Paper Stars

6

Charlotte Hollins
Present
When I get back home after my jog, there is a black car parked in my driveway, a car that I instantly recognize. I slow down to a walk and pluck my earbuds out of my ears, slinging them around my neck as I approach the man standing on the porch. He looks to be in his mid-forties, with brown hair that's beginning to gray at the edges. He's facing the door, his finger pressed on the doorbell.
"What are you doing here?" I ask.
Curtis Belmont turns around and smiles when he sees me, an expression that seems foreign now. The last time I saw him was in the hallway of the Hoffman Center at a jazz competition, his face furious and his hand holding my prescription medication in a fist as he screamed at me, "What have you done, Charlie?!"
"I heard you got out," he says in response to my question. He takes one step down off the porch so that he's standing in front of me, but still one step above me. "I came to check up on you, see how you're doing."
I scoff and brush the sweat from my forehead. "Well let's see: I had a nasty relapse and now I'm a college dropout with no job and virtually no future, so I'm doing just peachy, Mr. Belmont." I cross my arms and smile at him, prepared for scolding. He always hated it whenever I smart-assed him during practice.
"Glad to hear it," he says, ignoring my comment and then extending a black folder that's been tucked under his arm towards me. I stare at it. It's the same folder that we used in jazz band, no doubt filled with charts.
I take a step back. "What the hell is that?"
"An invitation." Belmont adjusts the sleeves of his button up shirt, rolling them up to his elbows. "The Kaufman Studio Band cut their drummer today. They contacted me and requested a candidate for the position from Manhattan." He gestures to the folder. "It's yours if you want it, Charlie."
Kaufman Studio Band. It was something that the first string jazz band whispered about, but never really discussed. Freshman almost never got chosen, and sophomores were rare picks. You had to be good, and I mean really good, at your instrument to even be considered. And then after you were a candidate, you still had to go through several stages of auditioning before you officially had the position. It was funded by the Kaufman Music Center and took candidates from the Manhattan School of Music, Juilliard, the Curtis Institute, Eastman, and Cleveland. Freshman year, Mr. Belmont singled me out and gave me private practices in preparation for candidacy for the Studio Band, but I was never chosen because I dropped out.
And now here he is, basically dangling my future in my face.
It feels like a death sentence.
I shake my head. "I—I can't do it. I'm not even a student at Manhattan anymore."
He shrugs. "I made a few phone calls. The administration said that you're eligible since you attended Manhattan for a period longer than a year.
I spit out my second excuse. "I quit drumming three months ago. I'm done."
Belmont's brow furrows. "Really. I don't believe that for a second. My student would never quit at the top of her game."
A sneer twists my lips. "I'd hardly call rehab the 'top of my game.' And I'm not your student anymore."
Belmont leans against the side of the porch and flips through the music folder. "Do you remember your freshman year, Charlie? Do you remember your botched audition, and how you came to my office early the next morning begging for me to let you in to first string jazz?" He closes the music folder and uses it a pointer to me to emphasize his words. "She worked hard. She was talented. She wouldn't have quit."
Belmont steps off the porch and tucks the folder under the crook of my arm. "They need an answer in two days. You know where to go if you change your mind."
He gets into his black car and drives away. I watch the car go around the street corner and then disappear from view before going inside the house. Aunt Joan and Uncle Kenny are at work, Emma at school. I'm the only one here. The folder feels like it weighs a thousand pounds, so I throw it down on the counter and try to forget about it. It doesn't matter that Kaufman is all that I've wanted since I started college. It doesn't matter that Kaufman is the gateway to Lincoln Center, where I could play alongside the best of the best. Drumming drove me to my breaking point, and there's no way I'm going back.
I spend the rest of the morning trying to get the folder out of my head. I clean the kitchen and do three loads of laundry. I flip through channels on the television and end up on some celebrity gossip program that talks about FliX and the critical reception on his Grammy award winning debut album. The screen cuts to a clip of FliX performing at some music festival in California, a sleek black X painted on his left cheek and his hair dyed silver, the theme for his album. One of the hosts goes into a sidebar, exclaiming her shock at FliX's breakup with his girlfriend, Nadia Ganesh, after a four year relationship.
I switch the channel to a cheesy cop show.
After about an hour of watching shootouts and scenarios that would never go smoothly in real life but work perfectly on the screen, I get off the couch and grab the damn folder, heading down to the basement. My drum set and equipment is in the corner covered with a tarp, untouched for two years aside from the time last year that I spent all of Thanksgiving break practicing for a competition. Aunt Joan wasn't very happy about that.
I take the tarp off and my stomach rolls over at the sight of the drum set. Ignoring the uneasy feeling in my abdomen, I use the tarp to swipe the dust off the seat and the cymbals. I take a seat and grab my plain wooden drumsticks off a nearby shelf, my practice sticks. I hit the bass drum and it makes a loud thump that echoes in the room.
I open the music folder and pull out the first set of charts, Setting Sun. The notes are thick and wild, guaranteeing aching wrists and hours of long practice. I stare at the chart, my fingers gripped tight on the drumsticks. The notes begin to blur together until the entire chart is one giant mess of black and white. My hands begin to shake and I can feel my heart rate gaining speed, pumping like a racehorse and filling my ears with the sound of its run. My breaths get shorter and black dots spot my vision. The drum sticks fall from my hands and clatter on the floor and my head is on my knees and a fountain of hot wet tears streams down my face as I whisper, "I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this."
She worked hard. She was talented. She wouldn't have quit.
Well now she has.