Attack the high notes from above,” Rowena says after my tenth unsuccessful run-through of the Mozart piece I’m practicing.
“What do you mean, from above?”
Rowena moves Fred the cat over so she can reach the sheet music, then points to a high B. “See that?” When I nod, she says, “Now close your eyes and visualize it.”
“Right.” I close my eyes. Rowena has a weird way of looking at things. “I’m visualizing.”
“Picture your voice as a physical being, floating above those notes. So instead of having to reach to get them, you’re dive-bombing from above.”
“Okay.”
“What does your voice look like?”
“Um, a pink line?” I wasn’t really visualizing, but now I am.
“Excellent.”
She starts to play my piece, and I start singing. But this time, I picture my voice dancing above the staff. It works. The music’s easier and it sounds better.
“Excellent job,” Rowena says when I’m finished.
“I wish everything was that easy—just visualize it, and it happens.” I’m thinking about Nick; how seeing him made me sort of want things back like they were before, thinking about how lonely I feel.
“Maybe it is.”
I visualize Nick exploding into a bazillion ex-boyfriend pieces. Better yet: I visualize Misty exploding. I grin.
Rowena looks at the clock. My hour’s over. “So, how do you like the school?”
“It’s great. But the kids there think I’m weird.”
“Really? Are you sure you’re not projecting, that you’re not the one who thinks they’re weird?”
I visualize Gus and his conga line, the part of me that wants to join in with them, and the part that doesn’t. Do I not want to dance because I think I’ll look stupid? Or because I think they look stupid?
I visualize myself, conga-ing. No way.
“I was surprised when you sang yesterday in the auditorium,” Rowena says. “It was really brave of you. Sometimes, you have to be brave to be an artist.”
I think of Nick again.
“I’m brave a lot,” I say.
Opera_Grrrl’s Online Journal
Subject: All That Jazz
Date: August 24
Time: 5:22 p.m.
Listening 2: “All That Jazz” from Chicago
Feeling: Happy
Weight: 114 lbs. (That is *so* not possible. I weighed 109 Fri., and I’m STARVING.)
After school, some of us walked over 2 the train station 2gether. I was walking w/Gigi, making fun of how the dancers all walk in 3rd position ALL THE TIME so they look like penguins . . . . .and someone started singing “All That Jazz” from Chicago, just singing, right on the street like Peyton and Ashley said. No one acted like she was weird. They joined in. It was the middle of the day downtown, and these guys in suits with stressed-out faces were looking at us like we were on drugs. But by the time we got 2 “No, I’m no one’s wife, but oh, I love my life!” I was singing 2. It was like being in a musical, and I was one of those people!
It was the first time I felt like, maybe, I could belong at this school.