Saturdays with Hitchcock Read online

  Copyright © 2017 by Ellen Wittlinger

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Charlesbridge and colophon are registered trademarks of Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

  Published by Charlesbridge

  85 Main Street • Watertown, MA 02472 • (617) 926-0329

  www.charlesbridge.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Wittlinger, Ellen, author.

  Title: Saturdays with Hitchcock/Ellen Wittlinger.

  Description: Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge, [2017] |

  Summary: Twelve-year-old Maisie feels that she has enough complications in her life: her actor uncle has moved in with her family while he recovers from an accident and her father is not pleased, her grandmother is slipping into dementia but wants to remarry, her mom has been laid off, and her best friend, Cyrus, with whom she spends Saturdays watching classic movies, has revealed that he is gay—but Gary, the boy he has a crush on, seems more attracted to Maisie herself. Identifiers: LCCN 2016043039 (print) | LCCN 2016048733 (ebook) |

  ISBN 9781580897754 (reinforced for library use) | ISBN 9781607349976 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures—Juvenile fiction. | Actors—Juvenile fiction. | Best friends—Juvenile fiction. | Friendship—Juvenile fiction. | Gays—Juvenile fiction. | Families—Juvenile fiction. | Grandmothers—Juvenile fiction. | Dementia—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Motion pictures—Fiction. | Actors and actresses—Fiction. | Best friends—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Gays—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | Grandmothers—Fiction. | Dementia—Fiction. Classification: LCC PZ7.W7817 Sat 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.W7817 (ebook) |

  DDC 813.54 [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​2016043039

  Ebook ISBN 9781607349976

  Production supervision by Brian G. Walker

  eBook design adapted from printed book design by Susan Mallory Sherman and Sarah Richards Taylor

  v4.1

  a

  For Morgan, beloved uncle to Rose and Jane, and in memory of my own Uncle Walt, never forgotten

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Acknowledgments

  “Everything I learned, I learned from the movies.”

  —Audrey Hepburn

  “Hey, you kids!” Mr. Schmitz yells up at us. “Yeah, I’m lookin’ at you. The movie’s over. Go home!”

  I lean over the balcony. “We’re just talking.”

  “Well, talk outside. I wanna close up.”

  I shut my notebook, and Cyrus and I shuffle downstairs to the lobby. Mr. Schmitz is standing by the big double doors, a broom in his hand.

  “How come you’re only open afternoons?” Cyrus asks him.

  “ ’Cause nobody comes downtown at night anymore. At night they wanna go to the multiplex at the mall.” The way he says “multiplex” sounds like he means “hellmouth.”

  Not that many people go to the Lincoln Theater in the daytime either. There’s only one screen, and Mr. Schmitz likes to show mostly old movies. Which is fine with me. Sometimes, on Saturdays, Cyrus and I are the only people in the whole place.

  We do go to the mall once in a while. We saw The Martian there, and Inside Out, which we both loved, but the mall is too much about buying stuff. Cyrus and I never have money for much more than the film anyway, so we like a place where going to the movies is pretty much all you can do. Besides, we can’t even see PG-13 movies, a classification we’re about six months away from. Old movies aren’t like that—they were made for everybody.

  We’re probably Mr. Schmitz’s best customers, but he’s not particularly nice to us. He always acts like he’s annoyed he has to rip our tickets in half, like why are we making him go to all that trouble? And if we want popcorn, his eyes roll back in his head before he shovels some into a box.

  We don’t mind too much, though. I figure he knows more about movies than anybody else in New Aztec, Illinois, because he always shows the best ones. I’m probably second smartest about movies. Cyrus comes in third because he just doesn’t put enough time into it. Of course, my uncle Walt would beat us all if he still lived here, but he’s out in Los Angeles, because that’s where you have to live if you’re a screen actor.

  We wave to Mr. Schmitz as we push through the glass doors, and he grunts at us.

  “We got a good crowd today, huh, Maisie?” Cyrus says, as if the Lincoln Theater belongs to us.

  “Casablanca always gets a crowd,” I say. “All the old people come.”

  “Yeah, old people and us. What’s the matter with everybody else in this town?”

  I shrug. “For some reason they think their actual lives are more interesting than movies. Which might be true if they lived someplace else.”

  “Like Morocco,” Cyrus says. “I love that speech where Bogart says the problems of three people don’t amount to anything compared to the problems of the world.”

  “Three little people,” I correct him.

  “Right.”

  “Of course the writing is good,” I say, “but what I love about Casablanca is the lighting.”

  Cyrus snorts. “That’s all you ever care about. The lighting.”

  “That’s not true. And anyway, lighting is one of the most important elements of film.”

  Cyrus wrinkles up his nose. “I don’t want to do lighting, Maze. I want to be a director. I want to be the boss.”

  “If you’re going to be a director, you have to know this stuff, Cy. Remember how the vines and plants throw deep shadows up on the walls in Casablanca?”

  “So?”

  “That’s Rembrandt lighting. The dark, twisted shadows echo how the characters’ situations are tangled together and complicated.”

  “You just read that somewhere.”

