Pinch Hit Read online

  “Baseball, remember? I’ve got league games on Tuesdays and the Blue Sox.” Sam had gotten over the strange name of his travel team weeks ago. “I’ve got practice or a game three or four nights a week, and tournaments on the weekends. What if these movie shoots run over? And sometimes we practice during the day, like Friday. Friday we practice in the morning.”

  “Baseball is a game.”

  “It’s a game I love,” Sam said. “It’s a game you can make tens of millions of dollars at, hundreds even.”

  His father laughed out loud.

  “That’s a long shot, Sam. We’ve talked about this.” His father waved a hand around the fancy office and toward the lot outside.

  Sam dropped his voice. “A script for a horror film is a long shot, too.”

  His father scowled. “Hey, this is my life’s work. It’s my dream, and Dark Cellar is the one, Sam.”

  “What about my dream?” Sam clasped his hands together. “Coach Sharp says I’ve got what it takes.”

  “Coach Sharp.” Sam’s dad swatted an imaginary fly.

  “He played in the pros.”

  Sam’s dad wrinkled his face. “Triple-A.”

  “But he knows. He says I can make it. Dad, three weeks and we’ll be in the finals. If I get the MVP, I get an automatic spot in the USC Elite Training Center. Almost everyone who goes through that program gets a scholarship. A lot of them make it to the pros. Dad, that’s my dream. You know all this.”

  Sam had explained to his father in detail how the University of Southern California—USC—held a tournament for the Los Angeles–area players every year. Besides monster trophies, whoever the USC coaches named as the MVP in the finals got an automatic spot in the USC Elite Training Center, something every kid in the area had heard and dreamed of. Making the finals was no guarantee, but the way the season had gone for Sam’s team, it didn’t seem like there was anyone around who could stop them.

  They were interrupted by a knock at the door. Fuller’s assistant marched in and handed a contract to Sam’s dad. She smiled and stared at Sam for a minute, obviously impressed with her boss’s discovery. After she walked out, Sam’s dad studied the contract and licked his lips.

  “There’s no reason you can’t do both. You can miss a Blue Sox practice every once in a while, and the league games don’t matter that much. Sam, we could really use this money.”

  His father waved the contract in the air.

  Sam bit his lower lip. “Dad, if I do this, will you promise I can play with my team? Maybe practice I can miss once in a while, but I can’t miss a Saturday game, even if they say I have to work. Will you promise?”

  Sam’s dad got a serious look on his face. “Sam, I’ve spent my whole life chasing my dream. I’m not going to keep you from yours.”

  Sam grinned at his father, but in his heart he knew that if push came to shove, the movie business took first place in his father’s mind. Baseball was a very distant second. His father laid the contract down on the edge of Fuller’s desk and scribbled his signature. Then he handed the pen to Sam.

  Sam looked at his father, took a deep breath, and signed on the dotted line.

  7

  TREVOR

  Trevor woke and stared at his ceiling. His mother had hired a famous artist to paint it like the night sky, and he couldn’t stop himself from picking out the many constellations he’d learned about from his tutor. He wondered what it would be like to go to school with other kids instead of spending all the boring hours with a tutor on movies sets, at home, or when they traveled to Paris, his mother’s favorite place in the world. Trevor sighed and got up. He showered, dressed, and then plugged an iPod into his ears so he could listen to music on his way through the house into the breakfast room. Breakfast was always laid out there on elegant silver service trays on a sideboard.

  Trevor took a china plate from the stack and went along the board, picking out crisp bacon, two scoops of scrambled eggs, some tangerine sections, and a blueberry muffin. He carried the plate to the round table nestled into a curve of big bay windows. The view overlooked the terraces that led down to the pool area, complete with its own waterfall. He’d heard people call it beautiful, magnificent, or impressive, but to Trevor the only point of interest were little yellow birds that sometimes hunted insects among the rosebushes.

  His mother appeared in a thick silky robe with a turban on her head. She blinked her puffy eyes and took a plate of her own, filling it with berries before sitting down across from Trevor.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She yawned and winced and took out her phone to check the messages. “Long night, a charity ball. I can never get away from those things without your father. He’s so … so…”

  “Hard-nosed?”

