Woof, There It Is Read online

  Woof, There It Is

  The Cheetah Girls, Book 5

  Deborah Gregory

  For my friend Laura,

  whom I adora,

  And her pooch Pongo,

  who plays the bongo!

  Contents

  The Cheetah Girls Credo

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Woof, There It Is!

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Cheetah Girls Credo

  To earn my spots and rightful place in the world, I solemnly swear to honor and uphold the Cheetah Girls oath:

  Cheetah Girls don’t litter, they glitter. I will help my family, friends, and other Cheetah Girls whenever they need my love, support, or a really big hug.

  All Cheetah Girls are created equal, but we are not alike. We come in different sizes, shapes, and colors, and hail from different cultures. I will not judge others by the color of their spots, but by their character.

  A true Cheetah Girl doesn’t spend more time doing her hair than her homework. Hair extensions may be career extensions, but talent and skills will pay my bills.

  True Cheetah Girls can achieve without a weave—or a wiggle, jiggle, or a giggle. I promise to rely (mostly) on my brains, heart, and courage to reach my cheetah-licious potential!

  A brave Cheetah Girl isn’t afraid to admit when she’s scared. I promise to get on my knees and summon the growl power of the Cheetah Girls who came before me—including my mom, grandmoms, and the Supremes—and ask them to help me be strong.

  All Cheetah Girls make mistakes. I promise to admit when I’m wrong and will work to make it right. I’ll also say I’m sorry, even when I don’t want to.

  Grown-ups are not always right, but they are bigger, older, and louder. I will treat my teachers, parents, and people of authority with respect—and expect them to do the same!

  True Cheetah Girls don’t run with wolves or hang with hyenas. True Cheetahs pick much better friends. I will not try to get other people’s approval by acting like a copycat.

  To become the Cheetah Girl that only I can be, I promise not to follow anyone else’s dreams but my own. No matter how much I quiver, shake, shiver, and quake!

  Cheetah Girls were born for adventure. I promise to learn a language other than my own and travel around the world to meet my fellow Cheetah Girls.

  Chapter

  1

  Thank gooseness, we have finally reached cruising altitude, after kadoodling for almost the whole night on the ground because of a tropical rainstorm named “Furious Flo.”

  That’s right, Kats and Kittys: the Cheetah Girls are flying the friendly skies together, for our first time as crew! Our destination: Hollywood, California, where we’re scheduled to give the most cheetah-licious performance of our very young lives, at the world-famous Tinkerbell Lounge on Sunset Boulevard.

  There are going to be record-industry types in attendance, and their job is to determine if we’ve got the flava that they savor. We’ve got to sing our little hearts out, in order to pounce on an “op” that may not knock twice, if you know what I’m saying.

  The more I think about going to Cali, the tighter I clutch the plane ticket I’ve been holding in my grubby little paw. This showcase could be the beginning of a dream come true, or it could turn out to be a “Nightmare on Sunset Boulevard”!

  Speaking of clutching my ticket—next thing I know, I’m clutching for my lunch tray, which is bouncing up and down along with the rest of the plane!

  “Is everything okay, ladies?” the flight attendant asks me and my mom. Mom’s in the seat next to me, looking over the bills and receipts for her business, Toto in New York … Fun in Diva Sizes. Now she looks the flight attendant up and down.

  I look at her, too. The attendant is wearing a big black velvet bow on top of her ponytail. She’s really pretty.

  “Yes, everything is okay,” I say with a big smile. “I like your bow!”

  “Thank you,” the attendant says, like she really means it. Her pretty green eyes are sparkling as she gives me a little wave and heads on down the aisle.

  Mom puts down the bills she’s been looking at and says in an exasperated tone, “Galleria, honey, would you please put the plane ticket away so you don’t lose it?”

  I stare one last time at my name—Galleria Garibaldi—on the well-pawed plane ticket before I slide it into the flap pocket of my cheetah carry-on bag. Then I shove the bag under the seat. I still can’t believe the Cheetah Girls are going to Hollywoood!

