Lights, Camera, DISASTER!

by Gordon Korman

  Pandemonium broke loose.

  Chapter 9

  Meet the Press

  Bruno and Boots got special permission to ride with Coach Flynn to York County Hospital that evening to visit the hero of the day.

  They found him sitting up in bed, spirits high, watching himself in an old Cutesy Newbar rerun on TV. His eye was swollen shut, and the left side of his face was puffed out and purple, but the post-game grin was still there, and it stretched from ear to ear.

  “I got in trouble,” he said cheerfully. “Makeup says they can’t make my face look normal for another ten days. Seth hit the ceiling.”

  “Join the club,” said Boots. “The whole team is alternating on dishwashing duty.”

  Coach Flynn tried to look grim. “I think I might be in trouble, too. It’s my business to know who my goalie is. I can never condone breaking the rules.” He smiled all over his face. “But today I came very close.”

  “Too bad we got disqualified,” said Jordie.

  Bruno snorted. “Ineligible player — big deal. We all know who won. Who cares about the official story? And you were great, Cutesy,” he added with emphasis. “You were better than great. The team is flipping out over the game and what you did for us.”

  “Pete’s all mad because he missed it,” put in Boots.

  “Is he okay?” Jordie inquired.

  “Sure, fine,” said Bruno. “We were kind of worried for a while, but then he asked if you and Fred were related — so we knew he was back to normal.”

  “You know, I’m fine, too, except for my eye,” said Jordie, fidgeting restlessly. “I don’t see why I have to stay here overnight.”

  Bruno surveyed the semiprivate room critically. “Hey, Cutesy, if you’re such a big star, how come you have to share a room with somebody else?”

  As if on cue, a hand reached out and pulled open the curtain that divided the room. There in the other bed lay Goose Golden, pale-faced and prostrated, a shattered man apparently breathing his last.

  Mr. Flynn was horrified. “What happened?”

  Golden glared at him balefully. “You!” he barely whispered. “A teacher, an educator, a respected man! Involving innocent children in a bloodbath! Barbarian! Savage! Philistine!”

  “He’s okay,” supplied Jordie. “He got a little upset at the game today.”

  “Game?!” the manager spat. “I don’t remember any game. Butchery. Atrocity. Mayhem. And in the middle of it — my client! I’m lucky to be alive!”

  Jordie laughed. “I’m the guy with the black eye.”

  “It’s my job to suffer for you,” said Golden stubbornly.

  “You should have seen him a couple of hours ago,” Jordie told the visitors. “He tried to get the doctor to put him on life support.”

  “He’s a quack,” muttered Golden. “What does he know about sickness?”

  “It really is my fault,” confessed Mr. Flynn. “Hockey is a great sport, but it can get a little rough.”

  “There were so many guys out there,” raved Golden. “Did anything happen to them? No! It had to be my client who got hit right in the face with the ball!”

  “It’s a puck,” corrected Bruno.

  “It’s a lethal weapon!” roared Golden, his strength returning. “It should be controlled by the government!”

  At that moment, a white-coated doctor entered, accompanied by Seth Dinkman.

  “The boy is fine,” the doctor was saying. “There’s no damage, not even a cut.”

  “But isn’t there something you can give him to get that swelling down?” pleaded the director. “Money is no object.”

  The doctor smiled. “Money won’t help. The swelling will reduce with time — no charge.”

  Dinkman made a face. “Money we have; time we don’t. I’ve got a whole crew standing by. Our schedule is shot.”

  The doctor reached down and made a notation on Jordie’s chart. “Sorry. He can check out first thing in the morning.”

  Dinkman looked dejected. “Well, how about the idiot, then?” he persisted, pointing at Golden. “Is he going to croak in the next five minutes, or what? If he is, I can stick around to say good-bye. Otherwise, I’ve got important things to do, like clipping my toenails.”

  “Come on, Seth,” said Jordie with a grimace.

  “It’s a difficult diagnosis to make,” the doctor explained. “There is nothing physically wrong with Mr. Golden. My best guess is that he had an instantaneous nervous breakdown at the rink today. All the stages that normally take months to evolve hit him in the span of three or four seconds. His recovery was just as fast. He can leave anytime.”

