Wish Upon a Star Read online

  I wasn’t trying for Amanda, I told myself. I wasn’t competing against those women.

  And then the first Laura went in. Her voice was rich and clear, so strong that the door to the audition room might as well not exist at all. She was phenomenal. There was no way I could go into that room, not after comparing myself to her. I didn’t have a prayer.

  I was going to be sick. Fifteen minutes before they called my name—fifteen more minutes of listening to the unbeatable competition. I turned on my heel and fled to the bathroom.

  I ran cool water over my wrists and forced myself to take a dozen calming breaths. Toweling off, I stared into the fly-specked mirror. Out of habit, I reached for my necklace, tugged lightly at my pearls. What was I doing wearing pink? It conspired with my blond hair to make me look pale, washed out. I’d been stupid to put myself in front of theatrical decision makers looking anything less than my absolute best. I tugged again, as if I could change the color of my clothes.

  As I forced my fingers away from my neck, they glinted in the overhead fluorescent light. Faint golden swirls glimmered against my skin, the vaguest reminder of Teel’s promise. I had wishes—four of them. Surely, the tailor-made role of a musical Laura Wingfield was worth a wish. Worth my entire professional future.

  I glanced around to make sure that none of the bathroom stalls was occupied, and then I pressed my thumb and forefinger together, bearing down hard. “Teel!” I enunciated.

  Immediately, a thick fog coalesced between the sinks and the stalls. Glints of jewel-toned light reflected off the mirrors, the faucets, the metal doors. I caught my breath at the surprising beauty of those swirling bits, and then I blinked. By the time I opened my eyes, a woman stood in front of me.

  A woman. Not the policeman that I expected.

  I was staring at a woman whose hair was a bottle version of my own, pulled back into a ridiculously high ponytail. Her eyes were green, but I knew she had to be wearing contact lenses to get such a garish color. She wore a red sweater, so tight that I wondered if she could draw a full breath. Her pleated skirt hovered well above her knees, and I was willing to bet my last Concerned Caterers paycheck that she wore a skanky thong. A giant white E was pasted across her chest, and her hands were obscured behind two red-and-white pom-poms. She looked like a horny teenaged boy’s dream of a cheerleader, by way of the Playboy Mansion.

  As I gaped, I could just make out the glint of flames tattooed around her right wrist.

  “Excuse me,” I said, half apologizing for staring. “Um, are you a genie?” Okay, stupid question, given how the woman had just appeared in front of me. But really, how do you start a conversation with an unknown magical creature?

  “Hel-lo,” she said, chomping on gum as she frowned at herself in the mirror. She transferred her right pom-pom to her left hand, using her free fingers to straighten a ragged outline on her lip gloss. “I’m Teel? We met in your kitchen?”

  “Teel!” Now I really couldn’t stop staring. “But you—” I started to say, You’re a policeman. You’re a guy. You’re…magic. If Teel was really able to manifest out of thin air—or at least out of a cloud of jewel-colored lights—then why couldn’t he, um, she change appearance?

  Nevertheless, I took a couple of steps away, shuffling back until the sink’s porcelain edge returned me to conscious thought. I didn’t have a lot of time. Not if I was going to make my audition deadline. If I missed my time slot, my dream of Menagerie! would be over forever.

  Still, my mind insisted on chasing around one question. “What are you supposed to be? I mean, I understood when you were a policeman, that sort of made sense, with the legal contract and everything. But that?” I gestured toward the sweater, the indecently short skirt. “Who are you?”

  She clicked her tongue in exasperation and sighed before blinking seven coats of mascara in my general direction. “I’m an actress? Auditioning for a role?”

  “In what show?” I asked with a queasy fascination.

  “High School Musical 7? Senior year of college?” She ruffled her pom-poms beneath my nose. I didn’t know where to start, telling her everything that was wrong with that, starting with the fact that there wasn’t any such show on the bulletin board downstairs. Instead, I glanced at my watch. Seven minutes before my own audition. Not that I was cutting things close or anything.