  Of course, it was Mom who hooked it up. Well, not the whole thing, but here’s the Hollywood wheel-a-deala:

  Mom gets her wigs styled by Pepto B., who also does Kahlua Alexander’s hair. (Yes, that Kahlua.) While Kahlua was getting her hair done for her latest movie project, Platinum Pussycats, we, the Cheetah Girls, showed up at Pepto B.’s salon, and rocked it to the doggy bone! “The Platinum Pussycat” was so taken with our cheetah-licious ways that she in turn arranged for the Cheetah Girls to perform in a “New Talent Showcase” sponsored by her record label, Def Duck Records.

  But, believe me, we’ve already paid the pied piper in full. On the night we’re supposed to fly, Furious Flo blows into the Big Apple, causing most airline flights to be canceled. Not only did we have to spend six hours in John F. Kennedy Airport, but we also had to sit in the plane, on the runway, for two more hours before takeoff! By the time we took off, we were so kaflempt, we were ready to jump out of the plane window, rent a hot-air balloon, and head to Oz instead!

  But like I said before, at last we’re finally out of the Twilight Zone now, and safely on our way. They just served us some “lunch,” even though it’s about sunrise. I guess they got all messed up in their meal schedule when the plane got delayed.

  I’m now happily lost in unwrapping my meal, ’cuz I’m supa-dupa hungry-poo. My mom isn’t even touching her food. She’s just staring at her receipts, shaking her head and frowning.

  I can see she’s worried. I know things have gotten kaflooeyed at the boutique—ever since Mom started working full-time as the Cheetah Girls’ manager. She had to hire someone else to manage the store for her, but she almost ended up hitting him with her cheetah purse! The business is Mom’s brainchild, even though my dad runs the factory and gives his heart and soul. But Mom has to control everything.

  I sure hope we get a record deal out of performing in the showcase. If the Cheetah Girls can finally start bringing in some duckets, that would take the pressure off my mom and dad. All I’ve done lately is take duckets out of the bucket.

  Suddenly, there’s a pinging sound, and the pilot’s voice comes on over the speakers. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be experiencing some turbulence. Please buckle your seat belts and remain seated until further notice.”

  Uh-oh. Turbulence. I know what that means. It means we still haven’t outrun Furious Flo! I buckle myself in, but while I’m doing it, the plane starts bucking like a wild horse. Before I can grab it, my “lunch” is in my lap!

  “Yaaaa!!!!” I scream. There goes my new cheetah blouse!

  The flight attendant rushes over to help. I don’t know how she can walk so easy like that, with the plane doing push-ups and swinging left and right.

  “Here,” she says, offering me a wet towel. Then she gets down and starts scooping up all the food that spilled. Luckily, most of it is still in the plastic container. Unluckily, the part that isn’t has spoiled the booti-ful cheetah blouse my mom made me. I know this brown gravy s
tain is not coming out, and I can see the worry lines in my mom’s forehead getting deeper every second.

  Leaning forward in my seat, I do a quickie check on my crew, to see how they’re weathering the storm. It doesn’t seem to be bothering Chuchie one bit. She is bopping her head, listening to her Walkman, like nothing is happening. That’s Chanel Simmons for you. She’s done a lot of flying with her mom to different places, so I guess she’s used to this kind of thing.

  I am, too—usually. I pull a blanket over my blouse, so Chanel won’t see my gravy train.

  At least I never get sick on airplanes. I guess you could say I was born to travel. See, Mom traveled all over the world when she was a runway model. And every summer, ever since I can remember, she and Dad and I have been going to Italy, to see my “Nona in Bologna.”

  Nona means grandmother in Italian. See, my dad grew up in Bologna, which is in the northern part of Italy, in a region called Emilia-Romagna, stretching east to west across the top of Italy’s boot. Lucky for me, he came to America and met my mom. The rest, as they say, is history—or mystory, to be exact. My story.

  Next to Chuchie, Dorinda Rogers, or Do’ Re Mi as we call her, has her nose in a book—just like she’s at home, and at the library—one of her favorite hanging spots. The plane is doing the Macarena or something, and Dorinda, who has never flown in her life, is acting like she’s just chillin’!

