Chapter 12: Say My Name, Say My Name!

Monday February 22

Tracy, Pam and Halle were waiting for me when I got to school.

“Are you all right?” Tracy asked.

I assumed she was talking about the alert Fritz had sent out.

“Yeah, I just wanted to make sure you were all okay. I guess, if nothing else, it was a good thing that we tested it out.”

“Did you know the girl?” Halle asked.

“No, not really. I met her for just a couple of minutes. She seemed nice. It was terrible, what happened,” I said.

Pam wrapped me in a hug and whispered in my ear.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yes. Like I said, I was more worried about you when the police weren’t sure if the brother and father might come after me or people I knew.”

“It freaked me out when it went off,” Tracy admitted. “It was sort of like when you get those Amber Alerts, but I knew it was for someone I actually knew.”

“I didn’t mean to freak you out,” I apologized.

“No, no, I’d rather be safe than sorry. I might have to get more pepper spray,” she said with a big smile.

“You could get a Taser, like Pam has,” I offered.

“No. I like that I don’t have to get close to do damage. If she had my spray, she could’ve nailed Yuri several times. That boy’s fast.”

I had to laugh because Tracy had sent me a video of Pam chasing Yuri down the hall with her Taser.

“Did you practice your lines?” Halle asked, to change the subject to the school play.

I gave her a disgusted look.

“Did you even see how many lines you have?” she asked.

“How bad could it be?” I shot back.

“You’d better not make me look bad. We’re supposed to know what we’re doing,” she said as she put her hand on her hip.

I surrendered.

“Hey, can you take Bandit this weekend? I have to fly out to LA to do some voice-overs. He doesn’t like flying,” she said.

“Sure. Just explain to him that he can’t be a big baby.”

“If you paid him more attention, he’d be just fine.”

“Fine. I’ll make sure I take care of him.”

The bell rang, so we went inside and went to class. I pulled the script out in second-period Art Appreciation. I’d studied ahead, so I decided to take a quick look. The copyright said it was written in 1938. I smirked when I read the dialogue. My ‘good ol’ boy’ routine with the press had nothing on this. It also seemed that my character, George, was a dumbass. Halle’s character, Emily, bossed him around. I decided this might be fun.

We had another Junior Class Project meeting. Everything was moving forward just fine. I was surprised when Alan stopped me before I went to my next class.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” I said tentatively.

He could ask, but I wasn’t sure I would answer. I’d accepted that he hadn’t been responsible for him and Tami waking up naked together. The thing is, I knew Alan. If I acted like I’d forgiven him, Tami would know ten minutes later. I wasn’t ready to explain why just yet.

“What did you get on your SAT?” he asked.

“Worried I did better?” I teased.

“No, of course not,” Alan blurted.

I gave him the stink eye, and he blushed. He always assumed he was smarter than everyone else. I reminded him that I was higher in our class standings than he was. Of course, his slip had come in PE, which I felt shouldn’t factor into overall grade standings. That was, of course, until I could use it to torment my former best friend.

I told him my score, and of course he wanted a breakdown. Turns out he did a little better than I did, overall. I did better in the Critical Reading and Essay sections, and he did much better than I did in Math. He admitted that Tami did better than both of us. I can’t say I was surprised. What did surprise me was that she did even better than Alan did on the Math section. I could tell that bothered him. I actually did beat her in the Critical Reading and Essay portions of the test.

I had to smile that we needed to check to see how each of us did. We’d always been competitive, Tami and me especially. Jeff had always been the calming influence and kept things from getting out of hand. The thing is I’d bet he would have had a better score than all of us. We were nerds at heart, after all.

Satisfied, Alan left me alone. Tami would have my scores soon, if my mom hadn’t already told her.

I skipped the dojo to try out for the play. I was a good boy and didn’t embarrass Halle. Mr. Dutton, one of the science teachers, was in charge of the drama club. He and a couple of the seniors would decide who won what part. Halle and I rolled our eyes when they told us they’d post the parts tomorrow. We’d sat through the auditions, and somehow we were the only ones going out for our parts.

“David, before you go,” Mr. Dutton said. “Are you going out for baseball?”

