by Alex Flinn
I closed my eyes, opened my mouth, and started to sing.
The world didn’t end. Halfway through, my legs stopped shaking.
I opened my eyes.
In Snow White, when the A.M. hours come, Snow realizes that the scary eyes in the night are really gentle woodland creatures. That’s how I felt that day. The people in that room were looking at me, but not in a bad way. I’d never met them, but they were like friends. They wanted to know me because I was good. I was really good. At that moment, maybe I was even a little visible.
I made Concert Choir that day—the only sixth-grade girl who did, thank you very much—and since then I’ve made most things I’ve tried out for.
Here and now: My legs are shaking so hard I can barely stand, so I lean against the piano like those opera singers on PBS. I’m calm. Really. I breathe. You’re good at breathing, Caitlin. Very good. You practice breathing for opera.
“Are you ready… Caitlin?” Sean says my name real soft.
I nod. If I could still close my eyes, I would. But of course, I’d look like a complete dork if I did that.
Right before the music starts is the quietest time in the world. I can hear other people breathing. Then my song. I can feel it in my body. It’s too late to back out now. It’s sing or be forever known as the girl who ran away in the middle of the audition.
Concentrate!
In the song, Christine’s this opera singer who’s possessed by the Phantom of the Opera. He sings through her, from inside her, making his voice come through hers. I try to feel the Phantom singing through me, locked inside me, making my voice climb higher, higher, until my muscles hurt from breathing. Up! I think, as I was taught, forcing the voice into my head, and through it all, I feel the Phantom inside me, hear his voice, screaming, “Sing, my Angel of Music! Sing to me!” like the voice on the CD. It seems so real, and my voice climbs higher, higher, and only when it gets to the highest note do I realize that the Phantom’s voice is real; it’s not just in my head. It’s Sean Griffin’s voice behind me at the piano.
I gasp out my last note, a high C, and it’s over.
Then silence again.
Then applause. Big applause.
Sean grins at me from the piano bench. I grin back.
Okay. So I can, on occasion, rock.
Back in my seat, I listen to the fifth girl to sing “On My Own” from Les Miz. She’s also the worst. I feel bad for her. Then the girl with the eyebrow ring, who does the witch’s rap from Into the Woods, and who is so good I sort of hate her, and a six-foot-tall football player type who actually sings “I Whistle a Happy Tune” from The King and I badly while everyone tries not to lose it.
And then it’s over. “You’ll hear one way or the other next month,” the director tells us. “Thanks for coming.”
People start leaving. I want to say something to Eyebrow-Ring Girl, compliment her on how incredible she was, but she’s already gone. I stoop to pick up my music.
“Hey,” a voice says behind me.
I look up. It’s Sean Griffin. People are walking out.
“Hi,” I say. “Um, thanks for playing for me.”
“No problem. You need a ride somewhere?”
I took the train here, and I have to take a bus home from the train station. But I can’t get in a car with some guy I don’t know, just because he’s a good singer. With my luck with guys, he’ll turn out to be a perv or a serial killer.
“Uh, no thanks,” I say. “My mom’s picking me up.”
“Oh, okay.” He grins. Up close, his eyes aren’t really blue, but they’re not green either. I wonder if they’ve changed since I first looked. Weird.
“Bye.” He walks away. When he reaches the door, he says, “Hey, Caitlin.”
“What?”
“I’ll see you at school.”
It takes me a second to realize he means this school. I laugh. “Oh … if I get in.”
He laughs too. But he says, “You will. With a voice like that, you can do anything you want.”
He’s gone before I can say anything else. I look around. The room’s cleared out, and I’m all alone. The sun’s streaming through the dirty windows, and I watch Sean as he goes to the street. Then I watch his back until he is totally swallowed up by the glare.
* * *
Opera_Grrrl’s Online Journal
Subject: Hi!
Date: April 5
Time: 9:37 p.m.
Feeling: Thoughtful
Weight: 115 lbs. this morning (Eek!)
Days Since I Auditioned for Miami HS of the Arts: 23
Okay, so here’s the deal. My former shrink, Lucia (*long* story), was after me 2 keep a journal. “Write your thoughts,” she said. “U don’t have 2 show anyone.”
i.e, a pointless exercise. No thx! I do enough of those in SCHOOL!
Besides, who wants a notebook where anyone can read my “thoughts?” Like, what if I got hit by a bus??? I can just picture it: Mom, drumming her pink-manicured nails on my hosp. bed, all “Oh, sugar dumpling, I know u feel bad, but could u possibly explain this little thing on page 15?” Again: No thx!
But some of my friends started keeping these online journal things, & I thought that would be better. The anonymous thing is cool. The *world* can read it, but my ex-boyfriend, Internet stalkers, etc. (“etc.” meaning my mother), won’t know it’s me. The journal name, Opera_Grrrl, is my secret identity. Think Clark Kent/Superman, Bruce Wayne/Batman.
Okay ......... some important details:
Name: Well, I’m not going 2 tell you that (see above)
Age: 16
Occupation: Student @ a high school in Fla. (but thinking about making a change)
Hobbies/Interests: See above......... I love 2 sing!!!
