As Ms. Keisha is walking toward me, I glance up at the police officer again. Yup, something is definitely about to jump off.
“I told you there was something weird about Mr. Horn,” Ms. Keisha starts in.
“What?” I ask, puzzled. I feel like someone has let the hot air out of my balloon. For once, I’m genuinely relieved and really interested in hearing what drama Ms. Keisha is about to drop.
“They done found a tiger in Mr. Horn’s apartment! Ms. Keisha says, her eyes bulging like Mr. Horn’s.
“What do you mean?” I ask, chuckling. Let’s just say, Ms. Keisha is no stranger to tall tales.
“They got some specialists coming in to try to sedate the thing so they can take it out of his apartment!” Ms. Keisha goes on, trying to make me understand the wild situation.
“A tiger!” Corky shouts out. “Where?” Corky tries to pull away from me, but I grab his hand real hard.
“They said that Mr. Horn showed up at some hospital with suspicious bite marks, saying he got into a fight with his cat, so they sent the police to his apartment and looked through his window with binoculars!” Ms. Keisha says, out of breath. “Now Mr. Horn done escaped from the hospital, and they don’t know where he is—but they are going to get that tiger out of his apartment.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, puzzled. “He’s, um, on public assistance. How is he going to keep a tiger in his apartment? They weigh five hundred pounds, Ms. Keisha.”
“This one probably weigh more than that, Dorinda. Crazy people don’t worry about things like that!” Ms. Keisha says, getting agitated. “The man got a tiger sleeping in his bed, okay? For how long, who knows.”
“I wanna see the tiger,” Corky pleads loudly.
“You are going to see frogs—and you’d better be happy with that,” I say, trying to hush Corky.
“I sure wish I could get in there and get some of the red meat he be buying. I sure could use that instead of him wasting it on some tiger,” Ms. Keisha says, shaking her head till her pink rollers are shaking, too.
Walking to the museum, I think about the whole deal. That poor tiger probably got fed up being fed that rancid meat from Piggy Wiggly—and more important—he was tired of not having any tiger cronies to hang with.
Unlike me. I have the Cheetah Girls and we will be a crew forever. Looking down at Corky, I realize that now I have a family, too—even if it isn’t the family I would have imagined for myself.
“Are they gonna have butterflies there, too?” Twinkie asks me as we near the museum entrance on 79th Street and Central Park West.
“I hope so,” I say. But tonight is, well, gentlemen’s choice, I guess.
“I hope there’s a lot of frogs!” Corky pipes up.
“There will be,” I assure him. “This museum has the largest collection of frogs in the world.”
“For real?” Corky says, stomping in his galoshes.
“Hi, Corky and Twinkie!” Pucci says, grinning and waving at us. Pucci is Chanel’s younger brother.
I can’t wait to tell Chanel the whole drama about the tiger in Mr. Horn’s apartment. She just howls in disbelief. “The Cheetah Girls beat won’t bite, but tigers sure do. Everybody is going cuckoo!” she coos hysterically.
“Who, Cuckoo Couger?” Pucci asks. Cuckoo Cougar is the name of the African Pygmy hedgehog that Chanel and Galleria gave Pucci for his birthday. We burst out laughing again. “You’re acting cuckoo—Coco Loco,” Pucci says, shaking his head. When we get inside, Pucci gives Corky a drawing of a frog that he made for him.
“I like purple frogs,” says Corky.
“You like any frogs,” counters Pucci, shaking his head.
When we get inside, it turns out Pucci was right. Walking around looking at all the frogs in the vivariums, there isn’t a color we don’t see. Orange, brown, blue, red, green, purple… “I never even knew that frogs came in so many colors!” exclaims Chanel.
“Too bad they don’t have a pink one—you’d like that,” Pucci tells his sister.
“You’re getting to know me so well,” Chanel coos to her brother.
“I wanna take one home. Can I?” Pucci asks.
“Me too?” Corky asks.
