America's Next Star

by Katie Dozier

  I nodded, and felt my cheeks grow a bit warm. I didn’t want to leave this little room, where my leg was accidentally-on-purpose touching his. I sang the pitch, the voice coming out of my throat not like the sand that had silenced me in my every previous trip to the rehearsal space, but like little clouds.

  Little streams of clouds floating higher and higher.

  For the first time since my Mother’s death, I forgot myself and remembered that I had a voice—that I could sing.

  I forgot the pain, forgot the seventy-five times Huck had ditched me since we got here, forgot Mom’s death, forgot the Carrie nightmare, I even forgot to feel sorry for myself.

  The little clouds flew out of me, from deeper within me than just my diaphragm. I followed the crescendo of the familiar tune.

  By the time I finished, there was only me and David, staring into my eyes, unable to speak.

  “Wow. That was incredible.”

  He ran a hand through his hair slowly, his elbow briefly fitting into the curve of my waist in the process.

  “Well if you sing Christine as well as you sing Disney, you should have no problem acing your audition. You’d be a shoe-in even without perfect pitch. Thanks for your help.”

  He fiddled with his phone again, taking it off the triPod and tucking it into his pocket.

  I shrugged as if I did this every day, as if this wasn’t the best moment of my life since my eighteenth birthday.

  “Hey, a group of us music nerds go to the Loop for dinner every Friday, so you just missed this week’s but next Friday, at eight, do you wanna—”

  “Yes.” I locked eyes with him.

  If I had Elsa’s power to freeze any moment, I would have chosen this one. For the first time at FSU, it finally felt like I was doing more than just treading water.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ♪ Time Has Told ME ♪

  * * *

  H eading out of Landis, it was one of those cooler summer days when the green between my dorm and the library almost seemed to invite students to play outside. Even though the air was a touch colder, I’d traded my “unsaveable” (in the words of Tiff) sweatshirt for a navy and white floral printed dress I’d borrowed from her. Also at her guidance, I’d traded my “acceptable once a week” messy bun on the top of my head for a blown out look. It was the first time I’d used a hair dryer since Mom died.

  Out on Landis Green, there was a game of football going on. A guy was running faster than his legs looked capable of carrying him. He scored, then scanned the field for his supporters, and at the same instant, we recognized each other.

  “Ella?” Huck called out, running over to me.

  “You look gorgeous! That hair!” He said.

  I didn’t run to meet him. He’d stopped texting me, maybe because my responses when he did were a bit cold. I hadn’t heard from him in over a week. I couldn’t help but think there wasn’t room for a girl still reeling from the death of her mom in Huck’s newfound happy life.

  “You play football now? I thought you hated sports.”

  “Shhh. Oh, yeah. Just a pick-up game.” He motioned to his football buddies to wait for the next play. “Look I’m really sorry that I’ve been so busy lately. I meant to text you back.”

  The last time—come to think of it, actually the only time—I ever saw Huck pick up a ball of any kind was back in ninth grade. We’d been walking around the track after school while football practice was going on. After an errant pass, the ball landed right at Huck’s feet. Instead of throwing it around a dozen feet to the closest player, he sheepishly walked the ball over and handed it to the quarterback. The entire team exploded in laughter, and he never lived it down.

  Now Huck was voluntarily playing football? The thing I wasn’t sure of is why I resented him for doing just what I was trying to do, but more successfully. In just a few weeks, he had really left his past behind him.

  Huck waited for me to say that it was okay. I didn’t feel like letting him off the hook that easy, but I did at least refrain from yelling out, “Too little, too late!”

  “Look, Ella, I am really sorry. I’ve just been so caught up. I love FSU as much as we hated high school, you know?”

  I didn’t know that we hated high school, I mean up until Mom died. We weren’t popular, but I’d thought we’d made it fun with all the theater tech.

  “Well, I’ve gotta go.” I began fighting back unexpected tears as I walked past him, and my throat got that familiar scratchy feeling.

