“‘Only for You’!” I whispered again, but Charla was already dimming the lights to make it feel more like a real performance. Olivia was still staring at me, wide-eyed. Calm down, I told myself. You’ve got this. I hadn’t been a tenth this nervous at the audition. Back then, it had all felt like a silly lark, like an adventure. It hadn’t felt like anything was actually at stake.
Now, in the split second before the music started, it occurred to me that everything was.
As soon as Lucas’s hands hit the keyboard I could feel that I had the rhythm wrong in my body. When I opened my mouth to sing, I couldn’t find my note. It was like that dream where you get to school and realize you have a huge test you didn’t know about and haven’t studied for, only this wasn’t a dream—it was actually happening. I felt like I was outside myself, watching; I could see Guy’s impassive face in the dim light, his expression impossible to read.
The three songs felt like they went on forever; I wasn’t finding my harmonies, wasn’t hitting my marks, my limbs feeling awkward and foreign and leaded. I tried not to make eye contact with Guy or any of the coaches, but I could see that Juliet’s lips were pursed disapprovingly. Lucas looked like he was going to puke.
“Girls,” Juliet said when we were finally finished, her voice as tight and clipped as her expression. Nobody had clapped. “Go change your clothes and get some water. Then come back here ready to listen.” Her voice didn’t leave any room for argument. My whole body felt hot and prickly with shame.
“Oh my God,” I said once we were all in the bathroom, clustered tightly together like hens in the rain. “Oh my God, you guys, that was a disaster.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” Ashley said.
“It was bad,” Kristin said, tossing an icy glare in my direction. “Nice of you to care all of a sudden.”
“What do you mean, all of a sudden?” I demanded. “I care about this just as much as you.”
“Do you?” Kristin asked. “Could have fooled me.”
“Enough,” Olivia said, grabbing my arm and tugging, her dark eyebrows knitted together. It was the first time she’d spoken since we’d been back here. “Let’s go.”
Guy was standing in front of the mirrors talking to Juliet when we got back into the rehearsal studio. “Ladies,” he said, crossing his arms. He didn’t say anything else for a moment, just looked at us with open appraisal, like he could see straight into our souls and wasn’t particularly impressed by them. I could feel my heart like a giant ball of phlegm at the back of my throat. The silence seemed to stretch on for ages, just hanging there like some kind of awful set decoration, although in reality it was probably only thirty seconds and made for a nice bit of theater on his part: if it hadn’t been obvious already, in that moment it was clear there was a whole new sheriff in town. I could tell Olivia was about to open her mouth and start apologizing when Guy finally spoke.
“Well, I’m not gonna sugarcoat this,” he said, settling back into the flimsy folding chair with his hands on his knees. He had a slight New York accent I hadn’t noticed before, or otherwise it only came out when he was really annoyed. “That was one hundred percent the opposite of what I was hoping to see.”
“Well, okay, the thing is—” Kristin started, but Guy raised one thick eyebrow at her and she shut up like he’d waved a magic wand.
“Tulsa MacCreadie made thirteen million dollars last year,” he continued calmly, leaning back and resting his ankle on his opposite knee like he was sitting in a leather armchair in some fancy smoking lounge. “Do you understand that? Do you have any idea how much money thirteen million dollars is? I do. I’ve been doing this for a decade. I don’t need the money; I have the money. And I can tell you, girls, you’re never gonna see it with a crap performance like the one you just made me sit through.”
I winced. My head was still throbbing; my skin felt clammy and hot.
“Do you think that was thirteen-million-dollar work we just saw?” Guy asked us. It sounded rhetorical, but after a moment he pressed, “Do you?”
“No,” we all mumbled.
“No,” Guy repeated. “And I’m not here to be the bully and the bad guy, but if you want to have any kind of success in this business, you need to give a thirteen-million-dollar performance every single time. I don’t care if you’re tired, and I don’t care if you just broke up with your boyfriend, and I don’t care if you’re on your period, or whatever. Amateur hour is over here. You with me?”
A flicker of annoyance sparked in me at his examples, but Guy changed tactics then, expression softening. “Part of this is my fault, because I haven’t been here to push you,” he told us. “I’ll be honest. I’ve been spread too thin lately, and I haven’t been able to give you the attention you need, but that’s going to change. You’re going to be seeing a lot more of me as we move forward.
“Look, girls,” Guy said, “greatness takes sacrifice. It’s how I got here; it’s how Tulsa got where he is. And it’s what I’m gonna require from all of you if I’m going to keep Daisy Chain together.”
If he kept the group together? I felt my stomach flip unpleasantly, cutting my gaze over to Ashley and Kristin, who looked equally cowed. Olivia was staring hard at the floor.
“I know what I’m doing,” Guy said, and from the way his voice changed I could tell we were getting close to the end of what he had come here to tell us. He had a quality to him like a politician or preacher, convincing like that. “All you girls are here for a reason—I picked all of you for a reason, and I don’t make mistakes. All you girls have the capacity to do the kind of work that’s required here.” He looked at each of us in turn, and I felt myself straighten up like a reflex, suddenly wanting him to know I was paying attention.
“Take the weekend, think about whether you actually want to be here,” Guy advised us, standing up and nodding at the coaches, then looking at the four of us one more time. “And come back on Monday ready to work.”
FOURTEEN
“Do you care if I borrow your car for a couple of hours?” I asked Olivia the next afternoon, putting one knee up on the bed where she was flipping through the pages of her lyrics binder, a furrow between her brows. “I’ve got some errands I wanna run.”
“Yeah, go ahead,” Olivia said, glancing up for the briefest of moments, and I told myself I was imagining the coolness in her tone. We hadn’t talked about what had happened at rehearsals yesterday. For the first time in the history of our friendship, it felt like neither one of us knew exactly what to say.