Rascal the Star

by Holly Webb

Lucy sighed. “I fell over. And my costume got all muddy, so now everyone’s annoyed because they had to sponge it clean, and it took ages. Then we tried again, and Freddie growled at me, and I forgot my lines.” She really was crying now. “I’m going to lose the part, I’m sure I am.”

  “Why can’t they get a different dog?” Ellie said crossly. It didn’t seem fair on Lucy at all.

  “They are trying, but it’s hard to find a dog at the last minute,” Lucy explained. “Ellie, can I ask you a huge, huge favour? Would you come over to the set? It isn’t far from your house at all. They said they might let me keep the part if I can do it with a different dog… I told them I knew a really sweet, clever dog, and he’s very funny, and I’m not scared of him… And he’s the right age – still a puppy, but an older puppy…”

  It took Ellie a few seconds to realize what Lucy meant – that the funny, clever dog she was talking about was Rascal.

  “You want Rascal to be in the ad with you?” Ellie squeaked delightedly.

  “Yes! He is sweet, Ellie, you know he is. I bet they’d love him. The director said Jack Russells were cute. And I’m not scared of Rascal at all any more. I’m sure I could do the ad with him.”

  Ellie nodded, and then remembered that she was on the phone and Lucy couldn’t see her. “Do you think he’d be able to do it?” she asked Lucy. “What about the rolling?”

  The dog in the ad had to roll over, and Ellie had thought that sounded great in the script. She’d asked Jo how you trained a dog to roll over, at the end of their class on Thursday. It was a difficult one to do, Jo had explained, because most dogs don’t like to show off their tummies. It was the way a dog would signal that he thought he had lost a fight, and he wanted to give in.

  Rascal didn’t seem to mind showing his tummy, but it was still tricky. It had taken them a while to go through the moves, as the dogs had to start off with “down”, which they already knew, and then learn to roll on to their side, their back and finally the right way up again. Rascal had sort of managed it when Lucy practised with him on Sunday, but Ellie wasn’t sure he could do it on command.

  Lucy sighed. “He might be able to. He was great at fetching when we practised, wasn’t he? I know he’s naughty sometimes, but that Freddie wouldn’t do what he was told either. His owner tried to stop him jumping up at me and he wouldn’t. She said it was because he could tell I was scared.”

  Ellie frowned thoughtfully. “All right. I’m going to ask Mum. Lila’s gone shopping and Max is over at Lewis’s house, so we were just doing some cooking. I bet she won’t mind.”

  Ellie smiled up at her mum, who was looking at her curiously. “Actually, she’ll probably love coming to a film set! Get your mum to tell her where we need to go!” Ellie thrust the phone at her mum, and picked Rascal up. “Would you like to be a TV star, Rascal?” she asked him, dancing around.

  Rascal gave a loud yap.

  Ellie was pretty sure that meant “yes”!

  “Wait for me, Ellie!” Mum was hurrying along after them, as Ellie read the house numbers, and Rascal bounced excitedly on the end of his lead, sensing that something special was happening.

  “It must be soon,” Ellie called back. “This is number fifty, and we’re looking for seventy-three.” She looked down the street, frowning. It didn’t seem at all smart enough to be used as a film set. But the lady at the audition had told Lucy that it was used a lot, as it had a beautiful garden. It had been in loads of TV programmes, apparently, when they wanted a “normal” sort of house.

  “Look, here it is.” Ellie hung back suddenly, feeling shy. The front door of number seventy-three was open, and a man was carrying some equipment in from one of the big vans parked outside. There was a catering van too. People were hurrying around inside the house, looking busy, and Ellie didn’t like to disturb them. Then a black-haired lady carrying a clipboard spotted her, and came over, looking hopeful. “Are you Lucy’s friend? The one with the puppy? Is this him?”

  Ellie nodded, and realized it was Carla, the same lady from the dance class. “This is Rascal,” she explained. “Lucy called me…”

  “Yes, it’s been a disaster!” Carla rolled her eyes. “That Freddie was supposed to be really sweet-natured, but he didn’t get on with Lucy at all and we had to send him home.” She looked down at Rascal worriedly. “He’s very small…”

  “He’s a Jack Russell!” Ellie said firmly. “He’s just the right size.”