Chanel’s cell phone rings. She gasps because she forgot to turn it off. “Sorry!” Chanel says, making a face at the people who are standing near us. Chanel hurriedly goes into her cheetah backpack and turns off her Miss Wiggy cell phone. “It was Bubbles,” she whispers to me. “We’ll call her back when we leave.”
“She probably has a Red Snapper update.” I chuckle.
After the dynamic duo’s performance at the benefit, Bubbles has done a three-hundred-sixty-degree turn on the Snapper situation. “He is the bomb—kaboom!” riffs Chanel, imitating Galleria all too well.
“She is so-o-o-o cuckoo for him now. She has un coco grande, the biggest crush I’ve ever seen!” swears Chanel.
“Well, at least that Eddie Lizard is out of the situation,” I retort, referring to Galleria’s last crush. We were grateful that the voodoo weirdo disappeared like ice cubes in a frying pan. Last we heard, Eddie Lizard went back to Los Angeles with his father, Doktor Lizard, who was here curating a hoodoo exhibit for a museum, or something. I’m not going to front, Eddie’s father really did help the twins’ father out of a bad situation (his girlfriend, High Priestess Abala Shaballa Mogo Hexagone, put a love spell on him that he couldn’t get rid of without the Doktor’s help), but, “How can you like somebody who claims he’s three hundred years old?” I ask Chanel jokingly.
“Yo se. I know, mija. But I can’t believe that sneaky Lizard left without saying good-bye to anybody.” Chanel says, gazing at a tank full of blue poison dart frogs.
“Wow, look at that frog fly!” Twinkie exclaims. I’m glad that she is getting excited by the frogs, too.
“Of course they can fly, Twinkie—that’s a Costa Rican flying tree frog. It probably can salsa, too!” coos Chanel.
“Is Bubbles going to go out with Derek now?” I ask.
“Yeah—she’s been waiting for him to ask her for a date. She won’t ask him,” explains Chanel.
“Why not?” I ask, surprised
“Because Danitra is all over him like a rash now—and she’s jealous, that’s why,” Chanel says, giggling mischievously. Bubbles has to be the top cheetah, or she’s not having it.
Corky pushes the buttons to all the frog calls.
“They’re definitely not getting a record deal,” I say, covering my ears from all the frog noises.
“Maybe we’re not, either!” Chanel counters, voicing our worst fear.
Now Pucci has turned up the volume on the Madagascar frog calls. They sound even worse than the bullfrogs.
“It would have been dope if Mouse Almighty had come to the benefit,” I sigh, feeling a little defeated about the whole situation.
“Sí, pero, the executives from Def Duck Records came. That has to mean something, mija, no, Do’? Chanel says, her eyes pleading.
“Yeah—that they felt guilty about leaving us hanging, and sorry for Mrs. Bosco’s situation,” I say honestly “Donating two hundred fifty dollars for ten tickets is nothing to a Big Willy record company like that.”
“Sí, you’re right,” Chanel says.
“But they were definitely digging our performance,” I say, perking back up. “It’s got to count for something.”
“Or a whole lot of nothing, as Bubbles would say,” Chanel counters, giggling. Then she looks nervous. “I’d better call Bubbles back soon. She knows we’re together and I don’t want her thinking we’re mad at her or something.”
“Yeah, we’d better break out soon—because I’m getting batty from these frog calls, anyway,” I say, looking over at Corky, who is clapping his hands to the chorus of frog calls. “Gosh, I hope that tiger has left the building like Elvis, by the time we get home!”
“How could he afford to feed a tiger?” Chanel asks, shaking her head. “They eat more than Bubbles, Aqua, and Ang
ie put together!
“People do crazy things,” I say, repeating what Ms. Keisha told me.
Twinkie is pulling at my sweater for me to pay attention to her. “Look, Dorinda—it’s a cheetah frog.”
We laugh and look inside inside the glass display. Sure enough—“It does look like a cheetah, but it’s a Florida Leopard Frog,” I explain to her, reading the plaque on the wall.
“Oh, Mackerel probably knows about that one,” Chanel coos, starry-eyed.
