Authors: Kathy McCullough
A few guys in the crowd spot Jeni and whistle. Her face reddens and her gaze drops to the ground.
“Come on,” I say. “We’re almost there.”
We arrive at the side of the stage, where a velvet rope barrier sets off a waiting area for the singers. Two teens in khaki shorts and black T-shirts, wearing headsets and holding clipboards, sign people in. I prod Jeni toward the girl teen. “Jeni Gold?” Jeni says, as if she’s hoping her name won’t be on there. But the girl nods and makes a checkmark on her sheet. Jeni glances around at the simple summer dresses and skirts on her female competitors. A few of them look our way and whisper.
“Ignore them,” I tell Jeni. “They’re just jealous because you stand out.”
“But I don’t want to—”
“Yes, you do. That’s how you win.”
I spot Ronald at the edge of the group. He’s listening to his iPod, his face fierce with concentration. I steer Jeni toward him and his eyes pop open wide when he sees her. He seems about to whistle, on boy-automatic, but then checks himself. He pulls out his earbud. “Hey, well,
okay
, then,” he says in admiration. “You look nice.” Jeni smiles and blushes. Exactly as I predicted, the dress has hooked him. Once he hears her sing, it will all be over.
Thank God. I can almost relax. Almost.
At one end of the stage, a guy I recognize from a cable entertainment news show reads through a couple of stapled sheets of paper that look like a script. His hair is slick with gel and he’s wearing a gray suit that you can tell costs more than ten pairs of new designer boots. One of the clipboard people hands him a stack of index cards. Hmm … I retrieve my chopstick from my boot as Slick steps up to the microphone. “Hey! Who wants to hear some music?” he yells. The crowd cheers and hoots. I back up a little, moving behind a hand-holding couple and making sure no one’s looking my way. “All right! You’re in the right place, then! I’m Diego Chen and I’m here to introduce you to the singing stars of tomorrow, at the Third Annual Alcove’s Amateur Singer Celebration and Competition. We’ve got over twenty talented young men and women here to perform for you today. So let’s start the music! Our first singer is …”
I aim the chopstick between the arms of the couple in front of me. Diego raises the first index card and reads it. “Jeni Gold! Give it up for Jeni!”
Jeni’s eyes go wide in surprise at being first, but I had to do it before she lost her nerve and dropped out. Then it occurs to me that she could still drop out, make a dash for it, even though it’d be pretty hard to run in those shoes. I “excuse me, excuse me” my way through the crowd toward the stage, so I can cut off any escape attempts. I’m still pressing my way through the crush when I see Ronald lean over and say something to Jeni. He takes her arm and guides her to the steps. I sigh in relief.
Diego reaches down from the stage to take Jeni’s hand. She’s moving pretty slow and I don’t think it’s only nerves. I may have made the dress a little too tight. I’m not going to mess with it now, though, because she’s not fleeing. She’s onstage and she’s going to sing and it’s all going to be more than fine.
“Oh my God, is that Jeni?” Lourdes slips up next to me. “What happened to her?” Lourdes asks, tilting her head toward the stage.
“What are you talking about?”
“Are you looped on Nutri-Fizzies? She looks like a contestant on that show
Fashion Crimes
.”
“She does not. Everybody’s staring at her. Look.”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Lourdes studies my face. “Please tell me you’re not responsible for this.”
“She needed … something.”
“What happened to ‘I don’t do makeovers, I do enhancements’?”
“The enhancement wasn’t enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“She needed to be prettier, okay?”
Up onstage, Jeni tilts the microphone down, leans in and says, with more clarity and confidence than I’d ever have expected, even with the dress, “I’m Jeni Gold. I’m sixteen. I go to Flores High School in Mission Lago and I’ll be singing ‘I Will Always Love You.’ ”
Lourdes is still glaring at me. “Wow, Boots. I’m pretty good at sussing people out, but I sussed you all wrong.”
I keep my eyes on Jeni. “You don’t understand. If I didn’t do it, I’d lose.”
“What’re you talking about?
You’re
not competing. Jeni is. So what are you winning, exactly?”
“Watch. You’ll see.” But when I glance over toward Lourdes, she’s gone. Whatever. If she’s going to be that way, she’ll just be
in
the way.