  “I was thinking ‘urbane.’” His mother turned her attention to the phone.

  “Ur-what?”

  “It means elegant, dignified,” she said without looking up. “‘Hard-nosed’ isn’t so nice.”

  “It’s better than what I was really thinking.”

  She looked up and smiled at him and they both laughed until she winced again and clutched her forehead.

  “Headache?”

  “Champagne. It always does that. I’m going back to bed, but I wanted to be a good mother and tell you to have a good day.”

  Trevor wanted to ask her why she always drank champagne if it felt so bad, but he kept quiet. He also knew his mother well enough that her lapse into total silence for the rest of the meal so she could text didn’t offend or upset him. He put his napkin on the plate when he finished and kissed her cheek.

  “It’s only eight-thirty,” she said, looking up. “Is Gabriel getting you early?”

  “Thought I’d hit a few.”

  “You liked that yesterday, right? With the Dodgers?”

  “It was amazing,” Trevor said. “How many people ever get to do that?”

  She squeezed his hand and told him to have a good day, then got back to work on her phone as she climbed the stairs toward her bedroom.

  Out front, the limo waited for him with Dolph and Wolf sitting side by side in the front seat. Gabriel sat in back. When the personal assistant saw Trevor, he jumped out of the car and opened the door.

  “I told you, you don’t have to do that.” Trevor walked past the car and headed for the batting cage.

  “Taylor Lautner liked when I opened the door.” Gabriel caught up to him as he circled the garage.

  “I keep telling you, Gabriel, I’m not Taylor Lautner. Why do you always talk about him?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “He’s the gold standard.”

  Trevor let himself into the cage, put on a helmet, and picked up a bat. One of the unseen workers had reloaded the machine. All Trevor had to do was step up and hit the balls.

  “Do you have to do this?” Gabriel asked.

  “Do you have to ask me that every day? The studio is five minutes away.”

  Gabriel rolled his eyes. Trevor stepped on the footpad that operated the machine. A yellow rubber baseball came shooting out of the tube with a thunk. Trevor swung and hammered the ball past the machine into the netting.

  “Nice,” he said to himself.

  Trevor kept going, pounding pitches until his arms began to ache. It was a good feeling, and it made up for sitting around all day in a dressing room, listening to a tutor, or playing Xbox while he waited for the next scene. Finally, he returned the bat and helmet and left the cage with Gabriel at his side.

  “We’ll be late now.” Gabriel pouted.

  Trevor shook his head.

  Gabriel pointed to himself. “But I’m the one who gets yelled at by Pierce Everette.”

  “He doesn’t yell, and it always works out. We’ve both still got jobs, don’t we?”

  Inside the car, Trevor said hi to Dolph and reached up to scratch Wolf’s head before Gabriel handed him his scenes for the day. They rode in silence to the studio, getting out right in front of the enormous soundstage and walking in through a side door. Trevor’s eyes had to adjust to the darkness, but in just a few moments, the orange glow of the lava pit provided all the light he needed. The stone walls of the cavern and the dragon sculpture with its missing ruby looked really menacing, even though Trevor could see the wooden framework behind it all. It was a busy set, with people scurrying around, touching up this or that or hammering something into place.

  In the middle of the set was his stand-in, well lit and wearing an exact copy of the leather vest and loose white shirt that Trevor would wear for the scene. Trevor stopped for a better look since he knew the old stand-in, Pete, a boy from Santa Monica, had come down with mono and was being replaced. As his eyes continued to adjust, Trevor moved closer. When he saw the new boy’s face, he kept moving, right up into the set until they stood face-to-face.

  Trevor felt a chill, and when he opened his mouth to speak, his breath was gone. Finally, he held out a hand and said, “I’m Trevor. Nice to meet you.”

  The other boy looked hard at Trevor. “I’m… Sam.”

  Trevor felt like he was looking in the mirror, and in the back of his mind he wondered if someone was playing some kind of a trick on him. The handshake was over, or it should have been, but for some reason Trevor couldn’t let go.

