Chapter 12
CHOKING ON THE DOTTED LINE
I just sit there, staring at the contract.
I’m squeezing the lawyer’s fancy pen so hard, my knuckles turn pinkish white. They sort of look like boiled shrimp.
“Take your time, Jamie,” says Joe Amodio. “But I only have the helicopter till noon. Then it has to go do traffic reports.”
I nod. And stare. And choke some more.
Do I really want to do this?
Do I want to take my life and turn it into a half hour’s worth of lame jokes every week?
What if they want me to say or do things I don’t want to say or do?
What if they want to do a sappy show about how I ended up in my wheelchair, which is something I don’t want to talk about on national TV?
“Well, Jamie?” says Mr. Amodio, snapping me out of my thoughts.
“We’re ready and raring to go,” adds Ms. Wilder.
“Just need you to sign on the dotted line,” says the lawyer who handed me the pen. He has another pen (this one’s silver) up and ready to go, just in case I don’t like the gold one clutched in my hand.
“Um,” I say, “if it’s okay with you guys, I’d like to think this over.”
“Think?” says Joe Amodio. “We’re from Hollywood. We don’t do that.”
“Well,” says Uncle Frankie, pushing the stack of papers back across the table toward Mr. Amodio, “here in Long Beach, we don’t rush into anything, except the Atlantic Ocean on Super Bowl Sunday.”
That makes me smile. Uncle Frankie is a member of the Long Beach Polar Bear Club. Every year, they go for a frigid swim to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Joe Amodio sits down. Snaps his fingers.
Another lawyerly looking guy pops open another briefcase. He hands Mr. Amodio another stack of papers.
“I didn’t want to bring this up,” says the producer. “But, well, you sort of forced my hand.”
“Bring what up?” says Uncle Frankie.
“The fine print.” Joe Amodio taps several paragraphs thick with tiny type, the kind you agree to every time you download a new version of iTunes. “You signed this when you won the million dollars out in Hollywood, remember, Jamie?”
I nod. Nervously. “I thought it was like a receipt.”
Mr. Amodio grins. Shakes his head. “It was a contract.”
“Legal and binding,” adds the lawyer. “In all fifty states, Puerto Rico, and Guam.”
“What kind of contract?” asks Uncle Frankie.
“For this TV show. That million-dollar prize wasn’t really a ‘prize.’ It was an advance.”
“An advance?” I say. “What does that mean?”
“It means, Mr. Grimm,” says the lawyer, “that Mr. Amodio has already paid you, in advance, to perform in this pilot.”
Because I’ve already spent a lot of Mr. Amodio’s money.
On Smileyville 2 and Uncle Frankie’s diner.
If I have to give Mr. Amodio his money back, we might all have to live in Uncle Frankie’s van. That wouldn’t be much fun. We’d have to cook dinner over the heat vents.
And… I’d have to sleep next to Stevie.
It’s not much of a choice.