  Bruno pointed at the TV screen and let out a whoop. “Hey, Cutesy, there goes your diaper!”

  Dinkman stared at Bruno. “What are you doing here?” He turned to Jordie. “What is he doing here?”

  “I remember when we filmed this episode,” Golden reminisced. “J.J. had diaper rash. Oh, how I suffered!”

  “Well, boys,” said Coach Flynn, “we’d better get going if we’re going to be back at the Hall before lights-out. Goodnight, Jordie.” He looked embarrassed. “And thanks for a terrific game.”

  The young man who had travelled the world, dined with presidents and starred with legends flashed him a lopsided grin. “This has been the greatest day of my life!”

  * * *

  “I don’t care what Mr. Dinkman said,” soothed Mrs. Sturgeon over Sunday breakfast. “It’s not your fault.”

  The Headmaster stared morosely into his coffee. “It was I who suggested they let Jones live a little. And what was the result? It practically killed him.”

  “Oh, William, how many black eyes have we seen in our years at Macdonald Hall?”

  “Hundreds,” he replied. “Thousands. But none of them had millions of dollars worth of equipment and man-hours waiting on their recovery.”

  “Mr. Dinkman is just a very excitable person,” she explained. “I’m sure he didn’t mean all those terrible things he said.”

  He smiled wryly. “You mean about how Macdonald Hall is an insane asylum, and I am the head inmate?”

  “You have to understand,” she persisted. “He’d just had a very nasty shock. But today his stuntmen will arrive, and he’ll be able to shoot all the scenes without Jordie, and I’m sure it will turn out that he hasn’t lost very much time after all.” She smiled wider. “And we did beat York Academy — sort of.”

  It was the one comment that could lighten the Headmaster’s mood. “I thought Hartley was going to have a seizure,” he said with relish. “It will always be one of the great pleasures of my life that I was able to return to the rink in time to see the look on his face.” He sighed heavily. “I suppose the worst is over. Dinkman has invited reporters to keep the Jones boy occupied so he can’t get into any more mischief during his recovery. And on Tuesday, Walton and his crowd are off on the wilderness survival trip. By the time they return, the movie people will have left for California.”

  “You see?” his wife said triumphantly. “It’s all working out beautifully.”

  The Headmaster buttered his toast. “It is always in the home stretch that the racehorse stumbles, Mildred. My instincts tell me that the Jones boy and Walton and O’Neal are an explosive combination. As for Dinkman — perhaps you’d better make him some more of your kiwi flan. It seems to have a soothing effect on him.”

  But not even kiwi flan did Seth Dinkman’s temper any good. The director was on the warpath. The arrival of his stuntmen, and the satisfaction of putting his idle crew to work, calmed him slightly, but the smallest equipment failure or human error had him in an instant rage. And the mere sight of Jordie and his swollen eye reduced him to screaming hysterics.

  On Sunday morning, when Bruno approached the director to beg for one more chance at an extra’s job, Dinkman ordered six burly security men to take him out and execute him.

  “Aw, come on, boss,” said the leader. “We can’t do that.”

  “Are you telling me I
can’t execute whoever I want?” Dinkman shrieked. “I’m the director!”

  The guards gently led Bruno a safe distance away. “Look, kid,” advised the leader. “You’ve got a lot of moxie. But Seth is pretty uptight right now, so don’t bug him, okay? Maybe you’ll get a chance to be in another movie someday.”

  The director had decided that if Jordie Jones wasn’t going to earn his money by acting, he was going to be put to work promoting Academy Blues. He sent out a press release, stating that the young star had suffered a grievous injury in a hockey game that he had single-handedly won. Reporters came flocking like ants to a picnic. They jammed all the hotels in neighbouring towns and swarmed all over the campus, waving press papers, cameras, microphones and notepads. From nine in the morning to nine at night, Jordie told his story over and over to representatives of everything from the Biloxi Post-Dispatch to World News Tonight, and from Sports Illustrated to the Columbia Journal of Medicine.

