The Talent Show

by Dan Gutman

  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.

  Chapter 5

  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.

  After a few shouting matches, Mrs. Villa realized she couldn’t force the great American songbook down Elke’s throat. She also realized she could have the next Taylor Swift on her hands if she played her cards right. In fact, Mrs. Villa thought about moving the family to Los Angeles or Nashville, home of the country music business. But her husband refused to move.

  As Elke was getting known around Cape Bluff, people began to gossip that Mrs. Villa was an overbearing stage mom who lived vicariously through Elke. And if you don’t know what that means, it’s a lot like those dads who push their sons to be sports heroes because they struck out with the bases loaded when they were twelve.

  But the truth was that nobody was twisting Elke’s arm. She loved to sing, she wanted to become a singer when she grew up, and she had a competitive streak in her. Elke had grown up watching an endless parade of teenage girls—Hilary Duff, Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan, Miranda Cosgrove—come out of nowheresville and become superstars. Every year, it seemed, some new fresh face would appear on Nick or Disney and become the next big thing. There must be a constant need to supply the world with young female pop stars. Everybody was always telling her that her voice was much better than any of those teenybopper girls.

  To most people in Cape Bluff, it was inevitable that Elke would become a superstar one day. The only reason she hadn’t hit it big already was because her parents didn’t have the money to get her to the next level. Acting lessons, voice coaches, fancy wardrobes, and hair stylists are expensive. It’s hard to get noticed in Cape Bluff, Kansas. You’ve got to go to Hollywood.

  When the talent show was announced, Mrs. Villa thought it could be Elke’s springboard to the next level. There would be local media there. The video would be on YouTube. It could go viral. You never know. This was how careers got launched.

  The word around Cape Bluff was that Elke Villa winning the talent show was just about a done deal. It was in the bag. Some people even felt they shouldn’t bother having the show at all. They might as well just give the Hummer to Elke and get it over with. The rumor was that if she won, her mom was planning to get a divorce and drive Elke to the West Coast or Nashville to take a shot at the big time.

  There was just one problem.

  Elke Villa was not even going to be in the talent show.

  Chapter 6

  Paul Crichton

  While Elke was a reluctant celebrity with a lot of talent, Paul Crichton had very little talent but wanted to be famous very badly.

  He wasn’t at all musical, at least not when he was little. His dad had a huge CD collection that played constantly in his car and every room of the house, so Paul couldn’t help but absorb some of his dad’s love of 1970s rock and roll. But for his first ten years, he had no interest in music at all.

  In second grade, it was a requirement that every student at Cape Bluff Elementary take up a musical instrument. There was an assembly in which the music teacher demonstrated the violin, snare drum, trumpet, cello, and several other instruments. Then the students got to pick the one they wanted to learn, and they rented that instrument from the school.

  Paul chose the flute. He didn’t particularly like the sound of the flute, or the way it looked. Paul chose the flute for one reason—it would be easy to carry to and from school. Who wanted to lug a French horn on the bus every day?

  In the end, he didn’t have a clue about how to read music or play the flute. Blowing air over the thing while moving his fingers to push down the pads over those little holes was confusing. It didn’t come naturally. Paul spent more time polishing the flute than he did practicing with it. The day the students no longer had to take music lessons, Paul was first in line to return the flute to the music room.

  He ignored music and turned to skateboarding through third and fourth grades, deciding that he wanted to become a famous skater when he grew up.

  “After I win a gold medal in the X-Games,” he told his friends confidently, “every company in the world will want me to endorse their products. I’ll make millions.”

  Unfortunately, Paul soon discovered that in order to get really good at skateboarding, you have to be at least a little crazy. You need to take risks and fall down a lot trying to perfect your tricks. The best skaters tend to get hurt a lot. They bleed. They break bones.

  Falling down, bleeding, and breaking bones were interesting to watch on video, but not things Paul wanted to experience personally. That stuff hurts! So much for a career as a pro skater. He toyed briefly with the idea of being a famous skateboard designer, but lacking any artistic ability, Paul gradually admitted to himself that maybe skateboarding would not be his ticket to fame and fortune.

  Then one day, he was on vacation in Oregon visiting his cousin, who had an electric guitar lying around his bedroom. A song came on the radio—“Seven Nation Army” by a group called The White Stripes.

  It consisted mainly of seven notes.

  Duh … duh-duh-duh … duh-duh … duh

  Duh … duh-duh-duh … duh-duh … duh

  “Cool tune,” he told his cousin.

  It was a simple, catchy melody, and it repeated over and over again. Paul picked up his cousin’s guitar. He plucked the A string, the second one from the top, and slid his finger up the neck until the sound matched the first note of “Seven Nation Army.” It was the seventh fret. The second note was the same, so he p
lucked it again. Then he slid his finger up to the tenth fret, where he found the third note. Then back down to the seventh fret. Then he slid his finger down to the fifth, third, and second frets. Before the song was over on the radio, he had figured out the seven-note musical phrase.

  Duh … duh-duh-duh … duh-duh … duh

  At the time, he didn’t even know what notes he was playing—E … E-G-E … D-C … B. He just knew they sounded right.

  Paul played the phrase over and over again until it sounded just like The White Stripes. The rest of the family was impressed that he could pick the song up so quickly, and Paul felt good when they complimented him. In the next few days, he played “Seven Nation Army” so many times, everybody started telling him to knock it off.

  “Can’t you play something else for a change?” his aunt begged.

  During that week, something clicked in Paul’s head. Rock and roll had grabbed him. When he got home, he put his skateboard down in the basement for good and made an announcement at the dinner table.

  “I decided that I’m going to become a rock star when I grow up.”

  He raided his piggy bank and bought a used Fender Stratocaster and a cheap amplifier from a high school kid down the street who was happy to get rid of them.

  Paul’s parents wanted to encourage his new interest, which was certainly a lot safer than grinding rails and attempting kickflips off the church steps. But there was no money in the Crichton budget for guitar lessons.

  So Paul went to the library and found a sheet music book that had guitar chord diagrams. On each page, above the musical notation, there were pictures of chords, like this:

  After a bit of fumbling, Paul figured out that the vertical lines represented the six strings on the guitar, the horizontal lines were the frets on the neck, and the black dots indicated where you put your fingers. He strummed his first chord.

  And as it says in the Bible—it was good.

  Paul quickly learned the major chords, the minor chords, and the seventh chords. Now he could play songs.