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worship began. I seated myself in the back pew of the swank sanctuary, removed from the others. Naomi made her way to the stage.
    She stood alone at first, waiting for her duet partner to make his way to the stage. For a few moments, every eye was upon her, glowing and vulnerable in that soft light; yet, in her stillness, she was assured and certain. Something in me began to unravel. I wanted to lay my hand on her neck in the soft crevice just under her jawline.
    Then somebody stood up and started to make his way to the stage. Anthony Hasbourd. I should have known. Of course it would be Hasbourd, that pretentious snob.
    I closed my eyes.
    At first, it was only Naomi’s voice. Tender, as if she were right next to me, her mouth whispering to me. Gentle. Breathy. This was what it must be like, then, to sit in a dark car with her head resting on my shoulder. This was what it must be like for her to lean towards me in a dark movie theater and whisper something in my ear, what it must be like to feel her wrap her arms around me on a hammock under a blue summer sky, sighing with contentment.
    And then Anthony Hasbourd’s voice trumpeted in, brazen and obnoxious. He was strident in a discordant way; his showmanship was full of pretentious pomp and circumstance. They clapped for him anyway, long and hard. Midway through the song, he took Naomi’s hand. I saw her flinch in surprise, then blush. They sang like that, hand in hand. At the end of the song, they embraced.
    And that was what did me in. I cut my eyes away. And just like that, it was decided. No matter what it took, I would get the lead role at school. It didn’t make a difference that I was just the understudy. I would land it somehow. Because I had something. Something that would stun Naomi. Astound her. I could sing. Sing lights-out brilliant. I would show the school. I’d show the world. I’d show all the pretenders out there. Most of all, I’d show Naomi.

VOICE LESSONS
     
    F or the next few months, before my mother awoke, I biked to school in the near dark. Cold and twilight darkness were my constant companions. The roads were always desolate and bitingly frigid; it always took me at least twenty minutes to thaw myself once at school. I would stand in the restroom and run my hands under the hot tap water, legs pressed hard against the radiator until I felt the heat begin to singe through my jeans. Then I’d walk into the music room warmed and ready. Mr. Matthewman would glance at me and fold his newspaper away. He never knew I biked to school. He would not have allowed it, given the Justin Dorsey incident.
    We would go through scales at first, loosening up the—in his words—windpipes of melody. My voice box would be stiff and cramped at first, but he started me easy. C major scale over and over until I felt my voice box melting and moistening into readiness. Every so often he would stop and push his hand hard against my back. “Posture,” he would say. “Gotta have good posture, Kris. Align that spine, and you’ll be able to lift your chest easy, get a full breath of air in there. Remember the marionette.”
    The marionette was his illustration, something he’d taught to hundreds of students while at Julliard. The idea was to imagine two strings holding me up like a marionette, one attached to the top of my head and the other to my sternum. I was to maintain a posture that would keep the strings taut, especially on the exhale. It took a while to get used to.
    He tutored me for about thirty minutes in the beginning. “Easy does it,” he’d say. “Don’t need to push you too hard for now.” The time always flew by. I would look up from the notes, my eyes rising above the plane of the piano for the first time, and be astonished to see the parking lot outside filling up. Over time, I started staying longer, another fifteen, twenty minutes, until I found myself staying for a whole hour.
    “I’ll make you a singer yet,” he would say enthusiastically.