I had never been so cold in my life, and I pulled the fleece blanket closer about my trembling shoulders. The room was not cold, only I was, but the hot, sticky air coated everything, including my forehead and the rough uneven floorboards of the backstage auditorium. The humming, whizzing, whirring fans spun desperately trying to break their own sweat.

Voices buzzed in my ears. Their excitement pulsed and swam down my already nervously pumping blood vessels. I could hear them. Even back far off from humanity in my corner as I was, I could hear them. The idea of disappearing floated through my mind. That’s what I wanted, that and to forget that I’d ever let Will talk me into this mess.

I was cornered, pressed and coiled against the wall like a snake after attempting to sneak past his volunteer table. Standing there, nervously blinking my eyes, glancing back and forth, and washing my pasted lips with my tongue, my eyes blacked out.
“Sing? Me?” I rasped, wondering how soon I would faint.

“Yea, you. I’ve heard you every once in awhile when you think no one’s around. You’re good. Really good, and we need singers,” he pleaded. I could see the doggedness in his persistent eyes.

The sigh escaped me before I knew it. I was annoyed, and nervous, and determined to deny my voice, but his words hooked me. I opened my mouth and my tongue began to roll out “No.” But instead my tongue swallowed, and the muscles and sinews of my neck rolled my head up and down in a nod, a binding, trapping nod.

“Okay, great!” he grinned. I could see the relief in his eyes. “I’ll see you tonight for the meeting.”

Like a snared rabbit, I slunk into the meeting that night and stood back against the far wall away from all the others. Will stood in the center of a small circle of students, backpacks in-tow, waiting to leave. “Thanks for coming everybody,” his voice boomed, as he grinned and pulled a strand of hair back from his forehead. “If you’ll all just give me your selection and phone numbers, in case I need to get a hold of you. Thanks, guys!”

I stood back and let the others choose first, and then I slipped up and whispered, “I’ll sing the ‘Lilies.’”

He glanced up quickly. “I’m surprised you came,” he said, wrote down my selection, and we both left.

Whining to my mom later that evening, she asked, “Why didn’t you just say no?”

I winced and picked hard at the crack in the table. “I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to see if I could do it.”

So, I religiously studied my song and sang it over and over again, humming in the shower and in bed at night, but never in front of anyone.

As I sat in the corner in the stage room, I tapped the beat of the song on my leg and shifted slowly in my crouch on the floor. Will walked zigzagged across the room to the shuffling, mumbling, shifting, tapping, hysterically giggling students throughout the room and whispered to each of them. Walking up to me, he squatted. “Time,” he whispered. I moaned and pushed myself up onto my feet and stepped after him toward the stage door. He walked out first, and, after much shushing, silence entered the room. Will began to speak, but I didn’t listen as I peeped through the crack in the doorway at the audience. Sickness invaded my stomach, and my head spun. Will strutted back toward me and jerked his head back toward the stage.

“Go!” he hissed and shoved me out towards the microphone. My left hand, which was gripping the music, began to shake, and involuntarily I stepped to the center of the stage. I cleared my throat and swallowed, my eyes large and blinking. I could hear the muffled movements of the audience shuffling, whispering, and flipping programs, and I felt their stares.

Taking in a sharp, cold gasp of air, I opened my mouth and sang, unconscious of the words flowing from my mouth or the audience, until the music quit and the audience erupted. Tripping back to the stage door, I glimpsed Will grinning and giving me two thumbs up as the next student walked forward onto the stage.

“Good job! You were amazing,” he exclaimed as I stumble through the doorway and flattened myself breathless against the wall. “Whoever said you couldn’t sing in front of people?”