Chapter 16:

ON MONDAY MOM made me come home instead of going to Amy's house. She figured Amy's parents must be sick of me by then. They must not have been too sick of me though, because Amy and her parents stopped by at seven and rang the door bell.

"Amy!" I said excitedly. I'd been kind of down that I wasn't hanging out with her tonight.

My mom came from the kitchen, "Come on in, how are you guys?"

"We're doing well." Her dad answered.

"Good." They sat down on the couch and side lazy boy chairs, while Amy and I sat down on the floor on the other side of the coffee table.

"So what's going on?" I asked Amy.

"Actually, I don't know. This was Dad's idea to come over – he refused to tell me what it's about."

Mr. Hancock must have heard us talking because he started, "Well, now that I have both of you in one spot I'll tell you at the same time, okay?"

"Okay?" I asked. Amy nodded. Apparently she must have been really pestering her dad to find out.

He actually started to talk to my mom first. "Did Brandon tell you that I called a friend of mine that works in the legal department of Mattel?"

"No?"

"Sorry, I forgot to tell you," I told her. I'd been too busy feeling miserable about not having a girls bedroom.

"On Friday I called a friend of mine from law school that works at Mattel. The school seems to want to make the kids' film a big deal and wants to promote their work, so I wanted to make sure their company would be okay with it. After talking to him I sent him a copy of their video. That's all that Brandon and Amy know so far."

"Not for lack of trying." Amy whispered to me.

"Okay," my mom said. "So did you hear back from him already?"

"Yes, today he called back first this morning at eleven. He was chuckling and told me he was genuinely impressed with their work. After talking for a few minutes, he asked some questions like 'whether or not they did this project on their own or not.' After we talked for a bit he said he was going to walk it down to one of the executives."

"Wow," I said.

"So, what happened," Amy fairly begged.

"He called back at three and said that there are several execs at the company that would like to meet with the four of you on Wednesday night. They want to take all of you, plus your parents, to dinner."

"Really?" I asked.

"Yeah. I don't know why, but I guess they were really impressed with the film you guys made. They also asked me for addresses for you guys. They wanted to send each of you something. I made sure that it wasn't some sort of lawsuit first and then gave them the addresses."

"What are they sending?" Amy asked.

"I have no idea. I don't think he even knew then. So, do you guys think you can make the Wednesday night meeting?" He asked my Mom.

"We should be able to. Where are we going to meet?"

He named off a restaurant name and I was fairly shocked. "That's probably the most expensive restaurant in town..." My mom said. It was an extremely expensive restaurant that our family had never been to.

"They're buying, and apparently they've eaten there before and liked it." Mr. Hancock said.

"Well if they're buying..." Mom said.

"Cool," Amy and I said together. We looked at each other and started giggling.

"So what's so funny you two?" My mom asked.

Mrs. Hancock answered, "I think it's just how frequent the two of them have been doing that. They've been finishing each others sentences and saying the same thing for the better part of three days now!" She laughed a bit herself.

We all talked for another twenty minutes or so before they left to go back home. I worked on some homework I'd needed to finish and got on the phone for a little bit while Mom talked to Dad. They were driving Grandpa home tomorrow. Since they lived about forty minutes away Mom was going to go pick Dad up from their house.

"Mom can I go with you to pick him up?"

"You'd have to miss school," she said to me.

I looked at her and said, "But I really want to see Grandpa. I've been really worried about him."

"I guess we'll make it work somehow. You're going to have to go to school in the morning though."

"Why do I have to go at all if I'm only going to be there for half-a-day?" I tried. I really did want to see Grandpa, but at the same time who doesn't want out of school? Plus I had a test first hour.

"We don't need to go till later. I don't want you missing any more school than you have to."

Mom ended up calling her boss and getting the afternoon off – she was going to pick me up just before lunch from school. I tried getting out of the whole school day again later, but she somehow knew that I had a test first hour. Couldn't I get away with anything?

When we got done talking about all of this I got back to my homework and then watched some TV till I went to bed. That night I kept trying to think of what Mattel could be sending us. Would they send us toys? If so would they realize I was a boy? If not would I be able to get my very own set of Barbies? Or something? When I fell asleep that night I had tons of dreams of my room being full of Barbies and other toys.

THE NEXT DAY our group talked outside about what we thought might happen next Wednesday. We were all really excited, and hoped that it would be something really cool. Just before lunch I was called to the office. Mom was there to check me out. We ate a quick lunch at home before driving over to my grandparents place.

