“Right,” I said. “In this space, specifically. Because there isn’t an entire campus’s worth of space just on the other side of those steps.”
“Right,” he agreed, and flashed a brilliant smile. I narrowed my eyes at his perfect teeth.
Lydia and I stood in deadlocked silence across from Tall and Taller. For a minute, I was determined to stand there until the natural world eroded me to dust, but then my eyes fell to the other Minuets’ hopeful faces, and guilt crept into me. Maybe Tall and Taller weren’t the nicest human beings, but these other kids just wanted to get on with rehearsal. There were more campus spaces for two people than sixteen, and anyway, at this point, it seemed like the options were to back down or waste another half-hour testing out new ways to explain the words “go away.”
I sighed and relented. “Come on, Lydia. Let’s find somewhere else.”
There was a smugness to the way Taller said “Thanks” that made it sound distinctly like “I win.” Although, to be fair, his entire persona oozed “I win.” This kid was really leaning into the Kensington type. When people heard “Kensington-Blaine,” they envisioned an alarmingly specific person: He was a third-generation legacy from New England with great bone structure; he was a he, because the school hadn’t gone coed until 1985; he was white, with a name like Oliver or Henry or Phineus; and his trust fund was roughly the size of Iceland’s GDP. With Kensington’s aggressive diversity initiatives, though, the type was transforming, blurring out of boxes and categories by the year. They were a diminishing breed, the Olivers, Henries, and Phineuses (Phinei?).
As Lydia and I climbed out of the amphitheater, her hand was tight over the navy tote bag that hung on her shoulder, and I plucked hard at the patches of wear in my jeans. With every step, I got angrier at myself for backing down. Why did it always end up like this? Why was I always the one to cave? Why did I feel guilty that we’d stood up for ourselves, even temporarily?
I tried not to hate the dark-haired boy down the steps, because anger didn’t do anything, and besides, if I let myself hate him, it wouldn’t entirely be for the way he’d acted. It would be for selfish reasons. All my failings were his successes: He could ask for what he wanted without feeling like an inconvenience. He could be totally sure of his own importance, not second-guessing a word out of his own mouth. That kid was handsome and rich and had a voice I remembered, a soaring tenor that was everything it should be. It’s too simple to hate the people who have doorways where you have walls.
That night, in my room, I scrolled through the flood of back-to-school audition advertisements. The e-mails had slowed to a trickle and finally stopped over the weekend, and I’d been glad at the time, but now I imagined turning back the clock and trying for any of these, instead of throwing away my chance on the musical. I could have run sound or lights for one of the senior capstone projects. I could have auditioned for Trazba, an experimental two-person play inspired by 1950s science-fiction films, in which one of the people is pregnant and the other person plays the fetus, because I guess every other idea for a play was already taken.
The e-mail system refreshed, and the thin stripe of a new e-mail appeared at the top. The subject line read, “Audition Call.” My heart leapt, my mind yelled, FATE! and my finger stabbed the clickpad.
The message loaded. My excitement died. A cappella again.
In a black-and-white photo, eight boys in sport coats and ties sprawled in bored-looking positions on the steps to the Arlington Hall of Music. Stone lions flanked the steps, prowling on the columns that guarded Arlington, carved muscle rippling beneath their alabaster skin. Calligraphy font across the photo read The Sharpshooters, and beneath, the audition notice said:
ONE SPOT HAS OPENED IN THE SHARPSHOOTERS, KENSINGTON-BLAINE’S PREMIER ALL-MALE A CAPPELLA OCTET. WE INVITE TENOR 1S OF ANY YEAR TO SIGN UP FOR AN AUDITION SLOT USING THE FORM BELOW.
Below that, they had an honest-to-God coat of arms, which displayed a pair of crows peeking around a quartered shield. Each crow carried a corner of a banner in its beak, stretching the cloth out to display VERBIS DEFECTIS MUSICA INCIPIT. I forced back the urge to laugh.
To be fair, the Sharps had been around since the 1930s, so the crest and the Latin hadn’t been these guys’ idea. Besides, with the way the school treated them—basically, with the type of reverence usually reserved for religious figures—how could we expect them not to have egos the size of your average planet?
