“The Dance of the Goon!” said Matt.
They laughed again.
“I’m going to tell jokes,” said Gary.
“Well, let’s hear one,” Paul urged.
Gary thought a second. “What do you call a cow without legs?”
They stared at him.
“Ground beef.”
They stared at him.
“You better stick to dancing,” said Matt.
“Every morning when I wake up,” said Ryan Utt, “the first thing I do is thank the Lord I’m not Gary Boone.”
Gary felt a hand on his shoulder. A girl said, “Gary.”
He turned around to see Brenda Thompson.
It was probably the first time Brenda Thompson had ever spoken to him. It was certainly the first time she’d ever touched him.
“Did you say you wanted to be in the talent show?” Brenda asked. She seemed genuinely interested.
“If I’m not too late.”
“See Miss Langley,” said Brenda. “She’s the faculty adviser.”
“Thanks, Brenda,” said Gary.
“Thanks, Brenda,” said Paul in a mocking voice, although it was more like he was making fun of Brenda than of Gary.
“Ooooh,” said Matt, as if there was something going on between Brenda and Gary.
The boys thought that was hilarious.
Brenda looked scornfully at them. “Get real,” she said.
The talent show had been Brenda Thompson’s idea. “It’ll be fun,” she’d said at the student council meeting.
“I think it sounds stupid,” said Philip Korbin, eighth-grade president. “Only an idiot would want to make a fool out of himself in front of the whole school.”
“Oh, it’ll be fun,” Brenda said again.
Most everybody agreed with Philip, but in the end they voted for the talent show because Brenda was popular, and because nobody else had a better idea for celebrating Floyd Hicks’s birthday.
But the real reason Brenda had suggested the talent show wasn’t because she thought it would be “fun.” She just wanted a chance to sing on stage. She imagined herself as the next Madonna.
She never admitted this to anyone. She thought she would say something like, “Well, I guess I should be in the talent show, since it was my idea. Hmm, what should I do? I don’t know. I guess I’ll sing.”
And it just
so happens that on the day of the talent show, a big-time Hollywood producer gets a flat tire while driving through town in his Lamborghini. And while the tire is being fixed he notices a poster for the talent show, so, since he has nothing better to do, he checks it out. When he hears Brenda sing, he immediately rushes backstage and signs her up to do records and movies.
She doesn’t even go back to school She just hops in his red convertible and heads straight for Hollywood with the wind blowing her hair.