  “OK. Well, let’s see if Dan likes him.”

  Ellie had no idea who Dan was, but she and Mum followed Carla through the house out into the garden, which was a tangle of cables, growing enormous lights instead of flowers. It was a truly weird-looking place. If Ellie glanced at it sideways, it almost seemed like a normal garden, but then she could see that half the plants were artificial, or real ones that must have been brought over in pots to make it look like summertime.

  Lucy was sitting on a folding chair to one side, looking anxious. She was wearing a pretty summer dress, with her coat on over the top. Her mum was beside her, and she nudged Lucy when she saw Ellie and Rascal coming.

  “Oh, thank you, Ellie!” Lucy dashed over to hug her. “You’re such a star. And you’re going to be a star too, Rascal.”

  Lucy took Ellie’s hand and pulled her over to a huddle of people looking at something on a laptop.

  Carla followed them. “Dan, this is the new dog,” she called.

  A tall, very thin man with a worried face and huge eyebrows turned round to look at them all. His eyebrows flew up when he caught sight of Rascal, but then he walked round Ellie and Rascal thoughtfully.

  Rascal sat down and panted up at him, his tongue hanging out cheerfully.

  “He might be all right,” Dan muttered, crouching down and staring at Rascal. “I had a much bigger dog in mind, of course, but still…”

  Rascal barked at him and wagged his tail, and Dan laughed. “He’s certainly a little character. Heard me saying you ought to be bigger, did you?” He glanced up at Ellie. “Can he do tricks? Does he fetch, roll over, that kind of thing?”

  “Some tricks…” Ellie said slowly. Rascal did fetch. She still wasn’t quite so sure about the rolling over. But she wasn’t going to say that.

  “Well, we’ll give it a go. Can you just wait over there for the minute? We’ll get everything set up again. Lucy said you’d seen the script? You know what he has to do?”

  Ellie nodded. She just hoped Rascal would do as he was told. She and Mum hurried over to sit next to Lucy, who looked frozen in her summer dress. Lucy’s mum took Ellie’s to go and get a cup of tea, and the girls and Rascal were alone for a moment.

  “I think Dan likes Rascal!” Ellie told Lucy. “Show me the script again.”

  Lucy handed it to her, and Ellie read it through carefully. Rascal ought to be able to do it all. It started with Lucy laughing at him as he rolled over and over.

  “We might need more dog treats,” Ellie muttered.

  “Ugh! Get it off me!”

  Ellie and Lucy looked up at once. They’d been peering at the script, and Ellie hadn’t noticed that Rascal was at the end of his lead, exploring. Now he was gazing up at a woman who’d been sitting on a chair close to them. She was staring down at her foot with a disgusted expression on her face.

  “Oh! She’s playing my mum,” Lucy whispered. “I don’t think she likes dogs very much.”

  “It licked me!” the woman told Ellie frostily. She was wearing pretty summer sandals, and there was a lot of foot on show for Rascal to lick.

  “I’m really sorry,” Ellie apologized, even though she didn’t feel like it. She scooped Rascal up. It was only a little bit of lick! And Rascal was a “he”, not an “it”!

  It looked like the actress wanted to make even more of a fuss, but a young man with spiky hair came over just then, and introduced himself as Ben, the dog wrangler. Ellie wasn’t quite sure that she wanted Rascal wrangled, but apparently Ben was just supposed to make Rascal do the stuff that
was needed for the filming. He started off by trying to give him a wash and brush-up, which didn’t go well. Rascal didn’t see why his claws needed polishing, and he kept wriggling out of Ben’s grip.

  The filming wasn’t nearly as exciting as Ellie had thought it would be. There seemed to be endless stops and starts, as the crew tinkered with lights and moved screens here and there to reflect the artificial sunlight around.

  Rascal was bored too. After Ellie had stopped him exploring the garden, he had to sit and wait by the chairs, and every so often he was taken to stand under hot lights. He didn’t have any idea why, and he didn’t like them very much.

  “OK, let’s start filming the rolling-over sequence.” Dan beckoned to Ben, Ellie and Rascal to come and join Lucy under the lights. “We want him to roll over and over, and then leap up. Right?”

