Chapter Eleven
Chapter
Eleven
“A reminder, friends,” Ms. Mellon announced to the class. “Today is the last day for sign-ups to audition for the Lewis replacement in Pippin.”
Danny slumped in his seat. Every day since the day it had been posted, that audition sign-up sheet had been taunting him from the wall.
Each day as he shuffled between classes, Danny passed the damn thing, slowing down and peering at it out of the corner of his eye, like he was walking past the underwear section at Sears.
“Now back to business,” Ms. Mellon said. “Let’s turn our attention to the songs I assigned last week. We’re going to take another crack at them.”
Danny looked down at his binder, the sheet music for the song “What’ll I Do?
” peeking out of the top like a parking ticket.
Since his meltdown in class two weeks prior, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to so much as look at the song.
So maybe it was the talk of auditions, or the residual high from his birthday, from his talk with Christian and the memory of holding his hand, because without warning, an electric current shot through to his fingertips, sending his own hand flying into the air.
“Um, yes, Danny?” Ms. Mellon said, looking at him quizzically.
“I’d like to go,” he said, surprised by his own voice. From the murmurs around him, so was everybody else.
“Oh,” she replied, apparently just as taken aback. “Yes, that’s all right.”
“Okay, cool,” he said, mostly to himself.
Danny flipped open his binder and charged over to the piano, setting it down in front of Jerry and taking a place on the masking tape X.
“First though,” Danny said, turning to Ms. Mellon. “I’m sorry for the way I acted last time. That wasn’t cool. I know you were just tryin’ to help.”
Ms. Mellon didn’t say anything, but nodded gently.
“This stuff is still kinda new to me,” Danny continued. “Obviously. But I wanna get better and I promise you, I’m gonna work hard.”
“Thank you, Danny,” Ms. Mellon said, a gentle smile rising.
“So, uh, yeah, I guess, I’m Danny Victorio and I’ll be singing “ ‘What’ll I Do?’ by Irving Berlin.”
Jerry played the intro, which was when Danny realized he had absolutely no idea what he was doing.
He’d planned to work on the song in his bedroom the previous week, but the memory of the train-wreck performance he’d given in class had him scrambling to think about anything else.
And then there was his birthday and the pancakes, and the surprise trip to the City, and then the boardwalk and lemon ices… and Christian.
What’ll I do
when you are far away and I’m so blue?
What’ll I do?
As he began singing, Danny fought off the urge to close his eyes and block out the room like he’d always done. Instead, he wrenched them open and picked a point on the wall, like he’d seen so many other students do.
What’ll I do
with just a photograph to tell my troubles to?
He was back to that place again. That place in the song that had tripped him up, that place that had seized his throat, that was uncomfortable and threatened to embarrass him in front of the entire class.
And he was back in his bedroom on the South Shore.
Back to staring through a keyhole. Back to a place where mothers shouted and fathers lied and sons sat hugging their knees up tight beneath their chin.
And then a strange thing happened. A face appeared on the back wall.
A face right in the very spot where Danny was staring.
And when the face opened its mouth, it revealed a chipped-tooth smile and the smile told Danny to talk, just talk to him like they were in the green carpet room, just say the words, nothing more.
When I’m alone with only dreams of you
that won’t come true?
What’ll I do?
Danny was amazed at how easy it was to talk to Christian, how he didn’t even have to think, how the words just spilled from his lips.
And the words knew exactly which notes they belonged to and which parts were the most important and which parts he could throw away, and which parts were best when sung in a low whisper and which ones he could shoot through the air like flaming arrows.
And which words crackled with electricity like a lightning storm, like a hand reaching for a hand.
Danny kept staring at Christian’s face, even after he sang the final line and Jerry’s fingers played the final tinkly chord.
It was the applause that finally faded Christian’s face back into Danny’s memory, and then the wall was just a wall, and the room was just a room, and the sound of Ms. Mellon’s voice was coming from the front row.
“What did that feel like, Danny?”
“It felt…,” he muttered. “It felt…”
But he didn’t have the words.
Danny looked down at his chest and saw that there were four small dark spots on his shirt that hadn’t been there a minute ago, spreading like ink.
“It felt good!” he said, laughing, which was when he realized that his face was hot and salty and the wet spots on his shirt had come from his own eyes.
“I don’t know.” He laughed again. “Yeah, it felt good, I guess.”
But this was a lie.
It felt fucking amazing.
Hot fudge brownie sundae good. Scratching off a thousand-dollar lottery ticket good. Standing ovation good.
“I think,” Ms. Mellon said, a cool smile forming on her face. “That you maybe just realized that you’re an actor.”
Yeah, that was it.
“But…,” Ms. Mellon continued, “I think we can be a little more intentional with the shift in the bridge. Would you be okay with working on that section?”
“Absolutely,” Danny replied this time.
“Good,” Ms. Mellon said.
They worked on the song for the next twenty minutes—longer, Danny thought, than anyone else in his class had ever gotten.
This time, he didn’t hesitate for a second when Ms. Mellon asked him to speak the lyrics as a monologue.
He said them clearly, trying his best to naturalize them rather than hit the rhyming words with an extra punch like you would if they were at the end of a musical phrase.
And in doing so, he realized that there were certain words you couldn’t just say the same way, especially ones that got repeated twice in a row.
The more they worked, the more Danny realized that he and Ms. Mellon were on the same team—it wasn’t just a teacher challenging a student.
They were both working toward the same goal: not just to sing the song with Danny’s voice, but to let his voice come through.
He thought back to the birthday note from Orion: Art isn’t what you create.
It’s what you uncover. If Danny ever wanted things to change, he was going to have to let people peek behind the door.
“Okay, who’s next?” Ms. Mellon clapped her hands together under her chin as Danny finished performing the song for the last time. This time, however, no one in his class raised their hand.
Danny headed over to the piano to collect his binder from Jerry, who whispered a soft “Nicely done.” He turned to head back to his seat, but was surprised to find Ms. Mellon standing right behind him. She took his shoulder and pulled him in for a huddle, turning him to face the back of the room.
“So,” she breathed, her hair smelling like lilacs. “I noticed that you haven’t signed up to audition. Why is that?”
Her words floated in the air like a hummingbird, beating its wings frantically, stirring up a flurry of emotions inside of Danny.
“I dunno,” he said, shrugging.
“Well, do me a favor and sign up after class, okay? I’m taking it down at the end of the day.”
“Sure.” He nodded, a surge of adrenaline running through his veins. “Yeah, I can do that.”
“Good,” she whispered. “I’ll see you tomorrow during lunch.”