“Yes, and that’ll take priority. I plan to play both football and baseball in college.”

“I’m worried that you might not learn your lines. Do you think you’ll be able to have them ready for the play?” he asked.

“That’s a legitimate question,” I said.

Halle gave me a hard look. She knew I wasn’t above wiggling out of this commitment. I wouldn’t quit, but if they didn’t cast me, I’d be fine with that.

“Act 2, Scene 2. My line is: ‘I’m not mad at you,’” Halle said.

“‘You’ve been treating me so funny lately.’”

“‘Well, since you ask me, I might as well say it right out, George.’”

I paused and looked at her. She gave me a smile.

“Your line is: ‘Goodbye, Miss Corcoran’,” I prompted.

“I’ll make sure he learns his lines and that he shows up for dress rehearsals,” Halle told Mr. Dutton.

“Do you know all your lines already?” Mr. Dutton asked.

I gave him a weak smile. I could claim I did, but I knew why Halle had picked that scene. It was the one where she got to tell me off. It seemed my character was a baseball star and had gotten too big for his britches, according to Halle’s character, Emily’s, opinion. She also said that she expected my character to be perfect.

“The script isn’t that long,” I said, and turned to Halle. “What is it, 119 pages?”

She nodded.

“I’ve got a month or more. I should be fine,” I said.

I also knew that Halle would make sure. We were both nervous about doing a live performance. We normally did numerous takes. That didn’t mean we didn’t know our lines; we did. It just meant we had to get it in one take.

I wasn’t worried about my scenes with Halle. She and I had worked together enough that I was sure we’d do well. What worried me were the other actors. I didn’t really have a lot of time to spend working with them. Play practice was the same time as baseball practice. I’d never known Moose to take a back seat for anything. He certainly wouldn’t let me skip out of practice for a school play. Maybe I could arrange to meet them after baseball or on weekends. We would see.

When I got home, there were cars parked on the street at our house. I came in and found my dad, uncle, grandma, Caryn and Fritz eating Monical’s pizza. I saw they had polished off all but one slice.

“Seriously?!” I complained.

“Check the oven,” Grandma Dawson said.

I knew someone loved me. There was a whole pizza in the oven. I made myself a salad so I wouldn’t eat just pizza. I noticed that Mom and Peggy were missing.

“Where’s Mom?” I asked.

“She took Peggy and Little David shopping with Pam and Lacy. They’re furnishing the baby’s room,” Dad said.

I hated to think what that would cost, but it was for my son, so I just kept my mouth shut. I knew if I complained, my dad would tell Mom.

They let me eat before the talk began. I wasn’t surprised when Fritz took the lead.

“I think we should use this weekend as a wake-up call. David needs to have security with him when he leaves the house,” Fritz said.

“I was surrounded by state police all weekend,” I tried.

“Who were there to protect the governor and Senator Dixon,” my grandma said.

“David, this is happening,” Dad said. “I’ll admit I was glad you followed what Fritz told you to do, as far as notification went, but you were two hours away from him being able to be there.”

“It also highlights that even though you didn’t do anything, unexpected things happen,” Uncle John said.

I pointed at Caryn.

“What?” she asked.

“Oh, I thought it was your turn to pile on,” I said.

Dad smacked me in the back of my head, to the amusement of everyone else.

“Actually, it was my turn,” Fritz said with a smile. “I’ll bring some of my team from California here. They’ll rotate in every couple of weeks until we find someone local. I also want you riding in that giant SUV you just bought.”

“But...” I began.

“We’ll figure out something when your son’s born. For now, Peggy would rather drive your jeep,” Dad said.

“I’ll also need the SUV for the next few days to make some modifications. I’ll pick you up in the morning and drive you to school,” Fritz said.

I knew there was no use fighting it. I just shrugged my acceptance.

“Now we need to talk about the reason we’re really here,” Dad said.

That had my attention. It was now Caryn’s turn.

“The Mouse told me what she said to you.”

“That’s not a very nice nickname,” I deflected.

“She answers to it,” Caryn said.

“David’s right. Megan should be treated professionally,” Dad said.

