No More Dead Dogs (8 page)

The Giants were doing pretty well, grinding out yardage in a tight defensive game. Cavanaugh’s four field goals had given them a 12–7 lead. I watched the whole thing with sweat pouring into my stinging eyes. Underneath my layers of camouflage, I was as wet as if I’d just climbed out of a swimming pool.

But I was happy in my sogginess. The guys were having their best Saturday this year. With the ball and less than a minute to go, all they had to do was run out the clock. Once they’d won a game without me, surely Rick and the team would see that I wasn’t indispensable.

“Hey, son,” said the man next to me as he took off his shirt. “You look like you’re having a heart attack. Why are you dressed for the North Pole?” Helpfully, he reached out, pulled off my headband and hood, and pushed down my scarf. I was out in the open.

And fate had put that little kid, Dylan, Rachel Turner’s brother, a few seats away.

“Hey, everybody!”
he shrieked in a voice that carried all through the stadium.
“Look! It’s Wallace Wallace!”

Everybody
did
look. And you could hear a gigantic
“Wal-lace”
as hundreds of people mumbled my name, passing it from tongue to tongue like trench mouth.

“Wallace?!”

I recognized
that
voice. It was Rick Falconi on the field, gazing up into the stands looking for me instead of keeping his eyes on—

“The ball, Rick!”
I bellowed.
“Watch the ball!”

The snap bounced off the side of Rick’s helmet and wobbled into the backfield, where it was picked up by the biggest, strongest, slowest lineman on the other team.

“Hit him!”
I cried.

And they did. Some of them bounced off. Those who managed to hang on were dragged seventy yards down the field by the enormous lineman. Rick, who was clamped on to an ankle, was repeatedly slapped against the turf like a flyswatter as the big kid returned the fumble for the winning touchdown.

Ouch.

The mood in the locker room was despair-minus-minus. I should have snuck home, but I felt kind of responsible for this, our third loss. And it wouldn’t have been right to duck out on the team.

You could tell that Rick wanted me dead. “I refuse to see you, Wallace!” The poor guy was one extended bruise from his trip down the field attached to that runaway locomotive. “I saw you once already, and look what happened!”

I indicated my heavy clothes. “I was trying not to be noticed. But then some guy pulled down my hood.”

“If you were on the field where you belong,” Feather said sourly, “nobody could pull down your hood.”

“And we would’ve won,” added Rick.

“It wasn’t a total disaster,” I argued. “You really showed something out there. If it wasn’t for that last play, you had it kicked.”

“It was a disaster, all right,” Rick moaned. “By any stretch of the means.”

Rick-ism math:
By any stretch of the imagination + By any means = By any stretch of the means.

Cavanaugh stepped forward, and I knew the rough ride was only beginning. “This was a close game, Wallace,” he declared loudly. Because he called me Wallace, and not some nasty double nickname, I realized that his true audience was the team and not me. “I scored twelve points, so a star like you could have gotten at least that many. We would have won by a mile!”

A chorus of grumbles bubbled up in the locker room.

“We need you on the team, not in the gym!”

“We’re getting killed out there!”

“We’re 0 and three!”

Silence fell as Coach Wrigley stepped out from his office. He gave me a crooked smile. “Congratulations, Wallace. I see your public hasn’t forgotten you.”

“Sorry, Coach,” I murmured.

He clapped me on the shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault. Relax. Go home. Maybe even—write a book review.”

I just couldn’t look him in the eye. Instead, I concentrated on the concrete floor, my sneakers, Rick’s muddy cleats, Feather’s open locker—

I froze. There on the shelf beside Feather’s wadded-up sweat socks stood a two-pound box of ground black pepper. I had a vision of the cast and crew of
Old Shep, My Pal
coughing and sneezing in a big black cloud.

“Hey, Feather—” I hardly recognized my own voice. “What’s with the pepper?”

He made a face. “It’s for the celery, to disguise the taste.”

“Yeah,” I insisted, “but two pounds?”

“Ever eaten celery?” He snorted. “Two pounds isn’t enough.”

As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one thinking about the attacks on
Old Shep, My Pal.
First thing Monday morning, I got called to the principal’s office.

