Call the Shots (Swim the Fly #3)(20)

“It’s just Buttons.” I glance over at the white-and-gray cat curled up on my bed. “She throws up if she eats too fast. Air bubbles get trapped in her esophagus. I’m the same way, actually. The problem is that she gets embarrassed when she’s sick and then hides in my bag. I probably should just get another backpack.”

“No,” Coop says. “What you should get is a bigger pair of balls. It’s a cat, dude. It doesn’t have feelings. Just ban the puking puss from your room.”

I shake my head. “I can’t do it. I feel bad for her. And she does too have feelings.” I reach into my backpack again and find the notebook and pen I was looking for. I hold them out to Matt. “Here you go.”

He looks at me warily.

“Go on. They’re cat puke–free. Don’t worry.”

“They better be.” Matt reaches out and takes them cautiously. “All right. Give me all that again, Coop.” Matt starts writing. “Video camera? What else?”

Coop rattles off the items, adding costumes, lights, actors, and editing software to the list.

“Uhhh . . .” Matt looks up from the paper. “I don’t want to be the one who craps on the cupcake here, but how are we going to afford all of this?”

“Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out. Most of the stuff we can cobble together for next to nothing.” Coop scrolls down what looks like a horror movie–themed Web page on my laptop. “But there are three things we absolutely need some casheesh for. One is a supreme camera, because it’s got to look professional. Two is special effects, for the same reason as one. And three is”— he smiles and clicks on something —“our entry fee.”

“Entry fee?” I ask. “For what?”

“For this.” He spins the laptop around for me to read.

I squint, trying to read the title. “What the heck is . . . TerrorFest?”

“It’s a film festival in NYC, baby. It’s where Psychopathic Anxiety was discovered. They have an amateur filmmaking contest. Anyone can enter a flick to be screened for two hundred bills. The top three films win fifty grand each. And Zonkey!,” Coop says, making a marquee in the air with his hands, “is going to be one of those films. But we’ve only got two months to get this puppy filmed, cut, and ready to show. So, who do you know who you can beg some coin off of?”

I laugh. “If I knew who we could get money from, we wouldn’t have to make this movie.”

“It doesn’t have to be a lot. Five grand would do. Don’t you have a college fund you can raid?”

“Pfff, right.” I snort. “As if my parents would ever let me touch that money.”

“Desperate times, dawg,” Coop says.

“I thought we were going to get someone to sponsor us. Like B&M Deli,” Matt says.

Coop shakes his head. “We don’t have time to canvas the neighborhood for suckers. If we want to get this bad boy up and running, then we need some scratch and we need it fast.”

“Okay, let me think.” I put down the Movie Guide and scrub at my eyes with the palms of my hands, like if I rub hard enough my brain will pop out an idea.

And then it comes to me. It’s not the best solution, for sure, but it’s the only one I’ve got. I open my eyes to see Coop and Matt staring at me hopefully.

“All right,” I say. “I guess there is someone I could ask.”





“OKAY, SO, JUST TO WARN YOU,” I say to Matt and Coop, “my uncle’s a little weird.”

Matt’s eyes narrow. “Weird, how?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “He’s just kind of odd. You’ll see.” I lift my fist to knock on Uncle Doug’s door when Coop grabs my wrist.

“Whoa, hold the phone,” he says, looking at me sideways. “We’re not going to black out and wake up tomorrow morning feeling like we’ve been bull-riding all night, are we?”

“Nice.” I shake my head. “Leap right in with the sickest thing imaginable.”

“What?” he says, feigning total innocence. “Someone tells you they’ve got a weird uncle, what are you supposed to think?”

“He’s just reclusive, is all. He’s not a perv.” I raise my fist again and rap on the door. “He happens to be a really chill guy. Just sometimes he comes across as a little . . . perma-fried.”

I wiggle my numb toes inside my frozen boots as we wait for Uncle Doug to answer the door. I have to admit, I’m a little on edge here. I have no idea what his reaction will be when I ask him for the money. Either he could be totally sympathetic to my plight — I mean, he does know Cathy, after all — or he could go ballistic, ranting about how he’s not the local bank.

Just then, the inside door swings open and there’s Uncle Doug. All six foot, two hundred and fifty pounds of him, wearing an XXL tomato-sauce-stained Buffalo Sabres hockey jersey and smoking a carrot-size joint. His hunormous bushy black beard hangs from his chin like a giant hairy lobster bib.

He’s got a big grin on his face and a happy twinkle in his eyes, like us coming to visit him is a welcome surprise. Which only heightens the guilt I’m already feeling.

“Good-morrow,” Uncle Doug says, raising his joint in a sort of smoky salute. “Your mom send you over here to shovel my driveway?”