“Well, if we’re done, I have homework,” I said as I got up to leave.

“Sit down,” Dad said, in a voice that was not to be denied.

I sat.

“Tell us what’s going on,” Grandma Dawson said.

I debated whether to say anything, but I saw that Fritz looked uncomfortable. I wondered if he’d already told them. I took a deep breath. I now knew why my mom wasn’t here. If she had been, the jig would’ve been up and Brandon would know I was coming after him.

“On a recruiting trip, I took Alan and Tami with me. They had different things for us to do for evening entertainment, so we didn’t go to the same parties. When I got back to the hotel, I found them both naked and passed out in my bed.

“Megan told me that she suspected Brandon Rigby had slipped something in their drinks and staged them to make it look like the two of them had sex. I honestly thought they had, at the time. What I now suspect happened is much more sinister: I think Brandon raped Tami,” I said.

By everyone’s reaction, Megan and Fritz hadn’t spilled the beans.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Did you call the police?” Uncle John asked.

“It’s not that simple. I have no proof of what happened to Tami. I got some help and found out more about Brandon. It seems he was in the equivalent of a fraternity at Harvard. Over the last couple of years, there have been multiple complaints of rape made against members of his frat, but no one ever put together that they might all be related.

“After I obtained the information, I talked to Bev Mass, and she contacted the DA in charge of the area where Harvard is. They’d taken the investigations far enough to obtain rape kits, but none of them were ever processed, for one reason or another. I paid to get all the kits analyzed. Bev told me this weekend that there is a connection. The only problem is they don’t have DNA from Brandon or the other fraternity members in the system, so they don’t know who did it,” I said.

“Can’t they just take it from him?” Caryn asked.

“You would think so, but apparently you’re innocent until proven guilty. If they had a better case, they could compel him to provide DNA. Bev said that now that they know there are links between the multiple rapes, the police would become more aggressive in their investigation to build the needed case to get the DNA so it can be compared. She said to give it some time so they could do their job,” I said.

“When do you plan to tell Tami?” Uncle John asked.

“I’ll tell Tami and Alan when I’ve either dealt with the situation myself, or the police do their job,” I said.

“David!” my grandma and dad said at the same time.

“I’ll help him, if it comes to that,” Fritz said.

“You can’t tell Mom,” I said. “If she knew, we’d have to bail her out of jail and Brandon might do a runner. It’s been all I can do not to confront him, but Fritz and Bev have convinced me that putting him in jail is the better option.”

Everyone agreed. I actually felt a lot better with everyone knowing. Now I could go to them and talk if I needed to.

The baby-shopping group arrived after I went up to my apartment to study. They all came up to show me what they’d bought. They showed me pictures of furniture that would be delivered. Thank goodness I didn’t have to put it together. Pam had also bought more maternity clothes. She was starting to get bigger.

I admit I nodded and smiled a lot. I think that was the appropriate response when four women went into baby mode and all talked at once. I mean, surely they didn’t expect me to follow the conversation. All I knew was that I’d just spent a chunk of money, but they seemed happy about it, so I was too.

Wednesday February 24

Ari had sent the movie numbers for the week. We’d been pounded by Deadpool, which only did $132 million. We came in sixth at six million. He said that we had been pulled from theaters. Caryn had been learning more about the movie business, and found a website called Deadline that seemed to have accurate information. Star Academy grossed $188.7 million in North America and $349.3 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $538 million, against a budget of $100 million. Deadline calculated the net profit of the film to be $91.6 million, after factoring together all expenses and revenues.

Both Ari and Caryn were happy. Star Academy’s numbers meant that I was now associated with an action movie that made money in my first venture. Ari confirmed that was why I’d made the cut for the role of Han Solo.

I’d been given the information for the next audition in London. Mom went with me the last time I went to the UK. I was surprised when Dad stood his ground and said he was going with me this time. For some reason, Caryn claimed that since she was my manager, she would go instead of Kendal. Ari and his wife were also going.