  8

  SAM

  “It’s pretty wild,” Sam said. “I feel like I’m looking at myself.”

  Trevor, the movie star, laughed. “I was thinking the exact same thing. I’m glad you’ve got long hair, or they might not be able to tell us apart. Don’t tell me you’ve got a birthmark under that hair.”

  Trevor wore his hair buzzed short. He turned his own head and tugged his collar down, showing Sam a raspberry splotch the size of a silver dollar.

  “No birthmark,” Sam said, using his fingers to raise his hair and expose the back of his own neck as he tucked it into the net they’d given him to keep the hair off his face.

  “Man, aside from that, Central Casting is on the ball, right?” Trevor said.

  “I guess. Yes.”

  “Well,” Trevor said, “you and I won’t get much chance to hang out because when I’m in there, you’re out here and pretty much vice versa. But when we break for lunch, maybe you can come to my dressing room. Do you play Xbox?”

  “Call of Duty,” Sam said. “I like Nazi Zombies.”

  “Cool. Type your number so I can text you when we’re going to play. McKenna Steele plays, too.” Trevor handed Sam his phone. “She’s hooked on Halo Reach, but she’ll play Zombies if you stand your ground.”

  “McKenna Steele?” Sam punched his number into Trevor’s phone.

  “She’s the costar. Here, I’ll send you a blank text so you’ve got my number, too. In case you need anything.”

  “I know who she is,” Sam said, swallowing because his mouth had gone suddenly dry as his heart skipped a beat. “You play Xbox with her?”

  “Her, and you, too, now.”

  “Oh.” Sam jumped when his phone vibrated and he realized it was Trevor’s blank message, establishing contact between them.

  A tall, thin man with a pinched face and blond hair plastered to his skull appeared and spoke to Trevor. “They want you in makeup and … oh!”

  The man stared at Sam.

  “Oh my God.” The man put a hand to his mouth. “Oh my God.”

  “Gabriel, this is Sam,” Trevor said, “the new stand-in. Sam, Gabriel is my assistant. He works for my parents, really. I think they call him my assistant to make me feel better about it. I mean, I’m a little old for a babysitter, right?”

  Sam and Trevor grinned at each other.

  “I can’t believe this,” Gabriel said, looking from Sam to Trevor and back again. “Excuse me.”

  Sam and Trevor watched Gabriel hustle off, pulling a cell phone from his suit coat pocket as he went and dialing someone.

  “He’s a little overdramatic,” Trevor said, “but he’s okay. He worked for my dad for years and then spent a couple years with Taylor Lautner, which I’m sure he’ll tell you about as soon as he gets the chance.”

  “Your dad’s a big movie producer, right?”

  “Yeah, but he’s okay. He’s in Australia now. Some mega-budget space movie with Russell Crowe. It’s a lot bigger than this thing.”

  “This is pretty impressive.” Sam looked around at all the people.

  Trevor shrugged. “They’re only spending about sixty million.”

  Sam blinked at the number. “Hey, I know we just met, but my dad’s in the business, too.”

  “He is?”

  “Well, kind of. He’s a writer. Well, he’s an English teacher, but he’s a writer, too. He’s been writing horror movie scripts for years. He cranks them out like there’s no tomorrow.”

  “Wow,” Trevor said. “I love horror. Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, Halloween, the old-school stuff.”

  “See, that’s what my dad’s into.”

  “What’s he written? Maybe I saw it.”

  Sam suddenly felt the heat from the lights. “Well, he hasn’t had anything made, yet. That’s what I was thinking. I mean, your dad. He might know someone who’s looking to do some old-school horror. My dad’s got this one right now that people are really interested in, Dark Cellar. How good is that name?”

  A blank look fell over Trevor’s face. “Yeah. Sure. No problem. Well, I gotta get to makeup. See you.”

  “Yeah, see you.” Sam watched him go. He could tell that something he said disturbed Trevor. As soon as he began talking about Dark Cellar, everything changed, but Sam had no idea why.

  9

  SAM

  “Don’t worry.”

  Sam spun around to see where the voice had come from.

