G&T Based

Chapter 32- Kyle

Chapter 32- Kyle

At 4:15, Lea picked me up at my house with her little sister Gabby in the back. All the other kids were probably at home, scared. The police officers were probably working frantically on all the little evidence they had gathered.

"Sorry for being so early," she said as I got on, "But Gabby has to be at the talent by 4:30 to get ready."

"It's okay."

Gabby was in fifth grade, so... she would be moving onto middle school next year. Right now, she was wearing this overly fancy dress decorated with hundreds of sequins. Her hair was in this weird twisty braid above her head. A little too much for a talent show...

"What's your sister doing for the talent show?" I asked Lea curiously.

"She's going to be dancing with a few of her friends." Lea replied.

At JFK elementary school, both Lea's and my elementary school, we walked to the auditorium and got a seat in the front row while Gabby met up with her group members and got seated in a different part of the auditorium where performers sat. Lea and I had both grabbed a program each and began looking over it. The talent show was scheduled to end at 6:30, which was good.

"There's 40 acts to this thing," I said to Lea as I squinted at the tiny printing on the program."

"Oh no," Lea told me, "That's only the first part. There's 40 more acts on the back."

I turned the page over and saw even more tiny print. 

This is going to take a long time, I thought to myself. But I couldn't tell Lea that I would rather leave, could I? After a few minutes of looking, I found that Gabby was act 67, not too bad. I wouldn't have to stay that late.

"Let's get food," I told Lea, putting down my program. The two of us practically ran to the back of the room and bought some things to eat. I got a bag of brownies, a bottle of water, a packet of skittles, and a donut, a dollar each.

We sat back at our seats just as the lights dimmed. A woman came up onto stage, in front of the red curtains that were drawn at the moment, and thanked everyone for being here. She said this all so slowly that it made me want to claw the stuffing out of my chair. After that, she walked off stage and a different voice announced the first act.

The first act a singing first grader. A first grader who sung so out of tune that I felt the urge to pull out my phone and earbuds. By the way, the act was five minutes long. As the second act began, I did some calculations. If there were forty acts and each act was five minutes, it would take a total of... 200 minutes, or 3 and a half hours for the talent show to end.

The second act was only 4 minutes, but the third act stretched to 8 minutes. Yes, I timed everything. By the tenth act, 60 minutes had already passed by. And each act seemed worse than the one before. No offense, little kids.

"I'll be right back," I practically screamed at Lea over the blasting dance music of act 11.

I swiftly crept to the side of the stage where the people in charge of the show were. I bravely walked up to one of them.

"No offense, but this show is too loud and taking too long," I began, "If each show takes about five minutes, we'd still be out of here at least an hour late. Did you think about setting time limits?"

"No, we didn't want to upset any of the children," said the women who started the talent show off.

"Is there anything you can do to shorten the show a little?" I pleaded.