No More Dead Dogs (5 page)

“Well, couldn’t you get him, like, a suspended sentence? Or a delay until after football season?”

I rolled my eyes. “If Wallace wanted to be back on the team, he could do it in two seconds. He won’t write his paper. He doesn’t even try anymore. He’s stopped bringing a pen to the gym. He’s too busy bugging people, anyway.”

Dylan stuck out his jaw. “How?”

“By interrupting our rehearsals.”

“What do you mean interrupting?” he persisted.

I swallowed hard, trying to be fair. “He makes—suggestions.”

He stared. “What kind of suggestions?”

“On how to make the play better.”

Enter…
TRUDI DAVIS

W
hen I saw the yellow Post-it note,
It’s here
, stuck to the door of my locker, I headed straight for the library. Mrs. McConville was so cool. She always let me be the first to read the new issue of
Teen Dazzle
magazine, even before it got catalogued into the computer.

I sat down at a research table and flipped through the pictures of clothes I couldn’t afford and makeup my parents wouldn’t let me wear. The Quiz of the Month caught my eye. It was called “Is the Perfect Boyfriend Right Under Your Very Nose?” I loved these quizzes. Of course, I cheated a little, like the time I fudged the answers so I could have every single thing in common with the national beach volleyball champion. But this time it was mega-important to do an honest job. I had a sneaking suspicion that someone pretty special was about to enter my life.

Question 1: Do you feel your pulse quicken when you see him?
That was a tough one. Every day after classes I ran to rehearsal so fast I was, like, hyperventilating by the time I got to the gym. According to the Aerobic Workout Chart in Coach Wrigley’s office, my heartbeat was the same as a normal person after twenty minutes of calisthenics. Did it get any faster when he showed up? I answered
YES AND NO.

Question 2: Do you think about him constantly?
Well, how much counts as constantly? I know for a fact that I thought about him nineteen times today in Spanish class alone. Figure eight periods per day, plus nights. So I probably thought about him, like, two hundred times a day, maybe more. Was that constant enough? I scribbled down
SORT OF.
They should be a lot more specific about something this important!

Question 3: Do you find yourself overlooking his faults?
Well, that was the stupidest question of all. How could Wallace Wallace have faults?

Not only did he single-handedly win the championship for the Giants last year, but he was a dramatic genius, too! Maybe even a genius-plus! Because Zack Paris was a regular genius, and Wallace was thinking up much better dialogue for our play. Five minutes didn’t go by in rehearsal without one of the actors calling out, “Hey, Wallace, have you got a better line for…?” or “Can you think of a more realistic way to say…?” And Wallace would always have the perfect answer.

We were all totally stumped when Leo Samuels, who played Mr. Lamont, didn’t want to say, “We must look deep within our souls to accept this tragedy.” But Wallace barely thought about it for a second before coming up with “Your dog died. Get used to it.”

“That’s not the same thing at all!” raged Mr. Fogelman.

But everybody else saw how much better it was, and Mr. Fogelman got sick of being outnumbered with only Nathaniel Spitzner on his side.

He looked daggers at Wallace. “All right, we’ll try it your way.”

“I don’t have a way,” Wallace replied honestly. “People asked my opinion, and I gave it.”

When Wallace cops that confident attitude, it makes me weak in the knees.
Teen Dazzle
should be asking questions about stuff like that!

“For someone who doesn’t care diddley-squat for our play,” Nathaniel accused, “you sure seem to have an awful lot to say about it!”

“Hey.” Wallace stood up. “I’m not even supposed to
be
here.”

“Well, if you’d write your paper, you wouldn’t be!” exclaimed the teacher.

And so on, and so on, blah, blah, blah. Mr. Fogelman just couldn’t see that he’d never get Wallace to write that paper. Which was another thing that was awesome about Wallace. He would stand up to anybody. And being totally gorgeous didn’t hurt either. I’d love to run my hand over that buzz cut of his. I’ll bet it would feel like a very soft brush. A lot of people think
nerd
when they see a short haircut, but it wasn’t that way at all with Wallace. His hair was more like, if he was in a rock group, the band members would wear really thin ties. Other qualities I liked about him: his voice, his
name
—other people had two names; he only had one, but you said it twice, kind of like New York, New York, or Bora Bora. Also his posture, how everybody looked up to him, and his shoelaces. Last month,
Teen Dazzle
did an article called “Learning a Guy’s Secrets from His Clothes.” You can tell a lot from the way someone ties his shoelaces. I’d never get involved with a sloppy-looper, or one of those weird alternative-knot types. But Wallace’s sneakers were simple, neat, and tight. I got goose bumps the first time I took a good look at them.

I was in the cafeteria line, and because I was looking down, I forgot to hold my plate steady. I guess I moved it just as the lunch lady released a humongous scoop-bomb of mashed potatoes. The load dropped past my dish, over the counter, and right onto Wallace’s shoes. I was shocked. One minute the laces were there, all taut and perfect; the next they were buried in food.

Wallace and I both squatted down with napkins to clean up the mess. Our eyes locked, and it would have been pure romance if I hadn’t tilted my tray, spilling just enough cranberry juice to turn the mashed potatoes pink.

As it was, I couldn’t resist blurting, “Do you want to come to the mall with me this afternoon?”

I’ll never forget his reply from the floor as he tried to pick up the slop:

“No.”

What a great guy! On top of everything else, he was so nice! After all, he could easily have said something really negative! That’s when I knew it was more than my third crush of the year. This time it was, like,
love.
You know?

