The rain had finally stopped; I was about to ask Olivia if she thought we could go outside for a while when the door to the audition room slammed open and Guy Monroe himself—or at least, a man I assumed was Guy Monroe—strode into the waiting room and surveyed the crowd of hopefuls, looking impatient. “Who’s next?” he demanded. “Actually, more to the point, is there anybody here who is not planning to completely waste my time?”
I snorted in disbelief—I couldn’t help it. There was something about him that struck me as funny—cartoonish, almost, like he should have been smoking a cigar and wearing a solid gold watch, a walking, talking Looney Tune. In reality, he was just an average-looking guy in his forties with a bit of a paunch around his middle, starting to lose some hair on the top of his head. But he had the bearing of someone much bigger, and so everyone acted as if he were. There was a lesson to be learned there, I thought in the millisecond before I realized that just as I was staring openly at Guy Monroe, sizing him up for my own amusement—he was staring openly back at me.
“Who are you?” he wanted to know.
I froze where I was sitting. For a second I actually forgot how to speak. “Oh,” I said once I’d recovered, feeling myself blush and not entirely sure why. “I’m not—I’m just here to—I mean, I’m not auditioning.”
“Why not?” Guy shrugged and made a face like, don’t be difficult. Then, without waiting for me to answer: “Can you sing?”
I hesitated. The short answer was No, of course not. The long answer was Kind of, but only the backup parts. On the car ride down here—and for as long as I had known her—Olivia had sung the lead. I glanced over at her now, both of us wide-eyed, then back at Guy. “A little?”
“A little,” Guy repeated, sounding bored. “What’s your name, girl who can sing a little?”
“Dana Cartwright,” I managed after a moment. My tongue felt too big for my mouth.
“Finally, we have a straight answer. Dana Cartwright,” he announced to Juliet, who was standing to his side like a lieutenant. “Come with me.”
I hesitated. Normally I wasn’t the kind of person who was easily intimidated, who let herself be bossed around by noisy, hawkish men she didn’t know. On top of which, this was Olivia’s thing. But already it felt impossible to argue with Guy, like the force field around him was too strong to be resisted by mere mortals. When I looked at Olivia again, she nodded once.
Guy and Juliet led me down the hall and through a doorway into a big room with shiny hardwood floors and one whole wall lined with mirrors. Two other people sat behind a folding table, pens poised to take notes—a guy in his thirties who introduced himself as Lucas, a voice coach, and a Hispanic woman named Charla dressed in dance clothes. Guy took his seat at the end of the table, looking at me expectantly.
“I didn’t bring anything to sing,” I explained, unsure why I was having so much trouble communicating the reality of this ridiculous situation. “Like, I really wasn’t planning to audition, I just came here for my friend.”
“Like, sing ‘Happy Birthday,’” Guy said, imitating me in a voice that was decidedly unflattering. “I don’t care.”
That made me mad, the idea that this guy was trying to cow me. Who the hell did Guy Monroe think he was? I wasn’t here to impress him, or any of them. He was the one who’d dragged me back here to begin with. I felt my spine get straighter. I pushed my shoulders back. “Fine,” I said, hearing more than a trace of attitude in my voice and knowing they could probably hear it, too. Good, I thought. Let ’em hear. “‘Happy Birthday,’ then.”
It was unremarkable, all things considered. At least I didn’t have to worry about forgetting the words. My voice cracked on the third birthday, and I couldn’t keep myself from wincing, but all four of them just kept on watching impassively, their faces impossible to read.
“Um, okay,” I said when I was finally finished. The coaches were still peering at me silently. It was probably the strangest moment of my life. “Thank you.”
“Thank you, Dana,” Charla said. “We’ll let you know.”
Yeah, I thought, shaking my head a little. I’ll bet.
Olivia’s eyes were big and bright as UFOs when I came back out into the lobby. She scooted over to make room for me on the leather couch. “I cannot believe that just happened,” she whispered.
I was about to reply, but Juliet had followed me out into the lobby, looking right past me as if I were completely anonymous, like the last ten minutes had all been a dream. “Olivia Maxwell,” she called, looking at her clipboard. “You’re up.”
It was pouring again that night as we hunkered down in our hotel room, which boasted HBO and a view of the half-flooded parking lot. There was an indoor pool, according to the girl behind the check-in desk, so in theory we could have gone swimming despite the weather, but Olivia didn’t want to. “I hate indoor pools,” she said, kicking off her sandals and flinging herself onto the bed. “It’s like being inside somebody’s mouth.”
“You’re so weird,” I told her, but I humored her anyway, and we sat in the air-conditioning on crisp white sheets, flipping channels. My whole body ached with exhaustion. Juliet had asked us both to stay on through the dance portion of the audition—because they’d known we came together and hadn’t wanted to kick me out onto the street, I guessed—and once we were done we’d eaten dinner at a Chili’s near the hotel, slurping Diet Cokes and splitting a basket of tortilla chips.
“This was better than job interviews, wasn’t it?” Olivia asked me now, leaning her head on my shoulder and peering up at me with a hopeful, shit-eating grin. “Huh? Huuuuh?”
“I mean, yes,” I allowed, laughing a little, “but ask me again when I’m destitute.”
“You won’t be destitute,” Olivia said, reaching over and flicking the light off. “You’ll be with me.”
THREE
Back in Jessell Friday night we headed over to Burger Delight just like we always did, our weekly routine since junior high. Olivia picked me up and we drove together, hot wind ruffling her shiny dark hair as the orange sun disappeared behind the low-slung houses to the west. The bells above the door jangled as we walked in, the sub-zero air-conditioning a chilly relief after the dry, still heat outside.
“You came!” Becky called when she saw us, raising her soda cup in our direction. There they all were, clustered in our usual pair of four-top booths at the back: Keith and Kerry-Ann and Jonah, Tim and Sarah Jane—the same half dozen faces we’d been looking at since kindergarten, the ones we’d been sneaking beers with since we were twelve. “Thought maybe you went off to Hollywood already.”