  Ellie nodded, but she was panicking inside. She really wasn’t sure if Rascal could do that, especially when the instructions were coming from Ben and not her. But she didn’t want to say so in case they decided to get Freddie the “trained” dog back, and to take Lucy’s part away from her.

  She watched anxiously as Ben said, “Down, Rascal! Roll over!”

  Rascal simply put his head on one side and stared at Ben curiously.

  The film crew laughed. He was very cute, with his head on one side like that, looking at Ben as if he thought the man was rather strange.

  “Shall I try?” Ellie asked nervously. “He’s not used to other people telling him what to do…”

  Ben looked slightly annoyed, but he nodded, and Ellie grabbed the treats she’d brought with her. “Down! Roll over, Rascal!” She rattled the bag of dog treats temptingly, and Rascal eyed it.

  “Roll over!” Ellie tried to make her voice as encouraging as possible, and Rascal seemed to suddenly remember what he was supposed to do. He lay down, and then flipped over on to his back, waving all four paws in the air, and wagging his tail at the same time.

  “Good boy!” Ellie told him, wishing she could get a bit closer. But she couldn’t be in the shot with Rascal. “Roll over. Roll over.”

  Rascal did it twice more, as she’d asked, and then he got up, and marched out of shot and determinedly over to Ellie, as if he’d given up waiting, and he’d like his treats now, thank you very much.

  Ellie gave him several out of the packet, and looked up hopefully at Dan. Had that been what they wanted?

  Dan was frowning at the laptop where they were playing back the last shot. “I’m still not totally happy with the light,” he mused. “Oh, and can he do it faster, please?”

  Ellie shook her head. There was really no point pretending. “I’m sorry, it’s not his best trick. I don’t think he can go any faster.”

  Dan sighed. “Well, we’ll do another take, and see if we can improve the light anyway.”

  Eventually, Dan was happy with the shots of Rascal rolling over, and they moved on to Lucy’s “mum” putting down a bowl of delicious Barkers food. She cooed delightedly at Rascal while she did it, as though she thought he was gorgeous. Ellie was impressed – she was obviously a very good actress.

  Rascal was supposed to wolf the food down eagerly, and this was the one part of the ad that Ellie hadn’t worried about. Rascal ate everything, all the time. Even things that weren’t food.

  So when the actress put down the big bowl of Barkers, Ellie wasn’t expecting Rascal to look thoughtfully at it, and then lie down as though he were planning a nap.

  Everyone was rather surprised, and they did it all over again.

  Rascal walked off set, looking bored.

  “Yummy food, Rascal!” Ellie hissed. It was no good. She didn’t know if Rascal just wasn’t hungry after all the dog treats, but there was no way he was going to eat the dog food.

  Ellie giggled nervously as he did it a third time. It was quite funny that the whole ad was meant to show how delicious Barkers was for growing dogs, and Rascal clearly didn’t like it at all! “Um, I don’t think he likes it,” she told Dan apologetically.

  “This is ridiculous!” snapped a man in a suit, who’d been standing behind the lights, watching. “That’s our extra-meaty kind.

  It’s very popular. Dogs love it! They go barkers for it! That’s our slogan!”

  Ellie opened her mouth, and then shut it again quickly. She hadn’t realized that someone from the dog-food company was watching.

  “Ellie!” Lucy whispered. She was looking a bit green. The smell of Barkers was very strong. “I’ve got an idea…”

  Five minutes later, Ellie smiled at Dan, and the dog-food man, with her fingers crossed behind her back. “I’m sure he’ll be fine now,” she explained. “He, er, just needed a wee. That’s all.”

  Dan gave her a slightly doubtful look, but he called everyone back for another take.

  Ellie watched hopefully as the actress put down the bowl of food for Rascal.

  The girls had begged the caterers for ham sandwiches, then they’d taken out all the ham and hidden it under the Barkers while everyone was gathered round muttering about the lighting again. As a final touch, Lucy had rubbed ham all over the outside of the bowl, so that it would smell yummy to Rascal.

  “Look at that!” the dog-food man said triumphantly, as soon as they’d finished the shot. “Wolfing it down! I told you dogs love it.”

