The Talent Show (4 page)

It took about twenty minutes to gather up all the slips of paper and tally the results. Mayor Rettino stepped up to the microphone to make the announcement.

“Okay, we have six hundred and seventy-nine votes for a talent show,” she said, “and one hundred twenty-one votes for a rubble museum.”

The audience erupted in applause and cheering.

“Well,” said Officer Selleck, “it looks like we're putting on a show.”

Get Your Act Together

“People try to put us d-d-d-d-down …”

Paul Crichton came charging two steps at a time up to the front entrance of Cape Bluff Elementary School the next Monday morning. He had his iPod turned up
way
too loud. But when you're listening to “My Generation” by The Who, you
have
to play it full blast.

Before he yanked open the door, Paul saw this flyer taped to it …

GET READY TO BOOGIE!!!

Do you think you've got talent?
PROVE IT!

Think you don't?

THINK AGAIN!

Mark your calendar for

the Cape Bluff Elementary School
Talent Show to be held on

FRIDAY, MARCH 29 at 7 p.m.

right here in the

multipurpose room.

The Talent Show will feature

acts of all kinds by our very own
grade 3–6 students. The grand
prize is a brand-new Hummer H3T
pickup (thanks to Honest Dave's
Hummer Heaven). The theme of
the talent show is “The Beach,
” but you do not HAVE to perform
to the theme.

Auditions will be held this Friday
after school in the multipurpose
room. Be there or be square! GET
YOUR ACT TOGETHER! We will
also need people to work on the
stage crew.

Paul pumped his fist and made a mental note to call a band meeting after school.

Inside, Mrs. Mary Marotta was rushing around, trying to tape the same flyer up all over the hallways before they were filled with students. She assigned her own kids, second grader Elsie and first grader Edward, to tear off pieces of tape and hand them to her.

After the town had voted to hold a talent show, Principal Anderson realized he was far too busy to run it himself. His teachers were swamped with work. What he needed was an enthusiastic parent volunteer. Cape Bluff is a small town. Everybody knows everybody. He asked around for someone who had theatrical experience, and the name Mary Marotta kept coming up.

Mrs. Marotta, ten years earlier, had been quite an actress. She was in the high school play every year, and won the lead roles in
My Fair Lady
and
Grease
. She was Miss Cape Bluff in the 4th of July parade. After graduation, her friends urged her to move to New York City and become a star on Broadway. Instead, she moved down the street from her parents, married the quarterback of the high school football team, and started a family.
The marriage didn't last, unfortunately. It was her husband that ended up moving to New York, to become a stockbroker. Mary didn't regret the decision she made, but always wondered how her life would have been different if she had chased her dream.

Running the talent show would be a big job. She wasn't sure she could handle it, with Elsie and Edward tagging along everywhere. But once she agreed to do it, Mrs. Marotta threw herself into the talent show headfirst. That's the kind of person she was.

After the flyers were all taped up on the walls, Mary drove home, sat at her computer, and typed up a second page to the flyer, which would be put into everyone's backpacks at the end of the day… .

TALENT SHOW DETAILS
…

• All acts must be two minutes or shorter.

• We encourage children to
perform as groups. That way, more students will be able to participate.

• All acts that are using a CD for background music must bring it to their audition.

• Start thinking about costumes and props NOW.

• We will have mandatory technical and dress rehearsals.

• All acts, songs, and costumes must be appropriate for a
family audience. There will be no violence, no guns, and NO NINJAS.

• If you are performing a song, bring the title and a hard copy of the lyrics with you to your audition. We want to make sure two groups don't perform the same song.

•The judges of the talent show will be Cape Bluff Mayor Lucille Rettino, Principal Jon Anderson, and Reverend John Mercun of the First Presbyterian Church. They do not accept donations, cash, or other bribes!

In the hallways and in the lunchroom, the talent show was the big topic of conversation among the students. There were a lot of whispers at the lockers: “Do you want to be in a group with me?” “Are you joining a group with
her
?” “Do you think she would join our group?” “What song should we sing?”

From the start, some kids knew exactly what they would perform, down to the song title and dance steps. Others knew they wanted to be in the show, but weren't sure if they had enough talent—and courage—to get up on a stage with lots of people looking at them. Still others—almost all boys—wanted no part. They joked among themselves, and said the whole idea of a talent show was stupid.

Just before school let out for the day, Honest Dave Gale carefully drove a candy-apple red Hummer H3T pickup over the curb and parked it on the grass right in front of the Cape Bluff Elementary School sign.

He got out and put this sign on the windshield:

SHOW YOUR TALENT

THIS TRUCK COULD BE YOURS

COURTESY OF

HONEST DAVE'S HUMMER HEAVEN

When the three o'clock bell rang, the front doors opened, and in seconds kids were pouring out of the school.

As he walked by the Hummer on the lawn, Paul Crichton thought about which song his band would perform in the talent show. Two minutes was not a lot of time. Something peppy, he figured. Something familiar that would get the crowd clapping and singing along. A classic song that parents and kids would like. And something that
rocked
.

As she walked by the Hummer, Elke Villa made up her mind and decided that she would enter the talent show, and sing by herself. Now the only question was, should she go with a new hit song that was on the radio and all the kids knew, or maybe a timeless standard that would appeal more to the judges and grown-ups in the audience?

As he walked by the Hummer, Richard Ackoon was already mixing and matching words and rhymes in his head, composing a rap that would blow away even the people in the audience who hated rap music. Maybe something about the tornado.