  “Of course I read it somewhere! And we’ve talked about it too, how bright lights and heavy shadows are exaggerated for emotional effect.”

  “Okay, okay. Just because I don’t remember every little thing about lighting…” He socks me lightly on the arm and I return his punch, but we’re smiling. Cyrus and I never really argue.

  We unlock our bikes from the parking meter out front and start pedaling home. There’s not much traffic in downtown New Aztec on a Saturday. Everybody is either at the mall or locked in their air-conditioned houses. It’s only the middle of May, but here in the Mississippi River valley it gets hot and steamy early.

  In five minutes my bangs are sticking to my sweaty forehead, but at least my hair is short, so I can feel a little breeze on my neck. I’m practically the only girl in the sixth grade who doesn’t have long hair, but those massive hair blanket
s are hot and heavy, and I don’t see the point. I guess boys like girls to have long locks to swing around, but I don’t care what boys think. Except for Cyrus, of course, and he doesn’t care what I look like. We’ve been friends for so long that Cy probably doesn’t even notice what I look like anymore.

  “Let’s go to my house,” I say. “Mom has Dr Pepper.”

  Cyrus doesn’t argue. His mother has banned all sugary beverages from the premises at their place, diet or otherwise, so he has to get his fix at my house. Which is easy enough, since I’ve lived across the street from him my whole life.

  We let our bikes fall on the backyard lawn, which I’ll get yelled at for later, but it’s so hot and we’re thirsty. The minute I open the kitchen door, though, I can hear my parents arguing in the living room, and I shush Cyrus. The only way a person gets any information about what’s going on around here is by eavesdropping.

  Dad sounds aggravated. “I thought he had a girlfriend out there in Hollyweird. Can’t she take care of him?”

  “They broke up months ago,” Mom says.

  “Can’t he stay with your mother?”

  “On that old foldout couch in her back room? That would be torture,” Mom says. I’m daring to hope I know who they’re talking about.

  “Well, he can’t expect you to be his nursemaid! You’ve got a job!”

  “I know that, Dennis. Don’t get mad at me. I didn’t invite him!”

  I hear the springs squeak as Mom flops into a chair. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? Isn’t your bowling team practicing today?”

  “We’ve got a game tonight,” Dad says. I can hear him pacing. “Look, it’s not that I don’t like the guy,” Dad says. “It’s just that every time he comes back here, you get all upset, and you end up taking it out on the rest of us.”

  “I do not. I get upset with my mother, is all. The way she flutters around him like he’s the famous movie star he thinks he is—‘Wade Wolf’—and not just her useless son, Walter Hoffmeister.”

  I turn to Cyrus and clap my hands silently. “My uncle Walt’s coming!” I whisper.

  He gives me a thumbs-up. I’m excited about Uncle Walt visiting, of course, but not so thrilled about my parents arguing over it. Mom has been known to snarl when she’s angry, and while Dad usually stays calm and talks her down, that’s not happening today.

  “How on earth did he manage to break his collarbone, anyway?” Dad asks Mom. What?

  “Doing a stunt in some movie. Collarbone and two ribs.”

  I pop around the corner in spite of myself. “Uncle Walt’s hurt? What happened?”

  Behind me Cyrus salutes my parents. He always does that, for a joke, when they’re in their uniforms. My dad’s a mail carrier, and my mom is a parking enforcement officer. They don’t have any badges or medals or guns or anything.

  “Oh, Maisie, I didn’t hear you come in,” Mom says. “He’ll be okay. He just needs someplace to rest up while he heals.”

  “And somebody to wait on him hand and foot,” Dad mutters to his shirtsleeve.

  “How’d he get hurt?” I ask.

  Mom sighs. “He jumped off a high diving board in some silly movie—”

  “Probably Girls Gone Haywire or some great work of art like that,” Dad grumbles.

  “—and apparently he hit the low board beneath him,” Mom continues. “I don’t even see how that’s possible, but—”

  “Does that mean he can’t finish the rest of the movie?” I ask.

  “I’m sure it does,” Dad says. “They’re not going to hold up filming for six weeks just because some second-string actor got banged up.”

  “He’s not a second-string actor,” I say. “He was Eddie in Sometime Tomorrow.”

  “One decent role in ten years doesn’t make him a movie star. Besides, eleven people saw that movie.” Dad heads for the kitchen to get himself his work-is-over beer.

  Cyrus laughs, and I elbow him in the side. He thinks my dad’s funny because his own father is so boring, but nobody laughs at my uncle Walt.

  “Sometime Tomorrow got a rave review in the Hollywood Reporter,” I call after Dad, “and Entertainment Weekly said Uncle Walt was an exciting new talent.”

  Dad calls back. “That was five years ago. He’s older now and a lot less exciting.”

  “He actually had a pretty good part in this movie,” Mom says. “He was a swimming instructor who falls in love with Kristen Bell.”

  Wow. “Kristen Bell from Veronica Mars? That’s huge!”

  Cyrus has been eating peanuts from the can Dad left open on the coffee table, but this gets his attention. “Cool! I love Kristen Bell. She was the voice of Anna in Frozen too.”

