Free Sabotage on the Set by Joan Lowery Nixon

1

    S EAN QUINN SLAMMED THE back door as he dashed into the kitchen. “Mom!” he yelled. “I’m going to be rich! Rich and famous!”
    “Sean! Where have you been?” Mrs. Quinn put down the phone. “I was about to start calling your friends to try to find you.”
    Brian and his best friend, Sam Miyako, looked at each other, then back at Sean.
    “What do you mean, rich and famous?” Brian asked.
    Sam said, “Mrs. Quinn, now that Brian and I don’t have to go out hunting for Sean, could I please have more cookies?”
    Mrs. Quinn pushed the cookie jar toward Sam, but her attention was on Sean. “Well?” she asked him. “Why didn’t you come right home after school? Where were you?”
    Sean tugged his backpack off, dropped it on the floor, and flopped into the nearest kitchen chair. “I told you, Mom. I’m going to be rich. Wow! Think of all the baseball cards I can buy!”
    “Mom just asked where you were, not what kind of wild daydreams you’re having,” Brian said. He got up and started toward the back door, but Sean stopped him.
    “Wait. I’ll tell you all about it,” he said. “Some big movie company is going to make a movie right here in Redoaks.”
    Sam raised an eyebrow and looked mysterious. “Not with the jinx, they won’t.”
    Sean ignored Sam. “The movie’s called New Guy in Town , and guess who’s starring in it? Dakota Wayne! And Justin Moore!”
    “Dakota Wayne? Cool,” Brian said.
    “Everybody knows who Dakota Wayne is,” Sam said. “He’s famous. But who’s Justin Moore?”
    “I know who he is,” Brian said. “When he was five he was the coach’s son on that TV show Our Family Tree .”
    “Yeah, but he’s nine now—the same age as me,” Sean said and grinned. “Some people who said they were casting directors for New Guy in Town came to our school today and visited our class. They said they wanted some of us to be extras, but they kept staring at me. Then they measured to see how tall I was, and they said I had the right coloring and height and weight and all that stuff, and … and …”
    Sean took a deep breath, and in a rush of words said, “And they want me to be Justin Moore’s stand-in! And they’ll pay me! Can I, Mom? Can I?”
    “You’d get more money if you were Dakota Wayne’s stand-in,” Sam said. “All those Save Joey movies made him famous.”
    Brian chuckled. “Sean would have a hard time being a stand-in for Dakota Wayne. Dakota’s fourteen now and tall. Tiffany said that Dakota has grown so much, they only use extra-tall actors around him to make him look shorter.”
    “Who’s Tiffany?” Mrs. Quinn asked.
    Sam snickered, and Brian felt his face grow warm. “Uh, she’s just a source of information,” he said. “Tiffany reads movie magazines and knows all that movie stuff.”
    Sean leaned toward his mother. “Mom, Mom, Mom! You didn’t answer. The casting director is going to call you tonight. Could I please, please take the job?”
    “Sean, you know I’ll have to talk this over with your father,” Mrs. Quinn said. “There’s a great deal we’ll need to know. Will your job on the movie interfere with your schoolwork? Will one of us have to supervise you on the set? What will your working hours be?”
    Sam interrupted. “And will the weird jinx on the movie put Sean in any danger?”
    Everyone stopped talking and looked at Sam.
    Sam didn’t say anything.
    Finally, Brian asked, “What weird jinx?”
    “I told you about it before. I thought nobody was interested.”
    “We’re interested. C’mon, Sam. What’s the jinx you’re talking about?”
    “I thought everybody knew about the jinx,” Sam said. “Tiffany should stop reading movie magazines and listen to that movie entertainment show on television.”
    “Sam!” Brian threatened.
    “Okay, okay,” Sam said. “The way I heard it was, some people in Hollywood are saying that New Guy in Town will never be made. The director began his career with some real blockbuster