The James Bond movie was in limbo. I’d been signed, but there was a power play going on. EON (an abbreviation of Everything or Nothing) Productions had done 24 James Bond movies that altogether grossed over $7 billion. MGM and Columbia Pictures had co-distributed the film series since 2006. Sony Pictures Entertainment is the parent company of Columbia Pictures. MGM filed for bankruptcy; following MGM’s emergence from insolvency, Columbia had been its co-production partner of the series with Danjaq until Sony’s distribution rights to the franchise came to an end with the release of Spectre.

Since the Sony deal ended, there’s been a fight to see who’ll take over, or whether Sony can hang on. Daniel Craig, the lead, decided to play hardball. He had a small child at home and didn’t want to be away for eight months, as he’d been for the filming of Spectre. He floated the idea of doing two movies at once. The current offer on the table was reported to be $100 million for him to do the two films.

Ari was about to do a happy dance when he told me that. He said that he’d begun to lay the groundwork for future Bond films. If we got the first one done with me as the son of James Bond, he planned to push to have the old James Bond retire and his son take over the family business. I personally thought they might just replace Daniel Craig, like they had so many other James Bond leading men. With the success of Star Academy, Ari thought we had a good chance.

Secretly, I would love to be the next Bond. It was the type of part you could be typecast in and never look back. I could do ten films in the next eighteen years and retire a happy man at the ripe old age of 35. I’d then be old enough to run for president. Sometimes my fantasies run away with me.

At lunch, I did something I hadn’t done in a long time: I asked someone out on a date. This was the first phase of my plan to get a girlfriend. I needed to know my potential honey better. The one I hadn’t spent enough time with was Zoe, so I asked her out.

Halle cornered me in our Principles of Business class.

“I need some info on your date with Zoe. Where do you plan to take her?”

I cocked my head.

“Look, I was sent because I told them you wouldn’t shoot me. Tracy told us how you reacted to some girl last year that wanted the information on her date with you. Zoe needs to know what to wear and the rest,” Halle said, and then gave me an evil smile.

I think she enjoyed teasing me.

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” I admitted. “I guess I’d take her out for dinner and a movie.”

“You know our movie isn’t in theaters anymore?”

I gave her credit for keeping a straight face.

“Really? How will I work my magic if she doesn’t see my impressive package on the big screen?”

“You mean your big butt,” Halle corrected.

If Mr. Quiroz hadn’t been droning on about income statements, she might have been in trouble.

“Okay, wise one, what should I do?” I asked.

“Thank you. I was afraid you might mess this up. Dinner’s a nice idea, but you need to do something where you two can talk. Sitting in a movie won’t accomplish that,” Halle said.

“I could do what I did on the last date. I liked how that went,” I suggested.

How is it that girls can ignore what you say if they don’t like it?

“You could take her to church,” Halle suggested, just to be mean.

“Why don’t I just ask her?” I asked.

“I was just getting started,” Halle said, and then gave me a look. “When is my date?”

“You could come over tonight and we could practice our lines,” I suggested.

“I accept, but I want a real date.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, and I’ll plan it. It’s obvious you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I suppose I’ll have to take Brook out as well,” I said, trying to think things through.

“No. I don’t think Brook would want a date,” Halle said.

I just rolled my eyes. Halle wouldn’t be my go-to person to plan any of the other girls’ dates. I was smart enough to figure that one out.

I was now skipping sixty minutes of hell to get in more baseball practice. Official team practices would start Friday, and our first game was on the road at Washington in just a few weeks.

I was really glad I’d talked to Moose early on. I was also lucky we had the Field House. It saved me from the drive to State to be able to practice indoors in bad weather, and the weather at the end of February was hit-or-miss at best. The best part about it for me, though, was it made it easier for me to keep my focus on baseball in the middle of an increasingly crazy schedule of other things people were piling on me. The Field House actually was becoming something of a sanctuary for me.

Well, maybe I was helping other people keep the schedule crazy. I thought if it got to be too much, and all else failed, I’d hide in Duke’s cage with him.

Moose had found a modification to the pitching machine that would allow it to hold a hundred balls now. It saved a lot of time reloading every couple of minutes. When I wasn’t batting, Moose spent his time showing me how to play the outfield. Center fielders tended to be smaller, fast guys. I was unique in that I had the size you’d expect your right fielder to have. Typically, your right fielder was a guy my size who was just in the lineup for his bat.

