Somebody on This Bus Is Going to Be Famous (3 page)

“But…why is it bad for you?”

“Two things. Number one, they're going to need my rehearsal room so they can put the crib and changing table and all that junk that goes along with a baby in there.”

This hurts: her rehearsal room (which the 'rents insist on calling “the spare bedroom”) is the only place she can work out her routines in private, where not even Uncle Mike could barge in. There's a mirror on the closet door and enough space to turn cartwheels and practice her signature slow-mo head-bang that makes her hair spray out like a fan. And now they were going to fill it up with stuffed animals and diapers. Ick.

But that's not even the worst thing. “The worst thing is, my mom's going to quit her job in February so they'll have time to train another manager before the baby comes. That means no money to spare, just when I need tuition for camp. Oh, and I also have to buy the camp workout suit and leotard and T-shirt…” Here, she has to stop and catch her breath. She cried her eyes out the night before, after a supersize blowup with her parents. It's amazing she has any tears left. “So,” she chokes out, “there's no way we can afford Shooting Star Camp.”

“Oh, Shelly!” That finally gets Miranda's sympathy. “Are you sure?”

Shelly sniffs, sucking it up, forcing herself to recall the logical steps her dad had ticked off on his fingers last night. “My mom quits in February and isn't going back to work for at least a year. Baby's due in March, and there're gonna be bills the insurance won't cover. No money left over. End of story.”

“Maybe next year, then?”

“But camp is every
other
year! That means I won't get another chance until I'm fourteen, and all the kids who got to go this year will be way ahead of me and they'll know each other and the coaches and agents and…”

She's getting worked up again, like last night, when her dad had stopped being reasonable and ordered her to her room:
And
don't come out until you're ready to apologize!
Seeing nothing to apologize for, she didn't come out until this morning.

“Are you sure there's no way?” Miranda looks really sympathetic now. It makes Shelly glad to have her for a listening friend. “Like, maybe if you could raise half of the money? I could help you do a bake sale. I like to bake.”

Yeah, it's easy to see that. Miranda is kind of round. “But half of seventeen hundred dollars is eight hundred dollars I have to raise!”

“Actually…I think it's eight hundred fifty.”

“Whatever. How many cupcakes with sprinkles does that add up to? A
lot
.”

“Well…maybe a car wash?”

“Right.” Shelly catches herself biting her nails, a habit she's trying to break. “Maybe a thousand-dollar scratch-off ticket.”

“When did you say the baby was due?” asks Miranda.

“What? Oh, I don't know. Sometime in March, I forget the date.”

“Do you think they'd let me watch it sometime?”

“Sure, come on over and watch it anytime you want. But I don't think babies do much at first.”

• • •

Next morning, when Shelly gets on the bus, Spencer is telling everybody he got accepted into space camp for the following summer. His good news would have made her feel worse about her bad news, but today her attitude has done a one-eighty turn. She has a plan. Cheerful as a chickadee, she slides in beside Miranda. “Hey, what are you good at?”

Miranda blinks in surprise. “Uh…not much. I can cook, like when my mom works late at the nursing home and I have to—”

“No, I mean in school. What's your best subject?”

“Oh. Language arts, definitely. Remember I won the school-wide spelling bee last year?”

“Right.” Actually Shelly doesn't remember anything about Miranda from last year, except that she hung out with that snotty rich kid, Penelope Gage. “That's perfect, because I can't spell. I've got a plan—you want to hear it?”

“Sure!” Miranda's face brightens.

“This morning, Dad told me he looked up the camp website and found out that they give scholarships. A
limited
number
. And I might get one if I bring my grades up and do some volunteer work and have my teachers and youth pastor and glee coach write letters saying I'm the greatest thing since spandex.”

“That's…that's terrific,” says Miranda, trying to be tactful. “I guess the main thing is the grades.” Shelly's grades aren't the best.

