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Max agonized over the application. It would be just his luck to miss out on the greatest chance ever because he skipped a line, or forgot to dot an / or cross a t. Everything had to be perfect.
Carefully, he block printed his contact information-cursive was out of the question. He gave the address of his father's veterinary practice, since SUITE 1H had a very professional sound to it. Maybe they'd think it belonged to a high-powered agent with an eye for young talent. For Name , on a whim he put MAX COMEDY.
He sat back and looked at it. It appealed to him. A lot of the great performers had stage names. He frowned critically. It was missing something. He took his pen and added another x on the end of MAX.
"Max Carmody" was just some kid from Bartonville, Ohio. But MAXX COMEDY looked like a rising star!
There was only one thing left to do for this application, and it was a biggie. Max had to submit a three-minute videotape or DVD of his act. After viewing all the auditions, the judges would decide which thirty finalists would be given performance slots at the Balsam Auditorium on November sixteenth.
"Big, your folks have a video camera, right?" he said the next day before homeroom.
Big Byrd took an instant shine to the idea. "I'll be the director," he decided. "Maude, you can executive produce, and well get Sydni to handle casting—"
'Tm the cast," Max interrupted. "It's just me doing my act."
An agitated low whistling sound began to emanate from Big's nose. A few years ago, the tall boy had undergone an operation to correct chronic respiratory infections. He still had tubes in his sinus
canals, which he could sometimes play like a built-in kazoo.
"I don't know if I can work under these conditions," he told Max anxiously. "I don't want to get involved in a low-budget project."
"You won't," Max assured him, "because this is a no-budget project." He turned to Maude. "How about you?"
"Do you need a steady hand for that?" Maude asked nervously.
"Oh, no," Max said sarcastically. "It's much better when the camera's shaking all over the place and you can't tell what's going on!"
The three glanced up as Sydni came running down the hall, her face shining with excitement.
"Guys! Guys! Guess what? You are looking at the new assistant refreshments chairperson for the student council!"
This was a big deal for Sydni, who had been student president of their elementary class. She was having trouble getting used to being a nobody as a sixth grader in middle school.
"It's over," Maude predicted. "You'll drop us like a hot potato if you ever fall in with that crowd."
"It doesn't work that way," Sydni insisted. "You
know how the president of the United States gets to take all his loser friends and give them cushy jobs in the White House? Well, it's the same in middle school. You guys could end up popular because of me."
"Those student-council types would never accept us," Maude said flatly.
"They just don't know you yet," Sydni argued. "Look at Big. A lot of kids think he's a nutcase, but deep down . . ."
Her voice trailed off. Big had formed a rectangular camera frame with his thumbs and forefingers, and was scanning the hallway, "filming" the students who passed by. The strains of "Hooray for Hollywood" tooted through his nasal tubes.
"Listen," she began again, "I couldn't get elected dogcatcher at this school. So I have to make the right connections. Do you know who the chief refreshments person is? Only Amanda Locke, that's who!"
Maude was instantly alert. "Isn't that Madison Locke's younger sister?"
"Exactly!" exclaimed Sydni. "Madison was student council president last year. She's in high school now."
Maude's jaw stiffened like the scoop of a power
shovel. "Madison Locke! Do you know what she had the classlessness to say to me?"
"When did you ever talk to Madison Locke?" asked Big.
"Four years ago/ 7 Maude shot back. "I was standing by the jungle gym in the playground at elementary school, and she walked by and said, 7 Nice pants. 7 Just like that!"
"Maybe she liked your pants," Max suggested.
"She said it with disdain," Maude insisted. "She said it like I don't know how to dress."
"You were seven years old!" Max argued impatiently. "I'll bet you didn't know how to tie your shoes, either!"
"Ever since that day," Maude continued bitterly, "my life has been a procession of snobs who treat me like snail slime. And don't think I'll ever forget that it all started with Madison Locke!"
Sydni cast her a scornful look. "You're weird."
"This isn't getting my video made," Max complained. "The deadline is in two weeks."
Big ran a hand through his scarecrow-yellow hair. "I don't know if I can deal with this time pressure."
Max blew his stack. "It's a three-minute video.
not The Lord of the Rings'. You just point the camera. I'll do the rest."
. . So you have to ask yourself: is it that all gym teachers naturally grow whistles around their necks? Or is it that all whistles somehow grow gym teachers?
"Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. You've been a fantastic audience! Good night!"
Max pressed the pause button on the Plunketts' VCR. The image froze. "What do you think? It's funny enough, right?"
Sydni shrugged. "I guess so. It seemed to be sort of kind of okay."
Big helped himself to a handful of Mrs. Plunkett's cookies. "I'll put a powerful spotlight behind you next time. You'll look like Hercules!"
