Puppet Wrangler Read online

  The

  Puppet Wrangler

  VICKI GRANT

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Copyright © 2004 Vicki Grant

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Grant, Vicki

  The puppet wrangler / Vicki Grant.

  ISBN 1-55143-304-4

  I. Title.

  PS8613.R356P86 2004 jC813’.6 C2004-900714-9

  Summary: When Telly is sent to spend a month with her aunt on the set of a television puppet show, she is shocked to learn that Bitsie, the cute star of the show, has a dark side.

  First published in the United States, 2004

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2004100990

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

  Layout and typesetting: Lynn O'Rourke

  Cover artwork © 2003 Kathy Boake

  In Canada:

  Orca Book Publishers

  1030 North Park Street

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8T 1C6

  In the United States:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  Printed and bound in Canada

  07 06 05 04 • 5 4 3 2 1

  First, of course, to Gus, who makes all good things possible for me.

  But also to Romney, who is not Kathleen,

  Buddy, who is not Mel,

  Jim, who may be Bitsie,

  and the entire cast and crew

  of Scoop & Doozie.

  You are all too talented, good-humored and civilized to appear in a book like this.

  —V.G.

  Contents

  1 IT’S NOT WHAT YOU’RE THINKING

  2 JUST SO YOU KNOW…

  3 WHAT DID I DO?

  4 SPARE ME

  5 TELLY DEAR,

  6 A FEW THINGS MUM COULD HAVE AT LEAST ASKED KATHLEEN TO BEAR IN MIND

  7 I ALMOST DIED,

  8 NO ONE’S WHO YOU THINK THEY ARE

  9

  10 BY COMPARISON, EVEN BESS LOOKED NORMAL

  11 JUST SO YOU KNOW PART II

  12 I’M TRYING TO BE REASONABLE HERE

  13 HE GROWS ON YOU

  14 EVERYTHING GORGEOUS NICK SINGH SAID TO ME THAT NIGHT

  15 EVERYTHING I MEANT TO SAY TO GORGEOUS NICK SINGH THAT NIGHT

  16 EVERYTHING I ACTUALLY SAID TO GORGEOUS NICK SINGH THAT NIGHT

  17 MY DREAM COME TRUE

  18 IGNORANCE IS BLISS

  19 THE GOOD BITS

  20 MY DAILY ROUTINE

  21 IT CAME AS A SHOCK

  22 BITSIE AND THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER

  23 AN EXCITING NEW SHOPPING EXPERIENCE!

  24 THIS IS HOW IT WORKS

  25 EPISODE 10: BITSIE’S BIG SURPRISE

  26 I WAS JUST TRYING TO HELP

  27 IT WAS BOUND TO COME TO THIS

  28 IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE

  29 HE DESERVED IT

  30 REVENGE IS SWEET

  30 LETTER BOMB

  32 WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED?

  33 THE FACTS OF LIFE

  34 LIFE WAS SO MUCH EASIER IN DREEMLAND

  35 THE GUY WAS A MANIAC

  36 THE END OF THE WORLD AS I KNEW IT

  37 SOMEONE OLDER AND WISER

  38

  39 GOOD IDEAS COME FROM THE STRANGEST PLACES

  40 IT WENT TO HIS HEAD...

  41 SOMETHING TO REMEMBER

  42 NOW SHOWING AT A BRAIN NEAR YOU

  43 THE GREAT VAN GURP

  44 YOU’D THINK HE’D HAVE NOTICED

  45 A LITTLE DEMONSTRATION

  46 NOT THE SOLUTION I WOULD HAVE CHOSEN, BUT IT WORKED

  47 SOME ADDED COMPLICATIONS

  48 RUNNING ON EMPTY

  49 EVERYONE HAS A BREAKING POINT

  50 WHAT GOOD WOULD THAT DO?

  51 I JUST WENT FOR IT

  51 I CAN COME UP WITH DUMB IDEAS AS WELL AS THE REST OF THEM

  52 SEE?

  53 FOR SALE: ONE SLIGHTLY USED KIDNEY

  54 JUST LIKE ON THE HEALTH CHANNEL

  55 MORE OR LESS THE WAY IT WENT

  EPILOGUE: THEN WHAT HAPPENED?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1

  IT’S NOT WHAT

  YOU’RE THINKING.

