Not Otherwise Specified

by Hannah Moskowitz

  There’s a piano in here, and Bianca cartwheels her way over to it and says, “Mason is singing ‘Reviewing the Situation.’ From Oliver!”

  “Okay, that’s pretty perfect.”

  “That’s something you need,” she says. “Something with a lot of character. That way if you’re self-conscious about your voice you can act through it and half-talk and make that part of what you’re doing. Not all songs need you to sing all pretty.”

  “Yeah, easy for you to say.”

  “It so is not, everything I sing sounds so polished. I can’t be brassy and big. Even my ‘Let’s Hear It for the Boy,’ which is—”

  “Amazing.”

  “Okay, yeah, but it doesn’t sound like how it’s supposed to.”

  “That’s what makes it interesting, and you totally know that’s a good thing or you wouldn’t sing it for every damn audition.”

  “I’m tryyyying to make you feel better.”

  “Usually chocolate is the answer for that.”

  She perks right up. “I’ll buy you some!”

  “I want to hear you sing.”

  “Noooo, we’re supposed to be working on you.”

  “You sing. Then I will.”

  It doesn’t take any more convincing than that, this goofy kid. Bianca jumps right up onto the piano and starts singing ‘Reviewing the Situation,’ which is this hilariously gritty song sung by this hilarious gritty guy, and she’s right, it sounds about a hundred times prettier than it’s supposed to be, but gaaawd it’s hard to even imagine that that could be a problem when you’re sitting on the floor of this studio and her voice is pouring on you like water. She’s showing off now, grinning at me and making notes flutter in the back of her throat (notes that don’t need to be held that long—a little show-tuney for me!) but she doesn’t have to. This shy little thing (although not as shy with me anymore so much, and I’m beginning to think that maybe she was as desperate for friends as I was) sings like it’s easier than talking.

  I clap, and she bows and falls off the piano (no wonder this girl can’t dance, she’s this broken little doll) and says, “Now you!”

  “I’m not singing ‘Reviewing the Situation’!”

  “Sing, um. What are you?”

  “Short. Black. Awesome.”

  “Vocally!”

  “I know I know. Mezzo-soprano. Who isn’t?”

  “Deep syrupy altos, that’s who,” she says, and she goes ahead and sings a few bars of ‘Reviewing the Situation’ down in the boy octave, and what even is this girl? Little. Blond. Gorgeous. A deep syrupy alto. “You like Rent, right? Even though it’s, um, a white construction? Do ‘Out Tonight.’ ”

  “I can’t do the high note in that, no way. Not a cappella at least.”

  She taps out a few notes on the piano, but she definitely doesn’t know the music and even more definitely is no piano player. “Just do the intro,” she says. “Stop at the part before she takes her clothes off.”

  “That doesn’t sound like me.” I’m really not ashamed of this. I’m really not, so screw you, Tasha.

  “I’m gonna go home and pray for you.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Sing!”

  So I do. I get up and wiggle around Mimi-style and sing about how she’s gonna go slut around tonight, and the truth is that I’m kind of loving that Bee picked this song for me. Rachel and I used to always listen to it when we got ready, flat-ironing her hair straight as a board and streaking on that white eye pencil and shrieking in my middle-of-nowhere bedroom that we were the felines of Avenue B.

  I cut off before the high note, but Bianca just stands there (Bianca doesn’t really sit, not when she can help it) and looks all delighted, and she says, “Etta, that was so good!” and I’m not complaining or anything, seriously, but this is the part where someone would normally compliment someone’s voice, not just the performance, and she doesn’t. Really, I’m not complaining. I’m not regretting that I sang or anything, I’m just saying that I feel like I let her down by not being secretly awesome.

  God. Maybe I am regretting that I sang.

  She says, “Hey, what? I said you were great.”

  “Clearly I’m not a good actor if I’m coming across all disappointed.”

  “Aw, hey, Etta . . .”

  “No no no, I’m sorry.”

  “I kind of thought you were going to be really bad,” she says. “I mean, just the way you talk about yourself. I was sort of wondering. You’re so incredibly far from bad.”

  “I know that! I never said I was awful. I’m just, you know, not a singer. And you have to be a singer for this audition. It’s okay.”

  She shakes her head. “You’re better than I thought, but I still stand by my earlier, um, prescription. Something with character. So you can dance like you just did.”

  “Whaaa?”

  “Like you just did?”

  “No no no, sweetie, that wasn’t dancing, that was being a whore. Good God, what do they teach in church nowadays? Aren’t you supposed to be able to pick whores out of a lineup?”

  “That’s only on Sundays,” she says. “It’s Thursday, my secret Christian Whore-Spotting Powers aren’t activated.”

  “I can’t dance in my audition,” I say. “Not in the singing part, anyway. Like, could I make it any more obvious that I’m using my dancing as a crutch? Nuh-uh.”

  She scrambles to the boom box she brought and starts rooting through CDs. “Wait wait wait.”

  “And this is all kind of moot and ridiculous because we have just proved that I’m not good enough at singing a song without character to get through to second round, and with my luck they’ll pick, like . . . ‘Till There Was You.’ ”

  “Did I or did I not say wait wait wait?”

