Chapter Two: December Elates

She hated auditions.

Performing Christine didn't mind; despite the pain of singing in a world without her father, the sensation of being onstage was almost calming. There was a powerful knowledge that she had been chosen above others, that she was worthy. In auditions it was the opposite: she was thrust into the spotlight to be picked-over and critiqued, and underlying it all was the stomach-sickening fear that she just might not be good enough.

Sighing, she paced the small grey hallway, the audition form clenched in a sweaty hand. As a theater major and an aspiring performer she felt the pressure to succeed close around her. She needed this. She needed to know that she was good, that she was making him proud.

'Watch over me, dad,' Christine thought, letting her free hand drift to her gold crucifix necklace. 'Let me shine.'

A number was called and her head instinctively jerked up. Only two left. Quietly she made her way to the stage door, rehearsing the song in silence as she walked. The very melody itself made her giddy, and she felt buoyed by its beauty.

When her number and name were called she straightened her shoulders and walked through the backstage and into the harsh lights. The theater was cast in darkness, but she knew there were people clustered together several rows from the front, waiting to grade her.

She opened her mouth and presented herself, relieved to hear that her voice came out clear and strong. "Hello, my name is Christine Danes and I will be singing an original composition."

One of the shadowy figures in the seats shifted slightly. "Excuse me? What is it? Does it have a name?"

"No, sir."

"Who wrote it?"

"I don't know, sir." Suddenly she was feeling stupid. What on earth had possessed her to use that strange piece?

Another voice sounded out of the darkness. "How will we know if you are off pitch if it is a song that no one has ever heard before?"

"I…" Christine paused, unsure of how to explain to them that with this song, you would just know. That it was impossible to sing a note incorrectly in this amazing piece without it jarring the flow. But she only shook her head and said, more confidently than she felt, "I will trust your judgment, sirs."

"Very well. Please begin, Miss Danes." There was disapproval in the voice.

Now was her chance. She smoothed her skirt with sweaty palms and breathed in from her diaphragm, slowly, carefully, molding her body into the familiar posture, positioning her head so that the line of her windpipe was straight and unimpeded, so that her notes would soar clear and high. Christine opened her mouth, and sang.

The song flowed well, and she hit the notes adequately, but her voice was still an imperfect instrument. She wobbled, stressed incorrectly, and didn't sustain her breathing well enough: the mistakes of an amateur. Still, she was certain that she sounded nice, if not a bit breathy and soft.

Christine found herself wanting to showcase the song even more than her voice. It was a thing of such strange beauty that she wanted someone else to realize its loveliness. It was important to her.

After she finished there was silence and the soft rustling of papers.

"That will do, Miss Danes. Callbacks will be posted in two days."

"Thank you," she said, her voice cracking from nerves and the stress of singing that song. Quietly she turned and left, letting out a small sigh of release. The immediate stress was over. Now a different type of tension would build up: the worry, the hoping, the waiting.

Callbacks were in two days. She wouldn't have to wait long.

The next several days were exhausting. Exams were only a week away, and Christine studied tirelessly for them, from morning until far into the night. But beneath her dedication and focus there was a knot of nerves perpetually churning in her stomach, reminding her every time she almost forgot that a musical was at stake, and that in the end she might not be good enough.

When callbacks were posted she nearly leapt into the air when she saw her name, and for the first time in months Christine felt a sense of relief from the weight of grief that accompanied her everywhere.

'You see dad? Maybe I can do it, maybe I can make you proud,' she thought as she bent her head over a textbook, the knowledge of a callback still fresh in her mind. 'Maybe this will all work out.'

The callbacks were tiring, long, and left Christine with the distinct impression that she had not done her best. She was nervous and shaky, and had difficulty sight reading the music they handed to her. Sight reading had never been one of her strong points, and she struggled through the song.

Still, maybe there was hope. The musical had a rather large cast, and any part at all would be welcome.

'Still,' she thought several days later as she sleepily let her head drift closer to the open book on the kitchen table, 'Wouldn't it be wonderful to get the lead? It would make him so happy…and I would happy too, I think.'

Her cheek touched the page as she gave into exhaustion, and as she slept Christine heard the beautiful music telling her that everything was all right, that she only had to follow and believe and the world would right itself. She trusted it – how could anything so beautiful be wrong? – and even nodded slightly as she slept in affirmation.

The music was the answer. The music would protect her. As with the stories her father had told her when she was young, Christine's dreaming mind believed implicitly in what the music was telling her, even if her waking mind, with all of its boundaries and logic, did not.

The next day was her first exam, and she entered it with trepidation. Despite hours of studying her mind drifted, became consumed with worry over the play. She didn't know when the cast list would be posted, only that it was soon, and she had gone over a dozen times to check if it was up. She couldn't even focus as she sat in the huge lecture hall, a test with horribly boring analytical questions in front of her. She tried to force herself to think, but her mind felt wooden.

After she gathered her bags and handed the exam in, Christine left the building with a strange mixture of disappointment and apathy. She knew that she had done poorly despite her studying, but as she rushed to check the list she found that she just didn't care. She went through her business classes like a machine, studied out of necessity, worked without passion. And when she had the chance to do something she loved, even if it hurt to do it, Christine found it hard to remember why she had the other major in the first place.