  Goose Golden was at his side every waking moment. Jordie Jones was virtually a prisoner.

  * * *

  Precisely at 6 PM, Headmaster Sturgeon closed up his office and started home for dinner. He had spent most of the afternoon writing a report of the hockey incident for Macdonald Hall’s Board of Directors and was annoyed at having wasted a Sunday on nonsense.

  As he made his way along the Faculty Building’s main corridor, he came across the crew of a TV news mobile unit about to enter the music room.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, hurrying over. “You must be in the wrong place. This is a school building and off-limits to the media.”

  “Oh, it’s okay,” said the cameraman. “We’re here for the press conference.”

  “I’m afraid you are mistaken,” said the Headmaster. “There is no press conference here.”

  “Yeah, nobody seems to know about it,” put in the reporter disgustedly. “You guys sure aren’t very organized. You’d better talk to your boss, this guy — uh” — he consulted a notebook — “Walton. He set the whole thing up.”

  There was a pause, then “Bruno Walton?”

  “Yeah, that’s the guy. Real big-time operator. He got all the hockey players together to release their statements.”

  Mr. Sturgeon opened the door to the music room. An amazing sight met his eyes. The room was jam-packed with media people and brilliant with floodlights. All cameras, microphones and eyes were directed to the front. Several long tables were pushed together, and behind them sat the sixteen Macdonald Hall Macs, preparing for their hour of fame.

  Bruno stood at the centre, leaning on a small portable podium. He flashed a thumbs-up signal to Mark, who was filming from the first row of reporters.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” he announced pompously. Then, in a more natural tone, “Thanks for coming. I’m Bruno Walton, and I play left defence, so I was right there on the ice when Cutesy got nailed in the face with that puck. But enough about me. Now we can take your questions, starting with this guy here — yeah, you from The New York Times.”

  A quiet, icy voice from the doorway spoke before the Times reporter had a chance to open his mouth. “You will go to your rooms and remain there until further notice.”

  The seated members of the team scattered through the ranks of the media toward the door, Mark hot on their heels. Alone at the front, Bruno stammered, “Uh — the press conference is officially postponed on account of — uh — I gotta go!” Abandoning the podium, he darted after his teammates.

  A confused murmur rippled through the crowd.

  “Hey,” came a voice, “how can it be over when it hasn’t started yet?”

  “Maybe it’s a coffee break.”

  Mr. Sturgeon addressed the assembled media, softly but clearly. “Ladies and gentlemen, I regret that your time has been wasted. There will be no statements made here. You will restrict your activities to the movie set on the east lawn. Good day.”

  At the door, Bruno was attempting to slip nonchalantly past the Headmaster when an iron grip on his shoulder stopped him cold.

  “Let go, sir. I have to report to my room.”

  Mr. Sturgeon glared down at him. “I require a word with you.”

  Bruno nodded. “I was afraid of that, sir.”

  They supervised the evacuation of the music room, with the Headmaster fielding the many questions and complaints from the disgruntled reporters. Then he turned and fixed Bruno with a fishy stare.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re running here, Walton, but I am running a school. And I will be obeyed. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You have been involved in a great deal of mischief before, but never have you been so out of control. Do you realize that, were you not going on the wilderness survival trip, I would probably be forced to suspend you, just to get you away from here for a while?”

  Bruno cleared his throat carefully. “This may not be the right time to mention it, sir, but I’ve been meaning to ask you if I could maybe — you know — kind of not go on the trip.”

  Mr. Sturgeon shook his head in disbelief. “This is exactly my point. You are not listening to me. I stand here talking about suspension, and you are already embarking on your next escapade.”

  “Well, sir,” said Bruno, “you know how you always say we have to keep up with our studies. I’m just starting to get really into my courses this term —”

  “Try again, Walton.”

  “Well, I had this great story about being allergic to bears —”

  Mr. Sturgeon smiled grimly. “And where did you discover this allergy? The zoo?”

  “The circus,” said Bruno, inventing rapidly.