Jeni starts to sing. Her voice soars out of the speakers like a living thing, wrapping around the whole audience and putting them into an awe-fueled trance. She’s even better than she was at the karaoke place. But there’s something different. Something missing. It’s like there’s no joy in it, but that can’t be right. I’m just too far away to see.
And no one else seems to notice. Shoppers stop to listen and Nutri-Fizzy customers give up their precious places in line to join the outskirts of the crowd, which is
swelling, expanding with each note that Jeni sings. A few of Jeni’s uniform-clad coworkers emerge from the Fizzy Bar to watch their fellow Fizz-Master-turned-diva.
The only reaction I’m interested in, though, is Ronald’s. I rise up onto my toes and find him. His eyes are on Jeni, and I can tell that she’s the only thing he sees. He’s mesmerized. It’s exactly as I planned. He believes she’s the Voice.
I won. I did it!
Me
.
“Delaney Collins.”
Ariella marches through the crowd, dragging Fawn by the wrist. “What is going on here?”
Ha! She’s too late.
“Oh, you mean the concert?” I ask innocently. “It’s a singing competition. They have it every year, I guess. I’m here because I so enjoy listening to—”
“I know why you’re here. Because your delusions about your abilities have led you to manipulations of villainous proportions.”
I thrust my chopstick in her face. “You should talk. Nice try with that call to my boyfriend. He saw right through your lies,” I lie.
“I thought we were just getting a soda,” Fawn says, glancing around worriedly.
Ariella ignores her and points a lemon stick at me. “And I saw right through
you
pretending to concede, and your attempts to throw off Fawn with your fake enthusiasm about her writing.”
“It wasn’t fake,” I assure Fawn. “I totally meant it. You’re very talented.”
“Thank you.”
Ariella pushes Fawn to the side. “Do
not
speak to her.”
Onstage, Jeni reaches the finale, her voice thunderous, and I have to yell to be heard. “It’s over, Ariella.”
“I’m not even supposed to be on break right now,” Fawn whines, her protest failing to penetrate the f.g. hostility that’s heated up between Ariella and me.
“It’s never over until I get what I want.” Ariella spins around and yanks Fawn after her. Fawn slams into me like the end of a cracked whip and I fall backward into the people behind me, whose protests are drowned out by the applause that erupts as Jeni finishes her song.
By the time I haul myself up to standing, I’ve lost sight of Ariella and Fawn. I push my way out of the crowd and race around the mall’s cobblestone walkway toward the back of the stage. While two girls sing an a cappella song about the glories of friendship and sisterhood, I study the crowd and spot the top of a blond head bobbing through the densely packed SRO area along the outskirts of the lawn, a mop of frizzy hair following close behind. Without thinking or planning, the act triggered by impulse and desperation, I point my chopstick their way. Even though I don’t know exactly what I’m trying to do and I have no specific intention, the two heads jerk up for a second and then drop out of sight. The people around them rustle and
shift, and I know Ariella and Fawn have both gone down—tripped or stumbled or … something.
It’s unnerving how easy that was. My heart rate has sped up, as if I’ve been zapped with those paddle things you see on medical shows, when the doctors try to electroshock people back to life. The chopstick is unnaturally warm in my hand, like an overheated appliance.
I shake off the dizziness and elbow my way to Ronald and Jeni, who are chatting near the back of the stage.
“No, girl. I’m telling you. You’ve got it locked up. We might as well all go home.”
“Oh, I don’t—”
“Jeni wants to sing backup for you!” I call out, over the head of the clipboard girl blocking me. Ronald and Jeni glance my way, both confused.
“I do?” Jeni asks.
“Yes. You told me. Remember?” Clipboard Girl steps aside to let me closer, and now only the velvet rope separates us.
“It’s an original song, though,” Ronald says. “Jeni doesn’t know the words.” Onstage, the sisterhood duo finishes to cheers.
“Here.” I snatch one of the
CONTESTANTS ONLY
photocopied signs posted on the velvet rope poles. “Write them down.” I subtly flick my chopstick toward the Clipboard Girl, and her pen appears in Ronald’s hand.
“How did that—”
“A lucky breeze. Don’t overthink it. You’re up next.”
“Don’t we have to sign up as a duo?” Ronald asks.
“Don’t worry about that. It’s handled.” I turn my back to Ronald. The chopstick’s gotten hot again. I blow on it to cool it off and then direct it at Diego.
“Write,”
I hiss over my shoulder at Ronald. “You’ve got five seconds.”
