America's Next Star

by Katie Dozier

  It was, “Let it Go,” from Frozen !

  The doors on each of the tiny rehearsal rooms had a small window in them, and I knew I shouldn’t stare, but I was drawn to look through the glass inexplicably, like Olaf was drawn to the sun despite being a snowman.

  It was hard to imagine that I could have been even more captivated by what I would see, but then I set eyes on the violinist.

  His eyes were closed as he played, the wisps of brown hair resting on his eyelids. His tall frame swayed with every crescendo. Adding to the ridiculousness of the moment, he was wearing a James Bond tux. The black bow and the top buttons of his white shirt were undone. I couldn’t stop staring until it was too late.

  “Uh, hi,” he said, through the glass.

  “Oh, sorry, I was just—”

  “Wondering why the hell I’m playing Frozen ?” He raised an eyebrow at me, and I willed myself to melt through the floor as he opened the door and made eye contact with his pale green eyes punctuated by dark lashes.

  “Well you’re not the first,” he said. “I was pretty much laughed out of the grad school rehearsal rooms. That’s why I’m down here in the land of crappy acoustics.”

  “No, no, that’s not it…I was just wondering if I have to reserve a rehearsal room or if they’re open?”

  Even though I was well aware of the hours and even the type of pianos available for use in the rooms.

  “Oh, well as you can see,” he said, as he gestured to the open row of doors behind him and I resisted the urge to smack myself on the forehead. “They’re very much open. You must be new, I’m David.”

  “I’m Ella.”

  He grasped my hand and brushed a wisp of hair out from in front of his emerald eyes.

  “You’re right to be cautious about the rehearsal spaces though, they can be pretty strict around here. I’m a violin Grad student, which, come to think of it, is likely pretty obvious.” He looked at my sheet music. “And you must be a new musical theater—a soprano that likes ghosts from the look of your sheet music.”

  “Yes, well.” I couldn’t lie to those eyes. “Not yet. I’m here to practice for my audition. And I like Frozen . I’ve never heard it played on a violin before.”

  “I’m practicing for my next YouTube release, see I record myself playing newer songs between wearing tuxedos and playing music older than my grandparents.”

  He looked at my sheet music and added, “No offense, I mean Phantom is a classic for a reason.”

  “How can I be offended already if I’m not even a real theater major yet?” I caught my eyebrows arching, was I flirting?

  David gave me a laugh. “Yeah, that’s true I guess. Well good luck with that audition, I’ll see you around, I hope.”

  “Thanks.” I said, acting like I was fine with not turning around to see his eyes, that hair, and that muscled physique in a tuxedo again.

  In the rehearsal space, there was barely room for one beat-up, upright piano. I felt more nervous in here than I had talking to that gorgeous guy. I started to play some drills on the piano to warm up my voice—which I’d learned on YouTube earlier that day.

  But when that fateful time came for me to sing my first note in a month, my throat and mouth felt like they were filled with the sand at the bottom of the Banana River.

  But belting out, “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again,” when I still missed Mom so much that it literally took my breath away, was starting to seem more impossible than the cliff Veronica dove off of on America’s Next Star.

  With my Beats glued to my ears, it turned out that the best present from my birthday had actually been Mom’s old iPod. I’d managed to get through many songs I’d never heard before, but it was easy to fly through music when I listened to it all the time. I never felt alone when there was music pulsing through my ears.

  Listening to one of my new favorites, Simon & Garfunkel’s, “The Sound of Silence,” I downed a slice of leftover cheese pizza at Real Food on Campus (the school cafeteria I had the meal plan with). Next on the agenda was the most boring class ever, Mathematical Topics, AKA the easiest math class that would relieve me of any more math credits for my degree. The most exciting thing about that class was wondering if Dr. Wu’s toupee might go sailing off when the door opened as late students trickled in.

  I pulled my hair into a bun, and donned my uniform of a vaguely stained FSU shirt, jeans and those Converses I still refused to throw out, much to the annoyance of Huck.

