A few minutes later, Oggie emerged from the house with Turk on his leash. As usual, Turk had a spitty yellow tennis ball in his mouth and his tail was wagging like a flag. The afternoon walk was his favorite, because often Oggie would take him to the park and throw the ball for him. Oggie glanced across the street, but there was no sign of Hannah or Dawn. He considered going over there himself to tell Donnica that the next time she wanted him to do her a favor, she didn’t have to make up some crazy story to get him to do it. He was happy to help her in any way he could — especially now that she’d invited him to come swimming in her pool.
Turk started tugging on his leash so hard that Oggie’s shoulder felt like it was about to pop.
“Okay, okay, I get the message,” he said. “Here we go.”
On the corner, Turk stopped to inspect a large bush popular with the neighborhood dogs. While Turk nosed around in the branches, Oggie turned back to look down the block at the Perfectos’ house once more. This time, Hannah and Dawn were standing out on the sidewalk. They waved for him to come over to where they were.
“Donnica’s disappeared!” Hannah told him.
“Disappeared?” said Oggie.
“Yeah, her mom is really worried. She said Donnica was acting totally weird today.”
“Yeah, like she couldn’t stop eating cheese. And now she’s missing,” said Dawn.
Oggie was about to explain that Donnica might not have actually been eating the cheese, she might have been charving it — though he was still a little unclear about why she’d want to do that if she wasn’t really planning to charve at a birthday party. But any thoughts about Donnica Perfecto and cheese were suddenly lost as Oggie looked down and noticed something that greatly alarmed him. The yellow tennis ball in Turk’s mouth had turned a very bright shade of pink. At first he was worried that Turk might have cut his mouth on something, but when he pulled the ball out, he discovered it wasn’t a ball at all, but rather a crumpled-up piece of pink paper.
“He must have found it in the bushes,” Oggie said, relieved. Then something occurred to him. “You know what?” he said. “This paper looks like the exact same shade of pink as the flyer I saw that guy putting up on the bulletin board at school yesterday.”
“What guy?” Dawn asked.
“What flyer?” asked Hannah.
Oggie uncrumpled the soggy paper. It was the very same flyer Donnica had pulled off the bulletin board the day before. The wind had snatched it off her bed and carried it down the street, where it had become snagged in the bush.
“Yeppers! This is it, all right. See? It says: ‘three pm at The Wawatosa Bandshell.’ That’s exactly what he told me.”
He held the paper out for the others to see. Dawn and Hannah’s mouths fell open.
“Hidden Talents!” they exclaimed in unison.
“What’s that?” asked Oggie.
“It’s only the hottest show on TV right now,” Dawn explained.
“Everybody watches it,” Hannah added.
Everybody but Oggie. He’d never even heard of Hidden Talents, which was not all that surprising considering that the Cooders didn’t own a television set. Mr. and Mrs. Cooder firmly believed that microwave ovens, hair spray, diet soda, and television were all very bad for your brain cells, so they didn’t allow any of those things in their home.
“Donnica’s not missing,” said Hannah, looking carefully at the flyer.
“She’s not?” asked Dawn.
“No,” Hannah said. “And she’s not sick, either.”
“Then where is she?” asked Oggie.
“She’s auditioning,” said Hannah.
“Why didn’t she tell us about the audition?” Dawn sounded hurt.
“Probably because she was afraid we might beat her,” said Hannah. “What time is it, anyway?”
Oggie looked at his watch. “Ten after three.”
The front door opened and Mrs. Perfecto came rushing out of the house with her car keys in her hand.
“I’ve got to go look for my Cupcake,” she cried.
“We’ve got a pretty good idea about where she is,” Dawn told her.
“You do? Oh, thank goodness!” Mrs. Perfecto put her hand over her heart. She opened the side door of the SUV.
“Jump in. You can help me find her. Oh, I hope she’s all right!”
“She may not be once I get my hands on her,” muttered Dawn as she and Hannah climbed into the car.
