Somebody on This Bus Is Going to Be Famous Read Free Page B

syllables were better, and stick with something that everybody said the same way. Like Brandi. Bran-DEE! Bran-DEE! Bran—
    â€œPipe down back there!” Mrs. B yells from the front. Shelly blinks, as though her fans were raising a ruckus outside her own head. But the driver is yelling at Igor, who has thrown up his hands and screams like he’s on a roller coaster as the bus starts down the long steep hill toward Drybed Creek. He’s done that for three days in a row.
    â€œDo you think Igor’s too young for fifth grade?” asks Miranda.
    Shelly glances across the aisle where Igor is leaning forward, resting his chin on the seat ahead of him, his tongue flopped out and eyes crossed for the littles. His dark glossy hair comes to a widow’s peak in the middle of his forehead, and his snappy gray eyes are fringed with long dark lashes. “He’s too young for second grade,” she says. “But he’s kinda cute.”
    â€œCute?!” Miranda sputters. “I wouldn’t think he was cute even if…if I found him on a Hello Kitty lunchbox.”
    Shelly laughs, but soon she’s time-traveling again, this time to the past—to the magic moment last May when she pulled triumph from tragedy at the Spring Talent Fling.
    The Fling is always held on the last day of school, when everybody has their minds on swimming and summer camp and hanging out for days on end. Shelly was scheduled for last on the program, after the audience had fidgeted through a few hundred (not really, but it sure seemed like it) lip-sync acts and piano pieces and even Davy Blair playing “Twinkle, Twinkle” on his violin. She had to admit, that took some guts—to keep playing even after kids had started throwing pencil erasers at him.
    By Shelly’s turn, the natives were really restless. She asked Mr. Manchuso, who was manning the sound system, to bump it up. The thump-thump-thump of the intro got everyone’s attention. Then she electrified them by cartwheeling out in her silver-sequined leotard (ordered from Footlight Magic Dancewear). She grabbed the mic and busted out with “What’s Got Into You?” (No lip sync for Shelly—her dad said she could raise the roof on a barn without the aid of electronics.) But she was only seven bars into the song when the sound cut out.
    Like, totally. She learned later that the cord to the main speaker jack had disconnected somehow—maybe an accident, like somebody kicked it while running backstage. Shelly suspected sabotage, even though she couldn’t prove it. But that’s not the great thing.
    The great thing was, she didn’t miss a beat. She found the beat inside her —the drums, the keyboard, the bass, the reverb. She felt the pulse in her boot heels as they stomped the stage, her long hair swinging like a curtain. She kept on singing , and a few kids in the front row started clapping in rhythm, and then more and more, as a kind of fever swept through the room. When the speaker got reconnected and the sound blasted out, right on the beat, her audience went crazy . By the second refrain, they were on their feet, clapping, stomping, hollering “Whoo-ot!”
    She could have taken four or five bows and an encore if Mrs. Jasper hadn’t cut it short. “A star is born,” the teacher said, though she didn’t sound exactly thrilled. Like Shelly might let triumph go to her head.
    It went to her heart. She should have freaked out when the music stopped, but she didn’t. That’s because there was no stopping the music inside, pumping through her so strong she could sweep a cafeteria full of kids right along wherever she went.
    She was so there she never wants to be anywhere else.
    That’s what people don’t understand: they think she’s just a show-off. Uncle Mike, who surprised her once while she was practicing in the backyard, can’t stop calling her Shelly Vanilli, after some old