  I don’t know why, but suddenly I’m starting to feel a little funny inside. It’s crazy—like I said, I never get sick on planes. Maybe it’s all the pressure of the showcase we’ve got coming up, or maybe it’s feeling like if we turn stinkeroon, I’ll be letting my mom down. Whatever—between that and Furious Flo whipping the plane around, I’m kinda glad I didn’t get to eat my lunch. I lean back, taking a deep sigh, and let the air that has been churning in my stomach “fly away.”

  I take out a wad of bubble gum, and start doin’ the chomp-a-roni on it—which I know Mom doesn’t appreciate, but right now, it’s either chomp or stomp.

  Speaking of which, just as my stomach starts to calm down, another natural disaster strikes: Aquanette and Anginette Walker, those fabulous Walker twins from Houston, who make up a très important two-fifths of the Cheetah Girls equation, start barfing up their BBQ, like bowwows gone bonkers!

  Leaning over the back of my seat to witness the twins’ latest performance, I can’t help but get on their case like mace—even though a few seconds ago, I wasn’t feeling much better than they are. “That’s what you get for pretending you weren’t scared,” I heckle them. “Now you’re paying the Boogie Man in full!”

  Chanel isn’t having the twins’ theatrics either. “Cuatro yuks! Jeez, pleez, give a señorita some notice next time, before you serve us your lonchando,” she moans. Then she covers her face with the cheetah throw Mom lent her, to fight the big chill left by Furious Flo.

  “You didn’t have to eat the pig and the poke—and that’s no joke!” Do’ Re Mi groans. The three of us always gang up on the twins. Three against two—what can they do, right? Of course, it’s all in snap heaven, and the twins don’t seem to mind. They just think we’re funny—most of the time, they laugh louder than we do! And after all, I guess it isn’t the twins’ fault they have such weak stomachs. Angie says they get sick whenever they ride elevators above the tenth floor. And it’s even worse when, like today, they’ve just eaten when it happens!

  Cheez whiz, what a crew I’ve got: Do’ Re Mi has never been on an airplane before, and the twins have never been out of the country. Never mind though: as soon as the Cheetah Girls get off the ground in more ways than one, we are gonna travel all over the world together, and sing to peeps on two legs and four.

  Now I feel bad for embarrassing Aqua and Angie. I reach over the back of my seat and stroke Aqua’s bob back into place. It’s sticking up like a pinwheel because of all the static in the plane cabin, and I know the twins are very fussy about their hair looking “coiffed.”

  “You’d better put on that stocking cap before we land,” I giggle. “Your hair looks like it’s going through electric shock treatment.”

  Aqua doesn’t say anything back, of course, because she’s still putting the barf pedal to the metal, and breathing heavy into the paper bag supplied by the airline.

  “Didn’t you two take your Cloud Nine tablets?” Do’ Re Mi asks the twins, like she’s a flight attendant or something. So that’s why she isn’t feelin’ it like I am! I’ll bet Chuchie took them, too!

  Angie looks up, holding the barf bag around her mouth, and shakes her head, “No, we didn’t!” Her big brown eyes look puffy, like Popeye’s. Aqua finally raises her head up out of the bag, and coughs right at us.

  “Uuugh, check it, don’t fleck it, Aqua,” I moan, covering my mouth in case some alien barf specks float in my direction.

  Mom looks up from doing her accounting, and hisses in an annoyed voice, “Basta!”

  I’ll show her “enough”—’cuz I haven’t even started yet on Aqua and Angie. I look at Mom and start sulking. I hate when she embarrasses me in front of my crew! Not that Aqua or Angie understood what Mom said, but it wrecks my flow, you know what I’m saying?

  Usually, Mom sleeps like a bear, and you couldn’t wake her if there was a flood nipping at her heels. Then I realize—she isn’t wearing those funny-looking earplugs she usually wears when we fly. That’s why she can hear everything.

  I grimace at Mom, who’s gone back to her work. Then I look down at my hands, and notice that my nails are already chipped!

  Leaning down for my carry-on bag, I take out my bottle of S.N.A.P.S. nail polish, and flip the tray down again from the back of the seat in front of me. Steadying the bottle of nail polish like an acrobat, I wield the polish brush across the surface of my nails to cover the chips.

