39 Clues: Rapid Fire 7 - Fireworks by Clifford Riley

Author:Clifford Riley [Riley, Clifford]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780545452038
Published: 2011-11-18T06:00:00+00:00

Jonah Wizard had been onstage for what felt like forever. He’d rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed for days. He hadn’t eaten any of the silver-domed, room-service breakfast that his New York hotel had laid out for him — the family meeting had been too upsetting. He was feeling a little dizzy from lack of food and lack of sleep and being attacked by a mob of thirteen-year-old fans the night before. His world tour would begin two days from now, and everyone around him, his dad, his publicist, was all nerves and tension. On top of everything, there were the usual cameras filming for Jonah’s reality show, capturing his every facial movement.

“All right, from the top,” Jonah heard his director say from out in the cushy red seats. “This is our last rehearsal, people, so I want perfection.”

The stage lights on Jonah’s face were too bright — it was causing his pancake-thick makeup to run, and it was bad enough that he had to wear makeup at all in rehearsal. But they wanted to test it against the lighting and camera angles.

Jonah waited for his cue, the drum lead-in, before launching in on his hit track from the killer new album. He was not five words in before —

“CUT. CUT. That was all wrong,” boomed a voice through the megaphone. The director sounded a little off — Jonah hoped he wasn’t getting sick.

“For reals, yo?” Jonah said. He’d nailed the choreography perfectly and the lyrics had never been fresher.

“This time, we’d like you to do something a little different,” said the megaphone voice. The lights were too bright for Jonah to see into his director’s eyes, but Jonah hoped he was glaring into the right spot of the empty concert seats. They’d rehearsed it a dozen times already. Seriously — did fame and fortune not buy anything anymore? Where was the respect?!

“This time,” the voice said, “we’d like you to begin with . . . ”

Jonah waited. This was why you became your own producer. This was why teen stars burned out before their twenty-first birthday bash.

“The chicken dance.”

“Say what, yo?” Jonah must not have heard right. He was multiplatinum. He was a TV star. He had taught Michael Jackson’s son how to moonwalk. Was this some sort of publicity stunt?

“That’s right. You know, the one old people do at weddings, where you flap your arms and waddle around like a chicken. Except we’d also like you to squawk.”

“Bro, get serious.”

“Jonah,” said the megaphone. “Remember, this is filming.”

“Fine. Fine.” Jonah hoped that his director’s remarks would be left out of the reality show.

And so, instead of his sick drum solo lead-in, the cheesy chicken music blared from the gorgeous, refrigerator-sized speakers, and Jonah squawked and flapped and gobbled his way around the stage, doing his best funky-chicken/wedding-chicken dance impression. Or whatever it was. What he didn’t know he made up, but he gave it everything he had, the full enchilada.

Finally, the stage lights dimmed, and Jonah could hear peals of laughter echoing through the theater.

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