  Ellie smiled, hoping he wouldn’t spot Rascal tugging the bits of ham out from underneath the dog food…

  Rascal’s final scene was the one they’d spent ages practising the day before. Lucy was confident throwing a ball for him to fetch now, and firm enough to take it out of his mouth when he brought it back to her. Sometimes he liked to hang on to it, and growl a little bit. But Ellie was sure that Lucy wouldn’t mind that after their practice.

  Rascal had had a bit of a rest while all the equipment was moved around for the new shot, and he was feeling bright and bouncy and full of ham. He barked delightedly when he saw the ball in Lucy’s hand, and there were admiring murmurs from the crew as he skipped and danced around Lucy, looking like the happiest dog ever. Exactly what they needed for the shot. Ellie smiled proudly. Finally he was behaving himself!

  Lucy wasn’t meant to throw the ball very far, as there wasn’t a huge lot of space in the garden and they needed to be able to keep Rascal in the shot as he fetched it.

  The first couple of throws went too wide. Rascal happily fetched them anyway, but Dan was shaking his head.

  “Try moving back a bit,” he called to Lucy. “Mind the pond though!”

  The best part of the garden, Ellie thought, was the big fish pond in the middle. It had amazing fat koi carp swimming in it, which luckily Rascal hadn’t noticed or they wouldn’t have been able to get him to do anything.

  Lucy edged backwards carefully.

  “Lovely. Nice view of the pond behind.” Dan nodded happily, and Lucy tried again.

  It was a perfect throw. Too perfect, actually. Lucy lobbed the ball gently towards Rascal, in exactly the right place, just in front of him. Rascal gave a huge leap into the air, seized the ball in his teeth – and hurtled towards Lucy’s arms, scrabbling his paws and expecting her to catch him, just like Ellie usually did.

  But Lucy didn’t catch him. Ellie watched in horror as Rascal landed at her feet, and Lucy toppled over backwards, straight into the lily pond.

  Ellie ran to help the crew fish her out, hoping that she wasn’t hurt. What if she’d hit her head? But Lucy was fine – just wet and cold. Everyone crowded round her, fetching towels and fussing, and then she was hurried into the house to get dry.

  Ellie looked round at Dan, thinking she should go and apologize, but then she realized he was laughing. He was holding Rascal, who was licking his ear happily.

  There was a laptop set up, and Dan was watching the footage of Lucy falling in the pond, and he looked delighted.

  The man from the dog-food company was nodding. “Really funny. Just the impression we want. Loads of energy, and all because of Barkers dog food.”
r />   “Perfect. We’re all done then.” Dan tickled Rascal’s ears. “You turned out to be a little star, didn’t you?”

  Ellie hid her smile. She wasn’t going to tell them it was actually all down to ham.

  She took Rascal back from Dan, and hurried indoors to see how Lucy was.

  “I’m really sorry!” she whispered to Lucy, who was wrapped up in a huge fleecy robe and was sitting with her mum, drinking a mug of hot chocolate. “Are you OK?”

  Lucy nodded, but she looked worried. “Are they really cross?” she asked.

  Ellie shook her head. “No! They think it’s fantastic, and they want to put it in the ad.” She gazed doubtfully at Lucy. Would she mind being on TV falling in a pond?

  But Lucy didn’t seem to mind at all. “They do?” she asked happily. “Oh, Ellie, that’s brilliant. I thought they were going to get rid of me!” She kissed the top of Rascal’s head. “You’re such a star!”

  “That’s such a lot of money!” Christy sounded very impressed.

  Lucy smiled, looking embarrassed and a bit proud of herself. “I did have to fall in a pond for it,” she pointed out. “Anyway, Mum says most of it has to go in my savings account, but I’m allowed to go to Pet Life and buy my gerbils and all their stuff!”

  It was three weeks after they’d filmed the dog-food ad, and Lucy had been sent a cheque in the post. Her mum had phoned Ellie’s mum and Christy’s, to ask if the girls could go to the pet shop after school.

  “I love Pet Life,” Ellie said happily, as they climbed into Lucy’s mum’s car. “Mum wouldn’t give me an advance on my pocket money though. She says Rascal doesn’t need any more toys.” She sighed.

  Christy laughed. “He can hardly fit on his cushion, Ellie, there’s so many toys on there with him!”