  “Never heard of her,” Dad says as he walks back in. Which doesn’t surprise me. Dad’s not a movie person, and most of the TV he watches involves men trying to keep some kind of a ball away from each other.

  “Anyway,” Mom says, “I’m picking him up at the airport tomorrow at noon. And I don’t think we can make him sleep on that awful couch in the den with all his broken bones.”

  “He can have my room!” I yell. “I’ll sleep in the den!”

  Dad laughs. “You’ve got the only air-conditioned room in the house, and you’re giving it up? You’d do just about anything for that guy, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course I would!”

  Mom shakes her head. “Just like your grandmother.”

  Mom lets me ride along to the St. Louis airport to pick up Uncle Walt. We park the car and go inside to wait for him because he can’t carry anything with his busted collarbone. I’m almost afraid to see what he looks like, all broken. Normally he’s tall and strong and walks so fast I can’t keep up.

  I shriek a little the minute I see him heading toward us.

  “Don’t jump on him or hug him!” Mom warns.

  “I know.” Sometimes she treats me like an idiot.

  He doesn’t look as bad as I thought he might, but he’s walking very slowly and carefully, and his face looks pale. He holds his upper body stiff, not moving his right arm, and I can see a bandage peeking out from below his shirt collar. He’s got on this slouchy felt hat, and he reminds me of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark—after he’s just gotten out of the snake pit.

  As soon as he sees us, Uncle Walt starts smiling his usual enormous smile. It’s not like anybody else’s smile—it takes over his whole face and makes you feel like he’s thrilled to see you. He’s really good-looking too, with dark wavy hair that flops down onto his forehead. I don’t know why he isn’t a huge star—his smile alone should have made it happen. If he was older, he could have played Butch Cassidy or the Sundance Kid. He’s that cool.

  I get to him first, but I’m not sure what to do. Normally I’d leap on him, and he’d catch me and twirl me around. Instead he just ruffles my hair with his left hand.

  “Are you okay?” I ask him.

  “Don’t worry, my dear. It’s just a flesh wound,” he says in a silly British accent. This is a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which we watched together the last time he was here. At least he hasn’t lost his sense of humor.

  He bends down a little, as if he wants to hug me, but I can tell it hurts him to do that, so I just put my arm around his waist and lean my head gently against his side. Mom gives him an air-hug, which is about all he’d get from her even if he wasn’t hurt.

  “Thanks for coming to get me, Cindy.” He puts his arm around her waist for a minute, but she pulls away.

  “Glad you made it.” She doesn’t sound all that glad.

  “Wasn’t the best flight I’ve ever had. Those seats are uncomfortable enough when you don’t have broken bones.”

  “Can you explain to me, Walter, how somebody can jump off a high dive and hit the board below him with his shoulder?” Right away she acts like she’s mad at him.

  He winks at her, and his great grin sneaks out around the pain. “I guess I’m flexible.” But Mom keeps her mouth in a flat line as we hea
d for the luggage carousel.

  “What’s the name of the movie?” I ask. “Mom said Kristen Bell is in it. Is she as nice as she seems?”

  “Nicer. And very funny. Didn’t I email you? I meant to. The movie’s called Runaway.”

  Uncle Walt always thinks he’s told me things that he hasn’t. He gets busy and forgets. “Who do you play?” I ask.

  “I’m a swimming instructor who falls in love with Kristen’s character when I’m giving lessons to her little boy. Well, I was the swimming instructor. I heard they got Milo Ventimiglia to do it now.”

  “I love him! He was in Heroes! And Gilmore Girls!” I say.

  “You watch too much television, Maisie,” Mom says. This is about the two-hundred-and-eleventh time she’s said this to me, so I put her on mute. It’s not even true. I watch a lot more movies than TV shows. Not that I don’t like TV; I do. Uncle Walt got me a Netflix subscription so I could watch older stuff like Freaks and Geeks and The X-Files. But you can’t watch TV on an enormous screen from the balcony of a huge room with your feet up on the seat in front.

  “It must have been a pretty big part if they’re giving it to Milo,” I say.

  “Medium big,” Uncle Walt says. “It could have been my breakout role.”

  “You broke out, all right.” Mom smirks at her own joke.

  “At least now you get to visit us for a while,” I say. “You didn’t come for Christmas this year. We haven’t seen you in ages.”

  “I know, but, hey, you liked my present, right?”

  Uncle Walt sent me a small handheld video camera, just about the best present I could ever imagine.

  “Oh my God! I love it so much!” I say. “Cyrus and I have already made a bunch of short videos, and we’re planning to write a screenplay for a longer movie.”

  “It was too extravagant a gift for a child,” Mom says. I don’t know why she always has to ruin things with her crabbiness.

  “It wasn’t that expensive,” Uncle Walt says. “Besides, who else do I have to buy stuff for? At least Maisie appreciates the things I give her. I bought Courtney a bracelet she wanted, and she broke up with me anyway. If I’d known she was gonna dump me on New Year’s Eve, I wouldn’t have stayed in LA for the holidays.”