The Talent Show (12 page)

Justin rooted around in his carry-on bag for his wallet. He would need his credit card and photo ID no matter what he decided to do. While he searched, his fingers came upon a envelope. His lawyer had handed it to him in New York. It was a personal letter. Most of Justin's fan mail was answered by secretaries. But this one came from his hometown, so his lawyer thought it might be important. The return address said “Mary Marotta, Cape Bluff, Kansas.”

The name didn't ring a bell. Justin tore the envelope open.

Dear Mr. Chanda,

I don't know if you remember me, but we went to high school together. In fact, you and I were Sandy and Danny in Grease for the senior class play. My last name was Lampert then. Hard to believe ten years have gone by so quickly. Everyone here in Cape Bluff is so proud of what you've accomplished. There's a new principal now, but some of our old teachers are still here, and so is Reverend Mercun, Officer Selleck, and others.

I'm sure you're crazy busy, so I'll get to the point. You probably heard about the tornado ripping up the town. The elementary school library was flooded and almost all the books were ruined. We're holding a talent show at the school on March 21 to raise money and help Cape Bluff get back on its feet. I can't think of anything that would be more inspiring to the kids here than if you were to show up that night and just say hi to everybody.

I know this is a million-to-one shot. But every so often a million-to-one shot comes in. If you can make it, great. If not, the folks of Cape Bluff and I wish you the best of luck with your upcoming projects.

Sincerely,
Mary Marotta (formerly Lampert)

Of
course
Justin remembered Mary Lampert, now Marotta. In fact, he had a crush on her back when they were in high school. He got the lead in
Grease
because he could sing. But he was a skinny little nerd back then and didn't have the courage to ask out such a pretty girl. Mary Lampert dated
football players. He didn't think he had a chance with her. Thinking back, he remembered a football player named Marotta. Mary must have married the guy. Lucky guy.

In Justin's mind, he was still a skinny little nerd. But now he was a
rich and famous
skinny little nerd. He was one of the few people who left Cape Bluff and became a success. He had never looked back.

Justin looked at the boarding pass of his canceled flight to check the date—March 21. Then he read Mary's letter again. The talent show was that night.

The grim-faced lady at the United Airlines Customer Service counter took one look at
Chanda, Justin
on the boarding pass, peered at his face, and nearly fainted. Suddenly she was all smiley like a schoolgirl, happy to help him in any way she could. Being a celebrity
does
carry certain advantages.

Justin explained his predicament and the customer service rep pecked some keys on the computer in front of her.

“There's a flight to L.A. tonight from Springfield-Branson Airport,” she said, “but that's
almost a three-hour drive from here. You'd have to hurry to make it.”

“I'll take it,” Justin quickly agreed. “I can get there.”

He rushed to the rental car area. The lady at the Avis counter also recognized him, and agreed to give him their newest car—a yellow Toyota Prius convertible—in exchange for an autograph.

“Nice!” he said, scrawling his name across a road map on the counter. “A hybrid. Fifty miles to the gallon. Very green. You've got a deal!” He thanked her and hurried to go pick up the car.

Interstate 44 starts near Oklahoma City, passes just below Tulsa, and is a straight shot to Springfield, Missouri. Along the way it crosses the state lines almost exactly where the corners of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri touch.

Justin liked highway driving. He found it relaxing. And having grown up less than two hours from Tulsa, he knew the area. He'd driven it plenty of times.

After an hour or so on I-44, he started to see exit signs for familiar towns—Vinita, Baxter Springs, Joplin. His old stamping grounds. The next sign said
CAPE BLUFF, ONE MILE
.

Cape Bluff.
The old memories came flooding back. He remembered the day he was sitting in the high school cafeteria when he jokingly suggested to his best friend Laurent Linn that they form a bubblegum boy band. Laurent agreed that they couldn't be any worse than The Backstreet Boys or 'N Sync. Justin and Laurent rounded up a few other guys in the school choir and named themselves “Pendulum Dune.” The name didn't mean anything, but they thought it sounded cool. Justin wrote a bunch of songs that sounded a lot like those other groups. Laurent was a real techie, and he built a little recording studio in his basement. Pendulum Dune recorded a demo CD there, and sent it to every radio station within a hundred miles. Somehow, it caught the ear of a talent agent who signed the boys to a management deal.