Something about the Sharps made people lose their minds. The all-girls’ group, the Precautionary Measures, packed Arlington Hall for their concerts, but for some reason it wasn’t quite the same. Our whole student body—girls and guys alike—fawned over the Sharps; they were a blank canvas that people could write their dreams onto, a blend between boy-band obsession and artistic admiration. Even Michael had harbored a secret dream of joining the Sharps up until graduation, not that he’d ever had time to audition.
Maybe that was why the Minuets were so unpleasant. An inferiority complex. The thought pleased me a little more than it should have.
I scrolled back up and paused over the photo. The Sharps looked nothing alike, but something about them was identical. The crisp lines of their jackets, maybe, or the loose way they held their heads and hands and bodies. Or maybe just their expressions, which wore the thoughtless confidence that came with practice.
I would’ve bet all my worldly possessions that the Sharps would win that December competition, and just like that, they’d have a shot at fame. The envy in my mouth tasted hot and bitter. Liquid gold.
Then my eyes fell to the audition notice, to the words TENOR 1, and my hands went flat on the keyboard as an idea hit me like a thunderbolt. An idiotic, impossible idea.
“Your range,” echoed Reese’s voice, as I straightened in my seat. “It’s just so deep.”
It could never work. Of course not.
Could it?
The feeling of failure still itched across my skin, a brand I was desperate to claw away. How hard will you work to get what you want? demanded Reese’s voice. I remembered that kid from this afternoon sneering at me, and now, eight impassive faces stared out from this audition notice, daring me, questioning if I had what it took: Could I be a Sharpshooter? Could I be hyper-confident, hyper-competent, all my self-consciousness forgotten?
For the sliver of a chance of performing across the sea, maybe I could.
This competition was three months out. Find my way into the Sharpshooters, stay under the radar for ninety measly days, make damn sure we won, and there was the springboard to my future. An international tour would be a shining star on my college apps—something not every other overachieving arts kid would have. It was downright depressing, the lengths it took to feel special when you wrote yourself out on paper. All As? Who cared? That was the standard here. Some shows, some activities? Big deal. How were you changing the world?
Sometimes, when I wasn’t too busy, I wondered why we had to change the world so early.
I went for my wardrobe and yanked it open, eyeing myself in the full-length mirror. From my dresser, I grabbed a tissue and rubbed off my purple lipstick, my eyeliner, my blush. Cheap chemical remover stung the air. Barefaced again, back to monochrome tan, I flipped my hair up the back of my skull and over my forehead, the fraying tips hanging above my eyes.
Everyone told me I looked like my dad. Never my mom, who had a delicate nose and chin. I had Dad’s prominent features and his stubborn mouth. But I’d inherited Mom’s height, plus a spare inch that had come from God knows where. “American food,” she’d said, shaking her head, when I’d growth-spurted past her at age fifteen.
I released my hair. As it fell halfway down my waist, I remembered the endless row of wigs in the costume shop. I could even picture the one I wanted—short, shaggy, black. We were supposed to sign them out, and for only three days at a time, but if anyone ever confronted me, I could say I’d forgotten . . . innocent mistake, right?
I worked my dresser’s top dra
wer, gummy with age, out of its slot and rummaged around for the finishing touch—a blunt-tipped pencil, worn down by use. I started filling in my eyebrows, shading the ends out with the tip, making my brows thick and serious.
I gathered my hair up and postured in the mirror, hooking one hand into the pockets of my jeans. Legs swiveled to shoulder-width apart. Tilting my head, I stuck my chin out.
“Hey,” I said to myself, and again, deeper. “Hey. What’s up?”
I was unrecognizable.
For the first time since Monday, I didn’t hate the sound of my voice. I couldn’t fix it, but I could use it. I’d solved the unsolvable problem, kept my answer and rewritten the question.
Two knocks came on my door, and I flinched. In the mirror, my shoulders buckled in. I shrank two sizes.
“Hey, lights out,” called our prefect, Anabel, from beyond the door. Heart pattering, I flicked the switch, but my desk lamp still shed a remnant of buttery light. As I turned back toward the mirror in the dark, lifted my hair back up, and pulled my guy-stance back on, limb by cautious limb, I felt free and empty and new.