Dr. Chechik spent the first few minutes showing me his poster-size blow-up of the newspaper photograph of me scoring the winning touchdown. The next few minutes he devoted to telling me that I couldn’t expect any special treatment because of it.

I kind of liked our principal. He was a straight-up guy who got right to the point. He asked if I did it, and I said no. But then he caught me off guard:

“Do you have any idea who might be responsible?”

I was stuck. I couldn’t tell him my suspicions about Feather. After all, the kid had a good reason for keeping a lockerful of pepper. Besides, I’d never rat out a friend. But I couldn’t lie either.

“I can’t say for sure,” I replied. The “for sure” made it okay.

When I left the office, my head was spinning. Why would Feather have a grudge against the play? The answer was simple. The whole Giants team was mad at Mr. Fogelman over my detention. Feather was the most obvious suspect because of the pepper. But it could also be Rick, or Kevin Wilkerson, or any of those guys who were dumb enough to believe I was a big star.

And what about Cavanaugh? He didn’t want me back on the Giants, but he sure got a charge out of watching me suffer. He could be doing all this to set me up. Pinning the blame on me would guarantee that my detention would go on forever. Come to think of it, Cavanaugh seemed to know a lot about what was happening to the play. Was that because he was making it happen?

When I walked out of the office, Parker Schmidt was skulking on the bench. I’ll bet he’d been hiding there ever since he’d heard my name paged over the P.A.

“I can’t believe you have the nerve to come anywhere near me!” I snarled. “Especially after what you printed last time!”

He waved the slightly damaged tape recorder in my face. “Did your meeting with the principal have anything to do with your ongoing holdout from the Giants?”

What an idiot! He even sounded like his stupid articles.

But then I got an idea. For some strange reason, a lot of kids read the
Standard
and talked up Parker’s columns. If I leaked to Parker that Dr. Chechik was looking into the attacks on
Old Shep, My Pal
, chances were the bad guy would read it and back off. Then I wouldn’t have to take the blame anymore, and Rachel Turner could stop yelling at me. Fat chance.

So I sat him down and gave him all the facts. He looked at me suspiciously the whole time. You could tell Parker wasn’t used to having a real story to write. He did most of his hard-hitting journalism on PTA fund-raisers, stuffing himself on complimentary brownies.

“That’s why Dr. Chechik paged me,” I finished. “He’s heard about the attacks on the play, and he’s determined to get to the bottom of it.”

“And he needs your help,” Parker concluded.

“Well, he asked me about it,” I explained. “I guess that counts as helping. But the important thing is he’s on the case. Got it?”

Parker patted his tape recorder. “This is a real scoop. Thanks a lot, Wallace.”

As he walked away, I remember thinking maybe people were too hard on Parker Schmidt. He wouldn’t make so many mistakes if more kids would take the time to answer his questions.

The Bedford Middle School Weekly Standard

Wallace Wallace, Secret Agent

by Parker Schmidt, Staff Reporter

The
Standard
has learned the true reason behind superstar Wallace Wallace’s holdout from the Giants. The hero of last year’s championship game has been recruited by Dr. Chechik to be the principal’s eyes and ears in the school.

The new role is so top-secret that Dr. Chechik himself refused to acknowledge that such an arrangement has been made. There was no comment on whether or not this undercover spy work would raise the incomplete that Wallace is currently receiving in English….

His responsibilities will include keeping an eye on every single one of us and reporting directly to the office. And while some may consider this job description to be “professional rat,” this reporter considers it a bold step toward law and order here at Bedford Middle School.

Enter…
WALLACE WALLACE

I
was halfway up the tree, pruning off dead branches, when I saw Rick and Feather. Right on schedule. Every fall, the guys on the team came over to help me spread Lawn-Gro on the grass. It was just another chore I didn’t want my mom to have to do—especially when there was an entire football team who could knock it off in two seconds. And even though one of them—maybe a close friend—was the jerk who was attacking the play, that still left a whole lot of pretty good guys who deserved the benefit of the doubt from me.

I waved. “I’m up here!”

“Hang on with two hands, Wallace!” Rick shouted up at me. “How are you going to get back to the team if you break both your necks?”