“That's what my dad says. I'll still have to raise money because the scholarships are only good for about half of it. I go, ‘Okay, so like if I get a scholarship for half the tuition, will you guys pay the rest?' And he goes, ‘Half the rest. No more than
half
. You earn one-quarter of the total—that's about five hundred, because we have to pay airfare—and that'll tell us that you're really serious about this.' Like I can't just
tell
him I'm really serious. Anyway, I'll need to bring my grades up a little, so I was wondering if you could help me out with language arts stuff? Like, after school sometimes?”

“Okay. Sure!” Miranda beams, like she was just asked to ride the homecoming float holding a dozen roses. Shelly's thinking it's sweet that she wants to help when Kaitlynn pops into the seat in front of them. “I heard you were going to try for a scholarship to Star Camp!”

“
Shooting
Star Camp,” Shelly corrects her, glancing at Miranda who raises her eyebrows. “How'd you hear that?”

“Your mom told my mom. And congratulations about the baby! Babies are fun. Except when they have colic and cry all night like my brother Steven did for the first three months.”

“Weren't you sitting somewhere else?” Shelly asks. Kaitlynn's wheels are always spinning so fast she doesn't have a clue how uncool she is, with her stuck-out ears and headbands and skirts that ride low on her skinny hips.

“Just let me tell you my idea. If you want a scholarship, you need lots of service projects. So why don't you run for Youth Court? I'll nominate you.”

Shelly opens her mouth with an automatic
no
, then hesitates. That's actually a good point, about service projects. Youth Court is made up of five sixth-graders (plus two alternates) who meet once a week to hear complaints that kids bring up against each other, like bullying, fighting, stealing, and things like that. Candidates have to be nominated by two classmates and a teacher, and the campaign runs from mid-October to the first Tuesday in November.

“I want to run for Youth Court next year,” Kaitlynn is saying, “but I can't this year, so I'll manage your campaign. It'll be good experience for me, and it'll help you get a scholarship even if you don't win. I've got a great idea for a campaign song—”

“Please,” Shelly interrupts. “Nobody writes my songs but me. So I'll think about it, okay?” She turns deliberately to Miranda. “Now, my other bad subject is math, unless you count social studies and science. Do you know anybody who's good at math? Like, somebody on this bus?”

Miranda glances around then leans in and lowers her voice—even though, with the groan of the bus as it slows to make the turn onto Farm Road 152, a secret-service listening device couldn't have picked her up. “Actually, Bender is really good at math.”

The back tire hits a pothole on the gravel road, making Shelly's next word jump out like a scared rabbit. “Bender?! He's
good
at something?”

“Shhhh!” Miranda wiggles her fingers but it's too late. The subject under discussion creeps up and slides into the seat behind them while Mrs. B isn't looking.

“Did I hear my name?”

“Did you?” Shelly turns around and flutters her eyelashes. “I was talking about
blenders
. And how your head would look in one.” His head is large, and usually there's a lock of dark hair flopping over his wide forehead that always looks dirty. The hair, that is.

“Haw haw.” Bender glances out the window at the little shed that swings into view when the bus backs up. “What's up with this stop?” he yells at the driver. “It's been three weeks now, and there's never anybody here!”

“Sit down, Bender!” Mrs. B calls back, even though he's not standing up.

He heaves a mighty sigh and throws himself back into his usual seat. From there, he carries on the dispute with Mrs. B as she pulls away from the shed and starts back up the gravel road. “We average two minutes and forty-three seconds a day doing this! Do you know how much that is for the whole year?”

“How do you know he's good at math?” Shelly asks Miranda.

Miranda stares at her. “Didn't you hear what he just said?”

“…Four hundred eighty-nine minutes!” Bender is saying as he tucks a rolled-up strip of paper behind his ear. “That's eight-point-fifteen hours of extra sleep I could get if we didn't have to make this stupid stop!”

“Thank you for the update, Bender,” Mrs. B says while looking both ways at the stop sign. “Now go back to sleep.”

“He says that kind of stuff all the time,” Miranda murmurs. “Some of the kids think he uses a hidden calculator but I think he mostly does it in his head.”

“What if he's just making up numbers?”

“You mean you never noticed?”

