12

Cathy

The next day at school was wild. Everyone had seen me on TV and they crowded around me at my locker wanting to know everything about it. “When did you find out your dog could talk?” “What does it feel like to be able to talk to him?” “You were on TV! We saw you on TV!”

“Okay, Cathy,” Derek said with a sneer. “What’s the secret?”

“What secret?” I asked.

“How do they do the magic trick with the dog?”

“He really talks,” I told him.

Derek just rolled his eyes to heaven. “Yeah, sure. I saw your dad’s lips move,” he said. “He does the voice, right?”

“Larry has his own voice,” I said.

“No way!” he said. And he laughed.

The other kids started to laugh as I slammed my locker shut. That was when Lily came up behind me.

“Don’t pay attention to Derek. You know what a dork he is.”

“You believe me, don’t you, Lily? You know it’s no trick.”

“Sure, Cathy. I totally believe you. It’s so cool!” Lily said and we walked to the cafeteria together.

The rest of the day was the same. Some kids thought it was awesome, and others didn’t believe it was real. But I told myself it didn’t matter because I knew by four o’clock I’d be at rehearsal. My job was to keep everybody organized.

When I got to the studio, Dad and Larry were practicing their steps. Five, six, seven, eight . . . The sight of the two of them out there on the floor twirling and dancing while they sang made me laugh so much my stomach hurt. And if you don’t think it’s funny, picture your own dad and your own dog learning to do dance routines together. I love Dad, but he’s kind of clumsy. And who would have ever imagined that Larry would be so graceful? It was as if he’d been waiting for this moment his whole life.

Jamie, the choreographer, was crazy about Larry from the start. He was not so crazy about Dad, whose name he kept getting wrong.

“Uh, Tim,” he said to Dad, “perhaps you should just move from side to side during this verse while Larry has a solo?”

“Call me Tom,” my dad said, nodding. He stepped back while the choreographer taught Larry his solo, which included not just some heavy-duty dance steps, but a backflip. And Larry mastered it all in less than a minute.

“Whoa! This mutt is magnificent,” Artie said, elbowing me. Dad had insisted that Artie be hired as the musical director of the act. Poor Artie still hadn’t gotten past his shock that Larry could talk, and every now and then he’d kind of cluck his tongue in amazement and say, “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

Greg the piano player was great, and I liked Jamie even though he kept getting Dad’s name wrong. Artie had written some arrangements that made Dad and Larry sound good too. It was amazing. They were starting to be a real act!

I didn’t like Linda, though. She came in with some hats and jackets she thought “the guys” should wear onstage. The hats were sparkly, glittery, silver baseball caps with T and L on the front, but she thought they should wear them backward. And the jackets were short little bolero things. Dad couldn’t even get his on. But when I put the jacket and hat on Larry, everyone went wild over how cute he looked.

“Well, we’d certainly better rethink these outfits,” said Jamie, trying not to laugh. “Ted looks like one of the elephants in Fantasia!”

“That’s Tom who looks like an elephant,” Dad said. Then he sighed. “Look, maybe I wasn’t cut out for this. I’m a guy who likes being behind the scenes and I . . .”

Just then Larry jumped on the table and in one big gesture brushed the silver hats and jackets to the floor.

“First of all,” Larry announced, “we are not going to agree to a costume until we find one that looks great on both of us. And will everyone kindly get his name right? He is Tom. Not Ted. Not Tim. Tom! Anyone who can’t remember that can work somewhere else!”

Everyone got quiet after that. Dad’s jaw even unclenched a little.

“Relax, Tom. We’re gonna be great!” Larry said. “And, Linda, Tom and I decide what we wear and what we sing. And we’re going to rock the audience right out of their seats. Hats or no hats.

“You can do this, Tom, I know you can,” Larry said in a voice that sounded like he got it from a character in one of those old movies he watched at night when he had the TV remote to himself. “We’re going to go out there as youngsters, but we’ve got to come back as stars.”

“I love that!” my dad said, throwing an arm around Larry. “That’s brilliant!”

“Ahhh, I stole it from the movie 42^nd Street,” Larry admitted. “Which is where I picked up all my dancing skills, by the way.”

Jamie chuckled at that. “Hah! Too bad Todd didn’t watch it with you; it would have made my life easier.”

“That’s Tom,” Larry said.

“I knew that,” Jamie said. But I was pretty sure he didn’t.