Authors: Sara Bennett Wealer
Rival
Sara Bennett Wealer
FOR MY DAUGHTERS
Dissonance: a harsh sounding of notes that produces a feeling of tension and unrest
I SAW AN OLD COMMERCIAL
once where famous singers used their voices to shatter glass. So I looked into it last year for a project in physics class, and it didn't take much of a Google search to find out the whole thing is pretty much a myth. Theoretically, the sound waves created by vibrating vocal cords could break a crystal goblet if they resonated long enough at just the right pitch, but finding and holding a note like that is incredibly difficult. The human voice, it turns out, just isn't that strong.
Human hatred, on the other hand, is. Anybody who doubts that should stand where I am right now and feel the hate waves coming off of Brooke Dempsey.
We're halfway through the second day of senior year, and both of us are in the back row of the Honors Choir; me in the soprano section, Brooke nine spots over with the altos. Even with all those people between us, even
with our folders up, our eyes on Mr. Anderson, and our voices busy on a really hard Bach cantata, I feel a steady
ping
coming off of Brooke like the signal from a giant antenna. It's like this every time we're in the same roomâshe's tracking me, I'm tracking her. The Defense Department would kill to have radar this good.
“Watch it, people!” Mr. Anderson shouts as the tempo picks up, the beats get more complex, and people start hunching over their music as if that will make the notes easier to sing. For a few measures I can hear Brooke's deep voice above everybody else's. I start using my pencil to beat time against my folder and she homes in even tighter. The waves coming from her direction are like a battering ram; I swear I can feel them against the entire length of my body. But I don't shatter; I'm not made of glass. Anyway, the parts that break aren't on the outside.
“Stop, stop, stop!” Mr. Anderson shouts, flapping his arms. The Bach has gotten the best of us and people start to look worried, because those of us who have been in the choir for a few years know what's coming next. “I asked you to study the repertoire over the summer, folks,” he says. “Give me a quintet. Down front, now. Steve Edwards, baritone. Tenor, Matt McWalter. Brooke, you're our alto.” Once I hear Brooke's name I know mine will be called, too. Mr. Anderson only calls people for quintets if he thinks they're slacking or if they're really,
really good. Brooke and I get called when he wants to demonstrate how a piece
should
be done; we get called because we're the two best singers at our school.
“Great,” comes a voice from behind, and I turn to see Matt, my best friend, trudging down the risers after me. I smile apologetically, but secretly I'm glad he's in the quintet, too. Matt isn't just my best friend, he's pretty much my only friendâthe one person to stick by me after Brooke started this cold war by punching me in front of half the student body after last year's Homecoming dance.
For a minute, while everybody gets situated, she and I almost brush up against each other; the nearness of her makes my skin tingle as my nose fills with her green tea and chlorine scent. Laura Lindner, a second soprano, steps between us as we line up bass, tenor, alto, SII, and SI, but I can still see Brooke out of the corner of my eyeâthat regal profile with the nose just this side of too big, the sun-streaked hair, the icy blue eyes. Brooke is beautiful in a way that's hard to describe, like the perfect parts of other people have been reassembled, slightly imperfectly, into a girl who looks like she'd be just as at home in a Greek forum as she is in the hallways of William O. Douglas High School. She towers over the rest of us while we get our music ready.
“Folders up!” Mr. Anderson commands. The pianist
plays the introduction, we launch into the piece, and then something rare happens: Just for a moment, I forget about Brooke. The music is beautiful and challenging and fun to sing. I stare at the back wall, past Mr. Anderson's conducting arm, allowing the notes to spool from memory out of my throat.
“Nice, niceâ¦,” he tells the group when we're finished. “But most of you have too much vibrato. Try singing it like Kathryn just did, with a nice, straight tone.”
Pleased with the compliment and still lost in the music, I turn to smile at Matt, but I catch Brooke's eye instead. She grimaces as if to say,
You've
got
to be kidding me
, then snickers and elbows Laura, who laughs, too. Nobody else notices, and I know from experience that pointing it outâgetting upsetâwould only make me look bad. After that humiliating Homecoming punch, I looked into my bathroom mirror to find a purpling welt across my left cheekbone. These days when Brooke strikes, there's nothing to show where the blow landed; she's become an expert at leaving no marks.
I guess you could say that Brooke Dempsey and I are rivals. That's not entirely accurate, though, because if you look it up in the dictionary “rival” means “one that equals or almost equals another.” If anything, Brooke and I are complete opposites. Her voice is deep and rich, mine is high and airy. She's imposing and confident, I'm
small andâ¦not. Socially we're on different planets altogether, the biggest difference being that Brooke is ridiculously popular.
