Page 9 of His Choice

“Listen, your fathers told me that you turn sixteen in a couple of months, and your only income this summer will be from the police station, doing odd jobs for Chief Winslow a few hours a week. How about I give you an additional opportunity? You could help with some of the promotional work that’s being done for the show and for my clubs. Even with the marketing professionals my partner and I already have, adding Keller to the team hasn’t been enough to keep up with the demand. I don’t want Keller’s college grades to suffer because he’s overwhelmed and has no assistance. That’s where you could come in by being his right-hand man. You know, run errands, read comments on social media to see what’s working and what isn’t, spit-ball some ideas…”

Flynt’s eyes lit. “I like Keller a lot. I don’t want him to fail either.”

“He’s told me you and he became friends working at the station. When I asked him how he felt about bringing you on, he was excited. I just ran the idea by your dads. They’re okay with it, but only for the summer. I’ll pay you double the minimum wage, providing you promise to put at least half in a savings account for yourself. You’re not going to find a better offer for someone your age. It’s a way I can recognize the initiative you took and the results you achieved, but link the reward to future efforts that aren’t being done behind my back. Would you like to accept?”

Adam had worried that I was splitting hairs with my proposal but, like me, he was a softy at heart—especially when it came to one of the boys. He had looked to Myles, who had nodded he was fine with it, then Adam had given me his permission to proceed.

Flynt beamed and nodded. “Absolutely. Thanks, Mr. Walker. That sounds awesome. I’ll do a good job, and I’ll try to remember to ask permission before I do something important. I promise.”

“Then, welcome to the team,” I said, smiling and reaching across the desk to shake his hand.

He was still grinning. “Mr. Walker, I really meant all the things I wrote about you in that submission. You’re like one of the nicest adults I know. I still can’t figure out why Keller thought you were such an ass-wipe when you were his teacher.”

My smile dipped. “Uh…yeah. Thanks,” I mumbled. “So, I guess we won’t need to go through all that paperwork you brought, huh? It was your compensatory demands for hooking me up with His Choice, right?”

Flynt looked to the pack he had laid on the desk as if he had forgotten it was there. “Huh? Oh, no. It’s a script for a show. I thought since we…you would be working with television producers, maybe you could slip it to them for consideration? If you like it, I mean.”

I pulled the papers toward me, surprised. “You wrote a television script?”

Flynt grinned, but he scratched his neck with nervousness. “I was going to show it to Myles since he writes books, but it has some…dirty parts.”

I frowned. I hoped he meant he’d used mild swear words like ‘damn’ and ‘hell.’ I wasn’t keen on reading smut written by a kid, nor to appear to be encouraging it.

“So, you want me to read this and give you my opinion first?”

He continued scratching. “If you don’t mind.”

“I… Sure,” I said with a sigh. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t read multiple creative writing papers from students in the past. I doubted Flynt’s work would be worthy of submission to a producer, but I didn’t want to discourage his creativity or dismiss it out of hand. “Let’s read the first page, shall we? I’d like to get a sense for your style before I dive into it later.”

“Okay.”

I figured if it was bad, I could suggest he work with Myles before I wasted time reading the whole thing. I opened the stapled papers to the first page. “Her vagina quivered like a gelatin mold on top of a rolling table.” I stopped, no doubt a stupefied expression on my face.

“That was one of the dirty parts,” Flynt whispered. “I wanted the first line to grab the reader.”

My jaw might have dropped. “Oh, it grabbed me. Um, Flynt…have your dads had a talk with you about female anatomy?”

Flynt blushed. “You need to read on. The character isn’t a human female. She’s an alien. The next part is where the thing that she’s birthing shoots out of her and rips the faces off the doctors and nurses.”

I let the top page fall back into place. “Okay. That’s…disturbing.”

He smiled. “Yeah. It’s a cross between horror and science fiction.”

I handed the script back to him. “You know, I think you should remove the dirty words and any scenes with nudity.” I frowned. “And Jell-O references. Flynt, some people, including a producer, may not feel comfortable reading that once they learn it was written by someone underage. You don’t want them to reject it just because of that. Right?”

“Oh.” He took the script, disappointed. “I guess. But after I strip out that stuff and they’re ready to film it, I hope I can add it back in. You know, maybe I could suggest it to one of the scriptwriters for the movie and nobody would need to know it was my idea. I just don’t want the kids at school to watch it and think I’m some Disney-watching lame-ass. I want it to boost my cred, not kill it.”

“Let’s not put the cart before the horse,” I suggested. “Make your edits. Then, without the potentially objectionable scenes and language, you might as well have Myles read it and provide feedback. You won’t need to worry about being embarrassed about him seeing it, and he’s a published novelist—much better equipped than me to give you pointers on what would sell and what wouldn’t.”

Flynt bit his lip in contemplation, then nodded. “Yeah, good point. Thanks, Mr. Walker.”

Sorry, Myles.

Chapter Four

Mikey

“Dude!” Aaron shouted as he barreled through the apartment door, phone in hand. “The His Choice site has the online applications up for guys interested in participating on the show.”