Their debut album,
Swinging with Pendulum Dune
, sold ten million copies and shocked the world. The talent agent ended up stealing all the group's royalties because the boys didn't read the contract carefully. But they had their fifteen minutes of fame, and even got to sing “God Bless America” at a St. Louis Cardinals game.

The other guys in the band were thrilled with their success. But Justin realized that the average career of a boy band lasted one album, maybe two. When he told the group he was leaving, Laurent and the other guys took it hard. They stopped speaking to him. Laurent developed a drinking problem, and only recently kicked it and started up his lighting and sound company.

After Justin left Pendulum Dune, he wrote some rhythm and blues songs, hired a couple of hip-hop producers from L.A., and released a solo album simply titled
Justin Chanda
. It won Best Pop Vocal Album at the Grammy Awards, and Justin was flying high. He started getting small TV and movie parts, opened up a restaurant in West Hollywood, and was named “one of the most stylish men in America” by
GQ
magazine.

It had all started ten years earlier as a joke in the Cape Bluff High School cafeteria. Justin hadn't been back there since.

The Cape Bluff exit was coming up fast on the right side of the highway. Justin pulled over onto the shoulder just before the off-ramp and turned off the engine.

He had a choice to make. He could keep driving to Springfield and catch the flight to L.A. Or, he could pull off at this exit and go to the talent show in Cape Bluff.

It would be great to get back to California that night, and sleep in his own bed. It would also be great to blow everyone's minds by showing up at his old elementary school. He wondered if the house he grew up in had survived the recent tornado.

If he went to the talent show, he knew there were sure to be lots of familiar faces. He wondered if Mary Lampert, that is, Mary
Marotta
, was as pretty as she used to be back in high school. He wondered if Laurent Linn and the guys in Pendulum Dune were still in Cape Bluff, and how they would react if they saw him. Maybe they would ask him for money. Or maybe they would just beat him up for leaving the band to go off and become famous on his own.

He
hated
making these decisions. That's why he had a team of lawyers and agents—to make the tough decisions
for
him. But he couldn't get in touch with them now. His cell phone was dead.

Justin sat in the car at the side of I-44 for a
good fifteen minutes, thinking things over. The sky was looking dark. There was always the chance that the flight from Springfield would be canceled, just like his other flight. Then he would have driven three hours out of his way for nothing. The weather had been really screwy lately.

He sighed, took a deep breath, started up the Prius, and pulled off the highway at the Cape Bluff exit. He would go to the talent show.

He had no idea that this decision was going to change his life.

A Jumble of Hubbub

An hour before the talent show was scheduled to begin, backstage was a jumble of hubbub and nervous energy. Richard (who by now was being called “The Raccoon” by everybody) was pacing back and forth with his eyes closed, silently rapping his lyrics to himself. Paul and The BluffTones were tuning their electric guitars while working up the nerve to play the forbidden “Stacy's Mom.” Somebody's mother was frantically sewing a costume that had ripped at the worst possible moment.

Julia was stretching her quadriceps to release tension, while the other Beach Babes giggled and sent cell phone pictures to their friends, who were
sitting in the same room. Jenny and her Sand Kittens warily eyed the Beach Babes from the other side of the stage, being careful not to make eye contact with them.

The Drumming Gorillas beat on their plastic garbage cans to kill the time. Singers practiced their scales. Cheerleaders, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, Elvis impersonators, penguin impersonators, and bacon impersonators were milling around waiting for the show to begin. Amy the crochet girl was sitting calmly in the corner—crocheting.

Somebody kept shouting, “Where's my mustache? Has anybody seen my mustache?”

