Sing Me To Sleep Part 4

Winning glory like the tales say

I can-

Is it me ?

After the playback, I avoid Meadow. She's dealing with rejection better than I ever thought she could. Maybe she's telling the truth. If I had her voice, I wouldn't want to sing the solos either. She's got ears like the rest of us. She's allowed to want to go to Switzerland no matter what it takes-like the rest of us.

Her mom is another story. She hovers in the back, rapid-fire whispering to her husband while he winds up the mike cords.

"Okay, girls." Terri ignores the angry woman at the back of the room. "If we're going to get our act ready for the world stage, we've got a lot of work to do. See you Tuesday."

I hang out so I can thank Terri, but Meadow's mom descends on her. "If you're actually going through with this, we need to talk gowns. They must have something elegant. My daughter will not appear on an international stage in one of those old capes."

I get myself clean out of her way. Guess our capes are doomed. The hand-painted flowers on the front are kind of hokey, but they're pretty. And we get to wear comfy black pants and a cotton choir T-shirt under them.

Meadow's mom continues in a loud voice, "They'll need an entire travel wardrobe."

Terri's eyebrows shoot up. "We better keep it basic. Most of the girls don't have a budget for a new wardrobe."

"Don't let that worry you. I have suppliers." She's getting excited. "A few cla.s.sic pieces. Mix and match."

"Comfortable." Terri's not going to win this one.

"Well-made clothes are always comfortable." Meadow's mom launches into a list of exactly what we must have.

"Thank you so much," Terri finally says. "I'll leave it all up to you." Good going, Terri. We won the war-let her have this battle.

"I insist on it. At least they'll all look good." She catches sight of me. "Well, most of them."

I can't thank Terri properly with this woman in the way. Terri sees me. She knows. I give it up, heft my music bag onto my shoulder, and turn to go.

There's Meadow. Right in my face.

I mumble a weak, "Hey."

She frowns. "I'm not going to bite you."

I hold out my arm. "Take a chunk if it will make you feel better."

"What? And blow my diet?"

"Thanks for-"

"That solo has been driving me crazy. I can never get it right. Terri's always crabbing at me to stay after and go over it and over it and over it. I've got better things to do with my time."

"Better than singing?"

"You would say that." She laughs and flips her fake blonde hair back. "There's lots out there better than singing."

I'm guessing Meadow rates love over singing. Maybe she's not a fair judge. It's obviously way easier for her to get guys than sing a solo. Her mega-hot boyfriend picks her up sometimes in his mega-hot red sports car. Maybe he gives her the exact same high I get when the music pours through me, engulfs the choir, and transports us to a different plane.

Sarah laughs from behind us. "Have you seen who's on the program? The Amabile guys are one of the host choirs."

The Amabile guys are a tenor and ba.s.s choir just across the border in Ontario, but light years away from us in the youth choir universe. The entire Amabile organization is like that. Their girls' choir kind of invented the whole movement. Hatfield composes for them. I have all their CDs. They set the standard. The girls are legends.

But the guys?

Rock stars.

I have their CDs, too. I can't believe we might get to meet them. Every girls' choir in the world is crazy in love with them. It's not that they are amazingly hot. A few are. Most are just gangly teen boys. Cute and sweet. Kind of like Scott. But when they sing-that's hot. Amazingly.

Meadow turns on Sarah. "Really? Are you sure?"

Sarah sighs. "Funny, we have to go all the way to Switzerland to meet them."

Leah is in the pew behind us, sorting the rhythm instruments. She leans into the conversation. "Have you seen the latest pictures on their Web site's gallery? The ones of their Christmas concert? I die for a guy in a tux."

"Who can sing." We all say it at the same time. Even me, Beth the Beast who never got a guy in her life, gets this.

Sarah kind of writhes. "Ooh, why does that make them so hot?"

Meadow narrows her contact-blue eyes at me. "So Miss Soloist, what are we going to do here?"

I look around for help. "Ummm." Leah and Sarah stare, too. "Practice hard, like Terri said."

"No, silly. Listen, I don't know how you came up with that stunning voice completely out of the blue but," Meadow shrugs and wrinkles up her whole face, not just her nose, "the rest of you is a disaster."

I look down at the hole worn through the knee of my Levi's, rub my hand over it. "I'm sure your mom will come up with some great looking clothes for us."

"Don't worry about the wardrobe. We've got that handled. Easy fix. At least you're not obese, too. You've got a bust under there somewhere right? But-"

I drop my head and stare at her shiny black pumps. "I was thinking I could stand behind something. Flowers. Curtains."

Sarah and Leah laugh.

I smile up at Meadow. "I'll sing from backstage, and you can lipsynch."

Leah says, "We'd so get kicked out for that."

"No gold medal," Sarah adds.

Leah snaps the lid closed on the instrument case. "No press conference."

Sarah winks. "No finale singing with the Amabile guys."