  “Please God let me buy you a new pair shoes. Even Crocs would be an improvement over the travesty on your toes,” he’d said to me a few days ago.

  Even beyond Simon & Garfunkel, Mom’s iPod was loaded with some really cool stuff—like this guy from the seventies, called Nick Drake, who sang so easily to acoustic guitar, like his song “When the Day is Done.” If his music was a painting, it would be a soft watercolor of a sunset over the Atlantic. Sometimes I pictured Mom listening to Nick Drake as she walked to her classes back when she went to FSU—wearing a flowing sundress and weaving between magnolia trees. The daydream always faded when I couldn’t decide if she would’ve had a cassette player or been an early adopter of CDs.

  It turns out that wearing headphones while eating alone at RFOC wasn’t a productive strategies in finding friends, which I’d promised myself I would do. I even found it hard to reply to Huck’s texts that were overly punctuated by a tremendous number of exclamation points and heart-eyed emojis. I guess our attitudes at the start of our trip to Tallahassee had held.

  My “fresh start” was growing a bit stale. Instead of my start at FSU being like a Veronica’s heroic dive, I was just treading water. I was just another minnow in the sea of fish at FSU.

  After class, Tiffanie was having a struggle so foreign to me that it might as well have been some awful sci-fi movie.

  “So we were standing in the quad, and I said, ‘Really John, I know you’re not going Greek and I think that’s stupid, but whatever. I changed my mind. We can get back together.’ And you know what that dick screamed at me right by a big group of Kappa Deltas when I was wearing my Tri-Delt sweater?!”

  I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to hazard a completely random guess, hand her a tissue, or just act like I was in shock that, for the seventh consecutive day, Tiffanie had broken up with and reunited with her high school lover—the one that had turned down a full ride on a football scholarship to Harvard to follow her to FSU.

  So I decided to go with all three at once.

  My arm shot out, loaded with a tissue.

  “Did he call you a bitch?!”

  “No! Why the hell would he call me that?! I’m the furthest thing from a bitch! I volunteer at the humane society for Christ’s sake!”

  As dozens of Instagram pictures proclaimed, a year ago, Tiffanie had volunteered one afternoon at a humane society near her home in Boca Raton. She wore a see-through pink top, a mini skirt, and kitten heels.

  “He said, ‘Too little too late, Tiff.’ Too little too late! Like we’re in some bad B-movie! Can you believe that!”

  Yes, I could.

  “No! I’m sorry Tiffanie. He doesn’t treat you well, you’ll find a better guy that’s in a frat?”

  “Yeah! Now that’s a good idea. Then it’ll be too little too late for him—ha!” She turned her wrath to fixing her makeup, pushing foundation into her flawless skin.

  It wasn’t that I disliked Tiffanie, after all she was my only friend besides Huck...if he and I were even still friends since he hadn’t replied to my texts in days. I just knew that if Tiff and I weren’t randomly assigned as roommates that there would be no way she would even use me as a tool for venting.

  “Can you show me how to do my eyeliner like you do yours? Normally it’d be too much for me, but Kyle from Phi-Delt’s taking me to the Glass Slipper.”

  The fanciest restaurant in Tallahassee, I’d never been, but Tiffanie went at least once a week, whether with the guy from high school or the new ones she used to fill in the gaps bet
ween breakups.

  It sounded a lot like The Palace, where Mom used to work in Cocoa Beach. Crushed red velvet booths, an attempt at 1950’s glamour, and an overpriced wine list that Mom used to feel a bit guilty about selling.

  As I put my pencil to Tiffanie’s eyelid, her hand grabbed mine as she gasped.

  “What is with your fingernails?”

  “Yeah, I had on gray, and I tried to just paint navy over it.”

  “That is one heinous shade of chipped brown. You’d better fix that if Mr. Bond’s about to ask you out!”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” After I finished her eyeliner, I went over to start the dreaded task of inhaling acetone fumes in our window-barred room.

  “You’re so lucky that your mom was in pageants, I bet she knows so many makeup tricks.”

