The Sound of Us

by Julie Hammerle

  I was an idiot to think I could hack it here. I’m never going to get one of those scholarships. I’m the aunt in a room full of stars.

  chapter two

  Kiki Nichols @kikeronis: Opera singers are REALLY attractive people, guys. I feel like I’m a walking, talking, singing “before” picture.

  From the music app on my phone, Ani DiFranco belts out a choice insult just as Brie bursts through my dorm room door, crosses the room, and plops a giant cardboard box on the other bed.

  “I guess we’re roommates,” she says. There were a bunch of boxes in the room when I arrived, and I wondered who they belonged to. I suppose that mystery is solved.

  I scramble to stop Ani from singing anything else we both might regret later, and I look up just in time to see Seth Banks crossing the threshold into my dorm room, carrying another larger, heavier box over to Brie’s side.

  “Hi,” he says. “Kiki, right?” He knows my name. Seth Banks somehow knows my name.

  I nod and sneak a glance at the mirror on the wall next to my bed, assessing myself against the two model-caliber people in my dorm room. I’m still wearing the cat dress. My frizzy hair is up in a messy bun, but the effect actually works with my blue-plastic glasses. I look eccentric but artsy, which may not be the best look of all time but it is, in fact, a look.

  (You’re probably wondering who my celebrity twin is. Well, there aren’t a lot of women in pop culture who have my body type, i.e. dumpy. I’m too fat to be thin and too thin to be fat. Head-wise, I have the glasses and mouse-like features of Mary Katherine Gallagher from Saturday Night Live with hair like Hermione before someone gave her hot oil help between the second and third movies.)

  Brie cocks an eyebrow at me and tucks her bottom lip under her top teeth as she picks up my backpack and drops it on the ground with a perfunctory thud. I had tossed it onto the blue papasan chair in the middle of our room after I got back from the auditions. “That’s my chair,” she says. “My. Chair.” And then she proceeds to place a six-pack of Diet Coke into the fridge—My. Fridge.—because apparently that’s how fairness works.

  Brie puts her hands on her hips and surveys my side of the room, which, honestly, does look like a tornado ripped through it. I came back to our room after auditions with the plan of unpacking all of my things, I really did. But instead I felt so overwhelmed, I had to take a few minutes to listen to Ani and decompress by writing horrible, secret poetry in my journal. But the few minutes turned into an hour, turned into me skipping dinner, turned into all of a sudden it’s seven o’clock and my clothes are still strewn around the floor like party guests who refuse to leave.

  To prove a point to Brie or something, I grab a stack of pictures from my desk and start sticking them up on the bulletin board. I don’t really want the pictures on my wall. I don’t need them, but I feel like they’re obligatory college student falderal, and that’s what I’m pretending to be this summer: a college student. My eyes linger over the pictures as I pin them, memories that seem so distant already. High school is a million miles away, which is kind of the point of my being in Indianapolis, so, success.

  Brie’s standing on a chair, pinning another opera singer poster above her bed. Seth, from what I can see from my vantage point, is lining books along the shelf atop Brie’s desk. I left our room the way it was when I showed up this morning. Brie—at least I think it was Brie—had divided our room in two by placing our desks back to back in the middle of the floor, right next to the papasan. When I’m in bed, I can’t see Brie and she can’t see me. We’re more like cellmates than roommates. Brie points to my varsity letters. “You play a sport?”

  I chuckle. “Yeah. Golf.” I brought my varsity letters as a reminder, a visual representation of why I’m here. The golf team represents the only time I’ve bested Beth at anything. Until now.

  “Seth’s on the basketball team.” Brie rolls her eyes. “I think sports are horribly barbaric and a colossal waste of time.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” I don’t want to get into this with her. She probably, like Beth, also thinks TV is a colossal waste of time. I get the feeling Brie and I aren’t going to have much to talk about. I’m glad I left all of my Project Earth paraphernalia in Chicago.

  “Are those your friends from home?” she asks.

  I stare at the faces in my photographs, all of them strangers, all of them people I basically haven’t spoken to in months. There’s even a picture of Davis Blankenshaft the Third and Beth on my wall because, apparently, I’m a masochist. “Kinda,” I say.

  “Is that your boyfriend?” She points to a picture of me at the sophomore year choir picnic, standing next to a guy who graduated that year. Troy or Trent or something. I can’t remember. It’s not like I even really knew him. The only reason I’d gotten near enough for a picture was because he had spent the entire picnic hitting on Beth.

  “No,” I say, “I don’t have a boyfriend.” I move the picture of TroyTrent and me all the way down to the bottom of the bulletin board. I chose pictures for my Wall of Fame based on how I looked in them. Who I happened to be posing with at the time was inconsequential. The selective history of me. I wonder if I’m the only one here presenting a bullshit front to the rest of the camp. I’m not actually a twee-dressing, put-together girl who wears lipstick and makes sure her hair is perfectly styled before she leaves the house in the morning. I’m “the aunt” in every musical. I’m the girl who rocks her mom’s old scrunchies on occasion and has no real-life friends to speak of.