  I had to accept that my can-do policeman genie was gone. I was stuck with this sexpot—love her or leave her. I swallowed hard and tried to ignore the sickening sweet smell of bubble gum. My voice shook a little when I said, “You told me to call you when I was ready to make a wish.”

  “Yes?” she said. Immediately, a sharp edge cut beneath the slutty cheerleader parody.

  “I need your help for my audition. I need to sing and dance like a star.”

  An avaricious gleam leaped into Teel’s green eyes. “I can do that. What are your other two wishes?”

  “Three,” I said, immediately wondering if Teel was putting me on. “My other three wishes.” Was this cheerleader babe really the same genie as my policeman?

  She shook her head strenuously enough that her ponytail almost took out an eye. Her pom-poms rustled as they settled on her hips. “One—singing? Two—dancing?” She clicked her tongue in exasperation at my apparently poor math skills. “That leaves two more?”

  “Singing and dancing are one wish! They’re for the same goal, for getting into the same show.”

  Teel cracked her gum loudly enough that I jumped. “No way. Singing is totally different from dancing? Think of all those opera singers? Ninety-seven out of one hundred opera singers? They wouldn’t know a tap combination if they stumbled into it?”

  I was suspicious about my genie keeping accurate statistics about opera. I lashed back. “This isn’t opera! It’s musical theater! Singing and dancing naturally go together!”

  Teel set her hands on her hips, making the letter on her sweater even more, um, prominent than it had been. “Look, who’s the genie here? Which one of us knows the rules? I’m telling you, you’re asking for two separate wishes.” She glared at me when I stayed silent, then huffed an exasperated sigh. “Fine. Are you invoking your arbitration clause?”

  Like I had time for arbitration. I glanced frantically at my watch. Four minutes.

  “Okay,” I said. “Two wishes.” What did it really matter? I’d assumed, when I first heard the word genie, that I’d be getting three, anyway. So, if I spent two here, I’d still have two left, pretty much like I’d planned it. Or imagined it, in any case—I hadn’t planned any of this. “Singing and dancing,” I prompted as she twirled the end of her ponytail around her finger. “Um, could you hurry up? I’ve got to be back out there when they call my name.”

  “All requests? They have to be phrased in the form of a wish? Nine out of ten wishers? They don’t even think about that?” Her annoying uptalk was twisted with just a hint of gloating. She knew that she’d won our argument.

  Form of a wish? What sort of idiotic, controlling… I cut off my mental tirade. There were rules all over—rules for serving overpriced catered dinners to wealthy society matrons, rules for breaking up with boyfriends, rules for completing a union audition for a musical that might be the precise ticket I’d been looking for, ever since I arrived in New York.

  “Fine,” I said. “I wish that I could sing and dance. I mean, sing and dance better than I already can. Well enough to get a role in a Broadway play, well enough to get a role in—”

  The cheerleader jutted out her hip and sighed in exasperation, effectively cutting off my explanation. “Are you going to go on all day? You’re the one who was complaining—”

  I did my own cutting off. “Fine! Go ahead! I only have—”

  I started to check my watch, but Teel had already transferred her pom-poms to her left hand. “As you wish,” she said, making the words a surprisingly declarative sentence. She raised her right fingers toward her ear, clutched the lobe tightly and pulled twice.

  The forc
e of the wish leaped from my genie to me, like a bolt of lightning jumping from a thunderhead to the ground. The jangle of power was every bit as strong as when I’d first freed Teel from her lamp. It knocked the breath out of my lungs and raised the tiny hairs on my arms. I would have staggered back, but the sink was still pressing against the backs of my legs.

  As quickly as the power had assaulted me, it was gone.

  I swallowed hard, testing my throat for some difference, for some magical musical ability that hadn’t existed a heartbeat before. Nothing. I stumbled forward, expecting some arcane grace to guide my feet into a smooth arc. Nothing there, either.

  “Teel!” I shouted.

  “No time,” she said. “You have to get to your audition?” She held up her tattooed wrist, as if a watch face could be seen amid the flames. “You’re down to two minutes? No, one minute?”

