No More Dead Dogs (14 page)

“Well, change it back to five dollars each,” Rachel ordered. “Some people might get the crazy idea that sold out means sold out. It wouldn’t be much fun without an audience.”

“How about ‘Good Seats Going Fast’?” Trudi wheedled.

“That’s just plain dumb.”

I sighed. “Take it easy, people. We’re a week away. The only thing that can sink us is ourselves. We have to stay mellow.”

MEMO: Follow your own advice.

Enter…
RACHEL TURNER

I ran straight to the gym first thing Tuesday morning. Mr. Fogelman and the Dead Mangoes had finished their final song, “Farewell, Old Pal,” and had promised to perform it for us before school. Also, the director had printed brand-new, updated scripts. With the performance coming up on Saturday, I knew my lines (and everybody else’s). But some of the actors were getting a little confused by the dozens of changes and inserts scribbled on the old copies.

I wanted my new draft, too, but for a different reason. The new script would make the ultimate souvenir. I was positive that Saturday would be the first day of my real acting career.

There was a ruckus going on in the gym when I got there. Everybody was standing on the stage, knee-deep in what looked like snow. Upon closer inspection, I could see that the white piles were made up of tens of thousands of long, thin strips of paper—barely a quarter inch across.

“What is it?” I asked in bewilderment.

Mr. Fogelman supplied the answer, and his face was pure anguish. “Our scripts! Forty-five copies!”

I was astonished. “What happened to them?”

As if on cue, the P.A. system burst into life.
“Would the custodian please come to the office. The paper shredder is missing.”

I felt my blood turn to ice water in my veins. Another attack on the play! Just when it looked like all that was behind us! And only four days to opening night!

That was the very moment that Laszlo, wading through the piles, stubbed his toe on something hard. He cursed out a long sentence in Hungarian, dug in, and came up with (you guessed it) a paper shredder.

“I can’t believe it!” raged Mr. Fogelman. “I spent all weekend at the photocopier! I was collating last night until three o’clock in the morning!”

“There’s something else,” said Laszlo, foraging around the paper drifts. “Got it!” He pulled the object up, and held it for all to see.

It was a Giants football jersey, the kind the team wore in practice. The front read P
ROPERTY OF
B
EDFORD
M
IDDLE
S
CHOOL
A
THLETICS;
the back said one word: W
ALLACE.

Oh, wow.

I’d heard silence before, but nothing like this. It was so quiet that the footsteps approaching across the wood floor resounded like gunshots.

“Hey, everybody!” exclaimed Wallace. “What’s all that stuff?”

“Wallace,” breathed Vito, shaking his head. “It was
you.
Right from the very beginning.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Wallace. “What are you doing with my old scrimmage shirt?”

“I think,” Mr. Fogelman began evenly, “that shredding forty-five scripts is sweaty work. So you took off your jersey and forgot it under all that paper.”

“Wait a minute.” Wallace took a step backward. “You think
I
did this?”

“The shirt proves it!” Leticia managed tearfully.

“I haven’t seen that shirt all year!” Wallace protested.

I was in shock. It was like I wasn’t part of this, but I was watching it on TV. I waited for someone to stand up and take Wallace’s side. Surely one of these Wallace fans would defend him. Surely
Trudi
would!

I looked at my longtime friend and saw she had tears in her eyes. “Oh, Wallace!” she quavered. “We trusted you! We followed you! We liked you so
much
! And it was you the whole time!”

Wallace looked shocked. “The whole time? You mean you think I did all that other stuff, too?”

“I was just starting to believe in you!” exclaimed Nathaniel.

“This is
awful
!” moaned Joey. “Man, it’s like, homework, allergy shot, dentist, bummer!”

Wallace was very white and still. “I thought you guys were my friends.”

“We thought you were ours,” Trudi barely whispered.

Mr. Fogelman stepped forward, and half a pound of shredded paper spilled off the stage. Our director was even paler than Wallace. “I don’t want to believe this,” he said sorrowfully, “but the evidence is right in front of me. Wallace, we can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for our play. But this is the strangest situation I’ve ever run into. The kind of person who could build with one hand while tearing down with the other needs to take a long hard look at himself.”

That’s when I caught a glimpse of the
old
Wallace Wallace, the ramrod-straight back, the stubborn outthrust jaw, the steely resentful expression. “I see myself just fine, Mr. Fogelman.”

“Then we don’t agree,” the director stated gravely. “As of this minute, Wallace, you’re banned from all rehearsals. And I don’t want to see you at the performance.”

Instead of the gasp of horror that I expected, there was a huge, melancholy sigh. It sounded like the wind moaning through the trees outside a haunted house.

Wallace started for the door. Then, almost there, he turned back to face us. “I have one last suggestion.”

“You’re not a part of this anymore,” warned Mr. Fogelman.

“Old Shep shouldn’t die,” he announced. “Think about it.” And he was gone.