“
Please
. I'm working on a career. I've got to stay focused. Besides, there's no way I'm asking
him
to be my math tutor. I'll just skip math—can't be good at everything, right? What do you think I could do for volunteer work? Hey, doesn't your mom work at a nursing home?”

“Uh-huh. She's a physical therapist. She's at Sunset Hills two days a week.”

“Perfect. Ask her what I can do to cheer up old people. That's always a good volunteer thing. I know!” Shelly sits up straight as she answers her own question. “I could put on a show!”

• • •

“What kind of show?” Shelly's mom asks when she springs the idea next morning at breakfast.

“My kind.”

“Could I have eggs and bacon?” Evan asks. “Cereal just makes me hungry.”

Mrs. Alvarez groans. “Sorry, sweetheart. I can barely tolerate the
words
eggs and bacon these days.” She's having what she calls morning sickness, another complication of having a baby that Shelly finds totally gross.

“Please, Mom?” Shelly pleads. “Miranda already talked to her mother and they can set it up for next Thursday after bingo.”

“I don't know, Shelly,” says her mom. “These are senior citizens. They're into Frank Sinatra and Perry Como, not Claire.”

“Can't I at least have some sausage?” Evan whines. “Or cheese fries?”

Mrs. Alvarez gags and makes a dash for the bathroom. Dad takes over. “How about you just do something short and simple. Like ‘The Good Ship Lollipop.' That was cute when you did it for the Elks Club.”

“That was ages ago! I was, like, seven years old! I'm so not that performer anymore!”

Her dad takes a deep breath. “Shelly, the whole point behind volunteer work is that you're doing it for somebody else. Not just to get something for yourself. If you're going to do this, then put on a show they'll like.”

“Okay, okay. I'll pick the music tonight.”

“Not more than twenty minutes,” he warns. “They get drowsy in the afternoon.”

“
Okay
,” Shelly says again, wondering how anybody could get drowsy while she's onstage.

• • •

Miranda's the one who has to take Shelly's overstuffed gym bag to the gazebo and wrestle it onto the bus next Thursday morning. That's because Shelly smuggled all the contents—costume, Mylar curtain, Mylar pompoms, and two box lights—to Miranda's house the night before. Her parents insist she doesn't need lights and props for a nursing home show where most of the audience will be asleep by the end. So they think.

“Are you moving to town, Miranda?” asks Mrs. B as the girl struggles up the steps with a bag that looks like it might be holding a janitor-sized vacuum cleaner and maybe the janitor too.

“No, I—”

“That's my equipment,” Shelly explains, boosting the bag from the rear. “I've got a gig.”

“What's a gig?” Igor asks from behind where the boys are waiting.

“It's some kind of noose, I think,” Jay says. Self-consciously, he adjusts his glasses. It's his first day to wear them, and he keeps glancing around to see if anybody notices. Shelly thinks he looks dignified and serious, like the president of the United States in a movie.

“No, she means gag,” says Bender. “She needs a gag.”

“Shut up, Bender,” Shelly snaps.

“A ‘gig,'” explains Spencer, doing his learned-professor imitation, “is a term used by musicians of the popular sort, meaning an engagement, or in the vernacular, a ‘job.'” His dad is a musician—Shelly's guitar teacher, in fact.

“Everybody move along,” says Mrs. B. “Find a seat.”

Shelly and Miranda find one together, parking the gym bag on the seat in front of them.

“Hey, Jay,” Igor calls from the back. “Look.”

Everybody looks where Igor is pointing out the near window. Jay's grandfather is standing in front of the gazebo, Panzer's leash looped through his arm while the dog noses in the grass. The old man is holding a sign:
IF
YOU
CAN
READ
THIS
YOUR
A
GREAT
RUNNING
BACK. KNOCK 'EM DEAD JAY PASTERNAK III, MVP
.

“Oh,” sighs Miranda after a moment. “That's really sweet.”

Shelly nods, meanwhile wondering if Mr. Pasternak usually wears his house slippers to walk the dog. Jay bites his upper lip and releases the catch on the nearest window. Forcing it down, he sticks out his fist with the thumb up.