High Note (7 page)

The orchestra began again. I waited, inhaled as much air as possible, and let loose with the most sound I had ever managed.

“No, no, no, no, no,” Evelyn yelled. She flew across the stage and stood above me. “I didn’t ask you to shout at us. I asked you to sing with passion.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be sorry, Hailey. Be better.” She stepped away and motioned at the orchestra.

I was shaking as the music started again. Mrs. Sturgeon sometimes got frustrated with us, but she never yelled. She was always encouraging.
Then I glanced at the small audience and spotted Crissy there. She was leaning forward in her seat, her arms crossed and resting on the back of the seat in front of her. She was glowing, as if this was the greatest performance she’d ever seen. She was enjoying every second of my discomfort.

The first notes trickled out. I glanced at Amanda. She rotated her arms, pushing me to continue. And somehow the sound came. I directed the music toward the balcony. My lungs felt as if they were going to burst. I glanced over at Amanda, and the sound dropped. She pointed to the balcony and yelled, “To the rafters!”

I looked back at the balcony, and my voice soared toward it. I could almost see the notes floating up and out above me. I didn’t look at Amanda for the rest of the piece. At the end, the orchestra kind of fell away, not coming to a tight stop.

“Fine,” Evelyn said, stepping away from her spot before the orchestra. She glanced at her watch. “The singers can go. I need to work with the orchestra now.”

When I looked down at the seats, Crissy was gone. I felt for a moment as if I’d beaten her.
As if I’d blown her out of the room with my voice.

Amanda stopped me as I was heading out the door. “Hailey, you’re doing great.”

“Thank you,” I said. But it didn’t feel like I was doing great. No one had ever demanded so much of me before. In my lessons and choir, I was learning. With this production, I was working. It wasn’t whether I would eventually learn how to sing an aria. I was expected to already have the skills and simply be able to change whenever something new was asked of me.

“I understand that tomorrow you’ll be fitted for your costume.”

“That sounds like fun.”

I thought she was going to leave, but instead she stayed there in front of me, so I remained in place too.

“So much talent,” she said, almost to herself.

“Sorry?” I said.

“You have so much talent, Hailey. Remember that. An absolute natural talent.”

And then she was gone, and I was left wondering how far natural talent would take me.

Eleven

“F
orecast today,” Sean said during lunch the next day, “hot and muggy. But don’t worry, folks, there’s a cold front creeping in.”

I was being fitted for my costume and felt awkward with him standing beside me. “I can’t even think about it, Sean,” I said.

“Crissy’s never going to forgive you for landing this part, is she?”

“It doesn’t seem like it.”

Sean yanked on my sleeve. “This is too short.”

“That’s why I’m being fitted,” I said. The woman who was adjusting my costume came back and tightened the corset. I wondered how I was going to be able to settle onto the floor with it hitched so tightly.

“This is too short,” Sean said to her. She reached around and yanked at the sleeve. Then she went back to making it impossible for me to breathe.

“It will blow over. She’s just hurt right now,” Sean said, taking a seat beside me.

“Isabel’s no better,” I said. “Have you seen how she grabs me? I have bruises on my arms.”

“She sure can complain,” Sean said. Isabel had thrown a couple of fits during the rehearsals. Once, she stormed off the stage for no apparent reason, shouting about “that girl” as she went. “But the question is, are you enjoying yourself?”

I didn’t even have to think about that. “Yes,” I replied. “A lot.” It was an adventure. I didn’t always know what I was supposed to do, but it wasn’t just me who made mistakes. The other performers did too. And I was okay with not being perfect. That’s what rehearsal was for.

“Then you’re doing it right.”

The woman helping me with my dress gave my shoulder a squeeze. “This looks great. How does it feel?”

“Tight,” I said.

“Then it’s fitting perfectly,” she replied before walking away.

“That is seriously tight,” Sean said.

“Is it too tight?”

Sean blushed. “I’m not sure what that would mean.”

“Are all boys like you?”

“No,” Sean said. “Not at all.” He paused. “Most aren’t even close to this polite, kind, generous and handsome.”