They lived outside of a small town on part of my grandmother's old family ranch. It had originally been a very large property of several hundred acres, but they had sold off bits of it until they only had fifteen acres now. We figured we were going to beat them to their place by about an hour so that would give us some time to make sure everything was ready for them.

Mom and I got busy making my grandfather's bedroom as ready as we could so that he could be comfortable. We were just sitting down to kill some time watching TV as they drove up. We went out to help them get him inside.

"Grandpa!" I gave him a soft hug since I didn't want to hurt him.

"Brandon, it's good to see you."

I then gave Grandma a hug.

"It's good to see you sweetie," she told me returning my hug.

We helped them get Grandpa inside and got him settled into a recliner in the living room. "How are you feeling Grandpa?" I asked him.

"I've been better before." He said with a wry smile. "But, I'm still here – and I definitely feel better than I did a few days ago."

"Good."

"And how are you doing?" Grandma asked me.

"Great, I've had several really cool things happen in the past few weeks at school." They had heard about most of this stuff, but they listened attentively anyway.

Grandma asked my Mom, "What do you think they want to meet with you all about?"

"Mr. Hancock has no idea. It could be interesting though, if nothing else it sounds like we're going to get a really good meal out of the deal."

"Yeah. I'll make sure that I'm not on call that night," My dad said.

We all talked for about thirty more minutes before we all gave Grandpa hugs and headed towards the car. At the driveway I gave Grandma a hug. "I like your hair," she told me.

"Thanks." I replied.

"How long are you going to grow it to?" She asked.

"Probably not a whole lot more. I like this length I think." I told her.

"Well it looks very nice. Have a safe trip home sweetie, and we'll see you again in a couple weeks, okay?" We gave each other another hug and I got in the car.

The drive home was fairly quiet since Dad fell asleep from fatigue about three minutes into the drive. We arrived back home into our town at about 5:30, stopping by Burger King for a Whopper for each of us before going to our house.

It was another quiet evening that night. I didn't do a whole lot other than talk to Amy on the phone for a bit. I ended up making arrangements to go to Amy's house the next day before getting back to homework and going to bed.

THE NEXT WEEK went by very quickly. I had hung out at Amy's house half of the time, and she had come over to our house the other days. When I was at Amy's house I had put on some of her clothes each day while we were doing our homework or playing. Each day I switched back to my clothes in plenty of time before anyone came home.

Each day that I wore Amy's clothes I didn't dress up in anything ridiculously dressy or out of place. Instead I wore something that Amy would typically wear to school. Most of the time I actually ended up wearing what she was planning to wear the next day – just so that her mom couldn't tell that there was a lot of extra laundry or something. Every one of those days was special to me as I was able to be who I really felt I was.

Amy had also invited me to an 'end of the year' slumber party that she was having that next week on Friday. Besides me, Ashley, Nikki, and several other girls were invited. I didn't know the others as well. But, they were all going on the trip with us, and I'd never had any major problems with any of them. I had no idea what to expect on Friday night, I just knew that it would probably be a really good time.

Mrs. Hancock had made sure it was okay with the girls' parents that a boy would be there – some had grumbled a little but went along with it. Amy and her mom had been shopping and preparing for the event for the better part of six days already by the time we got to our Wednesday meeting.

Dad had actually gotten off of work early that night so that we could be sure that we met up with the executives at the proper time. Mom made me wear a button up shirt and black slacks for the meeting. Dad had gotten out a suit that he rarely wore for the occasion. He looked really nice in it. Mom looked really pretty in a dress that she had bought for the occasion. I noticed she was also wearing a really pretty sapphire necklace that she had inherited from her grandmother. I was sure it was only the second time I'd ever seen her wear it. She'd never told me how much it was worth, but I had the feeling it was a really expensive heirloom.

Amy and the girls all came in dresses – I was really jealous that I wasn't getting to wear the same thing. All of the other moms had also dressed up for the occasion. You could tell by the way everyone dressed that they all were excited about the meeting and the meal.

Mr. Hancock's friend – Al – was the first person that we saw. The two of them exchanged handshakes and backslaps before introducing everyone to each other. There were four other people from the corporation there. The first was actually the CEO... I couldn't believe that part. He asked that we call him Billy. There was also the head of their Marketing department - Dave, the head of their Barbie division - Lilly, and a lady who was Billy's 'executive assistant' – Amanda.

We sat down at the table and the waiter took our drink orders.

"Well let's get down to some business shall we?" 'Billy' said after some small talk. We were all already munching on some appetizers at that point.

"Okay," Mr. Hancock answered.

