by Ted Michael
One time, we devised a plan: We’d both sing louder than everyone else in glee club. That way, we figured, Miss Hakes would have to notice our glorious voices.
“Meghan McGinley and Alli Hall!” Miss Hakes shouted over the din that day. “That is good enthusiastic singing, but a choir is supposed to blend. Would you please sing a bit more softly?” She gestured over to the usual side of the room. “Listen to how Becca does it.”
And Becca First, with a satisfied smirk, showed us.
. . . . .
Middle school was a little better.
Mr. Oglesby, the chorus teacher, had a special “show choir,” and while Becca First was the only sixth-grade girl to make it in seventh grade (boys being in short supply, any boy who breathed and sang kind of on pitch got in whenever), Alli and I got in too. Mr. Oglesby said I was really good. More than before, I started thinking of singing as my thing.
I dropped out of other activities like softball, where I’d never really excelled, and concentrated on singing. I practiced every day, not just karaoke with Alli, but real songs, even some classical stuff. My mom and Alli’s got real involved in the choir activities, heading up car washes and candy sales and making headpieces to match our costumes. In eighth grade, I finally got a solo in one of our songs. It was a real high to hear the audience applaud and know that they meant it, that my singing was that good.
That was the year we took an overnight trip to go to the state choir competition in Tampa. My solo was in one of our songs for state. My mother and Alli’s fundraised their little hearts out and volunteered to be chaperones. Everyone was real excited about it. It was the first time our school had made it to state, and Mr. Oglesby kept saying it was because of “my three stars.” But the day permission slips were due, Becca didn’t have hers in.
“If you bring it first thing tomorrow morning, it will be okay,” Mr. Oglesby said in choir that day. “I don’t have to have them into the office until nine. I just said today to give us a little leeway.”
“You can turn them in today,” Becca said, looking him straight in the eye. “I won’t have it tomorrow either.”
“But why, Becca? You’ve worked so hard.” Mr. Oglesby’s bald brow furrowed. “We need you to lead the soprano section.”
She looked at her shoes. “I have relatives coming from out of town that week. I can’t go.”
Frankly, I thought that was a pretty lame excuse. It was only one night, after all, and we’d be back the next day before noon. And much as I hated to admit it, I knew we sounded a lot better with Becca. There were still lots of kids who were in choir for an easy A. They didn’t love singing, and everyone would be okay with them staying home. But not Becca.
All week, I glared daggers at her, not mentioning it. But the twentieth time Oglesby sighed and said how he’d miss Becca’s voice, I got mad enough to say something.
“I think it’s pretty sad,” I said to her at the bus stop after school, “you not going to the state competition and letting everybody down. Way to support the group.”
“What do you care?” She straightened her skinny shoulders.
“I do care. You’re being a brat. I know the only reason you’re not going is because I got a solo for once and you didn’t.” I hadn’t thought of that before, but I bet it was true.
She laughed, a harsh bark that made some kids waiting around turn to look. “You think you’re that important in my life? Is that what you think?” Her face looked pinched, like her ponytail was pulling too hard.
“It’s what I know.”
Becca kicked a rock. It flew up and almost hit me. “You only got that solo because your mother hangs around and helps all the time—like it’s her life’s work to assure that you get solos and special perks.”
“My mother has . . . it’s not like your parents ever help out.”
“They don’t have to. I can get my own solos.”
“So you think you should just get everything? No one else gets a chance?”
She rolled her eyes. “Everyone gets a chance! Mr. Oglesby told me all about it the day he handed you what should have been my solo—sort of apologized, really. He said he had to give everyone a chance. ‘If not,’ he said, ‘parents complain.’”
I recognized her implication but ignored it. My mom had in no way complained to Oglesby. “So you think you should just get everything? Well, that’s fair.”
“I think it’s fair for the best person to get the solo.” She pivoted on her heel. “My bus is here.” She walked away, her dark ponytail bobbing as maddeningly as it had in fourth grade.
