Almost Starring Skinnybones Read Online Free

though. The best way to handle me is to let me have my own way.
    We worked on the commercial all day. I’m not sure how many times we filmed it before Mr. Rose was happy. He had an assistant who kept track. Each time we were about to film, the assistant would stand in front of the set with a chalkboard and say “Kitty Fritters commercial, take one” … or “Kitty Fritters commercial, take eighteen” … or “take twenty-four.” I stopped listening after “take thirty-two.”
    Ronald was the problem. Ronald the Cat—the dumbest animal actor in the entire universe.
    All he had to do was sit in the middle of the kitchen floor and watch me blow my nose and load the fritters. Then he had to let me pick him up. Think about it. How great an actor do you have to be to let someone pick you up? You could actually be dead and play that part.
    Not Ronald though. Every time he’d see mecoming, he’d lie down and roll over on his back. Then he’d make his body so limp it was like trying to pick up cat-shaped Jell-O. To make matters worse, Donald kept running in, shouting, “Up, Ronald, up!” He waved his arms around like he was training an elephant or something.
    Finally Mr. Rose got real annoyed about it. “Where the heck did you get this cat, Donald? The morgue?”
    Donald took Ronald and stormed off again. This time when they came back, Ronald’s face was wet. I guess Donald had been trying to revive him.
    Anyway, after Ronald had cooperated once or twice and the filming was finally over, we went around shaking hands and lying about how well everything had gone. Then Mr. Rose gave me a pat on the back, and Ronald and I shook paws. The Kitty Fritters man said if I ever came to Cincinnati, he’d take me through the cat food plant and show me how the fritters were made.
    Oh, boy.

  
3
  
    A fter
I got home from New York, I started getting nervous all over again. No matter how you looked at it, the commercial was stupid. So stupid, I was afraid it might backfire right in my face. Instead of being a big celebrity like I’d planned, I could end up as the school fool.
    For the first time in my life I started biting my nails. By the end of the week my fingers looked like ten little bald guys. Every time I closed my eyes at night, Annabelle Posey would drift into my mind. I’d be standing there with my little wagon, and she’d take one look at me and her mean, high-pitched cackle would penetrate my brain. Then pretty soon other voices would join in, until a thousand different laughs were echoing all around in my head.
    I’d cover my ears, but it never helped. The laughing was inside. And it was worse than any nightmare I’ve ever had.
    My parents noticed the change in me. It must have been the way I kept pushing my vegetables around and around my plate at dinner. One time I molded my mashed potatoes into a coffin.
    “You’ve got to stop brooding about this, Alex,” counseled my mother as we sat down to supper one night. “You did a terrific job on that commercial. So what if it wasn’t exactly
Rambo
? There’s nothing wrong with playing the part of a wimp.”
    I looked up from my meat loaf. “Thank you, Mother,” I said sarcastically. “That makes me feel a lot better.”
    “You know what she means,” said Dad, trying to come to the rescue. “That’s
acting
, Alex. Acting isn’t who you are. It’s playing the role of someone else. And the better you do it, the better actor you are.
    “Besides,” he continued. “I don’t think the character you played was a wimp. He was just a little younger than you, that’s all.”
    I frowned into my potatoes. “If he had been any younger, it’d have been a diaper commercial.” The thought of it made me shudder.
    My mother sat there for a moment, gazing thoughtfully into space.
    “You know, your father may be right on thisone,” she offered at last. “When you think about it, the character wasn’t a wimp at all. He was just a sweet young boy with a love