Rival

by Sara Bennett Wealer

  Rival

  Sara Bennett Wealer

  FOR MY DAUGHTERS

  Contents

  Senior Year

  Kathryn

  Brooke

  Kathryn

  Brooke

  Kathryn

  Junior Year

  Brooke

  Kathryn

  Brooke

  Senior Year

  Brooke

  Kathryn

  Brooke

  Junior Year

  Kathryn

  Brooke

  Senior Year

  Kathryn

  Brooke

  Kathryn

  Brooke

  Junior Year

  Kathryn

  Brooke

  Kathryn

  Senior Year

  Kathryn

  Brooke

  Kathryn

  Brooke

  Kathryn

  Brooke

  Kathryn

  Brooke

  Senior Year

  Kathryn

  Brooke

  Kathryn

  Brooke

  Kathryn

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  SENIOR YEAR

  Dissonance: a harsh sounding of notes that produces a feeling of tension and unrest

  KATHRYN

  I SAW AN OLD COMMERCIAL once where famous singers used their voices to shatter glass. So I looked into it last year for a project in physics class, and it didn’t take much of a Google search to find out the whole thing is pretty much a myth. Theoretically, the sound waves created by vibrating vocal cords could break a crystal goblet if they resonated long enough at just the right pitch, but finding and holding a note like that is incredibly difficult. The human voice, it turns out, just isn’t that strong.

  Human hatred, on the other hand, is. Anybody who doubts that should stand where I am right now and feel the hate waves coming off of Brooke Dempsey.

  We’re halfway through the second day of senior year, and both of us are in the back row of the Honors Choir; me in the soprano section, Brooke nine spots over with the altos. Even with all those people between us, even with our folders up, our eyes on Mr. Anderson, and our voices busy on a really hard Bach cantata, I feel a steady ping coming off of Brooke like the signal from a giant antenna. It’s like this every time we’re in the same room—she’s tracking me, I’m tracking her. The Defense Department would kill to have radar this good.

  “Watch it, people!” Mr. Anderson shouts as the tempo picks up, the beats get more complex, and people start hunching over their music as if that will make the notes easier to sing. For a few measures I can hear Brooke’s deep voice above everybody else’s. I start using my pencil to beat time against my folder and she homes in even tighter. The waves coming from her direction are like a battering ram; I swear I can feel them against the entire length of my body. But I don’t shatter; I’m not made of glass. Anyway, the parts that break aren’t on the outside.

  “Stop, stop, stop!” Mr. Anderson shouts, flapping his arms. The Bach has gotten the best of us and people start to look worried, because those of us who have been in the choir for a few years know what’s coming next. “I asked you to study the repertoire over the summer, folks,” he says. “Give me a quintet. Down front, now. Steve Edwards, baritone. Tenor, Matt McWalter. Brooke, you’re our alto.” Once I hear Brooke’s name I know mine will be called, too. Mr. Anderson only calls people for quintets if he thinks they’re slacking or if they’re really, really good. Brooke and I get called when he wants to demonstrate how a piece should be done; we get called because we’re the two best singers at our school.

  “Great,” comes a voice from behind, and I turn to see Matt, my best friend, trudging down the risers after me. I smile apologetically, but secretly I’m glad he’s in the quintet, too. Matt isn’t just my best friend, he’s pretty much my only friend—the one person to stick by me after Brooke started this cold war by punching me in front of half the student body after last year’s Homecoming dance.

  For a minute, while everybody gets situated, she and I almost brush up against each other; the nearness of her makes my skin tingle as my nose fills with her green tea and chlorine scent. Laura Lindner, a second soprano, steps between us as we line up bass, tenor, alto, SII, and SI, but I can still see Brooke out of the corner of my eye—that regal profile with the nose just this side of too big, the sun-streaked hair, the icy blue eyes. Brooke is beautiful in a way that’s hard to describe, like the perfect parts of other people have been reassembled, slightly imperfectly, into a girl who looks like she’d be just as at home in a Greek forum as she is in the hallways of William O. Douglas High School. She towers over the rest of us while we get our music ready.