. . . . .
Choir was first period, and the next morning, I went in early to talk to Mr. Oglesby about getting receipts for some raffle prizes my mom had gotten donated. I was standing in the hall when something stopped me.
The voice was high and light and would have carried out to the parking lot if the choir room hadn’t been sort of soundproofed. It climbed the scales, reaching for the heavens, and when it fell down again, it was reluctant, yet inevitable. She didn’t seem to need to breathe, like God himself was keeping her supplied with some invisible pump. She was hitting notes I couldn’t think of, and it sounded easy. As I came closer, I heard her words:
Oh had I Jubal’s lyre or Miriam’s tuneful voice,
To sounds like his, I would aspire.
In songs like hers, rejoice!
“Good job, Becca,” Oglesby’s voice said at the end of it.
Becca. Becca took private lessons with Mr. Oglesby before school, and it was really helping, helping in a way my own lessons weren’t helping me. Each note, each run and trill, was an icicle through my stomach. I felt tears coming to my eyes, not tears of anger, or frustration, but tears at the sheer beauty of her voice. Becca was an angel, and in that moment, I knew she was right. I wasn’t as good. I’d never be as good. She deserved all she got.
I left without asking about the raffle prizes. I came back fifteen minutes later, as class was starting.
That afternoon, I ran home from school and found my mother at the kitchen table. “Did you ask Mr. Oglesby to give me a solo?”
“No!” My mother was sewing a patch onto my sister’s brownie sash. She didn’t look up. “Of course not.”
“You did,” I said. “Oh, God.”
“I didn’t have to. Mr. Oglesby’s a reasonable man. He knows he can’t give every single solo to one girl even if . . .”
“Even if she deserves it.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“What were you going to say? She’s a hundred times better than me, a thousand. I could never be that good.”
“Of course you can be.” My mother tried to smile. “You can do anything you set your mind to.”
We got a rating of Very Good (“like a C,” I told Mom) at state. The next week, I started private voice lessons with Mr. Oglesby.
. . . . .
In the next years, I worked my butt off. I went from voice lessons with Mr. Oglesby in eighth grade to lessons with a “real” teacher, a professor from the university in ninth. “It’s worth the money,” Mom told Dad, “for something that’s so important to Meghan. Besides, maybe she’ll get a college scholarship someday.”
It seemed actually possible. I practiced hours each day and by senior year, was taking home Superior ratings at National Federation of Music Clubs competitions and Florida Music Educators Association. I didn’t go out at night so I could rest my voice. I was adding notes to my range, high B-flat, C, even a C-sharp, and a squeaky D—each note a tiny victory, when I couldn’t sing it one day. Then, I could. That year, my church did The Messiah at Christmastime. I had the soprano solo and, though I rolled my eyes at the slobbery compliments the old ladies there gave me, I loved it too.
Our choir director in high school was Mrs. Gower. Mom still made the headpieces, and Becca and I still alternated on most of the soprano solos, but it seemed more reasonable now. I never forgot about that morning in the hallway in eighth grade, b
ut I liked to think that I—and my voice—had grown past it. I was really good. My voice teacher assured me that a career in music was possible for me. Alli and I were still best friends too.
As far as I knew, Becca had no friends.
About a week after my performance in The Messiah, I got a call from the director of the local civic chorale. “We’re looking for two girls to do the solos in our performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem,” he said. “I saw you do Messiah. It was just gorgeous. Would you be interested? There’d be a small payment involved. Nothing much.”
“Wow!” I could actually feel my heartbeat. “That’d be great.”
Then, his next words: “Do you know anyone for the other solo?”
My first thought was Alli. But I knew Alli couldn’t handle that difficult music. Maybe in the chorus. No way as a soloist. My second thought was . . .
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t know anyone else. But I’d love to do it.”
Actually, Alli was more involved in drama club and had quit choir in high school. At her insistence, I’d tried out for the drama club’s Evening of One Acts sophomore year and got a small part, but it wasn’t really what I was into. It took time away from singing. “If they did a musical, maybe I’d try again,” I’d told Alli.
