The Talent Show (8 page)

Regular dictionaries are simply alphabetical, of course, listing words and providing origins, definitions, and synonyms for them. A rhyming dictionary lists
sounds
in alphabetical order, and provides words that rhyme with those sounds.

So, for instance, if you looked up the sound “each,” a rhyming dictionary would give you “beach,” “bleach,” “breech,” “leach,” “peach,” “preach,” “reach,” “screech,” “speech,” “teach,” “beseech,” “impeach,” “outreach,” “Long Beach,” and other words that rhyme with “each.”

Rhyming dictionaries are used by poets and songwriters. And rappers.

Richard's parents had mixed feelings about giving him a rhyming dictionary. On one hand, they were thrilled to hear that their son wanted a
book
for his birthday instead of a video game or some silly toy he would get tired of in five minutes. They wanted to encourage his longtime interest in reading, words, and language.

On the other hand, they didn't like the sounds they heard coming out of his bedroom. 50 Cent. Xzibit. Jay Z. Notorious B.I.G. Richard's favorite singers had names that didn't even
look
like names. He had developed an unhealthy interest in rap music, his parents feared.

They weren't dummies. They followed the news. Rappers were always showing off their cars and their guns, getting arrested, having violent feuds with each other, disrespecting women, and abusing drugs. Mr. and Mrs. Ackoon didn't want their son mixed up with that stuff. He was only in third grade!

When Richard started getting interested in rap music, his parents tried to push him in the direction of country, rock, pop, jazz, blues, and
even show music. But none of it clicked with him.

“I don't
care
about the music,” he kept telling them. “All I care about are the words.”

Richard tried to explain to his parents that just because he liked rap music didn't mean he was going to grow up to be like one of those rappers who set a bad example for kids.

“Your favorite singer is Johnny Cash,” he would tell his father. “Did you ever shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die?”

“That's different,” Mr. Ackoon argued. “Johnny Cash never shot anybody. He just wrote that in a song. But those rappers you listen to actually go around shooting each other.”

“Hardly any of 'em do that, Dad!”

Richard claimed that
anything
can be used in a good way or a bad way. He told his dad that a knife could be used to cut the food on your plate, or it could be used to stab somebody. A rapper could use words to insult a person, or they could use words to raise millions of dollars for charity. He could use words in a positive way, he explained. He could actually make the world better by rapping. His parents doubted it.

But Richard didn't seem like an angry kid who
would ever break the law or hurt anybody. He didn't have an angry bone in his body. So his parents agreed to buy him the rhyming dictionary for his birthday. But they were never really able to understand why he liked rap music or wanted to be a rapper.

“That stuff doesn't even
sound
like music!” his father would argue.

The other kids at school were also a little mystified by Richard's interest in rap. Like almost everybody in Cape Bluff, Richard was not African American. There
had been
a few well-known white rappers—Eminem, The Beastie Boys—but there was still something odd about seeing a white kid rap, especially a short white kid in third grade who had red hair, freckles, and braces.

There were a lot of people who felt that a white kid didn't even have the
right
to rap. Rappers had to come from “the hood” and have “street cred.” They had to pay their dues. They had to be oppressed.

Richard didn't think that was fair. Words were words.
Anybody
should be allowed to use them. Your skin color shouldn't determine what you could or couldn't say. That was what free speech and equal rights were all about.

And besides, Richard felt he
did
pay his dues, just by living in Cape Bluff. While it was true that he had never witnessed gang violence or the kinds of things poor kids growing up in the inner city experience, he had seen some bad things. Like his town being ripped apart by a tornado. That was pretty bad. Like people living in their cars because their houses were destroyed. Like friends who came over to his house not to hang out, but because they knew they could get something to eat there. Everyone in Cape Bluff had experienced poverty and hard times firsthand.

The other birthday present that Richard cherished came from his grandparents—a drum machine.

