Sorry it took a while. I don't have much time to write, and SuperStar isn't a priority.
I don't own Night World, or any of the songs mentioned. I recommend that you listen to all of Jez's song choices. They are all BRILLIANT songs!
Jez and Morgead: SuperStar
Chapter 7
Jez POV
I paused outside NW Recording Studios (A/N You see what I did there? :) Cool, huh?).
I was terrified. I'd been to an audition a few days ago and they thought I would be a well-selling artist. And now, I was recording a test song. I'd been told to choose five different song choices by different artists, and they would choose which I should sing according to my voice quality.
At least, that was what I'd been told by Ernest.
My song choices were my favourite modern songs, Breathe by Taylor Swift, Footprints in the Sand, in the style of Leona Lewis, Love Where Is Your Fire by Brooke Fraser, Brighter by Paramore and Lights Across the Sky by Nat Jay.
I took a deep breath and pressed the buzzer to the left of the door. After several seconds, it opened, revealing a smiling Ernest.
"Ernest! I didn't know you were coming," I said.
"I thought I should come to offer you support. I was the one who advised you to become a singer."
I smiled at him thankfully. "Thank you. I really appreciate that. I really hope I don't let you down."
"You won't, Jez. You're an incredible singer. You'll blow them away."
I laughed. "Thanks. Shall we go in?"
He nodded and we made our way into a mass of different corridors.
"Do you know your way around?" I asked him quietly as we went through another corridor that looked exactly the same to every other.
"Yes. It takes a while to learn, believe me!"
"I do."
We finally made our way to the recording studio (without getting lost once, which I was very awed about) and Ernest smiled at me.
"Well, this is it," he said, and chuckled when I glared at him.
He knocked on the door and a "Come in!" resounded from within.
I threw a terrified glance to Ernest, and he nodded and squeezed my arm comfortingly as I opened the door.
"Miss Redfern?" A woman said. She had grey hair and blue eyes.
I nodded.
She smiled. "Come on in."
She wrote something on a piece of paper as I came in and shut the door. Ernest hissed a quick "Good luck!" just before I closed it.
"How are you feeling?" The woman asked.
"Nervous," I answered, looking around the room. It seemed like a waiting room. It had chairs and a desk behind which stood a girl not much older than me. She had golden hair and moss green eyes.
"Good, that's normal," said the woman as I turned back to her. "My name's Lilith. So, Miss..." she paused and checked the piece of paper she still had in her hands. "Can I call you Jezebel?"
"Jez," I answered.
"OK, Jez. You will be going through to the recording studio in a few minutes. What are your song choices?"
I recited them to her. She nodded and wrote them on the paper.
"You can sit down anywhere you want."
I sat down in a chair and closed my eyes, trying to relax.
After a few minutes, Lilith came up to me.
"Jez, it's time," she said.
I opened my eyes and followed her to a door. She knocked on it.
It opened, revealing a man who looked about thirty. He had grey eyes and brown hair.
"Hello, Jez?" he said questioningly. I nodded and he smiled. "Come on in. I'm Mr. Rasmussen." (A/N Yes, that is James! Only a slightly older version of him :/)
I walked in and he closed the door behind me, and then gestured towards a sofa. "Sit down," he said.
I sat in the sofa as he sat in an armchair in front of me.
"I think your style of voice would be good for either your Nat Jay song or your Paramore song. You would certainly make a good rock star. It's up to you which you sing."
"Is there one you particularly recommend?" I asked.
"I would say the easiest would be the Nat Jay. But it depends at which pitch you're comfortable singing at."
"I'll do the Nat Jay. I'll have time to sing more difficult songs at less crucial times."
He smiled. "I like your way of thinking. There are too many good singers who try to impress people by picking a difficult song choice. Simple is more effective than difficult, unless you can pull 'difficult' off."
I nodded.
"Do you want some time to practice?" he asked.
"Yes. That would be great," I answered.
"We have a backing track for Lights Across The Sky. It's the original, but it hasn't got any lyrics, obviously."
"Thanks," I said. I took out the lyrics to the songs I had chosen and got the right pieces of paper, singing the lyrics under my breath.
Mr. Rasmussen went out a door and called over his shoulder that I had five minutes.
I sang out loud when he was out of the room, making sure I had all the notes easily. It all went well.
After about five minutes, Mr. Rasmussen came back in and said, "We're ready for you."