  “Folders up!” Mr. Anderson commands. The pianist plays the introduction, we launch into the piece, and then something rare happens: Just for a moment, I forget about Brooke. The music is beautiful and challenging and fun to sing. I stare at the back wall, past Mr. Anderson’s conducting arm, allowing the notes to spool from memory out of my throat.

  “Nice, nice…,” he tells the group when we’re finished. “But most of you have too much vibrato. Try singing it like Kathryn just did, with a nice, straight tone.”

  Pleased with the compliment and still lost in the music, I turn to smile at Matt, but I catch Brooke’s eye instead. She grimaces as if to say, You’ve got to be kidding me, then snickers and elbows Laura, who laughs, too. Nobody else notices, and I know from experience that pointing it out—getting upset—would only make me look bad. After that humiliating Homecoming punch, I looked into my bathroom mirror to find a purpling welt across my left cheekbone. These days when Brooke strikes, there’s nothing to show where the blow landed; she’s become an expert at leaving no marks.

  I guess you could say that Brooke Dempsey and I are rivals. That’s not entirely accurate, though, because if you look it up in the dictionary “rival” means “one that equals or almost equals another.” If anything, Brooke and I are complete opposites. Her voice is deep and rich, mine is high and airy. She’s imposing and confident, I’m small and…not. Socially we’re on different planets altogether, the biggest difference being that Brooke is ridiculously popular.

  Why, then, should somebody like her care enough to hate somebody like me?

  It’s a long story.

  BROOKE

  I DON’T LIKE KATHRYN PEASE. That doesn’t make me evil or anything. I’m just not one of those people who thinks everybody has to go around being nice to everybody else all the time. I could pretend everything’s fine between us. I could be nice to her face, then trash her behind her back. But I think it’s better to be honest. I don’t like Kathryn, and I’m not afraid to admit it.

  Unfortunately for her, if I don’t like somebody you can bet nobody else does, either. My best friend Chloe says it’s a power thing—people pay attention to who’s on my bad side because they don’t want to end up there, too. But I think that’s only part of it. Kathryn does a pretty good job turning people off all by herself.

  Take right now, for example. We’re down front in Honors Choir. In one of Anderson’s quintets, which are really no big deal. But from the way Kathryn’s going after it you would think this was the Met. She’s singing way too loud. Even has the music memorized. When we’re done, Anderson starts gushing about her “nice, straight tone,” and she looks over at me—right at me—with this bitchy little smile on her face.

  “Ow!” whispers Laura Lindner when I elbow her in the arm. “What’s the deal?”

  “I’d have a nice, straight tone, too,” I whisper, “if I had a nice, straight stick up my ass.”

  Laura laughs. Kathryn looks aw
ay. And she doesn’t look at me again for the rest of the rehearsal. Choir would be my favorite class if it wasn’t for her.

  I know. Choir. It sounds lame. And if you were Chloe, that’s exactly what you’d say. “You can do whatever you want, Brooke. You’re a Dempsey! So how come you’re wasting your time with the music freaks?”

  But she has no idea. None of the people we hang out with have any idea how big a deal music really is at our school. You’d think they would have gotten a hint when the Honors Choir performed at the White House—not one of those trips where you get to go if you sell enough popcorn, but a real concert set up by the First Lady and broadcast on public television. Or when two years in a row, somebody from William O. Douglas won the Blackmore Young Artists’ Festival, which is one of the biggest voice competitions in the country and just happens to take place at Baldwin University, right up the road. But it doesn’t have anything to do with sports or getting wasted or hooking up, so music might as well be knitting or ballroom dancing as far as they’re concerned.

  Music, however, is my life.

  It’s also the one place where I can’t get rid of Kathryn.