  “Wait, Ella!” He caught my shoulder with his hand, his hand easily covering half my upper arm. “Want to go out to eat? This game’s almost over and there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  “I’ve got to go to dinner with friends. Bye, Huck,” I said, as I quickened my pace as fast as I could without technically running. “Unlike on my birthday, I do know people that actually want to hang out with me!”

  I searched for anything else I could focus on besides what an asshole I was being: blades of grass dancing their last tango with the wind, students eating take out from RFOC in Styrofoam containers. One of the students sat in a wheelchair, steadying a paper plate with one hand and grabbing a slice of pizza from a box offered by a pretty girl.

  Huck cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Break a leg at your audition!”

  His words sounded more like a command than a good tiding. The floral dress and my straightened hair now felt like a costume that I couldn’t quite pull off.

  The Loop sat on the corner of the FSU campus on Tennessee Street, with a smattering of dingy bars on the other side. Even though it was ordered at the counter like fast food, it was the ritziest option that was still technically on campus. And the food was supposed to be a lot better than RFOC, even if it wasn’t included on the meal plan.

  As I walked through the black tinted door, I thought of singing, “Let It Go,” and leaving the professors at my audition tomorrow with the same wide-eyed look that I had made David feel through the little clouds of my voice. Some old John Mayer song hummed in the background of the restaurant.

  “Hey,” said David, as he handed me a menu. “Looks like we’re the only ones here now. Been here before?”

  Maybe my fate was turning in the right direction. Was anyone else even coming? Was this just a way of asking me out?

  Was he inching towards me because he wanted to or because they’d turned up some slow Elton John song and it was tough to hear me?

  “No, you?”

  “At least once a week. Closest place to the music school and all that. Fries kind of suck, but their lobster bisque is good.”

  We scanned the laminated menus, and I made another promise to myself to not throw up afterwards.

  “So when’s your audition, Elsa?”

  “It’s tomorrow actually, so ex-nay on the lobster bis-quey.”

  “Yeah, that’s another reason that I’m glad my instrument is something I can hold, and not something that I can ruin by eating dairy—though I suppose that spilling cream on my violin wouldn’t exactly help things. “Just get that bland dairy-less dish you’re thinking of, I’ll get the bisque, and you’ll have to taste…” His voice lingered over ‘taste,’ his tongue slightly touching his upper lip.

  We ordered, he didn’t pay for me (so not a date, I guess?) and we found the one open black leather booth along the back wall. I scooted in the long booth, and he slid right in besides me—so close that we were like the beginning of a trill—his head a few notes above mine.

  His hand rested on the outside edge of his thigh. Was it moving towards my bare, floral-lined thigh?

  His hand bolted to the top of the slick wood table.

  “Oh, there they are.”

  He waved, and a small group, led by all-too-familiar strawberry blonde ringlets, walked over. He jumped up to greet them, leaving me trapped in the deep booth—like a hermit crab wedged in a shell.

  As they approached our table, Carrie spotted me, and kissed David hard on his mouth. Why
couldn’t I have opened that door just a little bit more forcefully?

  I squeaked my way to the entrance of the booth, but David was still blocking me from standing up.

  “So you’re the Frozen girl David told me about.” Carrie said.

  “So Carrie, this is—”

  “Actually this is really awkward.” Her ringlets bobbed with a slight tilt of her head. She adjusted her tone, but not her volume, to mimic whispering. “I went to high school with her, but I can’t remember her name.”

  The faces around her gave small, obedient laughs like dogs barking on command for a treat.

  There were only a couple hundred in our graduating class. She knew my name. And if she didn’t, then why the hell wouldn’t she have just waited half a second to let David “introduce” us? There was only one reason I could think of.

  “Well, I remember your name because it reminds me of that movie where the girl gets pig’s blood all over her. I’m Ella.”

  Kill them with kindness, just like Mom always used to say.