  “Yeah but I was mid-monologue already.”

  She says, “You know A Chorus Line, right?”

  “Not really. I saw the movie like ten years ago, and it’s burned in my brain with how horrible it is.”

  “Oh Gosh no do not even talk to me about the movie. Whoever put that on screen should be . . . I can’t think of a suitable punishment for letting that move be made. Tied down and forced to watch it.”

  “The actual show’s better?”

  “The actual show is . . . Well, the actual music is incredible. And this song is so you, I can’t even believe it, listen listen.”

  So I listen listen. It’s this brassy-voiced woman sing-talking her way through an explanation of her father treating her like shit, and then she went to the ballet and it showed her this world where men were chivalrous and perfect and . . . and goddamn it, Bianca.

  She says, “You could even sing it more than she does. You could let yourself break through on the high . . . Are you okay?”

  “I just want to listen.”

  When the first singer is finished and a second starts, Bianca pushes pause. “And then the two other girls sing. But that part is Sheila’s all to herself, and I think . . . you know?”

  I swallow over and over and over. “I know.”

  • • •

  Full, honest disclosure: I’m not really the girl with daddy issues.

  When my parents got divorced, I was six, and my mom immediately brought me and Kristina to this kids’ counselor so we could work through our feelings. I think Mom read something about if you don’t deal with these things right away they escalate and then your daughters end up freaking out and getting eating disorders or something, I don’t know.

  So off we went to mold Play-Doh and draw pictures and talk about our feelings, and I don’t remember my dad even coming up that often. Our counselor gave us candy when we cried, so we used to pinch each other under the table (Kristina’s idea).

  Anyway, the truth about the whole eating disorder thing is that I really don’t see what the hell it has to do with my dad, probably because the thing with my dad is just so stupid. He pays his child support when he’s supposed to but he never wants to see us and he lives like right her
e, two blocks away from the community center. I guess at some point I should have some dramatic confrontation with him. I should appear on his doorstep and sing “At the Ballet” as a symbol of how ballet was my only savior from this horrible fatherless life that he gave me, and I guess maybe that’s what Bianca thinks is going on here. And the truth is that’s really, really not what’s going on here, because I didn’t have a horrible fatherless life, I just had an ordinary, stable, happens-to-be-fatherless life.

  But I guess I know these issues because I guess everyone’s been waiting for me to develop them, and everyone’s expecting me to start crying in group and talking about how my father is the root of all my issues, so I guess I’m saying that I can act this out pretty well.

  I guess I’m saying that when I’m on my way to meet Mason singing along to the CD, playing Shelia’s part over and over again, there’s really no reason for me to be crying.

  Or maybe I’m saying that I’m not crying because I’m picturing my father.

  I’m picturing The Nutcracker.

  10

  I RECOUNT SOME OF THIS to Mason, some watered-down version that doesn’t include me crying over show tunes (not so much because I think he would judge me but because I think that the fact that I’m whatevermaybekindofdating someone who wouldn’t judge me is some kind of miraculous bubble I don’t want to burst), and he says, “So I don’t get it, why did you stop dancing?”

  Okay, so this I really don’t feel like getting into. I’ve spilled my guts about this once this week, that’s really enough. “I still dance. I do tap and modern and I did ballroom over the summer. I just don’t do ballet.”

  “Which was your favorite.”

  “Favorite isn’t exactly . . . the term.”

  “So what is?”

  There’s no word for the thing that makes you lose your damn breath every time you get up on your toes.

  “I don’t know.” Subject change! “So what’s the thing for you, that, you know, crux. Singing?”

  “Eh, I like acting better than singing anyway, but no, none of that really.”

  “I hope you tell them this at your audition!”

  He laughs. “I’m not making it far in this audition. I’m just doing it for James and James is just doing it for Bianca. It’s all this big . . . I’m not complaining, you know, I love the girl, but it feels all the time that we’re making this little dream world for Bianca. Like a house made out of candy. Shitty metaphor but whatever.”

  “Right.”

  “I don’t know. We do things to make her feel safe. And she needs it, it’s fine. But it does kind of require this—well, you know, song and dance of getting amped to go to a theater school that . . . I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d love it, but I’m not good enough and there are other people who’d love it more. Like Bianca. And you, maybe.”

  I shrug. “I used to apply every year just for . . . you know, the hell of it. Like talking to mall Santas when you’re a kid. You know, just in case this one’s the real Santa.”

  “Oh, God, right?”

  “Like crossing your fingers every time. Getting the photo taken. Your mom fluttering by because she’s afraid he’ll cop a feel.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Being a girl, man, there’s some weird shit.”

  He says, “But you do want to go, right?”

  “You know what? I want Bianca to go. Give me some powdered sugar to decorate the candy-house walls, I guess.”

  He laughs and says, “We don’t know how many people are getting in. Could be both of you.”

  “Anyone who tried to justify admitting both of us is obviously deaf in one ear and Bianca and I are singing in different ones. Me in the deaf one, if that wasn’t clear.”

  “I bet you can sing.”

  “I just am so incredibly not in her league.”