“Thanks for the warning,” I said.

We walked back to the concert hall.

“Do you think this story still has the same moral?” I asked.

“That Crissy will decide friendship is more important than dressing up and singing?” Sean said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m not so certain that’s the moral anymore. We may have overestimated her interest in friendship.” He looked really, really sad. Sean is more loyal than anyone I have ever known. Crissy had never been very nice to him, but they were friends. I knew her sudden pulling away must hurt him too.

“She unfriended me on Facebook,” I admitted.

Sean looked shocked. “Seriously?”

“I went to send her a message, and she was gone.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “That’s cold. I want to think it’s all her mother’s influence.”

“She’s broken free of her mother’s influence before.” I leaned against the wall. Then I remembered the costume and bounced off it. “We’re seventeen, Sean. You can’t stay under your parent’s thumb forever.”

“That depends on how controlling your mother is.”

I thought that being seventeen was also part of the problem. We were right at the age where our parents’ influence remained a factor, but everyone was pressing us to figure out our futures. At the very least, we were expected to do a little planning. It was like living in an elastic band that everyone wanted to yank on.

We watched as the musicians took their seats. Crissy mounted the stage and stood on the spot where I’d sung earlier. She looked out at the room. Isabel joined her on the stage. Isabel said something to Crissy, and Crissy nodded. A moment later, Isabel sang a few bars of “L’ho perduta.” Crissy leaned into her and sang back.
The orchestra was tuning and there were people talking, but the two of them kept going as though it was opening night.

“This is bizarre,” Sean said.

“You don’t say.”

“What are they doing?”

“Performing?” I said. Crissy looked happier than I had seen her in weeks. She sounded great as well.

I knew she was trying to show me up—I could tell by the look on her face. She was trying to prove that she was the better singer. That the chemistry between her and Isabel was something astounding. But I wanted to let them finish. I thought that maybe if Crissy could sing to an empty room, she would feel better.

“Why are you standing here?” Sean said. “You need to get up there.”

“I want her to finish.”

“Why?” he said.

“Because she needs it. And what can it hurt?”

It appeared, as the orchestra was finishing its preparations, that no one was paying Crissy and Isabel any attention at all. When they were done, Isabel took a step back and clapped.
She probably thought other people would join in. Crissy bowed. Someone in the orchestra clapped too, but it died out quickly, leaving Crissy bowing to a complete lack of applause.

Evelyn thanked Isabel and Crissy for the warm-up and ushered them both off the stage. Now I felt sorry for Crissy. The whole thing had been a little humiliating. But she’d seemed so smug about her little performance that my sympathy quickly evaporated.

“That was really desperate,” Sean said. “I kind of feel weird about being here for it.”

“I know.”

“Remember when I had a crush on her?”

“I have to look back in time for that?” I said. “Don’t you still have a crush on her?”

“Not any longer. I had a crush on three-months-ago Crissy Derrick.
This
Crissy Derrick is someone else altogether.”

The rehearsal that afternoon was a mess. We were supposed to run through two of my scenes, leading to the next section of the opera. But everything seemed to go wrong at once.

First of all, the costume felt strange. It bit into me when I tried to sing. I actually squeaked a
couple of times. Eventually, Amanda came over and sat beside me.

“What’s going on, Hailey?”

“Sorry,” I said. I didn’t want to make excuses. That wasn’t part of the job.

“Is it the dress? Are you feeling okay today?”

“Can we skip over my scene for now?” I asked.

“We need to see the flow from one section to the next, Hailey. We need to make sure everything is coherent.”

I glanced out into the hall and spotted Crissy standing in front of the first row, her hands behind her back. She widened her eyes at me as I spotted her.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Let’s try again.”

Amanda gave my shoulder a squeeze and stood. “Let’s try it again,” she called to Evelyn.

The orchestra resumed. I looked directly at Crissy as I began. Her posture remained the same until about the halfway point of the scene.