Pet Peeves: People who think my hobbies & interests are weird
Dating Status: Unattached
The question ur all wondering about (even tho probably no 1 is reading this): The reason I had a therapist is b/c I recently broke up w/the boyfriend from HELL!!!
What is the Boyfriend from Hell? It is one who seems really perfect:
• wicked-hot
• nice car
• showed up on time
• brought flowers
• wrote poetry
But also:
• hit me
• told me I was fat
• said I should only hang out w/his friends b/c mine were all losers
• said no one would ever want 2 be w/me but him
• said my singing was stupid
• and, um, did I mention, HIT ME???
So this past Dec., I broke up w/him, & I actually went 2 court and got a piece of paper that says if he comes 2 close, I can call the cops & they will throw his butt in jail.
That’s when I got the shrink. I went for a month or 2, sat in a circle w/other girls who’d had bad boyfriends, talked about them, wrote poetry about them, did interpretive dances about them, role-played what we’d say if we saw them, cried, etc., etc., etc ........... then I got tired of wallowing in my problems so I stopped going. I use the time for practicing my singing now. *That’s* therapy.
But every once in a while, I think about getting back together w/Nick. How wacko does that make me???
Which is why I’m also thinking about switching schools.
* * *
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank the following people: Mariel Jones and Joan Farr, for sharing their experiences with Miami-Dade County’s courts and counseling programs; Richard Peck, for getting me started; Felizon Vidad and Barbara Bottner, for helping edit my drafts; my husband, Gene, and my daughter, Katie, for their support; the members of my critique group, for all their encouragement; my mother, Manya Lowman, for always thinking I’d be a writer despite ample evidence (like my high school English grades) to the contrary; my editor Antonia Markiet, for her knowledge and experience and, especially, for listening; and my agent, George Nicholson—for being the best.
EXCERPT FROM DIVA
Want to know what happened to Caitlin?
Read Diva and find out!
EXCERPT FROM BEWITCHING
1
My mother, in her sweet way, always reminded me that Daddy wasn’t my real father. “Be on your best behavior, Emma,” she’d said since I was old enough to remember. “He could ditch us anytime.” Sooo comforting. I don’t know why she said those things. Maybe she was jealous. True, Daddy and I looked nothing alike. He was tall and slim, blond and hazel-eyed, while I was short and clumsy with frizzy hair the color of rats. Yet on days like this one, as we sat across from each other at Swenson’s Ice Cream, it seemed impossible that I wasn’t Daddy’s and Daddy wasn’t mine. We had been together since I was three, after all; ten years since he and Mother had married. If I’d known my other father, the father that had left, I didn’t remember him. This was the only dad I had.
It had been his idea to spend the day together, “Daddy-Emma time,” without even Mother. I’d found out just the night before. He’d come home from work and told me he’d gotten tickets to the national tour of Wicked. It had been sold out except for nosebleed top balcony seats. At least, that’s what Mother had said when I’d begged to go. But Daddy told me one of his clients had given him second-row seats and he was taking me as a special surprise.
I’d breathed a secret sigh of relief. He and Mother had been arguing all week behind closed doors, alternately whispering and yelling, the sound muffled by television shows I knew neither of them watched. I’d sat in the family room, worrying in front of endless Full House reruns. Maybe Mother was right and they were getting a divorce. Maybe I’d end up like Kathleen, this girl in my class who’d had to be a flower girl in her own mother’s wedding. Maybe I’d lose Daddy. Occasionally, I’d hear my own name. Mother would say something like, “What about Emma?” and Daddy would reply, “What about Emma? I’m thinking of Emma.” Thursday night, Daddy had said, “I won’t discuss this anymore, Andrea!” and the house had gone silent.
But now, I understood. The whispered conversations had been about this. Mother was obviously angry because she’d wanted to go to the play herself, but Daddy was taking me. Me!
Our seats had been so close I could see the actors spit when they sang, and the play had been perfect, perfect for me because the ugly girl, the weird girl, the girl no one understood was the heroine. I identified with Elphaba, the outcast, except for the part about magic powers. Perfect, also, because Daddy had taken me, which meant he got it. He understood me as my mother never could.
After the matinee, we went for dinner, and even though I’d ordered an adult cheeseburger instead of the kids’ meal Mother would have pressured me to get in the name of “portion control,” Daddy let me get a Gold Rush Sundae too. “Not much of a meal without ice cream,” he’d said, and I agreed. I tried to eat slowly, like a lady, and also to make the day last longer. Plus, I had on a new dress, BCBG, and I didn’t want to stain it. Dad said, “What do you want to do now?”
“Now?” A bit of fudge dribbled onto my lip, and I caught it quick with my napkin. Mother would have said it was piggish, but Daddy didn’t wince.
“Sure. I told your mom we’d be late. Gameworks, maybe?”
