Puppet Wrangler by Vicki Grant Read Free Book Online Page B

did it. I’d get used to it in no time.
    Yeah, right.
    Have you ever seen a video of baby giraffes? They try to stand up right after they’re born, but their legs can’t hold them so they keep doing the splits. Then they manage to get their bum up in the air, but their head’s too heavy so their neck bounces around like they just lost a big prize-fight or something.
    That’s what Bitsie looked like.
    No. Not quite. It was more like a cross between that and Frankenstein’s monster. A very drunk monster.
    With a limp.
    And a broken jaw.
    It was terrible. Scary, in fact. Can you imagine if Bitsie ever went on TV like that? All his little “friends at home” would be screaming for their mummies to call 9-1-1.
    After a while I managed to get Bitsie’s mouth flapping, but he didn’t really look like he was talking. What he looked like was Grammie trying to chew without her false teeth in.
    I tried to get his eyes moving too. Most of the time nothing would happen at all; then suddenly one eye would twitch and you’d start to think that maybe Bitsie had a violent streak you didn’t know about.
    I felt like such a klutz at first. I couldn’t even figure out how to read the script and watch the monitor at the same time, let alone move the puppet too.
    But after a while I seemed to be getting the hang of it.
    Bitsie’s mouth started to move in sync with the words, his eyes looked left and right and I actually got him to walk across the set without looking like he was recovering from a serious car accident.
    I felt so proud of myself.
    It was only when Bitsie started doing a perfect version of the Macarena that I realized I wasn’t such a brilliant puppeteer after all. He’d been pulling my leg. He’d been doing everything for me!
    It was pretty funny. Even I had to laugh. 12 I mean, who did I think I was? Some puppet prodigy or something?
    We realized the security guy was going to be by on his rounds any minute, so we had to stop right in the middle of Bitsie’s hip-hop routine. We rushed around and got everything turned off and ourselves back under the set just seconds before the guard opened the door, poked his head in, closed the door and left. (Gee, some security.)
    We just lay under the set for a while. I was tired, but Bitsie was still going strong. He could do the wickedest imitations of people. His one of Kathleen completely cracked me up.
    I know it’s hard to believe, considering he was only a meter high and had big bulgy eyes and a nose like a beak, but Bitsie actually managed to look like Kathleen when he did it. It’s probably because he had her walk down perfectly.
    I thought I was going to wet my pants, I was laughing so hard.
    In fact, I realized that if I didn’t find a bathroom soon that’s exactly what I’d do. Luckily, Bitsie had stolen one of the computer cards that unlocks the studio door. (He’d also stolen keys to the storage room so he could let himself in and out, keys to the control room so he could watch TV whenever he wanted and keys to Mel’s car just to bug him.)
    I’d just crawled out from under the set when I heard Nick’s voice going, “Oh, good, exactly what I was looking for!” I thought it was Bitsie imitating him. (I had made the mistake of admitting that I thought Nick was cute.) I was just about to say something smart back like “Nick, darling, I thought you’d never get here!” when I heard footsteps. Good thing I kept my mouth shut.
    It’s times like that when you realize your mother is right about a lot of things. Like not wiping your mouth on your T-shirt after you’ve had chocolate chip cookies, for instance. It leaves these really gross stains.
    They were probably the first thing Nick noticed about me.
    11 Ewwww…
    12 Though not as hard as Bitsie did, of course. I was worried about his heart for a while there.

14

EVERYTHING GORGEOUS
NICK SINGH SAID TO