  When Tiffanie eventually grew tired of moaning about her own problems, she’d occasionally ask about my life. Here’s where I got creative with her again—like when I omitted that Mom was actually dead. I may have led her to believe that Mom was a former beauty pageant winner turned florist, and that Dad spent his time smoking cigars on our yacht. In truth, the only thing Mom had in common with beauty pageants was that our mutual favorite movie was Little Miss Sunshine , and the closest Dad got to a yacht was my decaying row boat tied up in the backyard.

  I told her about my crush on Mr. Hille, but I pretended that he was the captain of the football team in high school named Zac—instead of my drama teacher that I hoped had no idea that my crush on him had been the reason I initially signed up for his class. So yeah, I basically pretended Zac Efron from Glee was my high school boyfriend. That’s normal, right?

  Lately my stories had become even more embellished. Dad was a brain surgeon. I went to prom in the limo I actually went to Mom’s funeral for, where I actually wore that red poofy dress I could picture still hanging in a clear body bag—a flower in too much bloom against the bare stems of the empty wire hangers in my closet. I spent Prom night with Zac in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton, which he had filled with red roses.

  But realizing that I was in danger of sounding like an old frat boy harkening back to my youth— which, come to think of it, may have actually been something that Tiffanie would have enjoyed hearing—I came up with stories of wild flirtation with David. It seemed all too easy considering that he was the only person I’ve ever met for the first time while he was wearing a damned tux.

  “Uh, she told me that you can put hairspray on your ass to keep your bikini bottom from riding up.” I said, regurgitating some random Buzzfeed link I’d scrolled by on Facebook.

  “See that is what I mean! My mom would never know something useful like that—and I could use it for this pool party I have tomorrow…though maybe I want it to ride up!”

  Tiff shot me a wink.

  Chapter Twenty

  ♪ Let It Go ♪

  * * *

  W ith only a week to go until my audition I’d yet to sing a single note. I’d also gotten ketchup on the sweatshirt Mom gave me, after eating (and uneating) fries at RFOC. I was hopeful that the garment would prove to have nine lives thanks to the many ideas Tiff had about getting stains out of clothing.

  “You don’t even want to know some of the stains I had to get out before going home back when I was in high school.”

  As usual, Tiff was right. I really didn’t want to know.

  I decided just to give it one more try to sing, because if I couldn’t do it, then there really was no hope for making the last audition of the semester with so little time left to prepare. On the plus side, I could visualize a complete picture of the sheet music after staring at it for hours, and remember how my voice used to sound on every single trill. I carried my FSU travel mug full of green tea, as if sixteen ounces of steaming liquid could undo the damage of forcing bile through my throat at least once a day.

  In an effort to stop moping, I cranked Zelina’s number one hit, “Baby, Don’t Baby Me,” as loud as possible on my Beats and began strutting—that is, if it’s possible to strut in old Converses.

  Then I opened the door smack into someone’s face. And knocked them over.

  “What the hell!” said the girl, getting up from her stumble.

  I put out a hand to help her, which she refused.

  “I’m really sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” I said. Though I couldn’t see her face yet, I instantly recognized the timbre of her speech.

  “You could have broken my nose, and then what would happen to my voice?”

  She turned her face to me. Could it really be her?

  Miles from Cocoa Beach, did I really have to deal with the most popular girl from high school at FSU too? Wasn’t once in a life-time enough for that? I vaguely recalled something in the yearbook claiming she was moving to NYC right after graduation, to sing on Broadway.

  “Oh.” She smoothed her hair all the way down to her waist, where there was no evidence of the freshman fifteen. “It’s…you. Weren’t you—”

  “A techie at CBHS, yeah. So you go here too?”

  “Where the hell else would I go? Well except going straight to Broadway, this was the only choice.” She threw her French manicured hands in the air. “This is the best theater BFA in the country, plus I got a full ride and early admittance to the program. Didn’t you hear? Steven—I mean Mr. Hille—wouldn’t shut up about it.” She covered her cheeks to hide a blush that wasn’t actually there.

  “Carrie, I wasn’t there for a lot of the end of the year.”

  “Oh yeah…that. Sorry?”