Most people I knew would rather go there than anywhere, but the sounds of Wicked still filled my head, and I didn’t want to drown it out with pulsing game music. So I said, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the bookstore instead?” I loved going to the big bookstore, selecting a pile of novels, then spending an hour or more examining them over tea. “Would you be bored?”
Daddy grinned. “No, I can read. They prob’ly even have some of them there magazines with pitures in.”
“I didn’t mean that.” The kids at school all thought I was a nerd too.
“I know you didn’t, Pumpkin.” He glanced to the side. “Hey, don’t look now, but you’ve got yourself an admirer.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Right. Nine o’clock. Redhead’s been looking at you since dessert arrived.”
“Guys don’t look at me.”
“See for yourself.”
I shook my head. Parents lived in some happy place where everyone my age dated or had guys in love with them when, in truth, only popular girls like Courtney and Midori did. I looked around. To one side was a crowd of stick-thin girls in Greek letter shirts, pigging out on Earthquake Sundaes. But when I got to Daddy’s “nine o’clock,” I was surprised to see he was right. Someone was looking at me. It was Warner Glassman, a boy from school, a smart boy who’d won a playwriting contest. As soon as I saw him, I wondered if my face was clean, if I had whipped cream on my lips. It wasn’t like I could lick them now, though, not in front of Warner. I’d look like a perv. I fumbled with my napkin. Warner looked away.
“He’s a boy from school, Daddy. He’s looking at me because he knows me, that’s all. He’s probably trying to figure out where he’s seen me before.”
Daddy took a sip of his coffee. “You are a beautiful girl, Emma.”
“Mother says I’d be pretty—pretty, not beautiful—if I lost ten pounds and did something about my hair.”
“Mothers are too picky. You look great. Boys are going to be swarming.”
“Right.” Still, I straightened my shoulders and resolved to eat extra neatly until Warner and his family left. Maybe, if they passed close enough, I’d say hi. I took a minuscule bite of ice cream and glanced at Warner again. He was looking. This was the coolest day ever!
I knew I wasn’t ugly or fat either, just plain, like the heroines in books I loved, like Jane Eyre or Little Women. Of course, those girls usually ended up getting the guy.
“There’s something I have to tell you, Emma,” Daddy said.
“Sure.” I took another nibble, trying not to look at Warner. Still, I could sort of see him out of the corner of my right eye.
“… and her name is Lisette,” Dad was saying.
“What?”
“I said her name is Lisette.”
“Whose name? Start at the beginning.” I slurped up the ice cream that had melted to soup on my spoon. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I said I wasn’t sure if you remembered that, before I married your mom, I had another wife, and we had a daughter named Lisette.”
Remembered? I was three. But, yes, I knew he’d had a wife before Mother, in some foggy part of my mind. The daughter was news, though. I’d have remembered a daughter. “Where?” I choked out.
“She’s been living in Lantana with her mom.”
Lantana. Lantana wasn’t far. We passed it all the time when we drove up to visit my aunt. My aunt was two hours away, and Lantana was closer. How weird was it, that I’d never met her? Had my father had a secret life all these years, like one of those guys on talk shows who turns out to have two families? What else was there, what else I didn’t know?
“… here on Friday,” Dad was saying.
“Wait? What, again?”
“She’s coming here on Friday.”
“Coming? To visit?” No wonder Mother had been freaking out. She wasn’t big on things that weren’t all about her.
“No. To live. Aren’t you listening, Emma? Her mother passed away, and Lisette is coming here. You should get along great. She’s exactly your age.”
The chocolate ice cream fell from my open mouth and onto the front of the BCGB dress. I glanced down at the huge splotch, then at Dad, then at Warner.
Of course, everyone was looking right at me.
2
The first time I saw my stepsister, Lisette, she was crying. A battered white economy car with patches of rust so big it looked like a calico cat pulled into our driveway. The door opened and it disgorged its contents: a girl who was, as Daddy had said, my own age but taller; a carry-on, which I later found out held all her clothes; and a black plastic garbage bag, which I later learned held everything else. All her stuf
f in one suitcase and one garbage bag? We gave more than that to the Salvation Army. We threw more than that away.
It was Friday afternoon. I was in the tree house Daddy had built me when I was five, reading Vanity Fair (not the magazine, the novel by Thackeray, which Daddy had bought me after I got my jaw undropped from our talk), waiting for Lisette, but not waiting. Mother said I was too old for tree houses, that it ruined her landscaping. It was Daddy who said we could keep it and was always too busy to take it down when Mother complained. I liked to go there to read. And hide.
I was doing both that day, plus spying on Lisette. Mother was out, even though she’d told Daddy she’d be home. She’d wanted me to go too, but I said I had homework. I wanted to see Lisette. Since my conversation with Daddy, I’d been wondering what Lisette would look like. Would she be pretty? Prettier than me? Taller? Thinner? I hoped she’d be plain too, so we could be friends. Would she look like my father? Would he like her better? Would she think I was a geek? Would we be like sisters?
I peeked out from between the branches. Lisette tugged the black bag across the bright green lawn. Whoever had driven her didn’t offer to help. The engine started and the car was gone before Lisette was even halfway to the door.