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“David, no. I didn’t tell you all that just so you’d help me out. It’ll be okay.”

“Unlike you, I eat leftovers, and my brother seems to always be hungry too,” I said.

“If we call now, we can stop everyone from cooking all morning,” Beth said.

“You make the calls, and I’ll work this out,” I said.

“Are you sure?” Granny asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

I should’ve asked what all they’d ordered before agreeing to take it. I pulled around back, and Granny and her crew started to bring out four-inch-deep warming trays. Mom was going to kill me. Beth kept her mouth shut, but I could tell she recognized my distress and thought it was funny. Granny gave me detailed instructions on how to warm everything up.

“I sure hope everyone’s hungry,” Beth said as we pulled into the driveway.

Mrs. A met me at the back door. I explained the situation, and she just shook her head. Greg came out and helped me bring everything in. Mom took one look at the stack of trays on her countertops, stepped over to the phone, and made a call. She made Greg and me carry all the food back out to the Jeep, and she got in the passenger seat. Mom and Mrs. A would just make what they’d planned to for us.

“We’re taking it to the hospital cafeteria. A couple of the families aren’t organized to have Thanksgiving, so we’ll let them and the hospital staff enjoy this.”

Mom showed me where to drive, and we were met by several staff members.

“Hey, Mrs. Dawson. This is really nice of you,” a large man said.

“Thank David. He made this happen.”

He shook my hand, and soon all the food had been taken.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“I heard everyone complaining that last year they ate turkey roll. The cafeteria has to be open, but most of the better food service staff have the day off.”

I was halfway home when I realized that I’d left cinnamon rolls at my house unsupervised. If I knew my family, they would all be gone by the time I got there. When I arrived home, my worst nightmare had come true. Dad redeemed himself when he opened the oven and pulled out two plates of rolls for Mom and me.

◊◊◊

People started to show up just before noon. Mom and Mrs. A planned for the big meal to be at one. Cindy came with her boyfriend. Beth had joked about “’roided-up,” but he looked like a cartoon character. I’d seen pictures from when she met him her freshman year. He’d been a top-level lacrosse player as well as a football star in high school. I estimate he was about six-two. When he first met Cindy, he was about my size; I would guess he weighed in at around 215 pounds. I estimated that in the last year and a half he put on fifty pounds, forty of those in his chest. He watched TV with the guys, so I was able to avoid him because I was helping to cook. I might have to go get my Bo staff if it looked like we needed to throw down.

Tami and her mom arrived. Beth grabbed Tami so the two of them could have some girl-talk. I would pay Beth later; I really didn’t want to have a confrontation today. But just when I imagined I’d gotten away from all potential problems, I found myself cornered.

“David, can we talk?” Carl, Beth’s date, asked.

I suspected this might get ugly, so I invited him up to my apartment. Beth saw us and started towards us, but her mom stopped her.

When Carl came into my apartment, he did what most people do and looked at all my pictures on the wall. I’d added the movie poster for Star Academy. There were multiple versions, but I picked the one that showed Ben and me as we fought with swords.

“Did you do your own fight scenes for the movie?” he asked.

“Most of them, and some stunts. I did skip one and was lucky I did. We shot the outdoor scenes in Canada during the winter. They had a stunt where I was supposed to be almost blown up. The idea was I would fly through the air and land on a soft pile of foam-like mattresses. The only problem was that it was so cold that the mattresses turned into concrete. It about killed my stunt guy. After that, I had to do my own stunts.”

“Like what?” he asked.

“Here, let me show you,” I said.

The studio had sent me finished footage of me swinging over the frozen waterfall. I put in the DVD and turned on my TV. What they did with computers now was almost scary. My scene had seemed to be high up on the face of the cliff. It really wasn’t that bad, but the finished product made it look like I was hundreds of feet off the ground. If that had been real, I would never have done it. They loved the shot because you could see my face. If they’d used a stunt double, they would have had to cut in my face, and the shot would never have looked as good as it did.

“Dear God! Were you scared?” he asked.

“Of course I was. They had me dangling from a harness, and I’d just seen my stunt guy get hauled off in an ambulance. I had to do it, or they couldn’t have gotten the shot. I just sucked it up and prayed they knew what they were doing,” I admitted.

“How long have you known Beth?” he asked, changing subjects.

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