Starting Position

Chapter 5

About a year and half ago, the start of my freshman year of college, I had been walking near the campus theater and noticed a poster tacked to the wall. It was simple, no frills or color, and I was drawn in. I glanced upon it and discovered it to be a flier for a local choir group.

To this day, I didn't know what pulled me to the poster, but I must have stared at it for ten minutes. The only requirements for joining were having a passion for singing and being eighteen or older. 

While I wasn't a singer by any definition, I did enjoy it. I'd never been in a choir, however, and joining a random group wasn't something I was comfortable with. However, upon looking again at the poster, I felt something strange, something inciting – almost like the faintest whisper floating beneath the surface of my skin.

The next day, I joined the local choir group.

While I had received many questions from the other members regarding my background and the like, I had deflected them. After a while, they seemed to get the point. I was there to sing. Not make friends. Not socialize. I was in a place where nothing really mattered anymore. Choir was just another thing, along with track, that kept me tied to Earth until the remaining weeks were over.

Though I had wanted to, I never participated in choir in school. I always thought lyrics to a song were comparable to miniature novels. Good ones told a story on a multitude of levels, and it was up to the listener, the recipient, to relate it to their life. In this way, music connected people who had never before met.

This was my second year in the local choir. We met every week, practiced for an hour, and did community events periodically. The last event we participated in was a winter holiday concert recited in this very theater. With some promoting, we had received a decent turnout.

Our next event, although small, was going to be inside a retirement center for a winter themed performance next month. Following would be a bigger event, a spring concert again held in this theater.

We were in the middle of deciding if we needed to add one more song for the winter performance at the retirement center. The two Choir Aficionados, as I called them, Amy, a woman with a short black bob in her mid-fifties, and Jerome, a tall man with deep skin and long dreadlocks pulled to the nape of his neck, were speaking aloud and trying to gather ideas from the rest of us.

I never input my opinions, because I didn't have any. I was only there to sing.

"I hope they don't add 'Walking in a Winter Wonderland,'" a voice whispered from my immediate left. "I don't think my vocal cords are physically capable of singing that again until next Christmas."

My head turned giving me a full view of the person next to me. I knew him as Morgan. He had been in the choir group since I had started, but that was about as much as I cared to learn about him, or anybody else for that matter. Like I had said, I was there to sing; I was pretty sure everyone in the group understood that, so I had no idea what he was doing talking to me.

"Or 'Sleigh Ride,'" Morgan continued. "That used to be my favorite Christmas song until I joined this choir."

I flicked my eyes back in front of me.

"To be honest, I stand next to you because I can only bear those songs when I hear you singing them."

And my eyes returned. It was a line. And I hated being on the receiving ends of lines.

Morgan's mouth broke into a wide grin. "Wow – that was a joke. You should see your face."

Inhaling, I crossed my arms and loosened the severity of my expression. His laugh was a warm breath and shifted something inside of me.