Sweet Music

Home is a place we all must find, child. It’s not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we’re always home, anywhere.” – Glinda the Good witch

In the hallway of the hotel me and the rest of my chorus class were staying in, we escaped from the pressure of tomorrow. Me, Katie, and a few other recruits rushed past closed doors, and soft excited yelps escaped our mouths if one started to open. We felt the air on our faces and in our hair. Katie is in front (of course) and she turned to look at the rest of us with the biggest smile on her face, her tight curls were standing up all over her head. She was laughing the whole time, we all were. Running and laughing, the lungs of singers. As we ran, you could hear our quick feet hitting the carpet and our muffled laughter.

The next morning, we were reprimanded at breakfast. Katie’s small hand covers her mouth and nose and her little eyes peer at me over it. We thought we might get in trouble, but none of us regretted it. As our teacher gave us a lecture on our midnight romp, nobody was listening to or bothered by her words. Her hair was a bright unnatural red, and her face didn’t match that color, so we knew she wasn’t mad. We also knew she wasn’t entirely proud, but again we really did not care. I scraped my fork back and forth slowly across my plate, ready for us to be free again.

Katie may as well have come down in a bubble, with her hair piled high on her head. Her demeanor was not one of quiet pride though. Quite the opposite in fact. She never was serious, but we loved her for that. One boy saw her and her golden bubble and wanted to remain in it with her forever. They floated together for a time, and we saw his smile grow. She didn’t want to stay with him though. We watched her close the doors to him, not so gently pushing him out. He followed her. All he wanted was to hold her in the bubble they once shared. She was so golden and warm, but only for the things that made her feel alive. She discovered he was not one of them.

I was sitting in chorus class, sleepy as always. Katie busted in the door. She was laughing and singing Popular, from Wicked. “It’s not about aptitude, it’s the way you’re viewed so it’s very shrewd to be very very popular – like me!” She twirled around the chairs and was smiling brilliantly. Jared’s head was down as he clicked through his flip phone. Her demeanor was uninhibited by his blatant sadness.

Walking into Chorus class, a week after that trip, we knew we got our results today. Our teacher had a pinched look to her face, so we weren’t expecting good news. She looked at all of us, skipped a few faces, and lingered on others. Almost all of us looked back at her with anxious eyes. Then, she told us our scores, and they were nothing short of wonderful. Katie and I jumped out of our seats grabbed each other’s hands and jumped up and down, squealing a little. I half noticed that Jared was still looking down, unchanged. There were so many reasons for us to be happy about this news. We made our teacher proud. All our hard work meant something. We were part of something special. And most importantly of all, we had been told that if we scored well at this competition, we got to compete at Disney World for the second time. We all felt like we were in a golden bubble that day, all together. Ready to float on to something even better. But as we drifted up and out, I imagined Jared far below us. Most people would look up as a large golden bubble full of hyper high school students floated above and past them, but Jared kept looking down. He wasn’t looking at his phone anymore, he wasn’t even looking at the ground. I called to him, but the thick protective bubble swallowed my attempt to bring him along. I was crying, and my classmate’s feet were getting wet. Nobody had stopped smiling. Katie was looking at me, she was on the other side of our bubble. But she didn’t see my tears. She didn’t see him below us. All she wanted was to sing, and to dance, and to be unbroken. She led us through the halls that night, and we still got first place the next day. She gently took Jared’s heart in her hands, and without looking at him handed it back eight months later. She placed his heart back in his hands and didn’t let her fingertips linger on his. She turned on her heel and skipped away. Back to her classmates- who would sing songs from Wicked with her relentlessly, not caring- at all- about what other people thought. She was looking around at everyone who has joined in and saw that my mouth was closed. I could taste my tears, I could hear her and the other’s joyful singing, but all I saw was Jared’s sad face, shrinking away from us.