  She and I have other things that we’re good at, of course. I swim. She writes for the school newspaper. But music is our main focus. Some days the only thing that keeps us from ripping each other apart is the fact that we’re different voice types, which means we don’t usually go up for the same parts.

  We’ve always known, though, that that was going to change.

  The bell rings, and while we’re putting away our folders Anderson picks up two yellow envelopes from the podium.

  “People!” he shouts. “Don’t forget the pool party at Brooke’s after school. One last hurrah before we start the contest season! And speaking of contests—Brooke, can I see you for a moment? Kathryn, you too.”

  We both head down to the front of the room, but Kathryn hangs back a little. It’s like she thinks I’ll bite or something.

  “You’ve been waiting for these, I believe?” says Anderson as he gives one envelope to me, the other one to her.

  She thanks him. Puts the envelope into her bag, and hurries out of the room. I see her take it out when she’s halfway down the hall. She opens it and reads while she walks, her dark ponytail swinging.

  I wait until I get home to open mine.

  Congratulations. You have been selected to participate in the 50th Anniversary Blackmore Young Artists’ Festival.

  I sit on my bed and open the pamphlet that came with the letter. I read the section about the contest history—how Ian Buxton Blackmore came to Lake Champion after a highly successful opera career and started the contest to get our singers into the elite music world. I scan the list of past winners—they end up at Juilliard, at Peabody, in Europe singing with major orchestras. I imagine my own name on that list. This is what I’ve been working for ever since we moved to Minnesota.

  And it’s going to be my ticket out of here.

  Finally, I flip to the contest rules, even though I’ve been to every Blackmore for the past seven years and I know everything by heart. There’s only one first prize in the vocal division, so different voice types don’t matter. It’s sopranos against tenors. Baritones against altos. Altos against sopranos. Me against Kathryn.

  The letter has a link to an online registration form. I grab my laptop and fill it out, listing all the voice teachers I’ve had. Especially the ones in New York, which is a big deal since not many singers from here can afford training like that. Just to be safe, I rip out the snail mail entry and fill that out, too. Then I walk to the post office and send it priority with delivery tracking. This way, I know that the entry is on its way—that I am on my way. For the past two years, somebody from our school has won the Blackmore. This year is my turn. All I have to do is keep Kathryn in her place, which should be easy when you consider who I am, and who she is.

  But I learned a long time ago that you can’t assume anything when it comes to her.

  I learned it the hard way.

  KATHRYN

  “A WHOLE HALF HOUR YOU’VE been out in the sun and it hasn’t burned a hole in you yet. Guess the rumors aren’t true.”

  Matt lies back in a lawn chair, folds his arms behind his head, and sighs contentedly. We’ve claimed a spot near the fence that separates Brooke’s yard from her neighbors’, a perfect place for watching the pool party while remaining fairly inconspicuous. From here, it looks like one of the movies Matt and I rent every Saturday night. Pretty girls lounge alongside the pool, paying just enough attention to the guys in the water to let the guys know it’s worth the effort of showing off, while the less attractive people huddle around the food table. Meanwhile, the serious sun worshippers are using this opportunity to catch the last of the day’s rays.

  But while Matt’s basking, I’m stewing. The word “rumor” has set off a loop in my brain—a buzzing blip that repeats, over and over: Brooke. What is she saying about me now?

  “What rumors?” I say.

  “That you’re a vampire. Everybody’s talking about it.” The joke is only partly funny, and he seems to sense that because he follows up with, “Well, not everybody. Just me, myself, and I. We’d do anything to get your nose out of those books.”

  He looks pointedly at my hands, which clutch a dog-eared copy of Waiting for Godot. I look down and realize I’ve been rolling the pages back as I read them; the cover is streaked with creases and will probably never lie flat again.