Then one day senior year, Mrs. Gower announced in choir, “The Palm-Aire High School drama and music departments have decided to try something very special this year. In cooperative effort, we will be doing a production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s wonderful musical, Oklahoma! I hope that many of you will come out to audition for roles in this production.” As she said that, her eyes fell on Becca. “In addition to the major roles, there is a full chorus, so everyone who wants to should be able to participate.” She looked at the rest of us.
Alli and I ran out and rented Oklahoma! that night. I knew that Alli—cute, funny Alli—would be perfect for the part of Ado Annie. And I could picture myself wearing a calico dress, my blond hair curled, as Laurey. I’d always wanted to be in a musical, ever since I was a little girl and my mother put me to bed with selections from The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady. Now was my chance.
I saw Becca several times in the days before auditions. I’d tried hard to keep her off my radar in high school, but that week, she was all that was on my mind. Mrs. Gower had practically issued her a written invitation to audition. But this should be my part. My chance. Finally, the day before auditions, I couldn’t handle it anymore.
“Are you going to try out?” I asked.
We’d barely spoken since that day at the bus stop years earlier. She’d avoided me, and I hadn’t objected. Now she turned and her green eyes swept up and down, taking me in. She smiled.
“Of course.”
. . . . .
Mom had let me buy a new dress for tryouts, and a book of vocal selections from Oklahoma! I chose the song “Out of My Dreams” for the audition, figuring just about everyone else would sing “People Will Say We’re In Love” or “Many a New Day” because they were easier. I had Mom finance an extra voice lesson that week, spending the whole hour working on “Out of My Dreams,” getting just the right dreamy quality. Mrs. Gower might have looked at Becca when she made the announcement, but the drama teacher, Mrs. Sandler, was part of the decision-making process too. She’d remember me from the Evening of One Acts. Becca hadn’t participated in anything. And Mrs. Sandler wouldn’t have any preconceived ideas, like Mrs. Gower. If I was the best person at the auditions, I would get the lead.
I could barely sit still at the auditions, so it was a good thing there was a dance tryout first. I noticed with satisfaction that I picked up the steps much faster than Becca did. “Singing’s next!” Mrs. Gower announced.
“Can’t we do it privately?” someone asked.
“Sorry,” Mrs. Gower said. “If you can’t sing in front of people now, how will you do it in the play?”
Most of the auditioners were freshman and sophomores, hoping for, at best, a solo line among the chorus. They sang a few lines of a song from the radio and were gone. Alli nailed her rendition of “I Can’t Say No,” and I heard the drama club people whispering among themselves that she was a shoo-in for Ado Annie. Only drama club people would still use an expression like “shoo-in.”
“Becca Marino is next!” Mrs. Gower called.
Becca stood and walked toward the piano.
Becca hadn’t bought any special dress for the audition or done her hair any special way. She wasn’t even a blonde which, to me, made her inappropriate for the role of Laurey. She stood in the curve of the piano, and I recognized the dreamy opening bars of “Out of My Dreams.”
It had been years since I’d really listened to Becca sing. Oh, sure I heard her in class, but I tuned her out, and even when she had solos, she stood in front of the choir, her voice carrying forward. She didn’t go to Federation competitions or take lessons with my voice teacher. She’d continued to take lessons with Mr. Oglesby at the middle school, so I was able to ignore her, to relegate her to a place of inevitability in my head. Becca was there, every day in chorus, in school, like humidity or homework, or rain.
But now, seeing her standing up there, singing my song in what should have been my place, I was back in that eighth-grade hallway again, and again, tears filled my eyes. But this time, they were hot, angry tears, tears I couldn’t shed so they sat in my stomach and my throat, forming a hard lump like a wad of chewing gum. It wasn’t fair! I knew how hard I’d worked, how hard I’d always worked. No way could Becca have done any more.
