Chapter 2: Count Me In!

Carly was sitting on the picnic bench in her backyard working on a painting. Carly was an artist who would paint pictures for businesses, restaurants, and other places. She would also sell some of her art at auctions. The painting she was working on was her latest: Metallic Flower. It was supposed to be a painting of a vase with a rose, a daffodil, and pansy inside of it. But the vase was metallic, along with the flower stems and the water dripping off of them. Once Carly finished touching up her painting, she took a picture of it, and hooked her camera up to her laptop. Carly then went to a website called and the site would rate her painting from one to ten. Carly did this quite often in order to see if her art was worth selling. "I hope this one's better than my last painting," she said to herself in her natural Irish ascent as she clicked on the analyze button on the site. The site began scanning the picture of her painting. It didn't respond for a few minutes, and then her laptop started to make whirring noises. Then it started vibrating violently. "Huh? What's up with this thing?!" She tried switching the laptop off, but the small button on the side of it cracked and broke off. "Oh God. That ain't good!" Then the machine starting jumping and spewing out smoke from the jacks. Carly didn't like the looks of how her computer was reacting to her art and she had to do something quick before anything else happened, so she took a deep breath, turned her hands into fists and beat the shit out of her laptop until it was scrap metal. "Well, looks like I'm gonna need a new laptop!" she said, then looked at her digital camera, "And a new camera!" She sat down with a huff, picked up her laptop and tried to figure out what to do with it, then Jason suddenly popped up out of what seemed like nowhere, and started running towards Carly.

"Carly! Carly!" he shouted happily, "Wanna go play American Idol?!"

Carly looked at the man with the dreads. She knew that David was usually working at the Cooks in the Kitchen by now, and she secretly loved it when David was there. "Sorry Jason. I'm a little busy with my broken laptop right now," she told him. "Maybe later on when David's back from work."

"But David is back from work!"

Her ears perked up at the sound of his name. Just hearing David's name made her heart feel light and joyful, but she didn't want to show it in front of Jason so she tried to act as normal as possible. "Back from work? Already?"

"Yeah. Mr. Cook told him that he and Danny could have the day off seeing how Danny drove away all the customers," he explained.

Carly raised an eyebrow. "What'd in the name of Ireland did he do to drive them all away?"

"He told everyone that he hated American Idol."

Carly gasped! She didn't know Danny hated that show. Most of the people in San Francisco that she knew of were all fans of the show. Mr. Cook's brother Adam practically worships Kelly Clarkson. David has at least half a dozen posters for all seven seasons inside his bedroom. Mr. Cook has a model of the chest with cursed Aztec gold that Randy had, sitting at the foot of his bed. Jason had a life-size manikin of Ryan Seacrest made out of mushroom and olive pizza until he got hungry and ate all of it. She had even seen Michael Johns drawing a picture of the epic battle between Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell on the back of the We Will, We Will, Feed You restaurant. It was hard to imagine that anyone in San Francisco hated Idol! But she shook it off. "Alright then. Looks like you've got me as Paula Abdul again," she said as she elbowed Jason a little and gave him a wink. Then she put on her jacket and followed Jason outside. Once they got outside, Carly automatically asked, "Mind telling me which one of you boys is playing Simon today?"

"David," he told her. "I already called Randy Jackson, so he took to being the part of Simon today."

Carly smiled. She liked it when David got to play the part of Simon because she knew that she'd get to be close to David. Real close. And who knows? Maybe he'd even kiss her this time. So far they haven't gotten to kiss each other yet because Jason kept forgetting his lines and they had to keep reminding him so it took three times as long as it usually would. One time they were close to it, but for some reason David stopped and started making excuses like he had to go home and rest up so he could work tomorrow, he had to feed Archy, it was getting dark, he had to study for his chemistry, etc. Carly's mind went back to that day. She couldn't help but to wonder why he was making all those excuses, but she didn't wonder for long for they were already in April Border, a field with nothing but nature. And before they knew it, they found David with Archy and... Danny?!

"Now remember," David explained to him, "You have to aim your..."

"Aim my pistol at Jason, then shoot, then realize that I have wet gunpowder because me and the other Idols were under water because we had been dared to by the viewers to jump in the pool right before the results show and we had no time to change," Danny said flatly as if he'd heard it a dozen times before. (Which he actually did in order to know what he was doing seeing how he had only seen season one of American Idol.) If only this water gun was a real pistol and had real bullets, then I'd really shoot him and David too.

"Right." Then David looked to his right and found Jason and Carly. "Jason! Carly!" he shouted joyfully! He immediately ran up to the two with Danny and Archy following him. He came up to Jason and gave him a hi-five. "I see you've brought Miss Abdul with you, Mr. Jackson."

"Yeah I did. It wasn't easy, but I did it."