  “No one is.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know why we’re trying with these auditions when she’s our competition.”

  He sips his drink and thinks. “Because she’s miserable.”

  It kind of works as an answer.

  “Okay then,” I say. “So what’s your dream?”

  “I want to be a biologist. Or a basketball player. I want to be a basketball player who does biology on the side.”

  “Obviously, because that’s the one of the two that makes the more reasonable career.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Looking at schools?”

  “I don’t really have the grades right now, is the thing. I’m thinking I’m going to stay here and do community college for a while, and then we’ll see what happens. Maybe I’ll pull myself up by my bootstraps and everyone will be inspired and just give me things.”

  “That’s the dream, right?”

  “I think so.”

  I’m enjoying this. I haven’t had a good conversation with a boy in a long time, and yeah, maybe this is a little on the bantery side of things, but it’s nice, we’re not bored, we’re smiling at each other, and, yeah, he’s really cute. I don’t think anything’s going to come of this, though, and I really, really hope that doesn’t mess things up with James and Bianca. The thing is that I don’t know anything about biology and he doesn’t know anything about . . . I don’t know, there’s got to be something I care about. Lesbians. I don’t know.

  Okay, the thing is that he just said the words “turned off,” and I dried up like an old frog.

  Someone kicks my chair leg, hard, as she walks by, and I turn around and yep, that’s Clara, some sophomore. Awesome. Now it—and I don’t know what it is, but it’s enough to make me squirm down to my stomach—is happening outside of school too. I guess I’m surprised it took this long. Small school, small town.

  I guess some of me is surprised that it happened at all, and doesn’t that just suck.

  “You okay?” Mason says, and I can tell that he saw me jump but didn’t see the kick.

  “Fine. You’re really okay with staying in Nebraska?”

  “Ugh, did I really give that impression?”

  “Community college, not gunning for Brentwood . . .”

  “Hey, neither are you, you’re just gunning for anywhere but here.”

  “Yeah, fair.”

  “Look,” he says. “At the end of the day, there’s people who are staying and people who are going, and trust me, I know a fair number of each, and neither of us has a drop of staying in our damn blood.”

  I wonder which Bianca is. I know which Rachel is. I know which Danielle was. “I guess I’m pretty transparent,” I say.

  “Eh. I like you.”

  “So, what if we don’t get out? What if we’re these people made to get out and we don’t?”

  “We explode or become alcoholics. How’s your food?”

  How’s your food.

  People don’t ask me this. People count out my calories to make sure I’m eating. My mom watches me pour my six ounces of whole milk with every meal. My sister counts cookies to make sure two are missing. My mom stops herself in the middle of commenting on everything I eat—are you really—what? Nothing, dear!

  But no one asks me how my food is. I mean, it’s delicious, this is a nice place, whatever. But now I’m staring down at it and I can’t even figure out what it is. I can’t taste it anymore. I can’t remember it. I can’t even make out the shapes of it. It’s transmogrified itself into FOOD. It’s like what they ate in The Sims. It’s a plate of FOOD.

  I’m eating FOOD.

  I’m sitting here eating it.

  Shit.

  This was a mistake. The date. Not eating. Eating. Letting him know my history. Letting him think I’m over it. Ordering this. Ordering anything. This was a mistake.

  God, what the hell is wrong with me. It’s just a question. What the hell am I going to do if anyone ever comments on my actual weight? I’ve gained a shit-ton in the past few months, am I really telling myself that no one important is ever going to mention that? That no one’s noticed? I go to a freaking all-girls
school, how long is it going to be before someone says something and fragile little Etta just breaks into fragile damn pieces? How long do I have to do this before I figure out that being this shatterable thing isn’t fucking cute?

  They’ve all noticed. They’ve all been looking at me and thinking I’m enormous and whispering to each other not to say anything.

  The people in this restaurant are looking at me.

  They’re counting my calories.

  Not in a good way.

  I take a deep breath, feel it fill me, fill me all the way up. Set my fork down.

  “It’s good,” I say. “Thank you.”

  “Course. So did you and Bianca talk about what you’re going to sing . . . ?” And I have no idea what the rest of the conversation is about.

  • • •

  By the time he drops me off he’s figured out that something’s up. He asked me a few times and I blew him off, and people have a couple of different reactions to that, I’ve learned in my charming history of blowing people off, and he’s one of the ones who get pissed. I like that better than self-deprecating and depressed, like Ben, so there’s that.

  Which isn’t to say I don’t feel shitty about this.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s not you.”

  “I must have said something.”

  “No, seriously. I just get all up in my head about stuff.”

  He unlocks my door. “You think too much.”

  “What?”

  “That’s, like, my diagnosis. You think too much.”

  He kisses me and walks me to my door and I’m inside before I figure out what it was about that that really bothered me—I can’t get a freaking doctor to diagnose me, and I go out on one date with a guy and he thinks he can?

  I’m upstairs, breathing hard, on my phone.

  “Rachel. It’s me.”

  Goddamn it.

  “It’s Etta, I need to talk to someone. It rang before it went to voice mail, I know your phone’s on, Ray. . . .”