Wallace ate his lunch in total isolation in spite of the fact that the cafeteria was packed. I almost dropped my tray when I saw him, a single dot in the center of the room, no one within twenty feet of him. He was being ignored by football players and drama club members alike, not to mention everybody who got their news from the Bedford Middle School
Weekly Standard.
Wallace Wallace, hero and superstar, was now a leper.

I carried my tray in a half circle around no-man’s-land, and plunked myself down across from Trudi.

“Hi,” I said into the silence.

“Rachel, I’m so sorry!” Trudi blurted. “You were right all along!”

“I don’t know,” I mused. “Do you think there could be another explanation for how that football jersey ended up on our stage?”

“That’s another thing that burns me up,” Trudi muttered. “‘I haven’t seen that shirt all year!’ What a lame excuse! Does he think we’re idiots?”

“Unless he lost it months ago,” I said thoughtfully. “I lose sweaters and things all the time. Don’t you?”

Trudi slapped her tray, sending a shower of hot mustard into my milk. “Well, I’m breaking up with him.” She seethed. “We’re finished!”

“Maybe he’s telling the truth,” I suggested.

She stared at me. “Are you crazy, Rachel? You were the only person who saw through that sleaze!
He
was the one who hated
Old Shep, My Pal
!
He
was the one who had a grudge against Mr. Fogelman, and detention, and the play! We were such saps to believe him! He was rotten then, and he’s rotten now!”

“I’ll bet Wallace Wallace joins up with the Giants again,” Dylan announced at dinner that night.

“He just quit the Giants,” I said peevishly.

“Yeah, but now he’s kicked off the play,” my brother argued. “So there’s no reason for him not to be on the team.”

My mother cocked an eyebrow. “I thought you hated Wallace Wallace now. Remember what you said when you and Dad were picking all your football things out of the yard?”

“Oh, I’ll need that stuff back,” Dylan said seriously.

My father looked up from his plate. “But I just spent an hour making room for it all in the garage!”

“Listen, Dylan.” I sighed. “If Wallace goes back to the team, I will personally eat the biggest bug in your chamber of horrors.”

That shut Dylan up (he knew I didn’t joke about insects). After dinner, while he sulked, I went for a walk. I wandered in circles that got smaller and smaller, spiraling down to the center point—the neat little house on Poplar Street with the well-raked yard.

I rang the bell, and when Mrs. Wallace saw me, her face lit up, like she was drowning and I was here with a life raft.

“Hi, I’m Rachel,” I greeted her. “I was one of the rakers last Sat—”

She pulled me inside. “Thank goodness! What happened at school today? He hasn’t left his room since he got home! Not even for dinner!”

“Well, it was kind of a…” How could I explain it to her?

Mrs. Wallace bailed me out by calling up the stairs, “Wally! Rachel’s on her way up!” To me, she said urgently, “Talk to him. Please straighten this out, whatever it is!”

It’s a stupid thing to admit, but I’d never been in a guy’s room before. I guess I kind of expected it to look like Dylan’s chamber of horrors, only worse (because an eighth grader had three extra years to collect horrifying, disgusting things). But Wallace’s room was cleaner than mine, and there were no vampire coffins or tarantulas anywhere in sight. Even the football pennants and pictures were relegated to a corner. Wallace sat at the desk under a large poster of a young George Washington chopping down the cherry tree (weird decoration for a sports hero). If he was all broken-up over today, he didn’t show it.

He said, “Your shoelace is untied.”

Flustered, I blurted, “I want to believe you!”

He pointed to my feet. “Take a look.”

“No, I mean about shredding the scripts!” I insisted. “But how else could that scrimmage shirt have found its way to our stage?”

He shot me a sharp glance. “Someone must have planted it there to frame me.”

“Who would do that?” I asked.

Wallace threw up his arms. “I’m not exactly Mr. Popularity these days.”

“Well, when was the last time you saw the shirt?”

He shrugged. “Not since—I don’t know—last season at least.”

“Did you lend it to anybody?”

“I lent it to everybody!” he exclaimed. “These jerseys—they get passed around like chicken pox. It’s a miracle if you finish out the schedule with all your own stuff. The whole world came tramping through that locker room after we won the championship. I had to wear my football pants home because somebody picked up my jeans by mistake.”

“So it was someone in the locker room—” I mused.

“It has to be a Giant, but I don’t know which one. If it’s Cavanaugh, I’ll rip his lungs out!”

“Think, Wallace!” I urged. “How can I help you if—”

Wallace stood up. “Help me?” He glowered. “
Help
me? When Laszlo pulled that shirt out of the paper, do you know why everybody blamed it on me?”

“Because it was your shirt—” I stammered.

He cut me off. “Because ever since day one you and that deer tick Spitzner have been building a case against me. ‘Wallace is trying to mess up the play!’ You must have said it fifty times. So when everybody saw my name on the jersey, they just plugged it right into what was already in the back of their minds. And now you want to
help
me? Listen, Rachel, you’ve helped enough!”