Rachel definitely didn’t approve. “You’re making an idiot out of yourself, Trudi,” she informed me. “Wallace Wallace doesn’t even know you’re alive. If you keep throwing yourself at him, he’ll probably spray-paint something on you, too:
OLD SHEP, DEAD MUTT, THE SEQUEL
.”

“You have no proof Wallace had anything to do with that,” I retorted.

“Nothing except motive and opportunity,” she agreed. “Plus who else could it have been?”

“Wallace wouldn’t hurt the play,” I told her. “He’s
helping
!”

“Just because he’s killing time on his detention doesn’t make him one of us,” Rachel insisted.

“Yeah, well, you’re wrong!” I said accusingly. “And I’ll prove it.”

I could hardly wait for rehearsal the next day. I was all set to talk to the whole cast and clear Wallace’s name—explain what a great guy he was. Only I never got to do it. When I walked into the gym, there was a terrible ruckus going on. Mr. Fogelman was shouting, Leticia was crying, Nathaniel was pointing, and Wallace was denying. Our whole crew, stagehands, set painters, lighting and sound people, were staring in awe up at the stage. There, dead center, was a four-foot-high ball of knots made up of every microphone cable, spotlight cord, and speaker wire in the drama department. They were tied tightly together by the curtain ropes.

It was the great-granddaddy of all knots, a snarl that could take years to untangle.

“Who would do such a thing?” I quavered.

And all eyes were fixed on Wallace Wallace.

Enter…
WALLACE WALLACE

No, I didn’t write that. It was on the typed paper that Rick Falconi placed on my kitchen table after the Giants’ second loss on Saturday.

I stared at it. “What do you expect me to do with this?”

“Hand it in!” our quarterback insisted. “You can’t tell a lie, but I can. So I wrote you a review to get you back on the team. I even signed your name. See? Doesn’t that look like your signature?”

“Except that there are two
L
’s in Wallace,” I agreed.

He slapped his forehead. “I’ll cross it out and sign it again. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to get you off detention.”

I sighed. “Come on, Rick, there’s no way a review written by you is going to look like it came from me. Fogelman would see right away that you didn’t read the book. It doesn’t even say anywhere that Old Shep is a dog!”

Rick looked shocked. “He is? I always thought he was a sheep.”

I shook my head. “You didn’t even look at the cover, did you?”

He bristled. “Hey, man, I did
writing
for you! You know how much I hate writing!”

“Look.” I took a deep breath. “I wouldn’t hand in somebody else’s work and say it’s mine, even if Fogelman would never know the difference.”

Rick’s face fell. “Are you sure? ’Cause Feather’s working on a really classy one. And he
did
read
Old Shep, My Pal.
” He looked thoughtful. “Maybe I should’ve asked him about the sheep thing.”

I faced him seriously. “I hate being off the team. And I’ll be back the second Fogelman gives the word. But, Rick, you’ve got to face facts. You’re losing by four touchdowns a game. I’ve only scored one touchdown in my entire life.”

“But we were so great last year,” Rick protested. “And the only difference this year is you. It’s pure logicalness.”

“It’s not logicalness.” When you spend a lot of time with Rick, the words he invents tend to become real. “Last year we were all in seventh grade. The eighth graders made up most of our starters. Now they’re in high school. The only legitimate star we’ve got is”—and this really hurt, but after all, the truth was the truth—“Cavanaugh.”

Rick was stubborn. “Even Cavanaugh knows the team needs you. After yesterday, he said that if you’d been playing, we probably would have won.”

I was taken aback. “
Cavanaugh
said that?” If there was one Giant who understood my true value to the team—benchwarming—it was my ex–best friend. I mean, he never missed an opportunity to rub it in my face. So how come I was suddenly Mr. Essential?

That rotten Cavanaugh was probably trying to work it so that the Giants’ two losses would be blamed on me.

I struggled to be patient. “Cavanaugh’s just making trouble as usual. When all this is over, and I come back, Coach Wrigley is going to put me where he always puts me—the bench. And the Giants are still going to stink.”

Rick got so gloomy that he didn’t even try to argue. “You’re never coming back,” he mourned. “You’re going to be on detention till the cows freeze over.”

“Hi, Rick.” My mom breezed through the kitchen, jingling her car keys. “Sorry about the Giants.”

“Mrs. Wallace, talk to your son,” Rick pleaded. “Make him see how much the team needs him.”

Mom smiled sympathetically. “I’d have a better chance persuading a compass to point south. I’ll be right back, Wally. I’m going to the car wash.”

I jumped up. “That’s okay. I’ll wash the car.”

She looked at me. “Are you sure you don’t have something more important to do? Like writing a book review?”

“I’ll wash the car,” I repeated. “Rick’ll help, right?”

Rick flashed his paper. “If you’ll hand this in to Fogelman, I’ll cut your lawn, too. I’ll do anything to get you back on the team.”

We were just unrolling the hose when Feather rode up on his mountain bike, a stick of celery protruding from his mouth like a cigar. He waved a piece of paper of his own. “Hey, Wallace,” he mumbled. “Guess what I’ve got!”

I took a stab at it. “My review of
Old Shep, My Pal
?”

The celery dropped to the pavement. “How did you know?”

It was easy to maneuver a polishing rag into Feather’s meaty hands. Recruiting helpers normally put me in an A-1 super-good mood, but this time I was too aggravated to enjoy it. When the car was done and Rick and Feather had headed home for dinner, I marched down the block to the Cavanaugh house.

Mrs. C. greeted me like a long-lost son. She’d never quite figured out that her little Stevie and I were no longer friends. She directed me down to the basement, where Cavanaugh was busy lifting weights. Even flat on his back and sweating, he looked like he had just waltzed off the cover of
Male Model
magazine.