I had to laugh. “Maybe I’ll just break one of my necks, and I’ll still have a spare for football.” I clipped off a brown twig with my pruning shears. “I’ll be done with this in a few minutes. That’ll give the others a chance to get here.”

There was so much throat-clearing and coughing down there that I decided I’d better cut my work short. I clambered lower on the trunk and dropped to the grass at their feet. “What’s going on? Are the others going to be late?”

Feather shuffled uncomfortably. “There
are
no others,” he mumbled.

“Sure there are,” I told him. “I asked a whole bunch of guys—all the wide receivers and at least three defensive backs.”

“And did they tell you they were coming?” Rick challenged.

“No,” I said. “They never do. And they always come. Where’s Kevin? I figured him for the weeding. He has great eyes for dandelion spotting.”

Feather cleared his throat carefully. “Kevin said if you’re not on the team, he’s not your gardener.”

I snickered. “Come on, Feather. Where is everybody? Hiding over by the 7-Eleven?”

Rick gave me an agonized look. “You’re not listening, man!”

I peered down the street in both directions. Nobody.

It must seem like I’m a pretty big idiot because it was taking me so long to clue in. But this was a leap for my mind. I’d always thought my teammates came to help because they were my
friends.
And they understood how important it was for me to pull my weight and help Mom. I never thought it had anything to do with football. Football was just how I knew them.

“It was Cavanaugh, right?” I asked. “He’s behind this.”

“You’ve got to look at it through the team’s eyes,” pleaded Feather, his face open and sincere. “They’re getting shelled every week. Then they open up the
Standard
and read how you’re holding out for better grades, or spying for Chechik.”

“That’s just Porker!” I exclaimed. “The guy’s less than stupid! Nobody believes his stuff!”

“Maybe.” Rick shrugged. “But it seems like you’re not even
trying
to get back. And they think, hey, if the cake fits, eat it.”

I admit it. I was bitter. “So are you guys here now because you’re my friends, or because you think you can get me to write a review of
Old Shep, My Pal
?”

“Of course we’re your friends!” Feather exclaimed.

“But if you want to write the essay, that would be good, too,” Rick added eagerly.

It was impossible to stay mad at those two, especially with a whole lawn that needed fertilizing.

We took turns pulling weeds and pushing the spreader back and forth across the yard. And just when we were almost done, the delivery van from Chee-Zee Pizza whipped around the crescent, and pulled into our driveway, leaving tire tracks along the corner of the lawn.

“Hey!” I yelled.

The door of the van opened, and out stepped Laszlo Tamas. Even though Laszlo was older than we were, he was in eighth grade at our school. His family was from Hungary, and he was being held an extra year in middle school to work on his English.

I think moving to Bedford from Budapest must have been a great deal, because Laszlo was always cheerful. Even when he apologized for driving over our freshly fertilized lawn, he seemed pretty happy about it.

“Oops!” He beamed. “Sorry.” He brushed off his Chee-Zee Pizza uniform and shook hands with all three of us. Hand-shaking was not big at Bedford Middle School, but I guess nobody told Laszlo. To me he said, “I heard you wanted to see me.”

The thing about Laszlo was that he was sixteen, and had just gotten his driver’s license. You had to be sixteen to ride a moped. Now, we only needed it for thirty seconds in the opening scene of
Old Shep, My Pal.
But Fogelman was being a jerk about it, big surprise.

“Someone has to ride Vito’s mom’s moped in the school play,” I explained, “and you’re the only one who’s old enough to do it. What do you say?”

“Wow! Really?
Me?
” This was just another one of those things that pleased Laszlo to pieces. He enfolded me in a giant bear hug, and shook hands again with Feather and Rick.

Rick frowned, perplexed. “Wait a minute, Wallace. How come you’re lining up guys for
Old Shep, My Pal
?”

“Yeah,” echoed Feather. “What’s the play got to do with
you
?”

I shrugged. “Nothing, really. I’m stuck down there every day, and their rehearsals are so bad that sometimes you just have to say something. If they take it for advice, it’s not my fault.”

Feather was obviously suspicious. “So why are you helping? Advice isn’t the same as finding a guy to ride a moped.”

“It’s just this once,” I explained. “Otherwise Fogelman was going to ride it himself. He’s so clueless, and I knew Laszlo, and what the heck—why not?”