As she walked by the Hummer, Julia Maguire sighed. She would have liked to dance in the
talent show. But there was no way she was going to get up in front of all those people and do ballet by herself. The kids would laugh her off the stage.

As he walked by the Hummer, Don Potash thought about his dad's truck, which was now lying sideways in a ditch a hundred feet from where his house used to be. He thought about how much it would mean to his dad if he could win the Hummer H3T pickup. The only problem was that he had no talent and had never even been on a stage before.

Just about every student in the school walked by the Hummer and thought about what he or she could do in the talent show.

Elke Villa

If they held a “Most Likely to Succeed” survey at Cape Bluff Elementary School, there's no doubt that Elke Villa would be the winner.

When Elke walked into a room, it seemed to brighten. The chemistry changed. All eyes turned to her. She didn't try to make that happen. She didn't
have
to try.

It wasn't just her looks. Oh, she was pretty, with long, brown, impossibly straight hair. But a lot of girls are pretty. She had a great voice, too. People compared it to Beyoncé's. But lots of pretty girls have great voices. And it wasn't her unusual Swedish name. Elke had something special—that mysterious quality they call charisma.

It had always been that way. When she was three, Elke got up at her birthday party and sang a version of “New York, New York” that people still talk about. Grown-ups stopped eating their cake and ice cream in mid-bite. Nobody had ever heard a girl so young sing so well, so confidently.

Her father, Tom Villa, was a construction worker of distant Cherokee/Mexican descent who came to Kansas from Mississippi for the work. He married a Swedish girl who was born and raised in Cape Bluff. Mrs. Villa worked for a few years as a receptionist after high school, but gave it up after Elke and her two little brothers were born.

The Villas were one of the poorer families in Cape Bluff. Tom's job wasn't full-time, and when there was no construction work to be done, food stamps were required to put a decent dinner on the table. Elke didn't realize she was poor until sixth grade, when she started noticing that other kids had bigger houses, newer clothes, and more stuff than she did.

“Can we get a piano, Mom?” she asked one night after dinner.

“With your voice, we don't need a piano,” her
mother replied. “One day you'll be able to hire a
dozen
piano players.”

It was Elke's mom, Ingrid, who recognized her daughter's potential early and saw it as their ticket out of poverty. She did odd jobs—babysitting, pet sitting, house cleaning—and used the money she earned to pay for Elke's singing lessons. Mrs. Villa took Elke for private speech therapy to help her lose her hardly noticeable lisp.

The Villas couldn't afford acting lessons, so as soon as Elke knew how to read, her mother borrowed scripts of plays from the library. At night, instead of bedtime stories, the two of them would read lines from Shakespeare. Just about everything her mother did revolved around making Elke famous.

Elke was barely five when Mrs. Villa took her to a talent agency several hours away in Oklahoma City. Test photos were taken, and a few weeks later Elke was modeling snowsuits in a department store's advertising circular that was in the Sunday
Cape Bluff Tribune
.

“See? You're getting famous already!” Ingrid Villa told Elke the day the paper came out. She bought ten copies.

Mrs. Villa brought those photos of Elke on countless auditions for TV commercials advertising everything from shampoo to sofa beds. Elke almost got a part in a Duncan Hines commercial, but she didn't smile enough while she was eating chocolate cake, and the talent agency chose another girl. Eventually, the modeling jobs dried up and Mrs. Villa's old Ford Escort kept breaking down on the weekly drive to Oklahoma City. Elke was thrilled. She hated going to auditions and having to pose and smile for pictures.

Mrs. Villa began dragging Elke to outdoor festivals, country fairs, malls, open mic nights, and karaoke contests around Cape Bluff when she was in fourth grade. None of them paid much for singers, but when she opened her mouth, people noticed. Elke's name was getting around. There was always the chance that somebody with influence might spot her talent and take her to the next level. That was always what it was about, Mrs. Villa reminded her, getting to the next level.

“Can I go play now?” Elke was always asking.

“After you finish your vocal chord exercises,” her mother insisted.

Elke's father had little confidence that show business would lead anywhere. He worked with his hands. It was hard for him to understand that anyone could make a living by singing, acting, or posing for pictures. When Elke went to bed at night, her parents would argue about it. They fought a lot. There was a lot of yelling and crying. Mr. Villa thought his wife should get a job and help support the family. She said she already
had
a full-time job—managing Elke's career. In fact, some days she would be up past midnight sending out head shots, burning CDs, and blasting out e-mails to Oprah, Ellen, Jay Leno, the
Today
show,
American Idol
, and anyone she could think of who might give Elke her big break. Nobody ever wrote back, but Mrs. Villa was convinced it was just a matter of time. If you keep trying, everyone always said, you will break through.

In the beginning, she personally chose Elke's repertoire. She would sing the standards—“Autumn Leaves,” “Baby, It's Cold Outside,” “Stardust,” “What A Wonderful World,” and familiar Broadway show tunes. But by fifth grade, Elke was starting to rebel.

“I don't want to be the next Barbra Streisand!”
she would yell. “I don't like Liza Minnelli! That's old-time music!”

“What do you want to be?” her mother asked. “Some hillbilly?”

“Yes!”

Elke wanted to be the next Patsy Cline or Dolly Parton. The music she listened to was country—Shania Twain, LeAnn Rimes, and the Dixie Chicks. These were her heroes.