"When Al showed us the video you girls had made we were completely shocked by how good it was. We usually get about three dozen films a year that people send in trying to get something out of us for it. Al told us you just wanted to make sure that we would be okay with you showing it elsewhere. We all quickly decided that was fine, but we decided that we needed to do more."

"Okay. Like what, sir?" I asked politely.

"Well, first of all we sent a package to each of your houses, have you gotten them yet?"

We shook our heads.

"Well it should be there tomorrow then. Amanda, can you check on that tomorrow?" He asked her off to the side.

"Yes." She said simply.

"Anyway, there'll be some things for each of you arriving – but we wanted to see if perhaps we could reach a deal for the film itself."

"What kind of deal?" My dad asked.

"We would like to be able to use the film for a series of long commercials on one of the cable networks. We'd also like to sponsor its entry into a couple of film festivals this year. Does that sound like something you all would be interested in?" He asked.

Mr. Sanders took this one. "If we do this what are you willing to offer?"

"First we'll give each of the kids a two-thousand dollar savings bond for college – there are four of you involved in this project right?" Billy asked us.

"Yes," Amy said.

"And?" Mr. Sanders asked.

"We'll give them each twenty-thousand dollars in cash too."

"Whoa." Amy and I said together. I heard Ashley and Nikki gasp.

"You're planning on showing this on TV networks?" Mr. Hancock asked.

"Yes."

"And you're hoping maybe that the film will get picked up by a studio for distribution through the film festivals?" Mr. Sanders asked.

"Well, we could distribute it ourselves, but we want to see what kind of a reaction and buzz that we can generate with it first." Lilly said.

"Fair enough," Mr. Sanders said. "But that does mean we should be talking more for the film."

I was aghast... How could he push our luck with this?

"What would you consider to be a fair offer?" Billy asked.

Mr. Sanders and Mr. Hancock spoke to each other in low tones for a quick minute before Mr. Hancock said, "Well... We would think at least seventy-thousand dollars each initially. Plus twenty-five percent of any gross box office/VHS sales that happen."

I couldn't believe it. I trust Mr. Hancock a lot, but it seemed like he was blowing this opportunity for us.

"That's a little steep Mr. Hancock." Lilly said.

"Not really. When you consider the fact that these kids did all of the production work for you and that your only expenditure would be promotion of the film. In all honesty it's still highway robbery for you." Mr. Sanders replied.

"You make a good point, but we still can't pay that much. We will also have to license the Nancy Drew brand and deal with licensing fees for the music they used. How about fifty-thousand dollars each – and twenty-percent?" Billy suggested.

Mr. Hancock and Mr. Sanders both huddled for a couple moments again before saying, "We'll go for that as long as you also throw in trips to those festivals and let the kids show it at the State school board meeting next month."

"I think that can be arranged." They shook hands and Al wrote up a contract for those terms at the table real quick. After looking it over all of our parents signed the contract as well as us. We really didn't have to sign it, since it didn't make a legal difference one way or another, but they asked us to.

We completed this all before our dinner came. Once dinner came we ate in relative quiet. The adults all talked with each other as we chatted amongst ourselves. Eventually Lilly tried to engage us with some conversation. She seemed interested in how and why we came up with the project we did.

"Well, we thought a video was far better than having to talk for all that time in class. So we settled on the video idea pretty quickly." I said.

"Then we came up with the idea of using Barbies for the characters in the movie." Amy said.

"And then we just got really lucky that my dad works for a TV studio." Ashley added.

"And Brandon, you were okay doing it with Barbies?" She asked me.

"Sure, why wouldn't I be?" I replied. I was wondering where she was going with this.

"It's just you're not our normal target audience for dolls, and I'm trying to figure out if there's something we can do to change that." She said.

"No, I doubt you'll change that." I told her honestly.

"Probably not," she replied. She had kind of a strange look in her eye still, but the conversations moved on. After we finished dinner we had a sort of 'ceremonial' toast about the contract over dessert. The adults all had champagne, while we all had sparkling cider. They had brought out the cider in the same glasses though – which made us all feel cool.

"Well it's been great meeting you all and doing business with you." Billy said.

"Thank you so much for coming out here and taking this interest," My dad said. I think my parents were in a state of shock – I know I was. There were some final details such as arranging to send in the master of our film on the Beta tape I had. After that was done we all kind of filed out and the Mattel Corporation officers left in a limousine. We all stood by our cars while they drove off.

"YES!!!!" I screamedand found that my voice was joined by those of the other girls. We gave eachother all big hugs. Something we haddone in two days had earned us more money than my parents had ever had at once.

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