  Carrie gave a laugh two octaves too high.

  Introductions were exchanged, and Haji was sent from their group to order for the late arrivals. Carrie slid into my old spot in the booth, and David swooped in beside her, his hand resting at the base of her demon—I mean denim—cutoffs.

  “So Ella, you said you were putting off your audition until the last one. That’s tomorrow right?”

  I nodded between bites of a stale fry.

  “I’m surprised you’re eating those. Don’t you know that grease hurts not just your waistline but also your vocal cords?”

  David’s neck stiffened. “Trust me, Carrie. This girl is going to have no problem with her pipes.”

  “Pipes?! Who says ‘pipes’ anymore, David? Be careful, your age is showing again.” She led the table in a chorus of chuckles.

  “Seriously though, Ella has perfect pitch.”

  Carried straightened up, dropping her fork in the process that sprang out a high F when it hit the rim of her plate.

  “Do you really think you’re ready? I mean you’ve never even been the lead in a musical. Have you ever even been in a musical at all?” She waved away a spoonful of bisque on offer from David.

  I pushed my plate of fries a few inches in front of me. “Yes, I mean I’m nervous, and I have been a lead in—”

  “I don’t think FSU will be impressed that you once did half a performance when the real actor had to cancel. You weren’t even the understudy.”

  I bit my tongue to stop myself from looking like even more of an ass than I already did in front of David.

  “We all managed to get in. You will too,” said Haji.

  “Thanks,” I said. How did she even have any nice friends like him?

  “Haji, no offense, but we all know that getting accepted as an oboe performance major and getting accepted as a musical theater major is not exactly the same thing. I mean, thousands try to be sopranos here, and a max of like twelve get in every semester. I heard from Professor Flossely that they had so many great early applicants this year, that they only saved one spot for the last audition!”

  Carrie’s best friend spoke up. “Yeah, I’m just so glad that I already got in and I don’t have that kind of pressure.” She caught the gaze of my big eyes. “Oh…but good luck tomorrow, Ella.”

  Under the table, someone nudged my flip flop.

  I raised my head to meet David’s steady gaze and reassuring smile, before I left the table and made myself throw up in the single-stalled bathroom of the Loop, even though I really hadn’t eaten much anyway.

  And even though I’d promised myself that I would stop...again and again and again.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ♪ All That Jazz ♪

  * * *

  I spent the night before my audition trying to undo the damage of throwing up by drinking a dozen mugs of green tea, while talking to Tiff.

  I lamented the horrors of David’s girlfriend being my constantly reappearing high-school enemy—carefully skirting around the issue that the offender was also her sorority sister. Tiff had been happy to indulge me in listening to my struggles for fifteen minutes, after only an hour spent talking about her “final” break up with her high school love.

  The stupid decision to throw up those French fries in the bathroom at the Loop had a snowball effect leaving me more out of control than ever. The vomit lead to the tea which lead to a lot of caffeine which lead to not being able to fall asleep, which lead to me hearing my duck-quacking alarm at eight a.m. not even sure if I had had so much as a single moment of sleep.

  Tiff scrawled “Good luck today!” on a Post-it and stuck it to my laptop before she went to the gym, and as I grabbed my stuff to take a shower, I clicked to listen to Chicago on YouTube.

  As I let the hot water pour over my throat, I allowed myself to live in the past for one moment, promising that I wouldn’t think of Mom again until I was finished with the audition—but would allow myself this one memory.

  It was the happiest day of my life, though I hadn’t known it at the time.

  I was thirteen, and I went to sit at a bar stool on our counter as Mom finished making breakfast on a Monday. She had brought back pink apples—extras from work at The Palace the night before. She was sautéing the cubed apples with butter to put on top of the pancakes Dad was flipping.

  “Ella, you look so tired today. Go turn on Chicago to wake you up a bit.”

  “Maybe that’s ‘cause you demanded I wake up at six on a Monday. Just lemme have some coffee.”