Oggie wasn’t sure if he was invited, too, but Turk, who loved nothing better than a ride in the car, bounded into the backseat, dragging Oggie along with him.
Five minutes later, Mrs. Perfecto was turning into the parking lot of the Bandshell.
“Are you sure this is where she is?” she asked.
Oggie looked across the lawn at the small crowd gathered in front of the stage.
“There she is!” he said, pointing at a figure in pink corduroy overalls, standing on the side of the stage pacing nervously.
“Cupcake!” cried Mrs. Perfecto.
“What’s she holding?” asked Hannah, squinting at Donnica as she tried to make out what was in her hand.
“Looks like a book,” said Dawn. “Or maybe a CD.”
But Oggie shook his head. He knew exactly what it was.
“Cheese,” he told them all.
As the four of them got out of the car and hurried toward the Bandshell, Mrs. Perfecto and the two girls peppered Oggie with enough questions so that by the time they reached the stage they were all aware of what Donnica was planning to do with the piece of cheese in her hand.
“She’s stealing your talent, Oggie,” someone said softly.
But it wasn’t Mrs. Perfecto or Dawn or Hannah who said it. It was Amy Schneider.
“Where did you come from?” Oggie asked, surprised.
“I had a feeling Donnica was up to no good,” Amy told him. “So when I saw her ride by my house on her bike a little while ago, I followed her here. I just hope we’re not too late.”
“Too late for what?” asked Oggie.
“To stop her.”
“Next!” cried a small bald man with a large megaphone.
“Hey! That’s the flyer guy,” said Oggie, pointing to the man.
Donnica walked out onto the stage and stood in front of the judges, who were sitting in a row of metal folding chairs behind a long table.
“State your name and your hidden talent for the judges, please,” the man with the megaphone said.
Donnica flashed the judges her biggest, brightest smile.
“My name is Donnica Perfecto and my hidden talent is charving.”
“Excuse me? Did you say carving?” asked one of the judges leaning forward.
“No,” said Donnica. “Charving. It’s a combination of chewing and carving.”
“Quirky,” said the judge, nodding approvingly.
Donnica flashed another smile.
“Aren’t you going to stop her?” asked Amy, giving Oggie a little nudge toward the stage.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because she stole your talent,” said Amy.
“No, she didn’t,” said Oggie. “I taught her how to charve.”
“But she tricked you,” Hannah chimed in.
“And she lied to us,” added Dawn.
“Doesn’t she look lovely?” sighed Mrs. Perfecto, who seemed to have completely forgotten that only minutes ago she’d been worried sick about her daughter’s whereabouts.
“Quiet, please!” the man shouted at the crowd through his megaphone. Then he turned back to Donnica and said, “You’re on, kid.”
Donnica flashed that smile again, then she lifted the cheese to her lips dramatically.
“Wisconsin!” she announced. But before she’d even taken a bite, she stopped.
“Something’s not right,” she said, looking at the cheese. “There’s something wrong with this piece. It’s sticky.”
“Too warm,” Oggie told Amy. “She shouldn’t have held
it in her hand for so long before she started.”
“Hang on,” Donnica told the judges. “I’ll get another piece.”
She ran over to the side of the stage where she’d stashed her minicooler. Flipping it open, she quickly grabbed a fresh slice of cheese, tore off the cellophane wrapper with her teeth, and hurried back to her spot.
“Wisconsin!” she announced again. But this time when she bit into the cheese, it cracked in half.
“Too cold,” said Oggie.
“What’s happening?” asked Mrs. Perfecto nervously.
“Justice,” whispered Dawn.
“Yeah,” agreed Hannah with a satisfied smile.
The man with the megaphone was growing impatient. “Sorry, kid,” he said. “Your time’s up. We’ve got a schedule to keep to here. Who’s next?”
Amy was relieved that Donnica wasn’t going to get away with her little plan, but when she turned to Oggie to tell him so, she found he wasn’t standing next to her anymore. Looking up, she was surprised to see him running out onto the stage.