“Are you going to go out with the Mack?” I ask her, but I already know the answer.
“Yes! I invited him to the Kats and Kittys’ Christmas party,” Chanel tells me.
“Oh, right,” I say, suddenly feeling strange that I don’t have a crush on anyone.
“Who are you inviting to the party?” Chanel asks me.
“I don’t know. I never meet any boys that I dig more than two hours,” I say, embarrassed.
“Well, that’s only because you’re thirteen.” Chanel giggles.
“Right.” I chuckle and remember how happy I am that we finally got that out in the open. Now I feel closer to my crew than I felt before—especially Chanel.
“Wait till you’re fourteen. You’ll have a crush every other day,” Chanel informs me.
“Word,” I say, then check on Corky, Twinkie, and Pucci, who are running all around ogling all the different frogs in the vivariums. “You ‘bout ready?” I ask Corky.
He nods his head, satisfied. “Now I wanna see the tiger!”
Shaking my head, we go to the museum store to buy some toy frogs. After about an hour, both Chanel and I are exasperated with Pucci, Twinkie, and Corky, who keep changing their minds about which frog they want. “Could you please pick one already!”
“This may be one of the most important decisions I make in my formative years,” Pucci says, making a face. “You don’t want to leave an emotional scar, do you?”
“No, Pucci, I don’t,” Chanel replies.
Pucci smiles like he got away with something.
“I want to leave a physical scar!” Chanel says, boxing him in his ears. “And one of the most important decisions I’ll be making in my formative years is to go eat at Kickin’ Chicken and leave you here to eat frogs for dinner, esta bien?”
“Awright—I guess I’ll go for the boring green one,” Pucci says, but he is smiling, so we know he is just joking.
After we buy little frogs for Pucci, Corky, and Twinkie, we head outside to go to dinner.
Chanel calls Galleria on her cell phone. Suddenly she starts screaming into the receiver and jumping up and down like a contestant on The Price Is Right. That’s how I know something is definitely jumping off. I guess Bubbles has finally hooked the Red Snapper for a date.
“Let me talk to Bubbles,” I say, motioning to Chanel.
“Quack, quack, quack!” Chuchie yells into the phone.
“Quack, quack, quack!” scream Corky and Twinkie.
“Put it on pause, please, Twinkie,” I moan, taking the cell phone from Chanel. “Congratulations,” I chuckle to Bubbles.
“Don’t congratulate me. I don’t mean to be bragging, but I told you that snagging Toto for our act was going to take us to the top, top, top!” screams Bubbles.
“What are you saying?” I ask, holding my breath.
“The Def Duck executives were so amped by our performance, and the fact that we put together the benefit like the Lone Ranger that they have put the fire under Mouse Almighty to finish that demo.” Bubbles screams so loud, I have to take the phone away from my ear.
“That’s what I’m talking about. You going with the flow now, Do’?” She screams once more—with feeling.
“So what does that mean?” I ask. Sometimes I don’t understand Galleria, because she gets a little cryptic, like Dr. Seuss.
“It means that Mouse Almighty called Mom himself and says he’ll get us back into the studio next week!” Galleria says, singing, “Go, Toto! Go, Toto! Go, Toto!”
Chanel and I both start jumping up and down and screaming.
Now Twinkie, Corky, and Pucci start jumping up and down and screaming with us, too. A few passerbys stop and smile at us.
“But what about Kahlua’s record—isn’t he working on that?” I ask, feeling hesitant about getting on this roller-coaster ride called the record business.
“Hold that thought, Do’,” Galleria says, then screams, “Mom, come talk to Dorinda and Chuchie.”
Now I feel stupid for sounding so insecure, but I just want to make sure this is all on the real tip. When you wish on a star long enough, you’re bound to feel the world owes you a few twinkles for your troubles, you know what I’m saying?
“Chanel?” Ms. Dorothea says into the receiver.
“No, it’s Dorinda,” I reply.