  “But that’d hurt your voice. And stunt your growth. Don’t you want to be five-foot-nine like your mom? Just turn on Chicago .”

  Mom winked at Dad.

  I turned the volume of the racing overture a bit too loud, trying to make a point.

  “Better?” Mom asked, waking me from my day dream of singing the role of Roxie Heart in front of thousands of people.

  “Yeah, Mom,” I said, as we all moved to the kitchen table—the steam from buttered apples coating our throats with the scent of fall.

  “But you know what would make this even better?”

  “Rocky road ice cream?” Dad joked.

  Mom gave a mock gasp. “No, you know what I think would make this better?”

  I cut into my thick buttermilk pancake, the cubes of apple falling off the waterfall of maple syrup.

  “What?” I said, with my mouth full of childhood.

  “If we were actually on Broadway, if we were actually watching Chicago .”

  “But that’s like, all the way in New York. Besides.” I rolled my eyes. “I have to run tech for A Chorus Line after school with Huck.”

  “Just a sec,” Mom said, as Dad began laughing, and—perhaps most surprising of all—he put his fork down when his plate wasn’t clean yet.

  The wheels on my little daisy suitcase clattered as Mom pulled it into the kitchen. “I would say pack your bag, but I already did that.”

  I put down my fork too and noticed both my parents were studying my face.

  “We’re flying to New York City, in an hour! We’re going to Broadway! To see Zelina in Chicago !”

  The happiest scream of my life pierced the air as I ran to hug first Mom, then Dad, and danced around the house like a matador that had just outrun the bulls.

  In New York with Mom, I’d soaked up every second of being in the huge theater—even more than pancakes soaked up maple syrup.

  We were way up high, in the back, but somehow this only served to make my desire to reach that stage even stronger. The gilded ceiling was offset with dark red, and come to think of it the colors would have fit in well at FSU.

  I don’t think I took a breath once the velvet curtains opened until the finale. And Zelina, how I longed to be her, how she commanded the attention of thousands, with every nuanced trill. Mom spent almost every second Zelina was on stage not watching the most famous guest star ever to appear on Broadway, but staring at my face with a s
mile.

  She didn’t even flinch at the explicit nature of so many of the scenes where so many of the costumes were just fishnet tights and underwear. Mom wasn’t like most moms—most moms wouldn’t have encouraged a teen’s interest in a musical where almost everyone in the cast wore fishnets and underwear as costumes. But she didn’t mind that I’d been obsessed with Chicago ever since Huck got me into it.

  We’d dressed up way too much for the cheap seats—Mom in a black sweetheart ball gown with rhinestones on the bodice, and me in a dress she’d bought as another surprise—a white velvet a-line, with black lace flowers on the skirt. Everyone around us was probably wearing jeans and “I ♥ NY” t-shirts.

  My eyes and Mom’s eyes bore the same little lines at the side from smiling so much. Her hand squeezed my shoulder—as if I had been the lead that night, as if I had somehow already made her proud.

  Before, singing had been something I enjoyed. Afterwards, it was my passion, my dream, and what I’d wanted more than anything to succeed at. That was, until Mom died.

  After the show, we’d asked a man with a white beard to take our picture in front of the theater, and the glowing neon Chicago sign. Going to that building was—for me at least—like it must have been for others to make a pilgrimage to the Vatican.

  I decided that, whenever I went home next, I’d turn that picture—which I’d turned face down on my dresser, with its stand jutting out like a dagger above it—that I’d turn that photo back up the right way.

  And that now, from time to time, I might even be able to look at it without crying.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ♪ The Sound of Silence ♪

  * * *

  I sipped green tea hotter than a dragon’s breath as I ran through my music in my head. I took the back exit from Landis and a longer route so that I could minimize chances of a run-in with Huck, who hadn’t even texted me to wish me good luck today. I walked right by the main fountain on campus.