“Hey, Donnica!” Oggie shouted as he sprinted across the stage, pulling Turk along behind him on his leash. “I finally remembered what I forgot to tell you before. The cheese has to be the right temperature!” He pulled a slice of cheese out of his back pocket and waved it in the air. “Like this one!”
“Gimme that!” screamed Donnica, reaching for the cheese with a desperate look in her eyes.
But as Oggie ran past the judge’s table, Turk caught a whiff of the crusts of a roast beef sandwich one of them had left lying on a paper plate after lunch, and he took a sudden unexpected detour. Oggie tripped over the leash and his feet came out from under him, causing him to fall just as he reached Donnica.
“Ooomph!”
“Youch!”
The two collided, bumping heads so hard they both saw stars and landed in a tangle of arms and legs on the stage.
Donnica’s processed American ticket to Hollywood flew out of Oggie’s hand, sailing high up into the air. It looked like the audition was over, but then to everyone’s amazement, Donnica managed to untangle herself in time to leap up and catch the cheese a split second before it hit the floor.
“Wait!” she shouted, rushing back to face the judges.
The man with the megaphone took pity on her. “One last chance, kid.”
“With-consin!” said Donnica, holding up the cheese.
Dawn looked at Hannah. “Is it my imagination, or did she just say ‘With-consin’?”
Thanks to the perfect climate in Oggie’s back pocket, the cheese finally cooperated. Donnica felt certain that the judges would be impressed by Wisconsin, and so she had practiced it many times up in her room. Now she closed her eyes to help her concentrate, and carefully began to nibble the cheese, taking tiny bites and tilting her head as she went around the curves, just the way Oggie had taught her.
Oggie stayed right where he was, afraid if he got up and left in the middle of Donnica’s performance it might distract the judges or, worse, mess Donnica up. In the excitement, Turk had managed to grab the sandwich crusts and run off with them. To Oggie’s relief, he saw that Amy had caught Turk before he’d gotten very far and was holding tight to his leash now.
As he watched Donnica charve, Oggie could tell that she’d been practicing because she was much more confident than she’d been the day before. The judges leaned forward with great interest. They seemed to be enjoying it. Oggie felt proud of his pupil. Then as Donnica turned the cheese in her hands, Oggie caught a glimpse of what looked like a very jaggedy edge and suddenly he felt nervous for her. Without thinking about it, he did what he always did when he felt nervous. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out the remaining slice of cheese, and began to charve to calm his nerves.
Donnica finished, opened her eyes, and held up her cheese triumphantly. Oggie’s heart sank when he saw it. Just as he’d suspected, it was jaggedy. Really jaggedy. In fact, it was the worst job of charving he’d ever seen her do. But while he was sitting there feeling sorry for her, the judges suddenly broke into enthusiastic applause.
“First-rate!”
“Dynamite talent!”
“Quirky with a capital Q!” one of them exclaimed enthusiastically.
“Fank you,” said Donnica, taking a bow.
This time it was Hannah who looked at Dawn. “Fank you?”
“No, no, not you, honey,” one of the judges said to Donnica. “We’re talking about him.”
Shocked, Donnica whirled around on her heel to see who they were pointing at … and there was Oggie Cooder holding a perfectly charved Texas in his hand. Donnica was so angry her face turned a shade of purple Mrs. Cooder would have called eggplant.
“Thath not fair!” she wailed. “I wath thuppothed to be the one audithioning.”
There was a sudden gasp from the audience as Mrs. Perfecto pointed at Donnica with a shaking finger.
“Your teeth, Cupcake! What’s happened to your beautiful teeth?”
Donnica quickly put her fingers up to her mouth. No wonder the charving had been off! She had chipped both of her front teeth when she and Oggie had bumped heads! Needless to say, she was furious.
“I won’t forget thith, Oggie Cooder!” she shouted before she ran off the stage.