As she entered the hallway she immediately spotted the small slip of paper pinned to the far wall, and the knot in her stomach grew until it filled her lungs and throat. The hallway seemed to magically stretch, and as she finally approached the end Christine squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath.

The paper was directly in front of her and carefully, tentatively, she cracked her eyes open to scan the list.

She looked first at the leads, named characters, and soloists. She was not there. She bit her bottom lip as her gaze drifted lower, to the thin rows of neatly typed names that signified the chorus. There, smudged in the middle, was her name.

Christine let out a sigh of relief, and then a smile broke over her face. She had done it. Not a lead, not important, but she had made it, and that was all that mattered.

Another list of names followed the chorus, and she eyed it curiously. It was the list of understudies. And there, right there in black ink was her name, her own name as understudy for the lead!

Christine staggered backward, overjoyed. This was more than she ever expected. She knew her voice was mediocre: fair, but weak, without the power that a lead role demanded. And to get understudy for the lead! It seemed too good to be true.

And, as she slumped against the wall and clapped her hand to her forehead with a little laugh, she had no way of knowing that it was.

The days before her last three finals slid by like drops of water against a windowpane. Always prone to strong emotions, her success with the musical buoyed her to shake off her apathy and work harder than she ever had before.

Christine tried to pack weeks of studying into three days: she read for long hours, barely slept or ate, memorized information until her body ached for relief. When she did sleep she would doze and then jerk awake, terrified that she had missed a test or forgotten important information. The crying fits returned, stronger than ever. She refused Meg's offers to go out. She worked, and fretted, until the night before the last final when Meg found her collapsed in their room, hyperventilating and shaking violently, in the midst of a panic attack.

"Oh, hell." Meg was almost more annoyed than worried. She found a small paper bag and crossed the workbook-strewn room to hold it up to Christine's face. "Breathe into this."

Christine gratefully grabbed the bag and stretched on her back as she breathed. She stared at the ceiling, trying to clear her thoughts. What had happened to bring it on? She remembered studying, not understanding question after question, feeling like a failure, starting to cry, wishing that for just a moment she would not have to feel so alone…

She realized that Meg was speaking. "Christine, you have to stop this, go to a councilor or something. You're killing yourself." There was a note of suppressed urgency in her voice, and not for the first time Christine saw how her irrational actions must affect her roommate.

Slowly she took the bag away from her mouth and looked at the dark haired girl. "Do you ever hear music while you sleep?" she asked. Meg was taken aback.

"What?" She seemed unsure of how to deal with this strange question. "I sleep with earplugs."

"No, I mean in your head, in your dreams?" Christine felt like she shouldn't be mentioning it, like it was a secret to be jealously guarded, but at the moment she just wanted someone else to understand.

"I…no," Meg said, flustered. "Why, do you? Are you okay? This is a pretty weird question to be asking somebody."

"I hear it," Christine said in a soft voice, turning her face to the ceiling. "Sometimes I think that it's the only thing that keeps me sane."

"Or it's proof of your insanity," Meg snapped brusquely, unnerved by this strange revelation. Christine smiled.

"Maybe." She turned her head to find Meg looking at her with a mixture of worry and fear, and felt suddenly ashamed of her admittance. Talking about the music made it seem more real, and she wasn't crazy, she knew it wasn't real.

But the song left at the grave…

She made an attempt to calm Meg's fears, though it did nothing for her own. "I'm just stressing out too much, you know how I get. I don't even know how I find my way to the door some mornings, let alone to class." This earned a small smile from Meg that encouraged Christine to keep talking. "And finals week is over tomorrow, and we have vacation. I'll have plenty of time to rest down south."

Meg sat back on her heels, more relaxed at the thought of break. "Yeah, it will be good to have some down time. Who are you visiting again? It's family, right?"

"My Auntie V," Christine said with a wistful smile. "She's my father's older sister. I haven't seen her in years, but we used to visit her every year when I was little…" She trailed off, lost to her thoughts.

Meg cleared her throat. "Well, at least finals are almost over, and getting away will do you some good."

"Yeah, it will be nice to be with family again."

"And when you get back, will you at least consider maybe seeing a councilor or something? You can't keep breaking down like this, Chris."

"I'll think about it," Christine promised, though she knew that she wouldn't. She had seen therapists for a year after her father's death and they hadn't done any good; in a way, they had almost made it worse, forcing her to drag up difficult feelings and memories. She preferred everything to stay safely buried, locked away where no one could find it until the day that she herself forgot it was there.

But soon she wouldn't have to think about councilors, about school, about pain and death. Soon there was vacation, relaxation in a nostalgic place with familiar people.

Dimly, the childlike, believing part of her mind wondered if the music would follow her to Louisiana, if she would still hear it while she slept. She knew, a moment later, that it would. The music would never leave her.

It would follow her anywhere, and for the moment she took comfort in that knowledge.

No matter where she was, there it would be.