I yank my cap over my ears in hopes to shut it out. “That song . . . ,” I whisper, wrestling the instinctual stretch in my vocal cords as they itch to release the suppressed melody.
Aunt Charlotte beams and pulls out her dust rag, waving it. “Ahh, oui. The school performs The Fiery Angel at year’s end. It is our goal to tackle controversial projects. Ones you won’t find performed in any high school in the States. The lesser roles have already been assigned to junior participants. Today a handful of senior hopefuls compete for Renata—the heroine. First-tier elimination tryouts always take place on the third floor, in the rehearsal halls. Final auditions will be in the theater the last Sunday of October, once we’ve reduced to a finite number of candidates for the main roles.”
My body tenses as I stare up toward the torrential rain of notes.
Aunt Charlotte narrows her eyes, watching me with thinly veiled suspicion. “This is her confession piece, of her encounters with Madiel, her guardian angel. You are familiar with Prokofiev’s opera?”
“Not so much.” And I don’t want to be. I’m dying to find some private place where I can exorcise my musical demons, but Aunt Charlotte has planted herself between me and the way in.
“Well, that shall change soon enough.” She’s still talking but I’m barely listening.
My gaze darts all around, seeking escape.
“You are to be schooled in vocal pedagogy,” she says. “And the history of opera. You will learn. Not soon enough for first-tier competition. Next semester, perhaps. Some of the lesser roles will open up. There are always one or two students who forfeit their parts—be it for grades or nerves. But I expect, in your future, you will have all the lead roles on Broadway. You are your father’s daughter . . . born for music.”
She exchanges a strange glance with Mom—maybe sadness, maybe dread. Or it could be my own dread I’m sensing, because she’s wrong.
I’m nothing like Dad. He was a savant, able to tease out lush, savory sounds that would melt the heart. Music was pleasure for him. He always said, of all the instruments, the violin most resembled the human voice for its ability to express depths of emotion. When played with passion, technique, and vision, the strings would weep words—a tonal persuasion so far-reaching, it could breach the heavens and bring a celestial choir to their knees.
He had already mastered the technique of “voicing” his pieces by the age of fourteen. When he met Mom at seventeen, he’d had his pick of symphonies anywhere in the world, but loving her became his magnum opus, and he chose to be a music professor at our little community college in Harmony, playing only for family and friends.
I shared his passion for music only long enough to know how desperately I miss it, now that singing brings pain and humiliation.
As if triggered by that thought, the aria’s mood changes upstairs—a kaleidoscopic shift of strings and winds. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up in response, the melody becoming an electrical pulse under my skin. Prisms of color erupt in my mind’s eye as a soloist joins the chaos. Her resonant, booming voice rages in indecipherable Russian against the instruments, teasing me to follow.
Spinning on my heel to retreat outside, I crash into the chauffeur’s brick chest. I’d forgotten he was waiting behind us, along with shopping bags and suitcases full of bedding, lamps, uniforms, pajamas, underclothes, and assorted toiletries. His downward stare shakes my already frazzled nerves. I wrinkle my nose at the stench of spray starch and body odor.
“Rune!” Mom yelps. “Apologize.”
I mumble, “Pardon, monsieur,” turn around again, and wind my scarf’s fringe between my fingers. My heart hammers my sternum. I’m trapped—a deer in a forest set to flame. Even the air feels thick, as if smoke surrounds me.
At last Aunt Charlotte moves aside with a fanciful turn of the dust rag, but the rest of her body language remains tense.
My boots pound the marble floor on my scramble past my mom. I stop in the middle of the room. My tote slides off my shoulder and I make no attempt to stop it as the enormity of the place steals my breath.
Three giant golden stairways intersect in the middle of a grand hall. The stairs split into columns, each winding like a snake’s skeleton to the other six flights where brass balusters enclose circular balconies. Murals of angels and cherubs catch my eye, along with bronze statues set out along the floor. Intricately detailed windows coax in the outside light. Everything glistens, as if made of diamonds. Artwork hangs from the many walls, and the corridors are lined with elegant carved doorways. Uncountable doorways.