Meadow's eyebrows tease up. "We wouldn't want to jeopardize that." She scrutinizes my face. "Drop your bag. Try to stand straight." She walks around me. "Statuesque. Nice cheekbones. The jaw is a little heavy." She grabs a chunk of my hair. "At least there's lots of this to work with." She pulls off my gla.s.ses. I can't see much, but I can tell Meadow is in her element now-way more than when she's singing. "We can do a lot with your eyes. Have you ever tried contacts?"

"Whoa. Hold on. You think you can Glinda me? It won't work. I'm magic proof."

"Oh, honey." Meadow rubs her hands together. "Glinda's got nothing on me."

chapter 4.

REMAKE.

"What happened to your hair?" Scott flicks it with his finger and makes a section puff up as he sits down beside me in the caf.

"Being soloist has a price." I feel naked. It's still frizzy. No way am I going to add hours to my morning routine straightening my hair with that nasty tool of torture they gave me. It's just school. But my hair is way layered and a good foot shorter. It looked fantastic at the salon. Today I'm the Beast on shock therapy.

"They made you cut your hair?" Scott shoves a forkful of spaghetti in his mouth. "I liked your hair."

Only Scott could like my hideous hair.

As soon as our official invite to the fourteenth annual Choral Olympics arrived, Meadow got started on me. She called it a makeover slumber party and invited Sarah and Leah and the rest of the prettiest girls in the choir-and me. No bones about who was getting made over.

I put down my sandwich. "They ambushed me."

"A bunch of skinny wimp choir girls ambushed you ?"

"Meadow sat me down in her glitzy bathroom." She's got a Hollywood-type vanity mirror. "And did my face-troweled it on." All the girls gasped and said I looked beautiful. I put my gla.s.ses back on so I could see what they were talking about. Kind of ruined the effect. Then I had to tell them all about getting contacts when I was twelve, how excited I was, what a disaster it ended up being. I remember telling my mom that my fiery red hypersensitive eyes didn't hurt at all. She flushed them down the toilet.

"Jeez, Bethie, that's rough. Explains the new breakout." He goes back to his spaghetti.

"So nice of you to notice." Last month's fading crop of hormone-induced zits are being crowded out by a fresh load of fine red b.u.mps all over my face. Not just my usual zit zone.

He swallows. "Stupid brats. Who do they think they are?"

"Beautiful. They don't understand ugly." I tear my sandwich in two.

"You're not ugly, Beth." He opens his milk.

"I just wanted to go home and scrub." I take a bite and chew. "They made me sleep over."

Scott puts his milk carton back down. "They waited until you fell asleep and then whacked your hair off?"

"Does it look that bad?"

"It's all uneven."

"Layers. Supposed to be stylish. Meadow got us up early, and we went to a salon."

"c.r.a.p, Beth." He picks up my hand. "You're wearing nail polish."

"I know. I can't get it off. You should see my toes." They waxed my bushy eyebrows to a thin line. I'm not telling where else they waxed. They tried to glue fake eyelashes on me, but after the waxing, I got a bit hysterical, put my foot down.

"You should get your money back from that haircut." He guzzles down his carton of milk and eyes my apple.

"Meadow's mom paid." I roll my apple over to him. "She's the mastermind behind the madness. She got her stylist to fit me in." He washed, conditioned, hot oiled, relaxed, and dumped an entire bottle of detangler on my hair-like I'm a bag lady who never brushed it. Then he ironed it flat, cut long layers, and a "fringe" that I can't keep out of my eyes. "Meadow's mom wanted him to dye it, but they ran out of time."

"What color?" Scott takes a big bite of my apple.

"Maybe blonde." I shove the bangs out of my eyes, but they fall right back into them. "I stormed out of there in the middle of the debate. I don't want to be blonde. Can you imagine me blonde?"

"No." He reaches over and slides my bangs out of my eyes for me. "Your hair color is nice."

"Mousy brown? Kiss it good-bye. How do you think I'll look with highlights?"

He puts the apple down, gets serious. "Just like the rest of them."

"That's the idea."

"But it isn't you." He stares hard right into my hyper-magnified eyeb.a.l.l.s. "I thought they wanted you."

"They want a star. Meadow's mom says my nose is okay. We don't have time to change that, anyway."

Meadow gave me a bag of bra inserts. Since her surgery, she doesn't need them anymore. Gross. I'm not using her cast-off inserts. Next Sat.u.r.day we're all getting measured for our new performance wardrobe. Then Meadow's mom, Meadow and I-I begged Leah and Sarah to come along to keep it sane-are going shopping for the perfect push-up bra, designer jeans, and scoop-neck tops that show off my "striking clavicle."

Scott puts his hand on my arm. "Will I recognize you when they're done?"

"Just look for the tall girl with highlights b.u.mping into things."

"No plans to cut your legs off?" He glances down at my jeans.

"Shhh. She's got spies everywhere. We don't want to give her ideas." My cell buzzes. I jump.