  “It’s okay.” I forced a shrug as if Mom’s death hadn’t ruined me. As if it was the kind of minor annoyance that could be cured by singing along a few times to, “Let It Be.”

  I noticed her sweater in the silence. “Oh, you’re a Tri-Delt, cool, my roommate’s one too. She’s Tiffanie Schlampe.” Great idea, Ella.

  “Yeah, I know Tiffanie.” Did she roll her eyes? “You’re trying to be a music theater major? But you weren’t in any of the plays at CBHS. But maybe you just stopped auditioning, a lot of people did when I kept getting every single lead, I guess a lot of people realized there was no point.”

  She looked at my headphones resting around my neck and giggled.

  “Is that really ‘Baby, Don’t Baby Me,’ playing? I haven’t heard that since I was like six.”

  I pulled the plug.

  “Yeah, well, my audition’s in a week.”

  “Oh that sucks, I’ve heard everyone waits for the last one, so there are like no spots left. I got in on the first date, before school even started. That was what made me decide to do this before Broadway, or compete on America’s Next Star ...”

  She kept talking, but I wasn’t really listening, just staring at her strawberry ringlets, and how her eyes looked like a fawn’s. Her type of beauty was the kind that was prettier because she wasn’t a cutout, except perhaps of Natalie Portman years ago.

  They say college is different, but what if this was just going to be high school all over again and the only difference was unlimited French fries until midnight every day?

  “So you’ll really need to act like you’ve been acting since you were like five to have a chance of getting in. And make sure not to trip this time—part of being a great actress is being able to dance and…”

  Baby, don’t baby me.

  Finally someone walked by that Carrie knew, and she fluttered away from me without a second thought.

  Having almost broken the nose of the newest protégé of the Musical Theater department, I began to sweat into my ketchup-stained sweatshirt as I trudged up the stairs to the free rehearsal rooms. If I wasn’t going to sing now, with one week left until my audition, I’d be beyond screwed.

  Watching America’s Next Star , I had a very high success rate of guessing who was going to rock and who was going to suck based on that moment right before the music starts for them to sing. The camera would zoom in close—too close really—like stalker-close on their eyes.

  The o
nes with a steely, singular focus on the crowd—like they were starving and going to use their microphone to hunt the audience as prey—they were the ones that made it. The losers, with a drifting gaze, would sway their head all around the stadium, like they were about to get crushed in a stampede.

  As my eyes surveyed the garnet carpet, avoiding eye contact with the people in the hallway, it seemed like the only reality show I could make it on would be America’s Next Janitor —though I might be disqualified for my unclean sweatshirt.

  A door burst open just after I walked by it.

  “Hey, Ella, right?”

  It was Mr. Bond wearing a tight-ish “I Do My Own Stunts” t-shirt, somehow looking even hotter than he did in the tuxedo.

  “Yes.” He remembered my name! “I… didn’t think you ever went anywhere without a tux.”

  “Well, after all my name’s Fantome, David Fantome, so fortunately I’m not bound to the same dress code as Mr. Bond, except when I’m performing.” He smiled. Did he know that I was calling him Bond behind his back?

  “Hey, help me with something. Come in here.” He walked back into the tiny rehearsal room, holding the door for me.

  There was barely enough space for us to breathe without making contact on our arms or legs.

  “Thanks for your help. I forgot my sheet music for Frozen , but you said you were a fan—I can’t remember how the melody after the second chorus changes after the first part.”

  He fiddled with his phone, resting it up on a triPod.

  I pointed to his shirt. “So much for doing your own stunts, I guess!” We laughed, then I hummed him that part of the song.

  “No good, I need you to sing it. All of it.”

  “But—I’m not warmed up!” I turned to the door, and he put a soft hand on my back. Now I was really sweating.

  “It’s Disney, not opera, just help me out for a sec.”

  The defeated look in my eyes steeled to a focus as David turned to hit a note on the piano for my starting pitch.

  “I don’t need that,” I said.

  “Clearly I asked the right girl for help. Perfect pitch?”