Face the Curtain with a Bow

Four - Choir

- It was a really impulse decision, I know, but I told Kirstie and her friends that I would join choir again. I mean, I love to sing, and it’s not like the guys on the team are really that cool, anyway. I literally went right after lunch to go to my counselor and change my schedule, and he told me I could start showing up the next day and that I would be put on the class roster by the next week.

The one-minute warning bell rang, and Scott started going faster down the hallway, dodging other students left and right. No way was he about to be late for his first time in this new class. Where the hell was the fine arts hallway, anyway?

Luckily, he found the choir room and walked in with ten seconds to spare. The room was painted white like all the normal classrooms, but it was at least twice as big, with trophies and ribbons and plaques covering the walls like stickers on the cover of a middle school girl’s notebook. A set of gray risers stood against the back wall of the room with maybe twenty-five or thirty kids scattered all around the room: some sitting on the risers, others taking folders from a big rack of them at the front of the room, and the rest just standing around talking. Scott took it all in, unsure of what to do, and scanned the room for Kirstie and her friends.

“Scott, you’re here!” he heard a voice call to him from across the room, and he turned to see Kirstie’s friend with the glasses - what was his name, Mitch? - stepping off of the risers and going over to him with a big grin. Scott smiled back, partly to be polite, but mostly because Mitch was so happy he was there. He had seemed kind of cold at the lunch table yesterday. “Awesome! Welcome to Chamber Choir. Mr. Kalter?” he said as he lead Scott over to the teacher sitting at the shiny baby grand piano in the center of the room. “This is Scott Hoying, the volleyball player I was telling you about.”

Mr. Kalter smiled, shuffling sheet music in his hands and laying it out in front of him on the piano. “Nice to meet you, Scott. Glad to see that our program is getting some jocks, aren’t you, Mitch?”

Mitch rolled his eyes, and Scott was once again amused to see him going back and forth from thrilled to apathetic about the prospect of new people in choir. “Well, normally I wouldn’t be too happy about it because of their slacker reps, but I think we can make an exception for Scott,” he explained, throwing a bright-eyed smirk in Scott’s direction. “Especially because he used to be in choir.”

“So I’ve heard,” Mr. Kalter said, pushing back the piano bench and standing up. “Do you know your voice part, Scott?”

He shrugged. “I was a tenor in middle school, but that’s probably changed,” he said, laughing nervously. God, why was he so anxious? It’s just a class singing songs with a bunch of nerds.

“Not a big deal. I’ll do a voice check for you in a minute, how about that? That way the rest of the class can pitch in on what they think.”

Scott’s soul nearly spontaneously combusted upon hearing this. “Wh-what do you mean? Like...about what they think of my voice?”

Mr. Kalter nodded. “Yep. And again, not a big deal at all. I’ll just have you sing some scales, test your range, and maybe have you sing a few lines of a song. Nothing scary.”

Correction: everything scary. “Um...Mr. Kalter?” he began, his heartbeat accelerating. “I, uh, I haven’t sung in front of people since seventh grade. I don’t, uh-”

“It’ll take three minutes tops. Here, we’ll start right now and just get it over with, okay? Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ve got a fine voice. Okay, folks!” he shouted at the rest of the class as he sat back down at the piano. “Take your seats on the risers. Concert formation. Today’s a special occasion. This is Scott and he’s joining our class.”