"I don't want to look like Hercules," Max complained. "I want to look like Jay Leno doing his monologue."
"It didn't come out like that," said Sydni thoughtfully.
Maude snapped her fingers. "You know what's missing?"
"Flash bombs!" put in Big. "Every time you tell a joke, booml"
"There's no laughing," Maude went on. "Here's all this stuff that's supposed to be funny, but nobody's laughing."
"Of course nobody's laughing!" Max exploded. "Nobody's there! There was no audience when we shot it!"
"I was there," said Maude. "What am I—chopped liver?"
"You're only one person," Max retorted. "And besides, you never laugh, because you take all the jokes too personally."
Maude bristled. "How can I laugh at gym teachers? Every gym teacher I've ever had hated me. You know why? Because I think. I ask questions like, Why do they call it dribbling ? If I had spaghetti sauce running down my chin, would I call it bouncing1"
Max frowned. "I see what you guys mean. Without audience reaction, the rhythm is off. But where am I going to find an audience? I can't send in a whole tape of Teletubby jokes in front of Olivia and the diaper squad. Besides, they don't laugh."
The quest began to reshoot the tape in front of a crowd.
At school, the only teacher willing to volunteer his whole class as guinea pigs was Mr. Mancuso,
who presided over in-school suspension. Max performed his routine for as tough a group of hard cases as any prison would have been able to come up with. They didn't laugh. In fact, they threw things. One of them shook down Maude for her lunch money.
"Stand up to him!" Sydni urged. "We can take that guy!"
"Oh # sure," said Maude. "He's a foot taller than me. I can't even see his head from down here." Maude was short and squat with a perpetually aggrieved expression.
In the end, Sydni faced down the burly eighth grader alone. Brashly, she ordered him to "hand over that money or suffer the consequences!"
He just laughed. "Says who?"
"The President's Council on In-School Civility," she said evenly. "It's a commission set up by the federal government to investigate bullying in public schools."
Big was in awe as his friend strode away, the bills clutched tightly in her fist.
"Sydni, that was amazing! How did you find out about the President's Council on In-School Civility?"
"Just keep walking," she muttered through
clenched teeth. "And pray he doesn't look it up on the Internet."
The Bartonville Seniors Center provided a willing, but not very able, audience for Max. There were a few polite chuckles, and a scattering of applause, and hardly anyone walked out of the lounge where the performance took place. But most of the jokes were drowned out by one man in the back row, whose foghorn voice kept repeating, "What did he say? What did he say?"
Every day after school, Max, Maude, Sydni, and Big prowled the streets of Bartonville in search of a group of people who needed a good laugh. Max accepted without question that his three friends would be there to support him, even though they all thought his idea made no sense. The four were so completely different that each one's interests seemed almost alien to the other three. Yet they always showed up, even Maude, who complained every inch of the way.
No one was in much of a mood for comedy while waiting in line to pay traffic tickets at the county courthouse. At the supermarket, shoppers hid their faces behind magazines, and ignored Max
as if he were doing something shameful.
They did better at the library, until Max was shushed halfway through his routine. A command performance at the firehouse might have been a success if it hadn't been for a comedy-hating Dalmatian. And the manager at the local bank called the police, and had Max and his crew escorted from the building.
"Hey, officer," said Big conversationally, "how full is your jail? You think any of the prisoners like comedy?"
They let him off with a warning.
Max was getting panicky. "What kind of a sad- sack town is this? Nobody wants to laugh!"
Big had another idea. "What if we shoot you doing your act to a brick wall? Get it? Talk to the wall?"
"Only if the wall is going to laugh at my jokes!" growled Max. "What am I going to do? The deadline is practically a week away!"
"We'll keep trying," Maude promised.
"Count me out," said Sydni seriously. "I've got my first job for the refreshment committee this weekend. It's the annual student council-PTA joint meeting, where they plan events for the whole year. You guys promised to help, remember?"
"Now, wait a minute," said Max. 'Tm in the middle of getting ready for the biggest thing that's ever happened to me. No way would I volunteer to push brownies at the student council."
"Well, okay, so you didn't," Sydni admitted. "But I need you guys! It's at Amanda Locke's place. She lives in that huge old farmhouse outside of town. I can't handle it all by myself."
"Is Madison going to be there?" Maude asked tensely.
Sydni turned on her. "Maude Dolinka, if you embarrass me in front of the student council, there won't be enough left of you to fill up a doggie bag!"
"Do you want my help or don't you?" she shot right back.
"I know!" said Big. "W'e'll put hidden messages on the tape—you know, stuff like 'This would be a heck of a lot funnier if there was an audience."'
Max put his hands over his ears. He could see the deadline hurtling toward him like a comet.
How was he ever going to get his entry done?