  “Teel—” I started again, furious that there wasn’t a dulcet tone of perfect singing ability behind my command. There wasn’t a more resonant timbre, a clearer musical note. There wasn’t anything.

  Ignoring my protest, my slutty cheerleader genie shook her pom-poms. “Ready? Okay! Go, Erin, go,” she chanted, shimmying along with her red-and-white plastic puffs. “Fire up tonight! All the way to victory, fight, Erin, fight!”

  I grimaced at the absurdity of the cheer and turned on my heel. I didn’t have time to fight with her, didn’t have a second to spare to argue my case. I’d follow through on—what had she called it? Arbitration?—as soon as I completed what was about to be the most disastrous audition of my life.

  Race-walking down the corridor, I prayed that I hadn’t wasted too much time. I got back to the audition room just as the monitor called my name. “Here!” I said, filling my voice with mock good cheer. Despair clutched at my belly—my voice sounded the same as always. Good. Solid. But not Broadway-bold. Not at all.

  Stepping into the room, I threw my shoulders back and lifted my chin. I quickly crossed my fingers, and muttered my own “Just this once” mantra. I mean, if Teel was going to shortchange me, I had to rely on my own rituals to pull me through.

  I forced a confident smile to my lips and crossed the room to the accompanist’s upright piano. I handed him my sheet music, waiting for his easy nod before I turned to the trio of directors who waited in their uncomfortable chairs. I tried not to pay attention to the discarded coffee cups by their feet, to the crumpled wrappers from cookies and candy bars. They’d obviously had a long day already, and my audition was only making it longer.

  “My name is Erin Hollister,” I said, fighting down tears as I confirmed that my voice sounded exactly the way it always had. “I’m singing ‘Love Changes Everything’ from Aspects of Love.”

  The accompanist waited for me to take a full breath. He brought his fingers down in a bright chord, then nodded for me to start. “‘Love,’” I sang the first word.

  And I almost stopped singing.

  The sound that flowed out of my throat was like nothing I’d ever heard before. Certainly, it was like nothing I’d ever produced before. The note was huge, full-bodied. It filled my chest and soared out of my mouth like a brilliant, perfect bubble. I sang the rest of the line, and each syllable held its own, captivating, drawing the directors forward on their chairs.

  The full power of a Wurlitzer organ pumped behind my voice. My breath control was something that opera divas only dreamed of. The lyrics swelled inside me, took on a vibrant life of their own. The accompanist sifted his piano notes beneath my sung ones, keeping pace as the song built, as it became an anthem about the power of hopeless, helpless love.

  I knew that I would be cut off after a few lines. All actors were cut off after a few lines.

  But they let me keep on singing. They let me finish the entire first verse. And the second. I modulated keys perfectly, belted out the dramatic third verse. I hit the highest note, drew out the word flame as if my entire soul depended on my ability to embrace the word, to wrap myself inside it, myself, and everyone else in that audition room.

  I couldn’t believe it. No one ever finished a song in audition. Certainly, I had never finished a song in audition. I’d never sung like that in my life. I wanted to run over to the piano, to beg the accompanist to play something else, anything, so that I could further explore my new voice.

  In fact, I barely resisted the urge to press my fingers together, to summon Teel into the room, then and there. I wanted to thank her, to apologize, to tell her that I’d been wrong, that I never should have doubted her, never should have suspected her of shortchanging me on my wish.

  Of course, I wasn’t going to do that. I wasn’t going to give the slightest sign that my performance was anything out of the ordinary. Me? Oh, yes, I sing like that in the shower. Just a little show tune, here and there. Self-taught, I am. Humble, singing me.

  “Thank you,” one of the women said, her voice warm and sincere. “If you could just head upstairs, Ms. Hollister. The dance auditions are in room 401.”

  “Thank you,” I said, adding a fervent nod and a grin toward the accompanist.

  I almost fainted when I discovered that wish-supported dancing was a hundred times better than wish-supported singing. With singing, I was building on a talent I’d always had, at least a little bit. I’d glimpsed moments of perfect song before, those brief instants when a piece was precisely in my range, when I grabbed hold of the lyrics and belted them out with all the power of Barbra Streisand.