  “I know. This is a study-free zone.” I close the book and roll it even tighter. “But I already have a paper due in AP English. And Sunday I’m singing for that scholarship committee from Cincinnati, which is a long shot because they don’t have a lot of money this year, but my mom set it up, which means I have to do it, and that means I’m going to lose prep time for Human Anatomy….”

  “Whoa there, Glaurung!” Matt thrusts out his arms, making a cross like a knight warding off a dragon. “Now you’re stressing me out.”

  “Ugh,” I moan. “I’m sorry.” I unroll the book, stash it under my thigh, and try to push aside the feeling that I should be doing something productive all of the time.

  “See? I knew you needed a break.” He sits up and reaches around to pat himself on the back. “Good on me for forcing you out today. Ow!”

  Wincing, he pulls back his T-shirt to reveal a burn blooming along his neckline. I laugh. “Who’s the vampire now? Without me to drag around, you’d be holed up in World of Warfare.”

  “So we’re both pathetic.” He drapes a towel gingerly over his shoulders. “I vote we change that. Come with me to the pool?”

  I freeze. Just coming to the party was a big step. I haven’t seen Brooke yet, but I can just imagine her finding and following me with that superstrong radar.

  “I’m fine right here,” I say. “Thanks.”

  Another pointed look. After ten years, I can almost read Matt’s mind. The trouble is that he can read mine, too, and whereas I’ve had to learn my skill, he’s had his from the start—ever since the first day of second-grade Sunday school, when he came to where I’d huddled into a corner, sat down next to me, and didn’t say a word. He biked over to our house the next afternoon, and though I told my mom I didn’t want to play, secretly I was glad somebody wanted to be my friend. We rode our bikes up and down the sidewalk, Matt chattering question after question whether I answered or not. He would just pretend that I had, and most of the time his pretend answers were exactly what I would have said anyway.

  Eventually I started to open up and we’ve been best friends ever since. I helped him keep up his grades when ADHD combined with a raging sci-fi and fantasy obsession put him in the principal’s office more hours than he ever spent in class, and he helped me bear the infinitely awkward contradiction of being an overachiever who loathes the spotlight. One Sunday, the teacher taught us the song about letting your little light shine. Everybody loved the part where you sing “hide it under a bushel,” and then shout “NO!”
Especially Matt, who would get right in my face and scream “NO!” as loud as he could. After that, whenever he caught me being reclusive he would sing the bushel song. It was his way of pulling me out, telling me not to take myself too seriously.

  These days he just gets right to the point.

  “You’ve got to get over this thing with Brooke, Kath. It’s been a year.”

  “But it’s Brooke.” I study his face, trying to read whether he senses something about her that I’ve missed. Matt is a scarily accurate judge of character, especially after years of refereeing online fandoms and meeting total strangers at sci-fi conventions. “You remember how bad it got.”

  He smiles. Those comforting brown eyes crinkle at the edges, one of them nearly hidden under a flop of long hair.

  “Time has passed and people change,” he says. “We’ll all be going to college anyway. I seriously doubt she’s still thinking about what happened last year.”

  I want to believe he’s right, but I’m not so sure. I don’t feel like I’ve changed all that much.

  “Obviously you weren’t watching in choir today,” I say. “And then there’s this.” I pull my book out and hold up the yellow envelope I’ve been using to mark my place. Peeking out of the frayed opening is a pamphlet I’ve read three times now, six if you count all of the times I went over the section on prize money. A twenty-five-thousand-dollar check for first place; my jaw clenches when I think about my parents and how worried they’ve been about my college savings.

  “You made it to the Blackmore?” He leans over and wraps a sunburned arm around my shoulder. “That’s awesome! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t tell anybody.”

  “Not even your mom and dad? They’re going to freak.”

  “Exactly.” I put the envelope back into the book. “Once they know I’m in, they’re going to put all their hopes on it. The prize money is more than any of the scholarships I’ve applied for. Plus, it’s one hundred and fifty dollars just for the entry. I don’t have that kind of money.”