  Everyone was screaming.

  Most kids were screaming in a happy/scared kind of way—like we were all on some giant Krazy Karpet or something. The little kids were screaming because everyone else was. Adrienne Handspiker—figures—was screaming for help. (Like that would do any good. Who was going to help?)

  I wasn’t screaming. I never do. I was just sitting there.

  It wasn’t so bad. Whenever things get that crazy, my head goes really quiet inside. It’s like I’m watching TV with the sound turned off. Ideally, I’d be able to change the channel too, but that would get noticed. (Go too blank in the face and teachers start calling home. I didn’t need that. And you can bet my parents didn’t need that either.) So I don’t fool around with the picture. I just turn down the volume. That’s when I get some of my best thinking done.

  Like right then, for instance. When everyone else was screaming their faces off, I was thinking about the English language. It has got to be the worst way to say what you mean.

  Example: I say, “My big sister Bess took the school bus.” You think, “Yeah, so?” You picture your typical teenager with a knapsack and maybe a nose ring climbing on and elbowing her way to a good seat by the window.

  You don’t picture this: Bess actually taking the school bus. Hopping into the driver’s seat when Fred Smeltzer nipped out to check the back tire, yanking the door closed with that big old metal arm, and gunning off down Highway 12 like some cartoon maniac.

  That’s what I mean when I say Bess took the bus. Once you understand that, of course, the screaming follows naturally.

  Even I was surprised, though—when I finally zoned back in—to hear everybody singing. Bess had them all going, “I have not brought my specs with meeeeeee,” just like this was some field trip to Ye Olde Heritage Saw Mill or something.

  I have to hand it to her. Bess never does anything halfway. She doesn’t just steal a car and make a break for Mexico like an ordinary sixteen-year-old would. She steals a bus and takes twenty-seven kids on the ride of their lives. She gets everybody singing and laughing and making up stupid verses to “The Quartermaster’s Store”.1 She even takes the detour down Sow’s Ear Road so we can go over the bump that makes your stomach flip. Fred only does that the last day of school. Bess was all ready to do it twice in one day! In fact, she was actually backing up over the bump—which feels even weirder—when Cody Hebb barfed.

  Things kind of went downhill from there. It was hot in the bus anyway, and what with all the excitement and Cody throwing up whole unchewed pieces of bacon, everyone started barfing. Well, not everyone, but there was a definite trend in that direction.

  Bess even managed to make that fun. She started a contest—sort of a Motion Sickness Olympics—and everyone (who wasn’t busy throwing up) really got into it. She called it Digestive Tract and Field. (I was the only one who got the joke. Our dad’s the town doctor.) She had one eye on the road and the other eye looking for technical proficiency and artistic merit. She
gave Cody a whole bunch of extra points for those reusable bacon strips, but in the end Alyssa Corkery won. She’d had Tropical Punch for breakfast. That bright pink color was hard to beat.

  Bess was just about to start the awards ceremony when we ran smack into the Mounties. Not literally “smack into them”—but close enough that even I screamed. (When the Mounties set up the roadblock at Hanson’s Point, I guess they never figured we’d be taking the corner that fast.)

  They sure looked pale by the time we came to a stop. Who could blame them? Bess was, as they say, “known to the police.” They knew what she was capable of. They’d been bringing her home in the backseat of cruisers since she was five.

  I guess it started out cute. I don’t really remember her first run-in with the law—Bess is four years older than I am—but my parents used to talk about it. She was mouthing off— surprise, surprise—and got sent to her room. When they went to check on her five minutes later, she was gone. My mother went hysterical. The Mounties found Bess an hour later, after Mrs. Sproule called (also hysterical) to report that someone had pulled out every single one of her tulips. Turns out Bess wanted to bring her mummy a bouquet.