"Good! It just wouldn't feel right without the sweet Paula here." Then he turned to Carly. She smiled sweetly and he smiled back with his usual adorable grin. He secretly wanted to do more than just look at her and smile. He had certain feelings for Carly that he desperately wanted to tell her, but he always had this hidden doubt that she wouldn't return his feelings for her. Then Danny finally came and joined the other three in their greetings.

Carly's smile faded and she changed her attention from David to Danny. What in the world was Danny doing there? Wasn't he the one who openly claimed that he hated American Idol? Jason's expression was the same. Then he frowned. "Hey! What's he doing here? Trying to ruin our fun?" he asked grumpily and crossed his arms.

David could see that Jason wasn't happy. "It's okay Jason. He's going to play with us today. He's gonna be some contestants and come with us on our journey to bringing average people to stardom!"

Jason just stared at David blankly. For ten seconds he was completely still. He didn't even breathe until he finally said, "So he's playing with us?"

"Yeah, pretty much. So, let's go to our first audition stop in Pitts..."

"Wait!" somebody shouted! The four of them turned around to see that Mr. Cook was walking up to the five of them.

"Mr. Cook? What are you doing here?" David asked.

"Well seeing how you four are playing Idol and the Idols get money, and I love money, I'm in!"

David didn't exactly understand Mr. Cook's logic seeing how money wasn't one of the things he had in mind, but he completely understood that Mr. Cook said that he wanted to come and play with them, and that meant more people to play with, and that they'd have even more fun! "Alright then! Hm... well, I don't think you'd make a good Ryan Seacrest, and you'd make an even worse mentor, so... I think I'll make you some contestants as well! What do you say, Mister C?"

"Do these contestants make it to the top 12 and get money?"

"Uh... yeah. I guess."

"Then I'm alright!"

"Alrighty then! Now let's head to Pitts..."

"Hold on there, David!" a deep, Australian accent shouted. Then the six of them turned around again and found Michael Johns with little Ramiele Malubay. "Come on!" he shouted at Ramiele, and she ran towards him. They walked up to the other six.

"What do you want Michael? Aren't you gonna try to steal my secret formula for my meals today and fail as you always do?" Cook asked.

"Very funny David, but not today. For you see, I've got nothing better to do and heard that your young lackey and the dimwitted dread locks are playing American Idol. And seeing how I love Idol, I decided that I want to join too. Ramiele here was bored and decided to come with me."

"What?! Surely you can't be serious!"

"I'm afraid I am. So, do I make your team?"

"This isn't possible!" Cook shouted. Then he turned to Archuleta. "David! Don't tell me you're actually buying this bogus suck-up story, boy!"

"But Mr. Cook, if he was lying to us, then wouldn't that mean that he'd be trying to steal your formulas right now?"

Then Cook thought about what David said. Then he scratched the back of his head in thought. And if he's here, then that also means that I can keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't leave to steal my formulas, he thought. Cook smiled at the thought of this and said, "I guess he can be here."

"Good! Then he'll get to be Ryan!"

"Ryan?" Michael asked not really wanting to be him.

"Yeah. You know, Ryan Seacrest. He's the short guy that's the host for Idol. Is that okay?"

"Sure, I guess."

"Um... can I play as someone too?" Ramiele asked shyly.

"Sure Ramiele. You can be a back-up singer."

"You mean I get to have my own microphone?!" she asked excitedly.

"Sure. You can borrow Jason's." Then David reached into one of Jason's pockets. "I think I got it! No wait, that's a tennis shoe. Let's see... Here it... No, that's a baseball. Let's see, a golf ball, a tree, a pinball machine... Oh, hi Elvis. Um... Aha! Here it is!" Then he finally pulled out a microphone and a stand and gave it to Ramiele. "Perfect! Now, it's time to go to Pitts..."

"Hold on there, people!" a southern twang shouted. Everyone turned yet again, to see that Mr. Cook's cousin Kristy Lee Cook was coming towards them.

"Kristy?! What are you doing here?!" Mr. Cook asked?

"What? You didn't think I wanted to come with you too? I've never played American Idol before. And since everyone else is playing Idol, I want to give it a try and play too!"

David smiled. He didn't expect so many people to come here to play Idol. This was a pleasant change in events. "Well then you can be... uh..." It took a while for David to think of someone that Kristy Lee could play seeing how there weren't that many southern accented people on American Idol. He couldn't think of anyone other than a contestant she could play. So he gave up. "Well, I guess Kristy Lee can be contestants too!"

"More contestants?" Danny asked.

"Well sure! There were quite a lot of people to try out after season one."

"Contestants, you say? Well if I get to sing, this may turn out better than I expected. I'm definitely in now!"

"Great! Now, let's go to our first audition stop in Pittsburgh!"