a lot,” Jeremy said. “You’re here when people come in, and you’re here when they leave.”
“My name is in the title!” Everett sat back in his chair so hard that it rolled across the floor and bumped into a file cabinet. “I have to work this hard because if it’s shitty, it has my name on it!”
“Is this a random outburst? A midlife crisis?”
“I’m not midlife,” Everett said.
“Any one of us could be midlife,” Jeremy pointed out. “We don’t know.”
“Okay, so I haven’t mentioned this yet because I didn’t know if anything was going to happen, but . . . the Imagination Network is interested in the show, and Astrid and I are gonna fly to their studio to meet with the big shots.”
Jeremy raised his eyebrows. “So what would that mean?”
“Well, if it goes well . . . they want to buy the show. Which would mean we’d be working at their studio in the city.”
“Hmm.”
“So . . . what do you think about that? You’d come with me, right?” Everett asked, leaning forward on his elbows.
“Well . . . ,” Jeremy started, “it’s not that I don’t want to, Ev. You know I love the show. But my kids are in school here, and Tess’s parents are getting older and they need us around. Also I’ve got that huge aquarium. You think it’s easy to move saltwater fish? Because let me tell you, it is not. They’re easily stressed.”
“But . . . you’ve been with me from the beginning. I know it’s my name, but this is our show.”
“I know,” Jeremy said. “And if the show was here . . . well, I’d keep working on Everett’s Place until I die. You’d have to bury me in the studio.”
“Seems like your family might have some objections to that,” Everett muttered.
“But if the show ends up leaving, I don’t think I could come with it. I’m sorry. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a job on another show at the station,” Jeremy said, concern flickering across his face for just a moment.
Everett’s eyes widened. “You think I could leave you here without a job? No way. I can’t imagine doing the show without you. Without you to give him his sassy personality, Larry the Llama would be a shell of himself. What, am I supposed to work with some other puppeteer? Am I supposed to have a conversation with someone else’s hand shoved up Larry? It’s not right.”
Jeremy shook his head. “You don’t need to worry about me, Ev. Do I wish things could go on the way they are forever? Sure. But you have to think about what’s best for the show. Maybe it’s just the end of an era.”
“No.” Everett pointed at him. “Not yet. We don’t know what the Imagination Network is gonna say. Maybe they’ll meet us and decide to pass.”
“Nah,” Jeremy said with a smile that looked more sad than happy. “They’re not gonna pass. No one ever passes on your ideas.”
“But I don’t want to do this show without you!” Everett said, starting to feel a little frantic. “Maybe you could convince your entire family to move. There’s gotta be a safe way to move that fish tank. Money is no object. We could do that thing where we lift up your house and put it on a truck and move it, like in The Little House. That sounds feasible, right?”
“Ev.” Jeremy shook his head, smiling. “See? You are a good friend. Really. And I know that however things end up, you’ll make a good show. You always do.”
Jeremy patted him on the head before he left, which made Everett feel a little like a confused and petulant baby. Was it really so wrong to want his friends to make the show their number one priority, too?
Well, okay, so he knew it was. He knew he was being unreasonable, but that didn’t change the way he felt. That was the annoying thing about feelings: just because you accepted them, it didn’t mean they went away. They were still there, clouding his judgment and making him feel irrational.
He put his hand back in the new puppet and held it up. “What should I do?” he asked, but the puppet didn’t answer, because she wasn’t anybody yet.
He knew that other people didn’t understand what he was waiting on. They didn’t get why he couldn’t glue some eyes on a piece of felt and consider the job done. But it wasn’t like that; he’d never worked