The next day, I stood in front of the bulletin board again, nervously waiting for the teacher to post up who was going to the finals. Soon enough, she came out and posted the paper. I glanced at it.
Wait a minute…that's MY name, isn't it? No, that can't be… I blinked and looked again. My name was still there. Only one thought raced through my mind. "I have to go tell Phil!"
I raced down the hallways and finally down the stairs, almost tripping once. There he was.
"Phil, Phil, Phil, Phil!" I screamed, out of breath. "I made the finals!"
"Hey, hey, congrats!" We bumped elbows.
I squealed. "And I never could have done it without you."
He paused. "About that, um, see, I gotta talk to you--"
"Yo, Schrader! You hear? I made the finals!" I happened to see Tara chatting with her friends and I decided to show her that I wasn't the piece of scum that she thought I was. They chucked. "That's tight, I'm talking to you. I'm taking you DOWN!"
"Keely, uh…" He motioned for me to be quiet.
"Phil, please. I'm taunting," I turned to the rest of the school. "Everybody got that? Keely Teslow is taking Tara Schrader to the woodshed!" She just shook her head. "TADOW!"
Tara and her cronies than walked over. "No worries, Teslow, You'll choke in the finals." She laughed. I was put down a bit, but I was overpowered with this odd sensation of fearlessness. They started to walk away. "Old news!" I yelled after them. "This girl don't choke! She--" I suddenly started choking and coughing. So much for that statement.
"Keely, you okay?"
"Are you kidding?" I cleared my throat. "Never been better. Finally over my stage fright."
"Yeah, about that…" I wondered what he was talking about. "Uh, remember at the tryouts how you sort of had a hard time getting started?"
"Yeah, but then I really came on strong! Tadow!"
"Yeah, see, it's sort of complicated. Uh…I used the voice modulator on the wizard to kind of "tadow" your voice," he said sheepishly. I finally started to get what he was saying. My eyes widened.
"S-so, it wasn't really me singing?" I asked, afraid of the answer.
"Not technically."
"B-but it WAS just me who guaranteed I'd beat Tara right out in front of the whole school!"
"Yeah, that was you. There's no getting around that."
"Great. I'm toast." I sighed as thoughts overwhelmed me.
Phil and I were sitting on the stairs of the school, discussing my options of what I should do.
"The finals are on Friday, so we're looking at a few different options here," Phil said. "Option one, we can use the wizard again."
I really wanted to… "But that would be cheating."
"Option two, you can just now show up."
I pouted. "But that means that Tara would win and tease me for the rest of my life," I couldn't bear that. Even though I seem tougher on the outside when she does things like that, it really kills me inside.
"Option three, you can find a new best friend with more options."
I frowned because I didn't want that to happen. "Phil, you give me another option right now!"
He smirked a bit. "Okay, well, there is the obvious one."
My face lit up and I got excited. Anything would work, as long as it would help me get over that horrible stage fright of mine. "Gimme, gimme, gimme!"
"You and I work together to get over your stage fright." I bit the inside of my lip and my heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. This would be harder than I thought.