  I’d never had that sort of luck with dancing. I’d stumbled through a half dozen professional dance auditions before, but I’d always known that others would be chosen for those roles.

  As I took my place with seven other hopefuls, my toes tingled with post-Teel anticipation. The dance captain showed us a tricky combination, one that started out simply enough, but ended with a syncopated shuffle that left half my group shaking their heads in perplexed frustration. As soon as I flexed my knees, though, my body knew precisely what it was supposed to do. I copied the dance captain as if my limbs were tied to his. I matched the exact set of his hands, held my head at the precise angle. My feet executed the steps as if they’d known them forever, as if I just happened to skip through them every single morning on my way out the front door.

  The director and producers talked quietly among themselves, then sent three girls home. They had the rest of us work through another combination. Two more of my would-be competitors left. We three who remained danced a third combination. A fourth, and we were all finally excused from the room with a curt, “We’ll be in touch.”

  I knew that I should be gasping for breath—feeling the effects of both physical exertion and anxiety about the audition. My body, though, had been completely transformed by Teel’s electric jolt. My genie might have looked like a cheerleader, but she was actually a bioengineer, a scientist, a miracle worker. My heart beat just a fraction faster than normal. My lungs expanded and contracted like they’d done nothing out of the ordinary. Every fiber of my body was ready, all systems were go.

  Standing in the hallway, I caught the envious glances of the other dancers, their quick judgment barely masked by ingratiating smiles. We all agreed that the dance captain had been a sadist, that he could have shown the steps more slowly, demonstrated them with greater care.

  I took my time straightening my tote bag, pretending that I was searching for my cell phone somewhere in its cavernous depth. In reality, I just wanted the other dancers to go on ahead. I wanted to walk down all four flights of stairs by myself, to race down them. I wanted to feel the metal railing skim beneath my fingertips.

  I could still sense the flawless physical knowledge that had possessed my body. I could still feel the matchless swell of music in my chest. With Teel’s assistance, my audition had been perfect.

  Now I just had to wait for the casting director to call.

  CHAPTER 5

  BY EIGHT O’CLOCK, my enthusiasm about the audition had been replaced by a vague feeling of dread. I had spent a rid
iculous amount of time in my apartment, trying on every item of clothing that I owned, trying to choose the perfect outfit for my meeting with Sam.

  I finally settled on an ice-blue silk blouse that Amy had given me for Christmas the year before. I chose it as a conscious reminder of what my sister would say if she were sitting beside me. In the past week, Amy had become a charter member of the “kick Sam’s ass to the curb” club. She was fierce as a tigress when her loved ones were threatened. She’d always been my biggest defender, but her protectiveness had trebled after our parents’ death. “He’s dead wood,” she’d told me more than once during the past week. “You’ve got to disincentivize him from calling you again. You should have downsized a long time ago.”

  I loved Amy, but I was looking forward to her graduation from business school. Maybe, then, she’d speak English again.

  Glancing out my bedroom window, I could tell that storm clouds were on the horizon—literal ones, not figments of my sometimes overactive imagination. I shrugged on a lightweight rain jacket. Better safe than sorry.

  I was halfway to the elevator when I realized that I hadn’t watered the peace lily sitting on my kitchen counter. I’d had it for three days. I’d promised to water it twice a week, as I worked through my first milestone of the Master Plan.

  Three days. What plant needed water every three days? Besides, Amy had assured me that it would let me know when it needed watering. She’d promised that the leaves would droop just a little bit, that it would clearly indicate when it was thirsty.

  I was only looking for an excuse to avoid Sam. I was only trying to delay the inevitable. The plant could wait.

  I took a deep breath and headed downstairs, arriving at Garden Variety about five minutes after eight. Stylishly late—that was me. This time, Timothy wasn’t waiting in the courtyard. A roll of thunder sounded as I ducked inside the restaurant. I tried not to take that as an omen.