Moose wanted me to play a more shallow center field, because he knew I could get on my horse and chase down longer fly balls. The advantage of playing a shallower center field was my arm strength. I could in essence support the infield up the middle.

The disadvantage was I had to react quickly. A line shot in the gap could get past me and turn into extra bases. Moose didn’t plan to have me play in a nontraditional way every time, but he wanted it to be in his bag of tricks if it were needed. There were specific situations, like less than two outs with a runner at third, where your infield tightened up to prevent the runner from scoring. He could shift me up to help cover the ball up the middle. From shallow center field, I had the arm that could gun down someone trying to take home.

The other thing Moose had me work on was stealing bases. I worked with the pitchers to get my timing down.

Moose was excited about the coming year. He couldn’t wait to be able to actively coach us. What he was doing now was sort of like open gym. Of course, if you wandered over and talked some baseball, that was okay.

Fritz picked up Halle, Brook, Cassidy and me, and took us to the dojo. He normally drove Halle to and from school. She and I had been riding together while Fritz did what he needed to my car. So far he’d had them remove the storage area for the center console and had a gun safe installed in its place. It was both code- and fingerprint-activated. His people didn’t have concealed-carry permits for our state yet. He explained that if things went bad, I could get to a gun if needed. I really didn’t want to think of that scenario.

The next step was the electronics, which consisted of built-in cameras for both external and internal monitoring purposes, as well as tracking devices. In the back seat there was to be a tablet mounted that would allow the back-seat occupants to see each camera angle and determine if it was safe to exit. It could double as an entertainment and Internet access device. How I wish I’d had one of these for long trips when I was a kid. I told Fritz to install them in the back of each front seat like they had in the Charger, as well as in the backs of the second-row seats. My son was going to be spoiled.

I saw they’d put the medical bag in the back that Tami had put together for me when we’d been in New Orleans. Fritz had been impressed when he found it. He planned to get a similar setup for all the LA cars that Rita used.

When we were done at the dojo, Fritz took Cassidy and Brook home. I invited Halle and Fritz to stay for dinner because Rita was in LA, working on the film. We walked in, and Little David was having a meltdown.

“Oh, thank God,” Dad said.

“What’s wrong, Little Guy?” I asked, as I picked him up out of his high chair.

He wouldn’t stop, so I blew in his face. That startled him, and he stiffened up and his eyes got really big.

“What did you just do?” Peggy asked.

“Blew in his face. I do similar things to Duke to get his attention,” I said as I bounced him around and looked into his eyes.

He relaxed and laid his head against my chest.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Little David knocked his bottle off the tray and it landed on Duke. Duke about knocked over the high chair getting away,” Dad said.

“Is Duke okay?” I asked.

Mom just shook her head. When I was little, if I heard a story where there was an animal involved, my first concern was whether the animal was okay. Dad still shared the story where he told me how a bull had gotten out, and when they tried to catch him he’d attempted to stomp a farmhand. Dad would use a little boy’s voice— “Was the bull okay?”—to describe my antics.

I found Duke in the living room with milk all over his back. I used a washcloth to clean him up. As I did that, he gave Little David puppy kisses, which made him giggle. I then had to get another washcloth to clean the dog slobber off Little David. Both of the babies now seemed to be okay.

I tried to put Little David back into the high chair, but he needed me, so I ate my dinner with him in my lap. He was happily babbling up a storm. Then I heard “dada.” Dinner was soon forgotten.

“Did he just say ‘dada’?” I asked.

“Dada,” Little David said again, clear as day.

“Yeah, I’m your ‘dada,’” I said, and found I had tears in my eyes.

I’d never even thought about how much Little David meant to me. He kept saying “dada.” I knew it could just have easily been ‘yaya’ or ‘baba.’ He had no idea what he was saying, just that when he said “dada” to me, I made a big deal out of it. It tugged at my heartstrings to have him call me that. I knew in that moment that he was as much my son as my own would be.