  I look over at Seth and Brie, who chat easily with each other as they hang posters and straighten books. I’m not used to being in such close quarters with other people, aside from my own family. Especially not since Beth blew up our friendship. What’s expected of me? Should I start up a conversation? Should I ask them to watch a movie?

  “Well, enough of this.” Brie claps her hands after smoothing down the last corner of her poster. She looks directly at Seth. “Practice rooms?”

  He shrugs.

  “Practice what?” I ask. “We just performed our solos and we don’t even know what voice class we’re in yet.”

  “Practice vocalizing? Practice the song Greg sent us months ago with our acceptance packet?”

  “What? What song?” I recall the afternoon I got the envelope. Beth came over and we opened our packets together. Mine was a lot thicker than hers. I told her I got in; then she dropped her envelope and grabbed mine away from me. She stood there, eyes wide, shuffling through all the information I needed for camp. When she handed the packet back, she told me she didn’t get in. We went out for Culver’s after that, then came back to my house and watched an old movie, Legends of the Fall. It was the last good time Beth and I had together. “I didn’t get a song. At least I don’t think I did.” I rummage through my desk, hunting for the packet.

  “Everyone did,” says Brie. “We all got the same song.”

  I glance up, brow furrowed. What could have happened to that song?

  Brie smirks at Seth and shakes her head, like they’re in on their own private joke. “Well, I think we know one person who won’t be getting into Greg’s class.” She snickers.

  I ignore her tone, because it’s one I’m familiar with. She sounds a lot like Beth used to when I’d tell her I was staying in on a Friday night to live-tweet an old movie or something. I toss the envelope to my desk. “I don’t have it. What am I supposed to know about this song?”

  Brie raises her eyebrows. “What are you supposed to know about the song?” she asks. “Uh…everything? You’re supposed to have it memorized.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit,” I say. “What if it’s not memorized?”

  “I don’t know,” says Brie. She’s giving Seth that look again, the look that says they have one fewer camper to worry about, scholarship-wise.

  “I mean,” I say, “it’s our first week, right? Bertrand’s not going to hold it against me if I don’t have this song down pat. Will he
?” I feel the earnestness on my face. I hope Brie sees it, too. I need reassurance now, not a snide remark. “Will he?” I repeat.

  “What’s your name again?” Brie asks.

  My shoulders fall. “Kiki.” I add a guttural sound to the end of it. Like, gah. Am I really that invisible? Of course I am. I’m not sure why I’m surprised.

  “Kiki,” says Brie. “I think you’re screwed.”

  “Can I borrow your music, at least?” I ask. “To make a copy of it?”

  “I don’t think so,” she says. “You made your bed.”

  “I made no bed. I never got the stinking music.” Tears sting my eyes. This has to be a nightmare. This is freaking love and fate being a magnificent bastard again. The girl who only got into this program because of her sister shows up unprepared for the first week of class. I’ll be back in Chicago by Wednesday. Beth will find all of this hilarious.

  “You can borrow mine,” says Seth, riffling through his backpack. “I already have the song memorized.”

  “Thank you.” I take the papers and clutch them to my chest, like it’ll help me learn the piece by osmosis or something.

  Seth glances at his empty wrist, as if he’s imagining a watch there. “You’ve got two days before the first voice classes. The song is only two pages long. It’ll be tough, but you can do it.”

  I nod, feeling a bit calmer. “I can do it.” I might be an aunt, and I might have gotten into this camp on the reputation of my sister, but I’m a decent musician and a fast learner. I’m not out of the running yet.

  I grab my room key and hold up Seth’s music. “Practice rooms,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  *

  The practice rooms lining the second floor of Yunker Hall look like the kind of padded cells you see in every insane asylum in every creepy movie ever made. A soundtrack of wailing singers, violas, and trombones serenades us as Brie, Seth, and I tiptoe down the hall and peek into the windows, spying musicians pacing the floor or spitting in their oboes or cradling their cellos like their dying best friends. Some of these folks are already college students, real musicians. We’re just high school nobodies. I can tell even Brie and Seth feel like bumbling outsiders here.

  We manage to find three adjacent empty rooms at the end of the hall, and we shoot one another sheepish smiles as we enter our separate chambers, like we’re planning on soliciting hookers or emptying our bowels in there instead of warming up our vocal chords.

  I set my backpack on a battered armchair in one corner. From either side of me come the dissonant sounds of two different pianos and two different voices playing scales and arpeggios in two different keys as Seth and Brie begin their warm-ups. They probably didn’t even take the time to cover up their door windows. That’s too exhibitionist for me. No one’s getting a candid look at my practice face. I pull a notebook from my backpack and rip out the last page, glancing around, worried that someone might hear the tearing paper over the trills and staccatos. I tuck the paper into the tiny window on the door. It fits perfectly, as if the window had been created with embarrassed students who have access to spiral notebooks in mind.

  Not knowing where to begin, I stand in front of the mirror and pull my hair up into a fresh bun. Then I repeat the process three more times. My hair is the only thing I feel I have control over, and even that’s on the verge of staging a mutiny. At the floor-to-ceiling window, I watch members of some sports team run in a sweaty pack beneath me until the trees at the edge of campus devour the herd. No distractions left, I slide onto the piano bench and stare at the keys.