  “Miss, you can’t polish your nails on the airplane. You’ll have to put that away,” says the flight attendant, coming up to me. “It’s against the rules. Some passengers are allergic to the fumes.”

  Hmph! Little Miss “Bow” Peep, wrecking my flow. Now I don’t like her hairdo anymore! Cheez whiz, a little bit of “pow!” nail polish is gonna make the plane go “kapow”?

  Now Chanel peeps her head over at me, smirking. Then she sees the big gravy stain on my blouse, and she gives me a look, like “Ay, Dios, mamacita, what did you do?!”

  I look away from her, furious. Ooooo, that little Miss Cuchifrita! Wait till we land—I’m gonna get her back good in Hollywood!

  Chapter

  2

  The flight to Los Angeles from New York is five hours long, but it seems like I’ve been snoozing forever. I see now that the flight attendants are coming around with “breakfast.” Good. I’m real hungry by now, since I never did eat my “lunch.” I wonder if the Walker twins will feel like eating while we’re still airborne….

  I look at my Miss Wiggy watch. New York and Cali are in two different time zones. That is such a cool thing. Tomorrow night, L.A. time, the Cheetah Girls will be off to see the Wizard—the wonderful Wizard of Hits—at the Tinkerbell Lounge!

  It’s eleven o’clock in the morning in New York. That means Dad is probably drinking his fourth cup of espresso of the morning right now, and bossing everybody at the factory around. Here in Cali, however, it’s only eight o’clock in the morning.

  “You think they’ve got a pool in the hotel?” I ask Mom, smoothing one of the hairs on her wig back into place.

  “I’m sure you’ll find out as soon as we get there,” Mom says, then yawns, twirling her cheetah eye shades in her hand. I guess she tried to sleep, but it doesn’t look like she succeeded. She’s pretty punchy, and I guess it’s partly my fault for dragging her into this.

  Not that I even asked her to be our manager. She volunteered. But if she hadn’t done it, the Cheetah Girls would have been history. So it’s like she did it for me. And all it’s brought her so far is headaches and baggy eyes. Not one ducket in the bucket. Well, the showcase at the Cheetah-Rama doesn’t
really count.

  “Ooh, look, the clouds are so white they look like cotton candy!” Chanel coos. “Gracias gooseness, Flo isn’t here!”

  “Girls, don’t forget to set your clocks three hours back,” Mom says, perking up. “We don’t want to be three hours early for anything.”

  Believe me, no matter how worried she is about her coins, Mom is excited about taking us all to L.A. She has every hour of our trip scheduled, like she’s a librarian and we’re books on loan—we’ll be fined if we’re not back on time!

  Thank gooseness, the “New Talent Showcase” is not until tomorrow night. That gives us one whole day and a half of fun in the sun—or at least in the indoor pool at the hotel—and the chance to check out Hollywood—the ’Wood.

  Of course, we do have to spend some time doing our homework, so we can make up for the day of school we’ll be missing. Chuchie, Do’, and I all go to Fashion Industries High School together. The Walker twins go to LaGuardia Performing Arts High. They’ve got it like that.

  Of course, if Chuchie hadn’t chickened out of our audition, we might’ve had it like that, too. Of course, if we’d gotten into LaGuardia, we wouldn’t have met Do’ Re Mi, and who knows if the Cheetah Girls would’ve ever happened. Still, maybe one day we’ll all be going to LaGuardia together. It’s one of my dreams. That, and a record deal for the Cheetah Girls, of course!

  After we land, we are bustling along in the très busy LAX airport, which is even bigger than JFK airport in New York.

  “Look, yo, there’s a guy with a sign with your last name!” Do’ Re Mi exclaims. The man holding the sign is wearing a black suit with a black hat.

  “That’s the driver,” Mom says, waving at him.

  “Mrs. Garibaldi?” the man asks, like he isn’t sure.

  “Hi there, I’m Mrs. Garibaldi,” Mom says, relieved. “I’m so glad you waited. Our flight was delayed for six hours because of Furious Flo. What’s your name?”

  “Pedro. Welcome to Los Angeles,” he says with a smile. His mustache is so neat it looks like he drew it on with a pencil. “I’ve been hearing all about Furious Flo on the radio.”