This had the potential to be the most embarrassing stunt in Kensington history, but I had nothing to lose except my dignity, and I’d lost so much of that in June, the prospect hardly fazed me. Besides, theater was all about risk. Risk wasn’t scary. Insignificance was terrifying.
The light drew streaks down the thick lines of my arms. I rubbed one elbow, my throat tight. Michael Jordan, they’d taunted me every other day in middle school—not so much the girls as the boys. Incredible Hulk. Hey, Jordan, can you sell me some steroids? Whatever you’re on, I want some. Early growth spurts and a thick frame had gotten me so much shit back then. I’d come out of middle school thinking, that was it, I was done caring what anyone thought.
Of course, if I didn’t care, I wouldn’t still be trying to prove myself, would I?
I wouldn’t still want to win.
I spent Friday afternoon on the Palmer stage practicing my audition piece, serenading the empty theater. With my chin drawn back toward my neck, I muted the brightness of my upper notes, adjusting my delivery to hit the sweet spot between scratchy and strong. I sang out the stress of the week until my throat felt raw.
On Saturday evening, I fixed on my wig and warmed up in my dorm, nervous froth bubbling in my stomach. Then I headed for West Campus.
The second I set foot outside Burgess, I became hyperaware of my posture, the way I usually kept my elbows tucked in and my strides short. That wasn’t masculine. Was it? I loosened up and tried to walk like a dude, at which point I discovered I had no clue how dudes are supposed to walk. It took me the entire journey to figure out a gait that didn’t look like a velociraptor pretending to be a West Side Story character.
The first time I passed someone, a girl who glanced up for a second from her phone, I nearly turned and sprinted toward Burgess. She said nothing. Once she passed, I unleashed a huge breath that I’d been holding for some reason, as if suffocation would make me look manlier. This happened four more times.
I jogged down a grassy incline into the music quad, toward Arlington Hall, an elegant sculpture of weathered brick and poured beige pillars. I pushed through the backstage entrance at the side of the building, stopped outside the stage door, and waited.
At 6:15, one of the Sharpshooters emerged. He was half a head shorter than me and slender. With his neatly organized ginger-blond hair and a pastel button-up, he wouldn’t have looked out of place in the children’s section of a J. Crew catalog.
“Are you Julian?” he said, and I choked back a nervous giggle. A deep bass voice had spilled out of the kid’s tiny body. It was like a Chihuahua opening its mouth and emitting a Rottweiler bark, or possibly the Darth Vader theme song.
I cleared my throat. “That’s me,” I said, pitching my voice down. I’d gotten used to pitching up in theater classes, both for projection’s sake and to sound more feminine. I could get used to the opposite.
J. Crew Junior eyed me a second longer than he needed to. My fight-or-flight instinct burst into life, beating its wings frantically against the inside of my skull. I saw the conversation play out in quick, horrible flashes. He was going to say, “Um . . . you’re a girl,” and I would laugh nervously and bleat, “Yep! Psychology project! Ha!” at which point I would sprint out of Arlington Hall and never again let myself see the light of day, because in what possible universe could I ever have thought this was a viable plan?
But no. He just glanced over my clothes with obvious distaste.
“What?” I said, looking down. This was my most masculine outfit: worn-out tan corduroys and a blue flannel. Had they expected me to rent a tux?
The kid shrugged, smoothing a lock of his hair back into place. “Nothing,” he said, meaningfully. “Come in.” He stood aside and held the door open.
Lightheaded with relief, I folded into the backstage darkness. J. Crew Junior swaggered ahead of me, out onstage, and down the steps, tan boat shoes squeaking. For somebody who had never set foot on a boat, I had seen about three thousand too many boat shoes.
I emerged onstage and white light struck me. Scars glared from the black slick of the stage: blemishes left by screws and sets, splinters torn up by spike tape, shreds of gray missed in repainting.