  See what I mean? Never halfway. Either lots of lip or 212 Princess Pink tulips, complete with bulbs.

  Maybe if they’d nipped her behavior in the bud right then and there, the other stuff wouldn’t have happened. (That’s Dad’s current theory.) But they were so happy to have her back safe and so “touched” by the bouquet, and everyone made such a fuss when Bess hit the front page of The Clarion (once when it happened and once when she helped Dad and the expensive landscaping crew redo Mrs. Sproule’s garden), that the whole thing turned into an “Isn’t-she-adorable!” story.

  And there’s always a bit of that in everything Bess does. (For instance, most hard-core criminals wouldn’t have come up with the Barfelona Olympics idea.) When she mooned the politician, it was the guy who called Nova Scotians “lazy bums.” When she ran away to Halifax, it actually was with the circus. Even her shoplifting was about playing Robin Hood. She just wanted to give stuff to people who needed it.

  Or so she said.

  There were times I liked Bess. A lot. She’s funny and was usually there if I needed her.

  No, scratch the last part. When I was a kid, she’d get me home if I was bleeding or wet or something. And believe me, if anyone ever dared be mean to her little sister, she’d stand up for me. (She always managed to pay them back double for anything they did.) But later? I don’t know. Usually I just tried not to need her.

  I tried not even to hear her. It was too confusing. I wanted to pound her for messing things up all the time, but then there’s that other part of her. The part you just got to like.

  I mean, like with this bus thing. Bess didn’t panic even when we had to screech to a halt and two Mounties grabbed their guns and tromped over to the bus. They made her open the door and were all ready to climb on, but she wouldn’t let them. “You know the rules!” she said, all singsong. “Old people get off before the new people come on!” That’s what Fred always says. Everyone laughed.

  Then, when the kids were all piling out, she reminded Ashlee Kirk to take her gym gear, handed Cody her own lunch (he was going to be hungry after losing his breakfast) and got everyone to give Alyssa the Champion a big cheer. Who wouldn’t think she was sort of great? Even all the grown-ups who were bawling on the side of the road didn’t look all that mad anymore. Their kids were all trying to wiggle out of their bear hugs so they could tell their parents what Bess did next.

  When I got off, she fake-punched me in the arm and said, “Hey, Telly, don’t hold supper for me. I’m going to be a little late tonight.” It was the first thing she’d said to me all day. The Mountie snorted and said, “You’re right about that, Bess. C’mon. Your mother’s waiting for you in the squad car.”

  Waiting for her.

  Mum arranged for Jenna’s parents to take me home.

  1 From now on just assume that everyone means everyone but me and Adrienne Handspiker, who didn’t seem to be screaming any-more. By this time, she was curled up on a backseat, chewing on the strap to her knapsack.

  2

  JUST SO YOU KNOW…

  It doesn’t run in the family.

  I’m not like Bess. At all. I never wanted to cause trouble. I never even wanted to be noticed. I just wanted to fade into the background. I wore beige clothes, let my hair hang over my eyes and slouched.

  That was the only thing I ever did that seriously bugged my mother. The slouching, I mean. I felt bad about it, of course—Mum had enough problems without having to worry about my posture—but I just couldn’t get myself to stand up straight.

  Maybe that was because I was twelve years old and five-foot seven and nobody that age likes to be five inches taller than the teacher.

  But I don’t think so.

  I think it was because every time I stood up straight, this voice in my head would start screaming, “Get down! Get Down FOR GOD’S SAKE!” like I was going to get shot by some sniper or something.

  I know that’s a crazy over-reaction, but that’s really what I used to think.

  3

  WHAT DID I DO?

  You never know what people are going to do. Sometimes it’s the so-called normal ones who surprise you most of all.

  I figured my parents were going to go crazy. This bus thing was way worse than the tattoo Bess got on her neck or the words she sprayed all over her ex-boyfriend’s father’s Winnebago. Mum and Dad went ballistic then.

