me. She leaned in close with her eyes shut, and I thought she was going to give me a good-luck kiss. You never knew with Darlene.
“Do I need more Passion Plum?” she asked.
“What?”
“Eye shadow!”
“I don’t think so,” I said. She had enough goop on her face for ten Halloweens. “But Pepper could use a little help with her makeup. One plastic rose - check.”
Darlene gave me a look like I’d asked her to clean up after queasy elephants.
“I still don’t know why Pepper Pee-U is the Princess,” she said. “She should’ve been the Minstrel, instead of Cynthia. She’s practically a boy anyway.”
“Not this again,” I said.
“She’s supposed to be royalty, and she’s wearing a bedsheet!”
“Well, at least it’s queen-size.”
“Puh-lease. Check out my gown. It’s the haute couture bridesmaid’s dress I wore to my cousin Trish’s wedding,” Darlene said, doing a runway-model pose. “Definitely something a princess would wear.”
“Yeah, but it’s all wrong for your character,” I said. “Lady Pickerel is supposed to be, like, sixty. Maybe you and Pepper should switch costumes.”
“No way, José,” Darlene snarled. “I ain’t getting her cooties on it.”
“Okay, just help her with her makeup, then. She really needs your expert advice. One jester’s stick - check”
“Well, I do have an extra pair of false eyelashes. They might draw attention away from her unibrow.”
One con job - check!
I headed toward Leonard Shempski, the techie, to go over his cues. That’s when I noticed a small peephole in the right side of the curtain. I stuck my face up to it and closed one eye. I could see the whole audience.
The first-graders were in the front row, jumpy as grasshoppers on a grill. Futterman was blabbing at Miss Honeywell, next to my class, somewhere in the middle seats. The eighth-graders were filing in at the back, looking too cool for school.
“Hey, it’s a full house!” I said, grabbing Wally, who was lost in the lime green getup he was pulling over his head.
“Well, it’s a school assembly - they had to come,” he said. “It’s not like they paid for tickets or anything.”
Wally could suck the joy out of a birthday party on the beach.
“Let me see.” He shoved me aside and looked through the hole. “Oh, man. It’s packed.”
“I told you. SRO - standing room only. Isn’t that great?”
“I guess,” he said.
“Look, a lunchroom lady just snuck in the back door.”
“Dust? I swear, I can’t remember my first line in scene three.”
“Don’t do this to me, Wally.”
The look on his face told me he wasn’t kidding. It was a good thing a script was attached to the clipboard. I flipped to scene three.
“‘Why do you look so forlorn, Daughter?’”
“‘Why do you look so forlorn?’” Wally repeated. “Why did they have to put words like forlorn in it? Nobody knows what that means, anyway.”
“It means sad,” I said. “That’s how they used to talk back then.”
“And am I supposed to say my line and then cross to center, or say my line while I’m crossing?”
Wally was clearly losing his mind.
“It doesn’t really matter, Wal.” I gave him a pat on the back, ‘cause it looked as if he needed it. “But say your line and then cross.”
“Line, then cross.”
“Ten minutes, people! Ten minutes!” Futterman flew by in a blur.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Wally said, bouncing. “It’s an emergency.”
“Just work fast.”
Wally disappeared, and I had the hole to myself again. Darlene tried to wedge her fat head in front of mine, but I wouldn’t let her, so she ended up peeking under the curtain.
“Remember, if you can see them, they can see you!”
I knew Miss Honeywell was back before she even said a word. Her peach-pie perfume was a dead giveaway.
“Can y’all gather round?” Miss Honeywell said. She’d transferred to our school in September, from the South, so she said “y’all” a lot. The cast mobbed her.
“Ooh, I’m all goose-pimply,” she said. “You kids ought to be percolating with pride from all the hard work you’ve done -especially our star, Dustin Grubbs!”
I already felt like the luckiest kid on the planet, and now Miss Honeywell was gushing over me, smiling so wide her eyeballs disappeared. Life was good.
“I’m not supposed to say anything, ‘cause nothing’s confirmed yet,” Miss Honeywell said in a hushed voice, “but I’ve just heard some thrilling news, y’all. Someone very special is going to be in our -”
Futterman zipped by, and Miss Honeywell stopped short.
“What is it, Miss Honeywell?” a bunch of us said. “Tell us.”
“No, I’d better not. I’ve said too much already.” She mimed locking her lips with a key and tossing it over her shoulder. “But if the rumor is true, Dustin and Wallace will be as tickled as two june bugs in a feather factory!”
“Is that a good thing?” I asked.
The backstage lights went out, then on again.
“I’d better get back to my seat, lickety-split. Break a leg, kids.”
“Break a leg, Miss Honeywell!” everyone shouted. Which was stupid. It’s like saying “happy birthday” back to someone wishing you a happy birthday.
“What did I miss?” Wally said, rushing back. He was all over me like sticky on tape. “What rumor? I heard the word rumor.”
“Good question.”
“Five minutes!” Futterman’s voice boomed out of nowhere.
“Oh, no. I have to go to the bathroom again!” Wally said, racing away.
I grabbed my jester’s hat from the prop table and ran to the curtain
hole to get one last look. Was someone special out in the audience? Was it a talent scout? A Broadway director? I scanned the seats for anyone unusual. The houselights dimmed.
“Are you kids ready to go?” Futterman said, poking his head around the curtain. “After ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ I’m going to give a quick intro, and then you’re up.”
Backstage went black. My toes curled inside my curly-toed shoes, and the last of my saliva dried up. Deep breaths, I told myself.
The audience was screeching, “And the rocket’s red glaaare,” I was back to “Betty Batter bought some buttering,” and that’s when it started.
Clang-clang! Clang-clang!
It was so bust-an-eardrum loud that the scenery vibrated. I was hoping a really noisy ice-cream truck was passing by.
Clang-clang!
But I knew differently.
Chapter 2
Drills, Chills, and Spills
I was forlorn.
I used to love fire drills. I always thought of them as bonus minirecesses. But sometimes you can take two great things, slap them together, and end up with a disaster on your hands -like all-you-can-eat sundaes and the Gut Buster roller coaster at Venture Quest Park.
Or plays and fire drills.
The cast got swallowed up by the crowd jamming through the exit doors of the auditorium. It’s a good thing it was freakishly warm for March, ‘cause I didn’t have my jacket - or my pants. The school yard was a total mishmash. No neat fire-drill rows. Pepper and I were smooshed between the second-grade class and some rowdy seventh-graders. Our class was nowhere in sight.
Out in bright daylight I was suddenly aware of the red circles I had painted on my cheeks. Not to mention the curly-toed shoes, droopy tights, and pillowcase tunic. Breezes were blowing where no breeze had gone before.
“Hey, Dust Bin, nice dress!” Travis Buttrick said. “You got a purse to match?”
“Yeah, I borrowed it from your mother,” I said, which didn’t make sense. But people don’t like it when you mention their mothers.
Travis was a year older than me, and he was already sprouting facial hair. You know the type. Rich. Spoiled. Kicked out of every private school in the Midwest.