High Note

by Jeff Ross

  “I guess.”

  He winked at me. “They will—don’t worry about that.”

  Later, when the reporters were gone and I was in my dressing room removing my costume, wig and makeup, Denise popped in.

  She grabbed my shoulders and leaned her chin on my head. “Truly brilliant,” she said. “I knew you were the right choice.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “It was close,” she said, letting go of me.

  I didn’t reply. I was looking at her reflection in the mirror before me. “Crissy almost got the part?” I asked.

  “The votes seemed to be going her way. Then it was tied with only one vote left. The final one was Clive’s.”

  “The baritone?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  I thought back to the auditions and couldn’t remember seeing Clive there. In fact, I remembered Amanda looking for him just before the rehearsal that afternoon.

  “I don’t remember him being there when I auditioned,” I said.

  Denise winked at me. “That’s because he wasn’t.” She leaned in close. “Isabel can’t always get her way. When I discovered that Clive had been asked to be one of the judges, I told him the way the vote should go. He listens to me. We’ve been best of friends for a while now. He trusts my instincts.”

  “So he only voted for me because you asked him to?”

  “Don’t sound so surprised, Hailey. It’s just the way things work. You were the better choice. Crissy is good, but she would have made it all about her. She would have turned into a mini Isabel. A micro diva. It’s better for her to be brought down from the beginning, before she causes herself harm. I could tell you would be able to handle it. And you have. You’re wonderful.” She gave me a quick pat on the head. “See you in the hall for the reception, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I sat there stunned for some time. I had assumed I’d won the part fairly. In fact, I’d assumed that only Isabel had voted for Crissy. I was totally wrong. It had been so close. I’d only received the final vote because of backstage politics.

  I didn’t know what to do with this information. It felt awful to know. It felt…wrong. I tried to convince myself it didn’t matter. I had the part, and I was doing an incredible job. But it did matter.

  It mattered a lot.

  Fourteen

  “Has Crissy forgiven you?” Denise asked when we were off in a corner at the post-performance reception. My parents were going to take Sean and me for a late dinner. I wanted to soak in the opening-night glory, but I could barely make an appearance before leaving. The real party, I knew, would be on closing night.

  “I don’t think there’s anything she needs to forgive me for,” I said.

  “I guess I mean, has she accepted her role?”

  “No, she certainly hasn’t.”

  “That’s too bad for her,” she said.

  “It is.”

  “For both of you.”

  “I guess,” I said.

  “You’re hurt,” Denise said. I could see Sean watching me from the doorway. “It won’t always be like this.”

  “It won’t?” I said hopefully.

  “You’re going to lose friends. But you’re also going to find out who your true friends are.” She put an arm around my shoulders. I don’t know what happened—maybe it was the hugeness of the night—but I began to cry.

  “Oh, sweetie.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. Though, of course, I wasn’t. I felt awful. And then I got angry, because on the night when I should have felt better than ever before, I was sitting there crying over someone else’s bitterness. Crying over the fact that, yes, I had won the part, but in a way I’d never wanted to. Why did Denise have to tell me what had happened? Why did Crissy have to be the loser? Why did everything get so complicated and crappy right when it felt like my life was starting?

  “It sucks,” Denise said. “It really, really sucks. But it’s not your fault. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You had a great night out there. You’re a star,” she said. “You have an exciting future ahead of you. I can feel it. Don’t let anything or anyone change who you are, Hailey McEwan.” She spun me around and looked me in the eye. “You have a real talent. It’s going to make people jealous. But that isn’t your problem. It’s theirs.”

  It felt even more horrible to hear this. Of course, it was true. I hated how the world seemed to revolve around competition. But audiences don’t want to see second place. They want the stars. The most talented.

  The best.

  * * *

  At the restaurant, my parents heaped praise on me. And it felt great. All of it. It was one of the best days of my life. But I still kept seeing Crissy’s hurt face. Not because of something I’d done, but because of who I was and what I could be.

  “Suffering,” Sean said at one point, when my parents were questioning the waiter about the wine and their attention was elsewhere.

  “This again?” I said.

  “I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe the moral of this story is about suffering.”

  “Well, you’ve been talking about it enough. I’m sure it had to lead somewhere.”

  “You’re suffering because you want things to be like they used to be. But you also know you have to look ahead. You are suffering because of the past and the future.”

  “That is generally what people do,” I said. “We remember and we wonder.”

  “Ah, good. Yes, exactly. Crissy is suffering in a different way. She’s suffering from wanting.”

  “Okay. But she brought that on herself,” I said.

  I hadn’t told Sean what Denise had told me about the vote. I didn’t think I would ever tell anyone. It was going to be one of those secrets that lingered inside me forever. The weirdest thing was that right after Denise had told me how the vote had gone, while I’d sat there alone in the dressing room, staring at my reflection in the mirror, the only person I’d wanted to talk to was Crissy. I’d wanted to tell her how unfair it was. How stupid. But I couldn’t. I never could. Even if it might make things better, I was going to have to keep this inside me forever and never tell a soul.

  “She brought it on herself,” Sean agreed. “But it’s interesting, because you are suffering in the quiet moments. The times when you’re alone and thinking about what has happened. Wondering if anything might change. You’re suffering because of the past and the future. Whereas Crissy is suffering in the present. That’s a difficult thing to do. She’s sitting on the side of that stage, watching you perform, and she’s suffering because she wishes she was you. I doubt she’s even thinking about how she could have done better in the audition or what might come next. She’s suffering because she isn’t you.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know it.”

  “So do you think once this production is over, she’ll come back around?”

  Sean shrugged.

  “I have no idea,” he said.

  I looked at the fancy people around us. The waiters pouring fine wine into crystal glasses. The men and women in expensive outfits. The chatter and laughter and delicious smells. This was going to be my future. I had no doubt whatsoever. I was here because of my talent.

  I was here because I belonged.

  “Sorry, what?” I said.

  “You never know what’s going to happen,” Sean said. “That’s the moral of this story.”

  “That’s the moral of every story, Sean.”

  He shrugged again, then speared a shrimp with his fork and put it in his mouth. “Or it could be that we bring all the good and bad in our lives upon ourselves.”

  “That sounds closer to the truth,” I said.

  Because then nothing that had happened to Crissy could be my fault. And in the warm glow of that amazing night, that was the exact kind of moral that would bring no suffering to me whatsoever.

  JEFF ROSS is an award-winning author of seven novels for young adults. He cur
rently teaches scriptwriting and English at Algonquin College in Ottawa, Ontario, where he lives with his wife and two sons. For more information, visit www.jeffrossbooks.com