  But here it was, two days later, and there was nothing. No yelling. No slamming doors. Not even any of that loud laughing Bess fakes to drive them nuts.

  The quiet was making me nervous. Maybe this was going to be more like the time she got caught with a stolen credit card on her way to Sudbury. (She wanted to see the World’s Biggest Nickel.) That time no one raised their voices at all. The family counselor got everyone talking, but even then Mum barely moved her lips. (It was creepy. I’d rather she’d just gone snaky and got it over with.)

  I don’t know why the whole thing was bugging me this time. It’s not like it had anything to do with me. Just the same, I decided to crawl under my bed.

  I make that sound as if it’s something I only do in emergencies, like Dorothy and Toto heading for the storm cellar or something. But it’s not like that. I really like it under there. I always have. You can still see where I painted the word “Dreemland” on the plywood ceiling. I must have been about seven. It was the brand name on my mattress, but it seemed like the perfect thing to call my little hiding place, at least until I realized that dreamland is spelled with an “a.”

  It’s not as if it’s anything special under there. It probably looks like most kids’ beds, from the outside anyway. It’s got a pink-striped ruffly thing that hangs down to the floor and behind that the usual junk you’d expect: a couple of old shoe boxes, a gym bag, a stuffed monkey. I put them there as decoys so my mother wouldn’t get suspicious.

  It’s set up really nicely in back. Very neat. No dust. I’ve got a pillow and a little lamp. (It’s an old bed so it’s high enough.) There are books lined up against the back wall, a couple of games, my Discman and a picture of Snowball before she got run over. (Duh. Who’d have a picture of their cat after it got run over? Other than Bess, I mean.) Just below the headboard is my “kitchen”: some juice boxes, some granola bars, two cans of ravioli and the can-opener my mother tore the house apart for. I don’t actually eat anything under there, but I like to keep some nonperishables just in case. I also keep a change of clothes, though for the longest time they were size 6x because I forgot to update them as I grew. It didn’t really matter. It’s not as if I actually needed them. I just like the feeling of having my own little world that’s got everything I could ever want, right there.

  What’s so bad about that?

  I don’t know. But Mum caught me crawling out of Dreemland once when I was nine, and I knew I’d never let her cat
ch me again. Not that she was mad—what was there to be mad about?—but she didn’t like it. She got that worried “how-unusual-dear” look on her face and then tried to make it sound as if I was playing under there or something. Like I was doing it for fun! I started pretending I didn’t go there anymore.

  No one knows I go there—though I figure the cleaning lady must have her suspicions.

  Anyway, two days after the “bus incident,” I was lying under the bed, wondering whether I should get one of those little pots to pee in,2 when Mum knocked on the door.

  “Telly?” Way too sweet.

  “Just a minute!” I tried to sound calm but I was freaking. I thought she was going to walk in on me scrambling up to the surface.

  “Are you changing, dear?…I won’t come in.” Luckily, respecting each other’s privacy was one of the counselor’s big things. Mum went on from outside the door: “When you’re ready, could you come into the sunroom please? It’s …important.”

  Important.

  The Mercer family code word for seriously bad. But what had I done? Nothing. I figured it must be about Bess. Why did I have to get in on it then?

  It hit me as I was walking down the hall. They were going to punish Bess and they needed a witness! They had to make an example of her. This was going to be like a public hanging or stoning or something. (Mum had been reading a lot of history books lately.)

  No. It didn’t take me long to delete that idea. My parents don’t agree with “corporal punishment,” so I doubted they’d go for an actual execution. (That would be overkill anyway. All they really needed to do was haul off and smack Bess— even once. It might have helped. At least Mum wouldn’t be needing all that wrinkle cream now.)

  (Don’t tell anyone I said that. About the smack, I mean.)

  (Or the wrinkle cream.)

  I realized it was more likely to be an exile kind of thing. We were all going to stand at the door, pointing into the distance, and send Bess away. About time.

  I was almost right.

  Dad took my hand and patted it and talked in his nice doctor voice.