  I’m out of my element here. I never used the practice rooms in our high school. Beth took lessons from our choir teacher, so she was always hanging out down there during her free periods or whatever. I took lessons at a studio near my house and did most of my practicing at home on the living room piano, but only when no one was home. Though the door here is closed and the window is covered, I feel exposed.

  I blow out a long breath and press down on middle C with the conviction of a child dipping her toe into a freezing pool. I shudder and press the key again, louder this time, conscious that even over the blares of the trumpets and the wailing of Brie to my left, everyone within a five-mile radius can hear my timid tapping upon middle C.

  No one runs into the room to stop me or chastise me. No practice room police show up to arrest me for being a fraud. Feeling a little more secure, I stand up and bang out some arpeggios, just to see how high my voice is willing to go today. I don’t stop to correct anything I do wrong. I don’t think about why my voice cracks on the F# or if my “oo” sound is pure enough. I just sing without thinking.

  I open my backpack and pull out my fresh copy of the song I’m supposed to have memorized by now. “Vergebliches Ständchen,” it’s called and it’s all in German. I can’t even pronounce the title of the song, so I don’t have much faith in my ability to read the rest of the words. I start playing the music, adding some embellishments here and there in the accompaniment. As I play, I smile and I start to make up words to the music, words that are nothing like the actual German lyrics: “I am at camp now/but I’d rather be/in my room/with Project Earth on TV.”

  I grab my phone from my bag and compose a tweet: “I just wrote a song about wanting to watch #ProjectEarth. I need an intervention.”

  I send the tweet and toss the phone back into my bag. Ugh. Focus, Kiki. You have two days. Don’t mess this up.

  I pick up the German song again. The melody is fairly straightforward. I play through the piece a few times and hum along. The timing’s a little tricky. I make some notes in the music and clap out the rhythm. The lyrics are going to be the big problem. There’s no way I’ll have them memorized by my first voice class. Even if I spend the next two days doing nothing but looking at these words, it’s going to be next to impossible.

  I take down my bun again and grab my hair at the roots, staring at the lyrics the whole time, going measure by measure, line by line, trying to commit something, anything to memory.

  “Guten Abend, mein Schatz. Guten Abend, mein Kind.”

  I repeat these lines over and over again, clapping along with the rhythm, hoping, praying, that I’m saying the words right.

  Maybe my new voice teacher will take some pity on me. Maybe this is where my sister’s influence can come in handy. Maybe they’ll let this be my mulligan. God, I hope so.

  I need to walk. I need to stand up.

  I shove the music into my bag, tiptoe over to the mirror, and put my ear against the wall to hear what Brie’s doing in her room. She’s plunking out the same note over and over again, singing different versions of the vowel sound “oo.” I find the whole thing mesmerizing, how much time she takes to perfect a single sound. How many ways could there be to say “oo,” really? Then she pauses, leaving me in suspense, and chimes in a second later and a half step higher with another “oo.”

  The stars even practice better than I do.

  There’s a knock at my door and I fling my head away from the wall, guilty and embarrassed.

  “Yes?” I squeak.

  The person opens the door cautiously and peeks his head around. It’s Norman, the red-haired dude from the auditions. “Hey.”

  “Hi,” I say.

  “What are you up to?”

  I wave my arm to indicate that I’m in a practice room.

  “Duh,” he says. “I mean after this. A bunch of people are coming down to my room tonight to play Euchre, if you’re interested. My roommate’s mom left him a bunch of chocolate chip cookies and he said he’d share them.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Oh.” Norman is inviting me to hang out. This is a new one. People don’t just voluntarily ask to spend time with me. And besides, what the hell is Euchre? “Um.” I pull my hands into my sleeves, white-knuckling the cuffs from the inside. “Maybe? I really have to memorize this piece.” I nod toward the piano. Tina advised me to put myself out there, to make friends, but I only have two days to learn this German song. That’s
not an excuse.

  “Maybe next time,” he says, closing the door behind him.

  I pull out “Vergebliches Ständchen” again and resume chanting the words that now pass through my brain like liquid. Nothing sticks. I clamp my hands over my ears to drown out any distractions.

  Sorry, Tina. I’m basically a reality show contestant. I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to become an opera singer.

  chapter three

  Kiki Nichols @kikeronis: Guten Abend mein Schatz, Guten Abend mein SHUT UP, BRAHMS. #earworm

  “Help me, Tina Nichols. You’re my only hope.” I send my sister the text from inside the practice room and then spend the next five minutes waiting for her to respond.

  “What?” she writes. “I’m busy.”

  “I need to learn a German song,” I tell her.

  “So learn it,” she writes back. “You’re a singer. That’s what singers do.”

  “But I don’t know German.”

  I can feel her exasperated sigh in the three little dots beneath my own message as Tina types her reply. “YouTube it or something. Listen to the song.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  I open up the internet on my phone and search for “Vergebliches Ständchen.” Sure enough, there are a bunch of performances on YouTube. I click on the first one.

  Another text comes through. My sister again. “Dad is being such a butt.”