Why, then, should somebody like her care enough to hate somebody like me?
It's a long story.
I DON'T LIKE KATHRYN PEASE.
That doesn't make me evil or anything. I'm just not one of those people who thinks everybody has to go around being nice to everybody else all the time. I could pretend everything's fine between us. I could be nice to her face, then trash her behind her back. But I think it's better to be honest. I don't like Kathryn, and I'm not afraid to admit it.
Unfortunately for her, if I don't like somebody you can bet nobody else does, either. My best friend Chloe says it's a power thingâpeople pay attention to who's on my bad side because they don't want to end up there, too. But I think that's only part of it. Kathryn does a pretty good job turning people off all by herself.
Take right now, for example. We're down front in Honors Choir. In one of Anderson's quintets, which are really no big deal. But from the way Kathryn's going after it you would think this was the Met. She's singing way too loud.
Even has the music memorized. When we're done, Anderson starts gushing about her “nice, straight tone,” and she looks over at meâright at meâwith this bitchy little smile on her face.
“Ow!” whispers Laura Lindner when I elbow her in the arm. “What's the deal?”
“I'd have a nice, straight tone, too,” I whisper, “if I had a nice, straight stick up my ass.”
Laura laughs. Kathryn looks away. And she doesn't look at me again for the rest of the rehearsal. Choir would be my favorite class if it wasn't for her.
I know. Choir. It sounds lame. And if you were Chloe, that's exactly what you'd say.
“You can do whatever you want, Brooke. You're a Dempsey! So how come you're wasting your time with the music freaks?”
But she has no idea. None of the people we hang out with have any idea how big a deal music really is at our school. You'd think they would have gotten a hint when the Honors Choir performed at the White Houseânot one of those trips where you get to go if you sell enough popcorn, but a real concert set up by the First Lady and broadcast on public television. Or when two years in a row, somebody from William O. Douglas won the Blackmore Young Artists' Festival, which is one of the biggest voice competitions in the country and just happens to take place at Baldwin University, right up the road. But
it doesn't have anything to do with sports or getting wasted or hooking up, so music might as well be knitting or ballroom dancing as far as they're concerned.
Music, however, is my life.
It's also the one place where I can't get rid of Kathryn.
She and I have other things that we're good at, of course. I swim. She writes for the school newspaper. But music is our main focus. Some days the only thing that keeps us from ripping each other apart is the fact that we're different voice types, which means we don't usually go up for the same parts.
We've always known, though, that that was going to change.
The bell rings, and while we're putting away our folders Anderson picks up two yellow envelopes from the podium.
“People!” he shouts. “Don't forget the pool party at Brooke's after school. One last hurrah before we start the contest season! And speaking of contestsâBrooke, can I see you for a moment? Kathryn, you too.”
We both head down to the front of the room, but Kathryn hangs back a little. It's like she thinks I'll bite or something.
“You've been waiting for these, I believe?” says Anderson as he gives one envelope to me, the other one to her.
She thanks him. Puts the envelope into her bag, and
hurries out of the room. I see her take it out when she's halfway down the hall. She opens it and reads while she walks, her dark ponytail swinging.
I wait until I get home to open mine.
Congratulations. You have been selected to participate in the 50th Anniversary Blackmore Young Artists' Festival.
I sit on my bed and open the pamphlet that came with the letter. I read the section about the contest historyâhow Ian Buxton Blackmore came to Lake Champion after a highly successful opera career and started the contest to get our singers into the elite music world. I scan the list of past winnersâthey end up at Juilliard, at Peabody, in Europe singing with major orchestras. I imagine my own name on that list. This is what I've been working for ever since we moved to Minnesota.
And it's going to be my ticket out of here.
Finally, I flip to the contest rules, even though I've been to every Blackmore for the past seven years and I know everything by heart. There's only one first prize in the vocal division, so different voice types don't matter. It's sopranos against tenors. Baritones against altos. Altos against sopranos. Me against Kathryn.
The letter has a link to an online registration form. I grab my laptop and fill it out, listing all the voice teachers I've had. Especially the ones in New York, which is a big deal since not many singers from here can afford
training like that. Just to be safe, I rip out the snail mail entry and fill that out, too. Then I walk to the post office and send it priority with delivery tracking. This way, I know that the entry is on its wayâthat
I
am on
my
way. For the past two years, somebody from our school has won the Blackmore. This year is my turn. All I have to do is keep Kathryn in her place, which should be easy when you consider who I am, and who she is.
But I learned a long time ago that you can't assume anything when it comes to her.
I learned it the hard way.