Dream Chaser (12 page)

Except for me. I ran the other way. So I rinsed the shampoo from my hair and blocked off thoughts of cheer and Jilly and the gang.

After a marathon shower that used up all the hot water, my muscles screamed a little less loudly. When I went downstairs, Dad sat with a cup of tea listening to National Public Radio. Twinkie lay on the rug in front of the fireplace; her tail beat when she saw me. Dad glanced up.

“You’re walking like an old man.”

“I feel like an old man.” I shuffled to the kitchen and grimaced as I reached for a bowl, the container of granola, and milk. I brought my breakfast into the living room and sank into the couch, blowing out all my breath instead of crying in pain.

Dad looked over his reading glasses. “Hard workout?”

“Yeah, the worst,” I said. “Actually, it was amazing, but the aftereffects are killing me.”

“A cup of
herbal tea
should help your sore muscles.”

“I don’t think a tanker truck of herbal tea would make much difference at this point.” I took a huge mouthful of granola.

“And some yoga wouldn’t hurt either.” He raised his cup and sipped.

“Fine, Doctor Nut Case
.
Let me finish my breakfast first. Can I take the car later?”

“Sure, I’ve nowhere to go today.”

So after I ate and sort of crawled off the couch, Dad put on some eerie Indian music and we did some yoga. It just about killed me, but at the end, my aching body felt better.

I drove the short distance to school. Light snow fell, not enough to add up to much, just a light dusting to clean up the black sludge that had accumulated on piles of plowed snow. Inside the auditorium, I dropped my bag with the others. Most ignored me, but Sophie, a girl I used to dance with, nodded my direction, and McKenna glanced at me then quickly looked away. Chloe sneered, with her face all pinched up. She made a huge production of swaggering on stage for warm ups.

Eli looked my direction.

“Hey,” he said, which wasn’t a total snub, but he didn’t smile. He turned and joined some guys and a really pretty girl I didn’t know.

I put on my invisible suit of armor and followed the stragglers on stage. Taking the steps killed my sore thigh muscles, but after warm up and two more ibuprofen, it wasn’t so bad. Tyson had us run through the numbers I’d tried to learn the first night. The rest of the group looked pretty good, while I struggled to follow, always a half beat off. I stood in the back, but still Chloe and some of her posse would turn and scowl. When she wasn’t targeting me, she flirted with Eli. He talked with her and even laughed a couple of times, but I’d say she acted a little desperate.

After an hour, Tyson called a ten-minute break. By then I was kind of pissed off I couldn’t nail the dance. I didn’t want to ask Tyson to slow it down. As everyone left the stage for
their
bags, I approached Sophie.

“Hey Sophie,” I said.

She paused, turning to look at her friends leaving her behind. “Yeah.”

“I was wondering if you could run some steps with me?” I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice, but I knew that if I didn’t get some help, I’d be the joke of the production.

“Um,” she looked to the rest of the cast grabbing their water bottles and chatting and then
back
to poor pathetic me. “Sure, why not.” She smiled a little.

Thank god!

We moved to the back stage area, so the rest of the cast couldn’t watch me struggle.

“I really appreciate this,” I said.

“No problem,” Sophie said. “I sure wouldn’t want to be in your shoes, trying to catch up and learn everything.”

“I don’t want to be me either,” I joked. At least I wasn’t being launched skyward at the cheer competition right now, hoping my bases kept their concentration and didn’t drop me.

“What do you need help with?” she asked.

“Everything. If we could just mark through the steps real quick that would help so much. I’m trying to figure out exactly what we’re supposed to be doing. I’m kind of getting it, but I want to know exactly what the step is supposed to be.”

“Okay.”

Sophie marked through the entire number. A light bulb went off in my head. Now I knew for sure what the steps were supposed to be, instead of guessing that I had the right sequence or the right beat.

“You should go take a quick break before we get started again,” I said.

“Yeah, I’ve
gotta
pee.” She grinned.

“Thanks so much, I feel like I get it now.”

“Any time. Listen. I know Chloe and some of the others are pissed that you got the lead, but I just want the show to be good. If Tyson thinks you’re the one, that’s good enough for me.”

“Thanks. I hope Tyson made the right decision too.” Sophie not only helped me learn the dance, but her kindness was the shot in the arm I needed. Maybe I’d end up with a friend in the show after all.

Sophie left and I stayed backstage and marked through the steps a couple more times before Tyson called everyone back. When we ran it again, I no longer stumbled or did it half assed. I got it. At one point, Tyson smiled my direction. He must have been relieved that I finally knew what I was doing. That made it one number down, how many more to catch up?

Next, we spent two hours with Ms. Fuller on vocals. I was terrified she’d make me sing my solo, but lucked out that it was only the chorus numbers. Afterward, the girls were dismissed so Tyson could work with the guys on one of their numbers.

We’d been seated for vocals so long that when I stood up, my muscles had cooled down so much they basically locked up. I thought I’d die, going through this again. I edged my aching body to my bag and popped a couple more ibuprofen, a girl’s best friend, and moved to my next scene of torture. Voice lessons.

Even though Tyson gave me directions, I Google mapped it. He spent the past ten years in New York; Madison roads could have changed. I took the Beltline Hwy across town with a pit stop at Arby’s for
a big
cheddar and curly fries. I couldn’t imagine how many calories I’d been burning, and Mom’s cooking was too healthy to put fat on anyone.

This woman lived in Timbuktu. It took half an hour to get across town to my voice teacher’s house in Middleton. I easily found it, a refurbished Victorian in an older neighborhood. I parked on the street, grabbed my music, and slowly climbed the steps to her house. Now that I stood outside her stained glass front door, the reality of why I was here hit me straight on. Crap. This woman was supposed to teach me how to sing.
On stage.
In front of a thousand people.