Arlington Hall could have eaten three of the Palmer Theater and still had space for dessert. The house was a yawning chasm stretching endlessly ahead, and the wings to the right and left felt a few days’ journey away. I felt very small and very naked, especially without makeup, which always reassured me onstage. It wasn’t so much the feeling of wearing it as the preperformance ritual of sponging on foundation, dusting on blush, the tracing and blending of lipstick, eyeliner, eyeshadow. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d even left my dorm without it.
I peered into the first row as J. Crew Junior joined six other silhouettes. Suddenly, horribly, it occurred to me that all seven Sharpshooters could be like the kid from Wednesday. How would I survive three months of that? Was the competition worth the very real possibility of me spontaneously combusting?
Another silhouette sat off to the side, his face illuminated by an iPhone screen. I recognized the beaky nose and permanently downturned mouth, which belonged to Dr. Graves, one of the music teachers.
I planted my feet, tilted my head, and ignored the way the underside of the wig made my pinned-up hair itch. A picture came to me: the wig flopping off like a dead pigeon, mid-song, onto the stage. Hysterical laughter built up in my throat.
Paper rustled somewhere. My audition sheet, probably, with the batch of lies I’d typed into their form, from fake name to the matching fake e-mail account I’d made. “Julian Zhang?” said one of the silhouettes—not the bass kid, and not Dr. Graves, who was still frowning down at his phone. This guy had a bright, amused tenor.
I nodded. Julian Zhang was a cousin in Seattle.
The silhouette attached to the voice leaned forward, allowing the stage light to tinge his features. I recognized the guy instantly, the long, rumpled hair looped back into a bun, the serious eyebrows. This kid had sung Justine Gray’s “Slower Faster” in the Sharps’ last spring concert, a raw, crooning performance that had reduced about 60 percent of the audience to pools of sexual frustration.
“Welcome to auditions,” he said. “I’m Isaac Nakahara. I’m the president.”
“Of the United States?” said my mouth, without my permission. In the hideous silence that followed this total nonjoke, I wondered how much it would cost to hire someone to stand next to me with duct tape, ready to prevent these sorts of situations.
I started to apologize, but Isaac replied cheerfully, “Yep. Leader of the Free World.” He waved at the doors. “If Secret Service tackles you outside, that’s why. Because I, the president of the United States, am never safe from—”
“Isaac,” said an unimpressed voice beside him.
Isaac aimed a quick grin at whoever had said his name. “So, how’s it going, J
ulian?”
I deepened my voice and tried to look nonchalant. “Not bad. How about you guys?”
A couple of laughs came from the silhouettes. Some groaning and shifting. “It’s been a long-ass day,” Isaac said.
“Mister Nakahara,” said Dr. Graves to his phone, his permanent scowl deepening.
Isaac shot a careless glance over at him. “Sorry. A long gosh-darn day, by golly.”
The other Sharps snickered. Dr. Graves tore his eyes from his screen to give Isaac a withering stare, which Isaac responded to with a thumbs-up. Eventually, Graves shook his head and returned to his phone, and Isaac returned to me. “But yeah, we’ve been here since nine a.m.”
“God.”
“You’re the last one. Not to make you nervous.” He cracked a smile. “You nervous? I was like 90 percent nerves when I auditioned. I mean, I was a freshman, but I guess it never gets better, the auditioning thing.”
Somehow, his showy, joking patter was only making my nerves worse. I wished he would fold back into the dark, just let me sing and then get violently ill somewhere, probably. “I’ve had worse,” I lied.
“Good attitude.” Isaac leaned out of sight and addressed the others, a bit calmer. “He’s a Theater junior. Looks like we’ve got trumpet and choir in middle school, plus musical theater classes.”
A hazy sense of unreality sank over me. This boy, this actual human male, was talking about me like I was an actual human male. They were all buying this: the deeper voice, the wig, the too-small sports bra I’d used to strap back my already-flat chest under my baggy clothes. I hadn’t realized exactly how little I’d expected this to work until this second.
It was finally sinking in: This disguise looked convincing enough to turn me invisible. I was just some guy. Anonymous. Nobody. The world saw exactly what it wanted to see.
A different, deeper voice jerked me to attention. “Do you beat-box at all?” it said crisply.
“Uh,” I said. “No, I—”
“Any arranging experience?”
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