  It was McKenna Steele.

  Sam recognized her. She had long dark hair, green eyes, and a small upturned nose. Sam wasn’t one to go crazy over girls, but McKenna was beautiful, and even he couldn’t help feeling an electric kind of buzz in his stomach.

  “Oh, hi,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Sam. Sam Palomaki. I’m the stand-in.”

  “I know what you are.” Her hand was smooth and soft and dry. “Now I know who. Palomaki, that’s funny. Not in a bad way. I’m McKenna.”

  “I know.”

  “I was down there, studying my lines, and I heard you and Trevor talking. I saw you were confused, so I thought I’d clear it up for you. When you’re in this business, you shouldn’t ask people for favors about scripts or getting a part for something or other. It always goes through the agents.”

  “I had no idea,” Sam said.

  “I know.” She spoke lightly, and her face was pleasant. “That’s why I’m telling you, not to make you feel bad. Trevor doesn’t know what it’s like to be a normal kid, but I grew up in Seattle. This whole thing is only a couple years old to me. He was born into it.”

  Sam glanced in the direction Trevor had disappeared. “I only wanted to help my dad, you know?”

  “I know,” she said. “Don’t worry. Just let it be for a while. I thought I heard him ask you to play Xbox, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, when we break for lunch, I’ll be there and get everything back to normal. Just don’t bring up your dad’s script again and it’ll all be fine. We’ll be here all summer. Who knows, by the end, maybe I can bring it up indirectly, and then maybe he’ll help.”

  “You? That’s awesome. But you don’t even know me.”

  “I like your face.”

  Sam blushed.

  “Well, I better get to makeup myself,” McKenna said. “Good luck.”

  “I don’t really have to do anything.”

  “I know,” she said. “You’ll be bored out of your mind, and your back will ache from standing in one spot all day. That’s why I say good luck.”

  “How do you know about the backache?” Sam asked.

  McKenna cocked her head at him. “Don’t you know? I started out like you. I was a stand-in, then they ‘discovered’ me. Don’t get your hopes up, though. They’ve already got one of you. Trevor Goldman.”

  Sam knew by her tone that McKenna wasn’t being mean; she was just saying the facts. “I’m a baseball player. I want to play at USC. My team’s in USC’s big tournament this summer. If we get to the finals like everyone thinks we will, and I win the MVP, I get to go to their Elite Training Center and I’m on my way.”

  “USC? Wow. That would be hot.”

  “Then to the pros.” Sam spoke almost under his breath, and he looked away. “You know, if I get lucky.”

  “Maybe you will.”

  There was a commotion at the entrance to the soundstage. A woman shouted, cursing and barging through a cluster of people until she stood at the bottom of the set, staring up at Sam and McKenna. The woman wore a white robe and a turban and he knew she was someone famous, but Sam couldn’t quite say who.

  “You!” the woman screamed, pointing at the set so that Sam looked around him at the men working there. “Out!”

  A man in a bomber jacket and baseball cap who Sam recognized as the director, Pierce Everette, approached the crazed woman and put two gentle hands on her shoulders. “Diana, please. What’s wrong? What are you doing?”

  “Him! I want him off this set! I want him a million miles away from my son. Don’t you ever let him back! Ever! Do you hear me?”

  “Diana,” the director said calmly. “Who are you talking about? What’s the problem?”

  The woman trembled, but seemed to gain some composure as she lowered her voice. “Pierce, I’m sorry to barge in here like this, but you know me, and you know my husband, and you know that if I want something, it will happen. So please, just remove him from the set. I don’t want to go into it. It’s not important. I have my reasons. Just make him leave. Now.”

  Sam’s mouth fell open because he realized as all eyes turned his way that the crazy woman was talking about him.

  10

  TREVOR

  With the dressing room door open, Trevor could hear his mother’s shouting from where he sat. He started to remove the cape and get up out of the makeup chair, then paused, not wanting to get in the way of her anger. He’d done that before and knew it was to be avoided at all costs. While his mother was kind and caring, she could also be equally wicked and vicious. When she was in a rant, his father always said you had to watch out for friendly fire.