The Micro Rhythm Trak was a silver box no larger than a big piece of cake. It had twenty buttons on it. By pressing the buttons in different combinations, you could simulate virtually any drumbeat in any tempo, and create new ones as well. If you plugged the drum machine into an amplifier or decent set of speakers and closed your eyes, you would never know it wasn't a real drummer playing. His grandparents bought the Micro Rhythm Trak on eBay for forty dollars.

Richard didn't care about winning a Hummer. He didn't even know what a Hummer
was
. At eight years old, being able to drive a car seemed like something that would happen in the next
century
. But the night he found out about the talent show, Richard went home and shut himself in his room. He climbed into bed with a pad and paper, took out his rhyming dictionary, and turned on the drum machine. He punched in a beat that felt right, nodded his head with the rhythm, and started brainstorming.

He thought about what had happened to the people of Cape Bluff, and what was going to happen next. When words started coming into his head, he scribbled them down on the pad as quickly as he could. The rhymes came fast. He only had to use the rhyming dictionary in a few cases. Sometimes the words just flow.

Once he had the basic structure of his rap down, he tinkered with it, changing a word here or there, crossing out lyrics that didn't fit, and inserting replacements. He didn't even notice that two hours flew by until his mother knocked on the door and told him it was bedtime.

“One minute, Mom!”

Richard looked at what he had written. There was always room for improvement, of course, but it was good.
Really
good. He read it one more time from start to finish, changing just a few words to make the syllables fit the beat perfectly. He turned off the drum machine and smiled.

He was going to blow them away at the auditions.

The Kid's Got Talent

Whether it was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or running a talent show, when Mary Marotta decided to do something, she did it
right
.

In the four days leading up to the Friday night auditions, Mrs. Marotta was a ball of energy. She put flyers up in the windows of every Cape Bluff store. She got in touch with Mr. Linn, the man who offered to donate his sound and lighting equipment. She had to make sure the custodian would be around to open the school on Friday. She had to make sure there would be enough hand sanitizer and toilet paper in the bathrooms. She had to deal with pushy parents who thought their amazing child was the second coming of Judy
Garland. She had to deal with whiny third graders who couldn't decide if they should sing “You Are My Sunshine” or “I'm A Little Teapot
.”
It seemed like there were a million details to nail down. She knew that if she didn't do it, it wouldn't get done.

Mrs. Marotta even found the time to write a letter to Justin Chanda in care of his lawyer in New York. It was a long shot, but maybe Cape Bluff's most famous talent might be willing to come home and make a surprise appearance at the talent show for the sake of the town. It couldn't hurt to ask.

After dinner on Friday, Mrs. Marotta dropped Elsie and Edward off at the babysitter's house and drove to Cape Bluff Elementary School for the auditions. As she was parking her car on the blacktop, she noticed a group of boys shooting hoops on the old rusted backboard in the corner. She watched them for a minute, recognizing a sixth grader named Tyler Harvey who lived in her neighborhood. Sometimes he came around to rake leaves or shovel snow in order to earn money.

“Hey, Tyler,” Mrs. Marotta shouted, “are you and your friends going to audition for the talent show?”

“No, thanks, Mrs. Marotta,” he said, snickering for the benefit of the other boys.

“Talent shows are lame,” one of them said.

“Yeah,” said another. “That stuff is for girls.”

“No, it's not,” said Mrs. Marotta. “Lots of guys are going to be participating.”

“Oh, yeah?” Tyler said. “Like who?”

Mrs. Marotta looked at the list on her clipboard.

“Paul Crichton and his band The BluffTones are going to be in it,” she said. “Then there's Cutter Whitley, A. J. Campinha, Cole Roberts, Chris Flint. We've also got a rapper named Richard Ackoon and a singer named Aidan Baker. There will be lots of other boys too.”

“I'm not getting up on a stage and singing some stupid song,” one of the guys said.

“Me neither,” said another.

“You don't have to sing,” Mrs. Marotta told them. “You can do anything you'd like.”

“No, thanks,” said Tyler. “We like to play ball. We don't do put on shows.”