“But he hasn’t called—”
“Our next act is another singing duo,” Diego announces. “Let’s hear some love for Double-R and—hey!—Jeni Gold! Making a repeat performance.”
Hoots from the rear of the crowd rise above the applause, and I see Kevin and Cheyenne spinning their arms in the air in support. Jeni waves to them as Ronald escorts her up onto the stage. I clap along and try to blink away the headache that’s suddenly clamped down on either side of my head.
Ronald introduces himself. “Y’all may know some of my YouTube videos from when I was R-Squared. Today I’m performing a new tune—I mean
we’re
performing it”—he smiles at Jeni—“for the first time. So be kind, people.”
There are claps of encouragement. But then a wave of hush ripples through the crowd, with murmurs in its wake. At first I notice only the auburn hair, swept up into a loose bun, dappled with sparkling jeweled pins. Even from here I can see that the pins are winged—fairy pins. People move aside, giving Fawn room, and soon there’s a wide corridor around her, as if she’s a princess making her way through the peasants. Ariella, her f.g.-in-waiting, is
right behind her. She twirls two candy sticks, one lemon, one grape, like majorette batons, casting her magic everywhere. The crew members, caught in the spell, step aside to let Fawn pass, and she glides up the steps to the stage. I point the chopstick at her, but nothing happens. Maybe it really
is
overheated.
Ronald stares at her, dazzled. Fawn’s eyes are glazed over as if she’s in a trance. She whispers something in Ronald’s ear. “I guess I have
two
backup singers now,” he says into the microphone. Jeni seems to wilt behind him.
No!
I shake off the pain of my headache and summon up every ounce of energy I have, like a marathoner on the last leg of a race. I wave the chopstick at Jeni. I instantly feel the tingle and then the snap of an electroshock and I know it’s working again. Jeni’s dress shimmers, shifting through every shade of the yellow-orange-red end of the spectrum. The crowd “oohs,” as if this is part of the act, and Ronald’s attention transfers back to Jeni.
But this isn’t enough. For all I know, Ariella has given Fawn a voice—a Voice. I can’t believe that kind of magic is even possible, but with everything that’s happened today, I’m not sure there’s anything that’s not possible.
I’ve got to get Fawn off the stage. I twist the wrist of my chopsticked hand and one of the speaker cables swirls up into the air and lassoes around Fawn. The chopstick is burning hot now, but I clamp my fingers down around it and hold on, the searing pain in my hand canceling out some of my headache. The “oohs” become “aahs” at
this new special effect, but then there’s a burst of purple light—the flash from a grape candy stick—and the cable snaps. One end smashes into a speaker, sending off sparks. The other flies up to the overhead tarp, igniting a flame that soon spreads.
Oh my God. I’ve been acting on instinct, but neither my subconscious nor my conscious knows what to do now, other than watch, in a daze.
The audience, having realized that this is
not
part of the show, shrieks and scatters, gathering up their blankets and snacks as they go.
A crew member shakes a Coke can and sprays the sugared flame retardant up at the fire, putting it out, but the tarp has burned loose from its frame and it falls in singed sheets. Ronald grabs Fawn and Jeni and pulls them out of the way, out of sight.
People run past me, but all I see is Ariella, being pushed back from the stage by crew members as she waves her candy sticks wildly. She spins around, looking for Fawn, and her eyes lock on mine.
Ariella raises the grape stick at me in an accusation. I point my chopstick at her as a reflex, in self-defense. My arm is still a live wire and the energy moves through it without effort. Currents zap through the air. My whole body becomes electrified and the burning pain in my hand is so intense that it doesn’t feel hot anymore, it feels numbingly cold. Two mini-bolts of lightning meet overhead. They flash and burst into a single firework explosion. I
watch, jittery and breathless, as spider legs of sparkles arch up toward the sky and then curve down, their twinkles dimming and diminishing before dissolving into smoke and vapor, leaving only the acrid firecracker smell of sulfur in the air.
Far away, on the other side of the fountain, Kevin and Cheyenne lead Jeni away. She’s back in her off-the-rack dress, and there’s someone else with her, someone in a peasant dress whose hair has never been frizzier.
“What’s
up
with you two?” Ronald steps between us, glaring first at Ariella, then at me. “You wrecked my act, man. Why?”
“I didn’t—” I start to protest.
“I
know
you did,” he says. “You and that freaky chopstick.”