Mrs. Perfecto quickly whisked Donnica away in the SUV for an emergency dental appointment with Dr. Schelkun. Oggie felt terrible. He hadn’t meant to ruin Donnica’s audition. He even tried to persuade the judges to give her another chance.
“Maybe she could come back tomorrow and charve for you after she gets her teeth fixed,” he said. “She’s usually much better than that, and she’s been practicing a lot.”
“There’s only one slot left for the next show, and we have to fill it today,” they told Oggie.
“But —” said Oggie.
“Sorry kid,” said the man with the megaphone.
So Oggie, feeling miserable and guilty, slunk off the stage.
“Thanks for watching Turk,” he said as Amy handed him back the leash. “I guess I’d better get going.”
“You can’t leave now,” Amy told him.
“Why not?” said Oggie.
“Because you don’t know yet whether you won,” she answered.
“I never win anything,” Oggie said. “And I didn’t even mean to audition, I was just charving because I felt nervous for Donnica.”
Up on the stage, Mr. Megaphone gestured to a boy with a large, white rabbit under his arm.
“You’re next, kid. State your name and your talent for the judges, please.”
“My name is Fred McMinnville, and I can make my rabbit faint,” the boy told them.
The judges smiled and nodded their approval.
Fred set the rabbit down on the stage, crouched down beside it, and blew in its face. The rabbit instantly fell over in a dead faint.
Turk started barking so excitedly that Oggie had to shush him. One of the judges asked Fred how he’d done the trick.
“Onion breath,” he said, pulling a large red onion out of his pocket and taking a big bite of it. “Works every time.”
“That was a pretty neat trick,” Oggie said to Amy. “I wonder if it would work on Turk.”
Next up was a little redheaded girl with a jar of olives in her hand.
“I can tap dance and eat olives at the same time,” she announced proudly.
The judges didn’t seem all that impressed, but Turk loved her because she kept dropping the olives, which he would gobble down as they rolled off the edge of the stage. One by one, kids came out and did strange, quirky things. There was a boy who could make his ears disappear by folding them up and tucking them inside his ear holes, and a tall skinny girl who could pop balloons with her shoulder blades. There were a number of kids who did tricks with hula hoops, including one girl who nearly choked herself by putting the hoop around her neck and trying to keep it going while she did an impression of the sound of a toilet flushing. When the last o
f the auditions were over, the judges bent their heads together and began to whisper. After a while, they called Fred back up and asked whether the fainting rabbit trick really worked every time.
“Well, almost every time,” he said. “Sometimes, though, he just sneezes.”
“Where’s the kid with the cheese?” called the man with the megaphone.
“See? I told you,” said Amy excitedly.
Oggie was called up onto the stage and asked whether Texas was the only state he could charve. Oggie didn’t want to brag, but of course he told the truth, admitting that he could do all fifty.
“How about instead of one particular state, if we asked you to charve the entire country, do you think you could do that?” said one of the judges.
Oggie thought for a second.
“Well, I’ve never done it before,” he said. “But I’m willing to give it a try. There’s one problem though —” Oggie patted his back pocket. “I’m out of cheese.”
It was Amy who noticed the minicooler Donnica had left behind. She ran and got a slice of cheese out of it and brought it to Oggie. He made sure to warm it up a little before he began to charve.
A minute later, everyone was very impressed when Oggie held up a perfectly executed U.S. of A.
Again the judges bent their heads together and whispered. This time they came to a decision.
“Pack your cheese, Oggie Cooder. You’re going to Hollywood!”
What happened after that was all kind of a blur. News traveled fast, and the next morning Oggie’s face was on the front page of the Wawatosa newspaper with the headline “LOCAL BOY BECOMES BIG CHEESE!” A television crew was outside on the Cooders’ front lawn when Oggie came out to take Turk for his morning walk. Reporters began firing questions at him.
“How old were you when you first started charving?”
“When do you leave for Hollywood?”
“What are you going to do with the money?”
“What money?” asked Oggie.