I was singing well. I hadn’t made any squeaks or really faltered in any way. And as she watched me, Crissy’s shoulders dropped. Her knees bent slightly. When I finished and the cast for the next
scene came onto the stage, Crissy just stayed there. Not moving. Not even shifting.

I slipped between the curtains to the wings and found myself in the darkness. The orchestra moved on to the next piece. I looked out at the audience. Crissy was still standing there, her hands behind her back, her chin held high, and for some reason, she was smiling.

Twelve

W
e were given a break over the weekend. I slept in hard on Saturday morning and didn’t bother to check my phone until the middle of the afternoon. When I finally turned it on, I was seriously surprised to find a text from Crissy.
Dinner at the Diner?

It was so unexpected that I wondered if it was a joke. I let it sit for a moment. I thought back to how Crissy had looked at me the day before. She hadn’t said more than a dozen words to me all week and now, out of nowhere, she wanted to go for dinner?

I texted back:
Seriously?

It’s been too long,
she texted back.

I stared at this response for a good half minute. The Diner used to be our favorite restaurant…

My phone vibrated again.
Cleary wants to come as well.

Cleary Hewson?

Cleary Hewson?
I texted.

Yeah. She says she really misses us.

I hadn’t spoken to Cleary in the better part of a year. There was no rift. No real reason. We just ran in different circles now and rarely saw one another. Back in grade school, Crissy, Cleary and I were always together. We’d even made shirts with
CCH
on the front. But that was ages ago.

I dropped my phone on my bed and picked up the stack of photos on my dresser. I flicked through them until I found the one I was looking for. It was from almost two years ago. It was the last day of school, and Crissy, Cleary and I had run into one another on the way out. I’d been part of the yearbook committee, so I’d had my camera with me. We still used film cameras then. The school had since removed the darkroom, meaning that the photo I had in my hand could have been one of the last ones ever developed there.

We looked happy. And not just last-day-of-school happy. We looked like we were the best
of friends, lined up beside one another being completely goofy.

We looked like three little kids.

I finally texted Crissy back.
Did she contact you?

Yeah, she called me.

And you want to go to the Diner? The three of us?
There was a long pause after I sent this.

Then the reply:
I really miss the way we used to be.

I thought about that for a moment. I stared out the window at the well-trimmed lawns. The Subarus and Volvos parked in driveways. The teams of landscape artists working their way through people’s gardens. This whole opera situation was only a couple of months out of our entire lives. It would come, then go. It was possible that Crissy and I would be best friends again. I knew Crissy. I knew she could fall so deeply into her pursuits that she could lose her identity, at least for a while. But she had always climbed back out again. She was entirely capable of being the person I’d always known. If this was her reaching out to me, I would be wrong to not reach back.

Ok,
I texted back.

OK!?

ok.

This is going to be awesome. CCH rides again. Meet at 6:00?

ok.

I put my phone down and held on to the photo.

* * *

I walked to The Diner under a bright, early-evening sky. The day had been warm, but a late-afternoon thundershower had cooled the air. It was the first time in a while that I didn’t feel sticky and gross. There was even a breeze moving down the street. And after all the time I’d been spending inside Paterson Center, it felt good to be outside.

As I turned the final corner, I noticed Mrs. Derrick pulling away from the curb. It felt like old times. Mrs. Derrick had always had to drop Crissy off after a rehearsal or lesson. Cleary and I had often had a half hour to ourselves, drinking water and watching out the window for Crissy to arrive so we could order. This time I was the late one.

Crissy and Cleary were in one of the large long booths against the back wall. Crissy was on
one side, right on the edge of the bench. Cleary was on the other, leaning against the wall. They had water in front of them but nothing else.

“Hailey!” Crissy said as I approached. She stood and threw her arms around me. Her hold was fleeting, yet hard. Like she was grabbing on to me so I wouldn’t turn and run away.

“Crissy,” I said when she released me. I waited, wondering if she would say something about how she had been behaving. She flashed me a smile and then quickly returned to her seat. She didn’t leave any room for me to slide in beside her. I sat down on the other bench. “Hey, Cleary. How are things?”