Double crap.

I rang the doorbell and waited. A tiny woman, who appeared to be in her late thirties, yanked the door open.

“Hi, you must be
Willow
.” She smiled at me with optimism. Little did she know how much work this would
take.
I nodded. She must have been a former beauty. She was still pretty, but her face looked like she’d lived a little hard or maybe worshipped the sun too much.

 
“Come on in. I’m Gloria.”

I stepped carefully onto her entry mat, not wanting to track snow in her house and have her mad at me right off.

“Just kick your shoes off and hang your coat on the rack.” She indicated the old-fashioned coat rack in the corner. “We’ll be working in here.”

 
I obeyed and followed her into a front room with a huge picture window looking out onto the street. The sparse room held only a love seat with embroidered pillows edged with lace, a couple of floor lamps, and an upright piano, which faced the wall.

“Have a seat.” She motioned to the antique love seat. I sat down and gripped my music like a life preserver. She pulled the piano stool over, sat down, and faced me, her hands placed on her legs. “So you’re Tyson’s dance prodigy?”

“Excuse me?”
Dance prodigy?
She must have heard wrong.

“Tyson raves about you and says you’ve saved the show.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” What exactly had Tyson told her, and what had he been smoking?

“I’m so glad to meet you and happy to help out. Tyson and I go way back to when he first got to New York. Back then, when I wasn’t in a show, I gave voice lessons. It was a great run, but then I met my husband, and we didn’t want to raise a family in the city.”

“Oh,” I said, not sure how to respond.

“I still do shows on occasion. Mostly opera as guest performer.”

“Wow, that’s impressive.” Except that it made me feel even smaller.

“Enough about me. Tyson tells me your vocals could use some help, and that your biggest issue is lack of confidence.”

“Yeah, singing isn’t really my thing. I mean, I’m in choir, but I’m no soloist.”

“Well, let’s warm up and see what you’ve got.” Gloria wheeled her stool back to the piano. “You can stand here next to the piano. Leave your music on the stand.”

Standing there in front of her without music, my hands started to shake. I don’t know why I was so nervous, maybe because I hated the idea of singing in front of people. She better be able to cure me of that, too.

“We’ll start with some scales.” She played a chord and then her fingers punched out each note. She sang with me the first run, which was horrifying because her voice was totally perfect. It reminded me of the time my parents took me to see
Wicked
at the Overture Center. The singers were so amazing. Their voices were clear and pure and filled the entire theatre. Gloria’s was just like that.

She hit the next chord and let me sing this one on my own. The decibel level in the room dropped to almost none.

“This time give me more. Louder. Sing from your belly button.”

Huh? I didn’t know how to sing from my belly button, so I sang as loud as I could. We changed from ahs to oohs. She didn’t look at me as I sang; she just listened, staring off into space. She made me sing higher and higher until my voice cracked.

“Sorry.”

Gloria sat deep in thought for another minute and then looked at me. “You have a lovely voice, you just don’t know how to use it.”

After that she had me hooting like an owl and skipping around the room to shake off my nerves about singing. She had me lie on the floor with a book on my stomach to learn how to breathe and then do a bunch of other insane things.

An hour later, I left, feeling more confused than ever, with a bill for fifty dollars and a schedule for three lessons a week until further notice. Major crap. My parents weren’t made of money. I didn’t even know if the lessons were going to help.

Dejected, I drove back across town and wondered how Jilly and the cheer squad had done. I hadn’t talked to her in a couple days and I really missed her, but that didn’t mean I missed cheer.
Not at all.

Trying to learn all this show stuff was a steep price to pay to get out of flying. I really wanted to go home and crawl under an afghan with Breezy and play cats cradle. Instead I drove straight to Miss Ginny’s. It was already getting dark out, but the lights were on.

Once I was inside, she gave me a big hug. “Good to see you!”

“Is it okay I showed up?” I didn’t want to intrude.

“Of course. You are always welcome here.” She beamed. “I’m surprised you’re here so late. You must have had a really long day!”

“I have, but I need to get this right or I won’t be able to sleep tonight.” After the voice lesson, my ego was bruised, my body ached, and I was
dog tired
. Part of me wanted to cry, but instead I sucked it up, changed into dance clothes, and met Miss Ginny in the largest of her six studios.

I stretched out, warmed up,
then
slowly worked through each of the dances I’d learned so far. Miss Ginny helped me break them down and polish each step.

“Willow, chin down. Relax your shoulders.”

I made the changes.

She corrected my turn out and extension. She watched like an eagle and had me repeat the leaps and spins until they felt natural and second nature.

If there is one thing I love, it’s dance. I guess I forgot that for a while. Now that I was back, and immersed in it, I realized how good it felt to move around the floor. Even after a crappy day like today when I was so exhausted I could fall asleep in a chair. So I didn’t sit down. I kept going. I was determined to catch up and to get it right. I didn’t believe what Gloria said about me saving the show, but I was sure going to do everything I could not to ruin it. Even if that meant pushing books up with my stomach from Gloria’s floor and spending extra time on my form with Miss Ginny.

Finally, we’d covered every number I’d learned so far.

“Good work. You should be pleased with yourself,” Miss Ginny stated in her matter-of-fact way.

“Thanks.” I slouched unable to hold good posture for another moment. “Thank you again for letting me come and practice. I really needed it.”

“I’m so happy to see you in the lead role. As I said before, my door is always open to you. I want you to come here anytime you need to.” She walked me out to the office area. “In fact, I want you to take this and use it anytime you need.”