But part of me was transported to an Oklahoma cornfield, and I knew everyone else listening was too. She sounded like a real singer, a professional. The rest of us were just kids.
The audition list was in alphabetical order, so the next name called was mine. I stumbled through “People Will Say We’re In Love,” barely remembering the words. But I couldn’t sing the song I’d prepared. Not after that.
The next day was callbacks to read for the principal roles, but I already knew it was decided. I did my best and hoped for a miracle.
I didn’t get it. The next morning, the cast list was posted outside the drama room:
Curly . . . . . . . . . . .Jared Davis
Laurey . . . . . . . . . . Becca Marino
Ado Annie . . . . . . . Alyssa Hall
Jud . . . . . . . . . . . . .David Hernandez
Will. . . . . . . . . . . . .Nick Szpykowski
Aunt Eller. . . . . . . Meghan McGinley
“Aunt Eller’s a good part too,” Alli said. “You have a big solo number.”
“Yeah, about cows.” But then I remembered myself and said, “Congratulations on Ado Annie. It will be fun, being in the play together. It will be, like, our last hurrah before college.”
That day, at the first meeting to give out scripts, I could barely look at Becca. I was sure if I did, I’d see derision in her green eyes.
But Wednesday, when I got to rehearsal, Mrs. Sandler called me to the front of the room.
“Would you still be interested in playing Laurey?”
I drew a sharp breath. “I, uh . . . sure. But what about Becca?”
“Becca’s had to drop out of the production.”
I looked around, noticing for the first time that Becca wasn’t there. I’d been trying not to look at her lately. “Why?”
“I have no idea. She called just this morning and said she couldn’t do it. I’m afraid she’s not a very reliable girl. She didn’t even turn in her script sides and sheet music pages. You’ll have to get them from her when you see her.” Then she added, “I’m sure you’ll do a wonderful job, Meghan. It was a hard decision to make. You were really equally good. I just thought you could be Eller because you’re taller.”
What a lie. But I guessed it was one she had to tell. She couldn’t have Laurey doubting herself. I should have been elated, and I was in a way. But in another way, it was a letdown. I hadn’t really gotten the part. And I dreaded running into Becca, knowing that
I was second-best—as if I’d been caught rooting through her garbage, looking for leftovers.
She didn’t show up for school on Thursday. And by Friday, I admitted to myself that I needed those script sides—the part of the script that had my lines on them. So that day, after school, I looked up her address in the phone book and walked to her house.
I stomped up the pitted driveway and knocked on a door with peeling once-white paint.
I barely recognized the Becca at the door. She pushed it open, just a crack, so all I could see were her red-rimmed eyes.
“What do you want?” she said.
“I . . . um . . . Mrs. Sandler asked me to come get your script.”
“Oh.” Without inviting me in, she walked away.
I pushed the door open a bit more and went in.
The house was small, so small that when I walked in the door, I was already in the living room and almost to the kitchen. And it was a mess. It was dimly lit, and it smelled like cat pee. Objects littered the floor and every available flat space. I moved my foot to avoid stepping on a used Q-Tip. On the sofa was a pile of what I first thought was laundry. Then I realized it was a woman.
Becca’s mother.
I hadn’t seen her in years, but I recognized her, sort of, from some assembly back in grade school. She’d changed so much since then. She was curled up sort of in the fetal position. Without thinking, I stepped toward her.
“Who said you could come in?”
The voice stopped me dead. I turned and looked into those piercing eyes again.
“I just thought . . .”
Becca thrust a wad of papers at me. “Here’s your script. Now get out.”
I didn’t move. “Becca, I—”
I didn’t even know what I was going to say. Whatever it was, I didn’t get it out because Becca was on me, pushing me toward the door. “Get out!” she yelled. “Get out now!”
I went along. I thought she would have hit me if I hadn’t. As it was, she was shoving so hard, saying, “You got my part. You get everything you want. Now, you can leave.”