  “Then perhaps you are only allergic to dancing bears,” said the Headmaster. “Or bears that walk tightropes, or ride tricycles. Walton, I know why you want to stay behind. You still have the grossly mistaken idea that you are going to get yourself into that confounded movie. It is a fever that has taken you over, and I expect you to go on that trip and come back cured.”

  Bruno sighed. “That’s not exactly true, sir. I would have been satisfied with just getting on TV, but you wouldn’t let me have a press conference.”

  “Indeed I would not,” said the Headmaster emphatically. “Do you realize the embarrassment you might have caused this institution before a worldwide audience?” He gazed down the empty hall and frowned in annoyance. “O’Neal, come out from behind that door.”

  The white face of Boots O’Neal appeared, and the boy himself stepped out into the open.

  “This whole miserable business has had its amusing aspects,” said Mr. Sturgeon, “and that has saved you more than once, Walton. But now I am not feeling indulgent, and, if you will notice, I am not smiling. Neither will you smile if I catch you anywhere near the east lawn again. And now I am going for my dinner, and I suggest you do the same.”

  “Uh — sir,” called Bruno as the Headmaster marched toward the exit.

  “Bruno — shhh!” whispered Boots.

  Mr. Sturgeon wheeled and fixed Bruno with blazing eyes. “This had better be good!”

  Bruno flushed. “Well, it’s just that you sent the team to their rooms until further notice, and it’s dinner time, and if you’re going home — well, you know Wilbur —”

  In his anger Mr. Sturgeon had completely forgotten the team. “I was coming to that. Tell them they may leave their rooms.”

  He stormed out of the building.

  Bruno exhaled deeply. “First Dinkman, then Golden, now The Fish. People are going to have to lighten up around here if I’m ever going to get into that movie.”

  Boots stared at him. “You know, Bruno, we have a great time at the Hall. We break a few rules and play practical jokes and we’re not goody-goodies who do everything we’re told. But we both know that when The Fish starts using words like ‘suspend,’ it’s time to lay off. Because the fun stops if we’re not at Macdonald Hall anymore, right?”

  Bruno shrugged it off. “Don’t worry. The Fish wa
s just kind of steamed —”

  “No!” his roommate interrupted. “Look, you’ve had your shot, but now it’s too risky. If you won’t listen to The Fish, listen to me. Don’t get yourself suspended or expelled. Chill out!”

  Chapter 10

  The Stuntman

  The first wave of Jordie Jones interviews hit the papers, radio and television on Sunday night, and by Monday morning, the actor’s trailer looked like a florist’s shop. Movie security had been up all night chasing off Miss Scrimmage’s girls, who streamed across the road, singly and in packs, with get-well flowers for their hero. These were mostly tulips, daffodils, crocuses and snowdrops filched from the school’s spring flower beds. There were also potted African violets from indoor windowsills, ferns and parlour palms from Miss Scrimmage’s sitting room and the entire prize cactus garden from the Headmistress’s conservatory. Those who could not come up with any flowers made artificial ones out of pipe cleaners and Kleenex. This entitled them to sign the giant Get Well, Jordie card, which also arrived during the night, and bore over three hundred signatures.

  The news reached Mr. Sturgeon when Miss Scrimmage stormed his doorstep at 6:30 AM.

  “This is all your fault!” she shrilled. “Now you’ll see why I need my shotgun to protect my poor innocent girls! My school was robbed last night!”

  The Headmaster was shocked. “What was taken?” he asked, tying his bathrobe and stepping out onto the porch. “Money? Jewellery?”

  “Flowers!” she cried. “The outdoor beds are picked clean! It looks like the great hurricane of ’thirty-one! And all my plants! Even my famous award-winning cactus garden!”

  Mr. Sturgeon turned to his wife, who had appeared in the doorway. “Mildred, tie down the geranium. There are plant bandits about.”

  Miss Scrimmage was outraged. “You mock me, sir! But do you deny that my girls were in danger?”

  “I do indeed.” The Headmaster yawned. He pointed toward the east lawn. Even at a distance it was obvious that Jordie Jones’s trailer was festooned with flowers and greenery.