Mrs. Marotta shrugged, got her bag out of the trunk, and started walking toward the school. Then she stopped and turned around to look at Tyler again. He had a point. There
were
more girls
auditioning for the show than boys. The show really needed some more guys in it, and more variety of acts too. Besides, she had a feeling that Tyler and his friends would really
like
to be part of the show, but they were embarrassed. Probably in their eyes, singing and dancing just weren't cool. Or manly.

“What if I gave you guys costumes to wear?” she shouted to the boys.

“What kind of costumes?” Tyler asked.

“I know they have some gorilla suits backstage from the school play last year,” she told them. “Nobody will see your faces.”

“Gorillas are cool,” one of the boys said.

“And we don't have to sing?” Tyler asked.

“No.”

“Do we have to dance?” asked Tyler.

“Nope,” Mrs. Marotta said. “Like I said, you can do whatever you want. You can be basketball-playing gorillas for all I care. Come on, it'll be fun.”

“Well … okay,” Tyler said, “as long as we don't have to sing or dance.”

Tyler and his friends followed Mrs. Marotta into the school. She told them where to find the gorilla suits in a closet backstage.

The multipurpose room was already filling up with children and parents who arrived early. Some kids were putting on costumes they had made or were lugging elaborate props they had built.

As more people arrived, the noise level gradually went up until it reached the point where you could accurately call it a commotion. Kids were running around like crazy, which is what kids tend to do when they're unsupervised. Mrs. Marotta fully expected it. That's why she brought a whistle and a bullhorn in her bag.

An ear-piercing whistle filled the room.

“Attention!” she bellowed into the bullhorn. “Quiet! Ah, that's better. Everybody sit down, please!”

Everyone sat down. Mrs. Marotta wasn't sure if it was because she had yelled at them or because they noticed that the panel of judges had arrived—Mayor Rettino, Principal Anderson, and Reverend Mercun. Honest Dave Gale had walked into the room too.

“Who's gonna win my Hummer?” he asked everyone cheerfully.

Mrs. Marotta posted the list of acts on the wall and announced that she would call each act to the
stage one at a time, so students should listen for their names. She also requested that everyone be quiet and respectful of the person on the stage. Performing in front of an audience was a very difficult thing to do, Mrs. Marotta told them. It took a lot of courage to get up on a stage and be judged by other people.

She called out for a boy named Jimmy, a quiet little third grader. He climbed up on the stage with a violin and played Beethoven's “Violin Sonata Number 7 in C Minor.” It was obvious that he had been playing for years, and he received a nice round of applause from the kids and their parents in the audience.

“Very nice, Jimmy,” Mrs. Marotta said as the three judges gave him the thumbs-up and words of encouragement.

None of the kids knew this, but from the start Mrs. Marotta and Principal Anderson had agreed that the talent show would
not
be just like the popular TV show
American Idol
. There would be judges and a grand prize—the Hummer—of course. But nobody would be rejected. Any child who wanted to could participate, no matter how awful their act was. Nobody would be criticized,
poked fun at, humiliated, kicked off an island, voted out, or made to feel bad. The talent show was supposed to be a positive experience, not a negative one.

After Jimmy went back to his seat with his violin, a sixth-grade girl in a wheelchair sang an off-key version of “Under the Sea” from
The Little Mermaid
. She was followed by four cheerleaders who threw one another up in the air, a boy who played a lovely Chopin sonata on the piano, a trio of Irish step dancers, and two boys who did the old Abbott and Costello “Who's on First?” routine. Or tried to, anyway, until they got confused and forgot the name of the third baseman (“I Don't Know”).

“Very good,” Mrs. Marotta yelled into the bullhorn after each act had reached its two-minute time limit. Next!”

Some of the acts were very good. Elke Villa, as expected, was amazing. She sang “Over the Rainbow” from
The Wizard of Oz
, and a few of the grown-ups who were hanging around were all misty-eyed. The little third grader, Richard Ackoon, did what he called his “Cape Bluff Rap #1.” As he predicted, he blew the audience away.