In The Wings

Act I Scene II

"All right, rehearsals are done. If you want then you can stay and ask us questions, but otherwise it's time for you to go."

Meg and Christine looked at one another. They always stayed after rehearsals as it gave them a good place to talk all the time. The teachers never really minded, as long as they didn't cause any trouble.

"I'm going to head backstage for a minute, okay? I'm going to use the bathrooms back there," Christine said.

"Um, okay, whatever you say, Christy. But, don't forget: there are always bathrooms in the regular hallway."

"I know that," Christine said, shaking her head.

"Just making sure." Meg waved Christine off as she began her walk behind the wings.

As Christine walked backstage, she began to hum. Sure enough, a voice soon joined in. It was a beautiful, angelic voice. Every note the voice hit inspired her to sing. The voice was the reason she had gotten Cinderella.

The voice was her tutor.

When Christine had first walked backstage on the first day of rehearsals for Cinderella, she had been alone. A voice had come out of nowhere with no face or body to go with it. The voice sang to her, and then taught her how to sing back.

Of course, she very nearly missed the big ballroom scene that she was dancing in that day. But Christine had been so intrigued by the voice that she would go backstage as much as possible at every rehearsal.

The problem with the voice was that it wouldn't always show up. Christine would wander backstage, away from the singing and the reciting of lines, to find her voice. She wanted that teacher all of the time.

Every time the voice helped her to sing, she found her voice becoming more and more beautiful. It was almost as if an angel was watching over and teaching her how to sing. An angel of music. Christine sometimes walked down the hall backstage, lightly humming or singing with her eyes wide open and ready to hopefully catch a glimpse of the voice. But then the voice would never show up to begin with, and Christine would have to walk away with a sigh.

"I suppose you've seen my triumph," she said. Christine hummed a part of In My Own Little Corner, then let it go out into a line of "da da dums."

"It was the most beautiful thing a human ear could ever behold," spoke the voice back to her. "The angels wept at the sound of your singing."

"But aren't you an angel, an angel of music? Did you weep?" Christine said with a slight giggle.

"Perhaps, child. But today I will teach you how to sing even grander, even more beautiful, though it may not seem possible." Christine still nodded eagerly at the voice.

As Christine was singing, she suddenly heard footsteps. She didn't know who they were or if there had actually been anyone. But it didn't matter to her. Without a word she stopped singing and ran back onto the stage. She couldn't let anyone catch her singing to some disembodied voice that she called an angel.

That was the problem Christine always had with the angel voice. Since she never saw anything to go with it, not a head or a shadow or anything, she had no way of knowing it was real. Perhaps her musical training from her father had just finally started coming out fully in her brain and that's why she was singing better.

That would make the voice just a hallucination, a figment of her imagination. It sometimes came to her, and sometimes didn't. It was like she was going insane sometimes. Christine didn't feel insane. She didn't want to believe she was insane.

The voice had always seemed so real to her. But, then again, those sorts of things always seemed real to the insane person who was making them up. Christine hurried through the wings, hearing whispers of the voice almost as if it was right behind her.