I walked up to him. My legs were like jelly. It was a wonder they could hold me up.
"You'll do fine," he reassured me.
The recording studio was exactly how they look in films, a scary-looking sound system on one side and a space with a couple of chairs and microphones on the other. A wall with a large window separated the two sections.
Mr. Rasmussen pointed to a door set in the wall, next to the window and told me to go in. He came in afterwards with a pair of headphones.
"Put this on," he said. "You can sit down or stand up, and sing into this microphone." He tapped one. "I'll give you a thumbs up just before the backing track starts."
"Thanks," I said.
He smiled reassuringly and handed me the headphones. I dragged over a chair to the microphone and put them on, getting out my lyrics. I waited as they set up.
Finally, Mr. Rasmussen gave me a thumbs up and the backing track was playing. I was shaking so much I could barely hold the piece of paper still enough to read it.
Thank goodness I knew the words off by heart.
I recognised the cue and started singing along to the instruments.
Life leads us to hope
It leads us to cope
But it cannot carry us home
I need you to go
I need you to know
That you don't have to go it alone
And we'll all break free
And we'll all break free
Lights across the sky
They've got me wondering, wondering why
Some people live
And others, they die
And those who can't love
They still try
They still try
Five fortunate prayers
Three wishes to bare
Will two become one 'til we care?
Well, I'll meet you there
Wearing a shirt made of hair
Just look for my stare
And we'll all break free
And we'll all break free
Lights across the sky
They've got me wondering, wondering why
Some people live
And others, they die
And those who can't love
They still try
They still try
They still try
They still try etc.
Lights across the sky
They've got me wondering, wondering why
Some people live
And others, they die
And those who can't love
They still try
They still try
Across the sky
They've got me wondering, wondering why
Some people laugh
And others, they cry
And those who can't win
They still try
They still try
Life, it leads us to love
It leads to above
And we are the lucky ones
I stayed until the music stopped, then took the headphones off. I let my self take a deep breath.
It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be, singing that. I had no idea why my nerves had been so bad. It wasn't like I'd never had to do anything worse –
I broke off the thought. I didn't want to think about my life. I'd managed to not think about it for a whole two days.
Guess my record's broken, I thought bitterly to myself.
Mr. Rasmussen opened the door and clapped. "That was incredible, Jez. Really good work."
I smiled at him. "I don't know why I was so nervous. It wasn't that scary."
He laughed. "Yeah, you looked like you were about to faint when I shut the door. You were white as a ghost."
"Can I listen to it?" I asked.
"Of course. I think you were in key for all the notes but one, and that was a minimal sharpening of the note, so it's not too bad. If you done that in a concert no-one would think worse of you."
He opened the door again and leaned out of it, requesting whether I could hear the recording. They nodded and motioned for me to put the headphones.
I listened to it in complete shock. They say that your voice sounds different to how you hear it, but I never knew it could be so different.
When I listened to myself whilst playing, I knew that my voice was decent. That's all it seemed to me. Decent.
Actually, I was darned good.
"Are you OK?" Mr. Rasmussen asked. "You seem a bit shell-shocked."
"I am," I said. "I didn't know that I was that good."
He smiled, his eyes going from cold grey to an unusually warm silver.
"You are very good, Jez," he said.
Morgead POV
I had disciplined myself not to think about her, and it was working.
I could go for days now without the tears that had come almost daily before. I could not think of her, if I concentrated enough.
It took a lot of discipline, though.
I forced myself to play my piano at least once a day, but it never felt right. There was always emotion lacking. You would have thought that I could put emotion into a piece, having just lost the only woman I could ever love, but it came out dull, lifeless, soulless. Limp, even.
Sometimes it worked if I just let anger out. I have no idea how many times I smashed mirrors. If I'd been superstitious, I would have at least forty years bad luck.
I was careful never to smash anything that was linked to her. I may have thrown the painting around, but afterwards I always threw furtive glances to it, and then rushed up to it to put it gently back on the wall.
My life was starting to piece back together again, and I thought I could start living properly.
There was one thing that particularly helped. I'd got a sort-of job at the hospital, going to visit the kids who had types of cancer. The utter cheerfulness of those kids was enough to make anyone feel better, let anyone have a smile on their faces.
But then something happened that threatened to scatter the barely-healed strands of my life.