Peggy took him from me so I could eat. She put him on the floor with Duke. We’d given up on the playpen, because Duke would hop in with him every chance he got. He was super gentle with Little David, and it was common to find Little David curled up having a nap with his furry friend. I took a lot of pictures of the two of them together.

After dinner, Halle and I went to my apartment to practice our lines. Acting was her craft, so she took it very seriously. I was glad she was serious, because her professional approach made me crack down, too. Memorizing the lines was the easy part. She and I broke down each scene and talked about how it should be done. Normally the director would do that. Halle told me that Mr. Dutton had let her do pretty much whatever she wanted, so I bowed to her lead and did what I was told.

We were deep into Act I when she got a text.

“Crap,” she mumbled.

“What’s wrong?”

“Look at the time.”

It was 11:30. Where did the last several hours go?

“Send Fritz a text back to bring you clothes in the morning,” I said.

“How did you know it was Fritz?” she asked.

“Who else could it be?”

“Oh,” was her witty response.

Then her brain kicked into gear and realized what I’d just suggested.

“Oh, you’re going to get me into trouble.”

“Halle, what do you want to do?” I asked, and waggled my eyebrows at her.

She looked down at her phone and sent a text. One came back and she responded to it.

“Pam, Brook and Zoe are going to kill me. I feel like you’re corrupting me,” she admitted.

“Hang on. The only way they’ll find out is if you tell them. If you end up dying, it’s your own fault. Secondly...” I said, and then pulled her in for a passionate kiss.

Of course I would corrupt her, but she wanted to be corrupted. She became quite a vocal and active participant in her corruption. I took my time to worship her body. She wasn’t like Brook, who was much more athletic and rowdy in bed. Zoe was like a kid in a candy store who had never had any before—she wanted to try every kind. Pam was my surfer-mama who was fun to be with.

Halle was the queen of passion. She took her time and let things build. There were long, lingering kisses and endless little butterfly kisses all over my body. We both just indulged each other and worked to bring enjoyment. We found ourselves in a sixty-nine position, and she was lavishing my cock with licks, kisses and little sucks. She never took me in her mouth. She used her fingernails to tease me right where my balls met my body. She about drove me wild.

I finally had enough and attacked her sex.

“David! David! DavID! DAVID!” she screeched as she came.

I was playing the song in my mind: “Say my name, say my name!”

I was gloating about winning when she took my cock in her mouth. It was like when Scooby Doo sees a ghost. “Ruh roh, Raggy!”

“Halle! Halle! Halleeeee! HALLE!” I howled as Old Faithful erupted.

“Jesus, David,” Halle complained as she got out of bed to go clean up.

She came back and straddled my waist.

“Condom,” I warned.

“Brook said you promised to use one if you weren’t sure. I think you can be sure of me,” she said as she sat down on my member.

Mr. Happy told me not to worry about it, but the big head remembered what had happened with Pam.

“Hang on, we need to talk about this,” I said.

“I’m protected, so what’s to talk about?”

Good point, Mr. Happy assured me. Fuck it, I was going to Hell. Halle slowly rode my cock all the way up and down. Her pussy was made for me. I let her drive for now, because I couldn’t do it any better. The sensation without the condom made things altogether too short, but we both had an orgasm.

Sex with Halle was better than a sleeping pill. I fell asleep right away.

Thursday February 25

Tracy found me first thing. She saw Halle and me get out of my car and Fritz drive off. I could tell Tracy needed to talk.

“You two had sex,” Tracy said.

I just shrugged. Tracy knew I wouldn’t tell her, but I couldn’t figure out how she knew.

“My dad took a job in Chicago. He’s going to work with your lawyer, Ms. Dixon,” she said.

“What about his clients?” I asked.

I wasn’t sure how it worked. He was in charge of the Entertainment Division, and I’d gotten him several clients. I didn’t want them to fall into the wrong hands.

“I don’t know the details,” she admitted.

I’d have Caryn find out. I knew Tracy was worried she might have to move.

“Your dad’s gonna let you stay here to finish out high school, isn’t he?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Look, I know how important Pam is to you. I promise you that you won’t have to move away, even if I have to have you move in with me.”