“Dorinda, darling, trust me. Mouse Almighty called here eating humble cheese pie,” Ms. Dorothea says sweetly. I can tell by the way she is talking that she is smiling. “He apologized profusely for not coming to the benefit. But the good news is, he has just handed in the master for Kahlua Alexander’s next record and is ready to finish working on the Cheetah Girls’ demo. He also very humbly hinted at the fact that he got a few urgent calls from Freddy Fudge and Tom Isaaks—meaning both coasts of A&R executives were blowing up his phone—as you would say. Well, suffice it to say, he is now firmly in agreement that the Cheetah Girls should ‘Bring It On!”’
“What is she saying? What is she saying?” Chanel asks impatiently, grabbing my arm.
“Okay, I’m down for the twirl. Please tell Toto thank you, because it if wasn’t for him, we would be starting our own divette dogwalking service right about now,” I say. Then I hang up the phone.
“They said the record executives agree—it’s time for us to ‘Bring It On!’ and the Mouse is back to nibbling!” I explain cheerfully to Chanel.
“Ay, Dios mío, omigod, I can’t believe it, mija!” coos Chanel.
Chuchie, Twinkie, Corky, Pucci, and me dance around in a circle for a few minutes. Looking at Chanel and my favorite brother and sister and Pucci, I realize that the “Bring It On!” benefit was the happiest day of my life—but this moment, right here, right now, is a pretty close second!
Bring It On!
Yeah, we saw those wannabes
Trying so hard to be prettily perched
But all they have are knobby knees
That shouldn’t be seen in anybody’s church
So by now you may be wondering
Why do we care about somebody else’s
whacked reality?
For all we know there may be truth
That simply alludes us
Especially if we’re thunderin’
So let us break it down like this
If you wanna dollar
You’d better stand up and holla
’Cuz the beat won’t bite
And our street cred’s tight
Laced with lyrics on the right
I said if you wanna dollar
You’d better stand up and holla
’Cuz the beat won’t bite
And our street cred’s tight
Laced with lyrics on the right
Alrighty for our groove
Alrighty for our moves
The Cheetah Girls are out.
No doubt. So bring it on till the break of dawn!
Now time goes on and still we see
Those wannabes are everywhere
Doing the same old thing
While we’re out there standing our ground
And always coming up changing up
The style and sounds we bring
So maybe we should stop our caring
About all those who try to steal our flavor
Because we’re gonna keep showing our spots
And that’s all there is can be that we can savor
So let us break it down like this
If you wanna dollar
You’d better stand up and holla
’Cuz the beat won’t bite
And our street cred’s tight
Laced with lyrics on the right
Yes I said. If you wanna dollar
You’d better stand up and holla
’Cuz the beat won’t bite
And our street cred’s tight
Laced with lyrics on the right
Alrighty for our groove
Alrighty for our moves
The Cheetah Girls are out.
No doubt. So bring it on till the break of dawn!
The Cheetah Girls Glossary
The Beat Won’t Bite: When the composition of a song is supa original. As in, “Don’t hate on the Cheetah Girls’ jammies, because the beat won’t bite!”
Better Than Cheddar: When something is almost too good to be true. As in, “Guess who’s coming to my birthday party? Kahlua Alexander! Now tell me that’s not better than cheddar!”
Big Willies: VIPs (very important person) and other peeps rolling with the extra bling bling. As in, “Puff Daddy is such a Big Willy, he is coming to the party in his own private jet.”
Breaking it Down on the Real Tip: Being totally and absolutely honest about something to the best of your ability. As in, “I’m not mad at you. Let me break it down on the real tip. I hope you!”
Bugaboo Chillies: When you get a creepy, scary feeling inside your tummy.
Chitlin’ Circuit: Back in the day, especially in the segregated South, some black performers were forced to hop on rickety buses and tour the country to perform in broken-down clubs for very little money. This strip of clubs came to be known as the chitlin’ circuit.
Crooky Snook: Someone who is a crook but is really shady about it and pretends to be an honest person.
Down for the Twirl: Ready and willing to represent for the cause. As in, “You can count on Danitra to perform in the showcase, because she is always down for the twirl.”
Bring It On! Page 11