Don Potash, the comedian who suffered from brain freeze and flop sweat during his audition, had felt bad that he would not be part of the show. Two days earlier, he asked Mrs. Marotta if he could help out behind the scenes in some way. She said he could be on the stage crew. Because he was big and strong, Don was assigned the important job of pulling the curtain open and closed for each act.

There was only one performer who wasn't nervously getting ready backstage—Elke Villa. But in
all the confusion, nobody noticed she was missing.

The talent show had been switched to the Cape Bluff High School auditorium at the last minute. This was because eight hundred tickets had been sold, and the fire code stated that only five hundred people were allowed in the elementary school multipurpose room at one time. Honest Dave Gale moved the grand prize—the Hummer H3T—over to the front lawn of the high school so everybody could see it when they arrived for the show.

People were still buying tickets at the door and filing into the auditorium thirty minutes before show time. It was going to be standing room only. Three seats in the front row were blocked off with white tape. They were reserved for the judges—Mayor Rettino, Principal Anderson, and Reverend Mercun.

Just about the whole town had come out to see the talent show. At five dollars per ticket, they had raked in at least four thousand dollars from the admissions alone. A lot more money would be made from selling ads in the program, sales of the DVD, still photos of each act, and cupcakes and cookies, which were selling briskly in the lobby.
All that money wouldn't fix the estimated million dollars worth of damage to the school, but it would go a long way toward replacing the library books that had been ruined.

Money talks, as they say. To the grown-ups of Cape Bluff, the talent show was a success before the first act took the stage. Parent volunteers were cheerfully ripping tickets, hawking food, and handing out programs at the door.

“Don't miss the opportunity to buy a DVD of the show!” one usher announced. “You'll have those memories forever. Pick up an order form on the table in the lobby.”

“Photos are available for purchase,” another volunteer announced. “We have individual action shots, pictures of each act, and a group photo of all our talented performers.”

Honest Dave was walking around the audience, schmoozing and hobnobbing with his old customers, new customers, and potential customers. Laurent Linn, the sound and lighting guy, was running around hooking up tiny wireless microphones for the performers so they would be heard.

Mary Marotta was also rushing around, giving quickie pep talks to nervous kids and making
sure everyone had the right equipment and costumes. She was almost in a nervous panic herself. There were eight hundred people out there! What if something went wrong? In her eyes, the last rehearsal had pretty much been a disaster, with props breaking, CDs skipping, and kids misbehaving. She really wasn't sure if everything was going to come together in time for the actual show. And she was on the verge of laryngitis from shouting so much at rehearsals.

The media loves heartwarming human interest stories, so
The Cape Bluff Tribune,
Channel 6 Action News, and KNOW-AM “In the Know” radio had sent correspondents to report on the talent show. It was a natural headline: TOWN DEVASTATED BY TORNADO STRUTS ITS STUFF. Tech guys were setting up their equipment and reporters were interviewing parents in the audience.

Most of those parents sat anxiously in their seats. They were hoping their child wouldn't be the one to sing that horrible note, fall off the stage, forget the lyrics, collapse into tears, or humiliate the family in some new and unusual way. Proud grandparents waited patiently for the show to start, some of them having come from hundreds of miles away. Dozens of video cameras were at the ready, fingers hovering over the record button.

Each member of the audience had been instructed to bring along a flashlight with them. It was Mrs. Marotta's idea to end the show with an all-cast sing along and have everybody wave their flashlights back and forth in the dark.

As it got closer to seven o'clock, a buzz of anticipation swept through the audience. Everybody knew the show was about to begin. Mrs. Marotta gathered the kids in the room behind the stage.

“Okay, this is
it
!” she said. “I need to tell you kids something. We all want to be something different from what we are. We all want to be somebody else sometimes. Well, you become someone different when you're on the stage. You each have two minutes to shine in front of the whole town. Show 'em what you've got. Whatever happens out there, I'm proud of you and you should be proud of yourselves. Now let's get this party started.”

The doors leading out of the auditorium were closed. The last stragglers found the few remaining seats. The house lights were dimmed. Conversations ended. People shushed their neighbors.