Chapter 5 On Stage

Vera's POV

The lights are blinding, a harsh spotlight that feels like an interrogation. I stand dead center on the stage, number 23 pinned crookedly to my blouse, and for a moment I feel like the smallest person in the universe. The hall is bigger than I imagined, rows of faces dissolving into shadows beyond the first few seats. My palms are slick, my throat feels like sandpaper, and my heart beats a frantic, unsteady rhythm against my ribs. It's a sound I know too well, the soundtrack to every one of my panic attacks, every failed attempt, every moment of doubt that has ever consumed me.

"Name?" the woman at the microphone asks, her voice crisp and professional.

I swallow hard, the movement a painful scrape in my throat. "Vera Kingsley." My voice trembles, a fragile thing I can barely recognize as my own. It sounds so small, so utterly out of place in this vast, echoing space.

The panel of judges sit in a neat line at the front, their pens poised, expressions unreadable. They are a wall of silent judgment, and I can almost feel their collective gaze weighing on me. One of them, a man with dark hair, lean, composed, meets my eyes for a flicker of a second. Something about his gaze, something steady and almost... familiar, steadies me. It's not pity, not judgment. Just a quiet, focused attention. I drag in a breath, and for the first time since I walked onto this stage, it feels like enough air.

"You may begin," the head judge says, her tone brisk and final.

The accompanist nods, a slight, encouraging smile on his face, fingers poised over the keys. The first note spills out, soft and low, a single drop of sound in a sea of silence, and I open my mouth.

The nerves don't vanish, but something shifts. It's like a switch is flipped deep inside me. Music is muscle memory, it's oxygen, it's the only language I've ever trusted. It's the refuge I've always run to, the one place where I'm not the awkward cashier, the quiet neighbor, the girl who keeps her head down. My voice finds the melody and grows stronger with each bar, rising, breaking, then soaring again. For a moment, I stop being the awkward cashier in a corner store uniform, the girl who hides in her rented apartment at night. I stop being the version of Vera that no one believes in, not even me. For a moment, I am only this voice.

The world outside that moment, my dripping clothes, my ruined makeup, my gnawing doubts, the long bus ride here in the pouring rain, the disapproving looks from the other contestants, the sheer, paralyzing terror, disappears. It all dissolves into the background, a hazy, unimportant memory.

For three minutes, I belong.

Every word of the song feels like it has teeth, digging out pieces of me I didn't know I'd hidden. The lyrics weren't mine, but they might as well have been. They spoke of falling and clawing back up, of breaking but refusing to stay broken. I could almost feel my chest split open as I sang them, not because I wanted to impress the judges, but because I had to. It was a compulsion, a necessity. I needed them to know, this is all I have. This is me. This voice is my entire life story compressed into a few minutes, a chronicle of every stumble and every desperate stand.

When the final note fades, there's a deafening silence. My chest heaves, my fingers tremble, but I don't look away. I hold my ground, even as the stage lights seem to grow hotter, even as I feel the last of my resolve beginning to fray. I have given everything, and now there is nothing left to do but wait.

Then, applause. Scattered at first, a few claps from the back, then swelling, growing louder and more confident, a wave of sound washing over me.

I bow quickly, too quickly, a clumsy, jerky motion, and hurry offstage before my knees give out. My heart pounds, a wild, joyful drumbeat, but for once, it's not just from fear. Something electric hums in my veins, a new and intoxicating sensation. It feels like possibility.

I catch my reflection in a side mirror as I slip backstage, my face flushed, strands of hair sticking damp to my forehead. I look... alive. Different. The pale, drawn face I see in the morning is gone, replaced by a radiant glow. For the first time in a long time, I don't look like someone simply surviving. I look like someone reaching. I look like I have a destination in mind, a goal I can finally touch.

Maybe... maybe I did it. Maybe this wasn't just a delusion, a pipe dream, a foolish hope. Maybe this was the beginning of something real. The first step on a new path, away from the life I was sure I was trapped in forever.

David's POV

I've sat through nearly forty auditions today, and my mind feels like a cluttered attic. I'm tired, I'm hungry, and the constant stream of hopefuls, each with their own brand of practiced desperation, has numbed my senses. Most of them blur together; shaky voices, half-formed stage presence, the occasional spark that dies out before it really catches fire. I've trained myself to keep my face neutral, to hear potential where others might only hear nerves, to sift through the static for a signal.

And then number twenty-three walked in.

At first, she looked like she'd been dragged through a storm, literally. Her clothes clung damp to her frame, her hair was slightly flattened, and her eyes were wide as if the stage itself might swallow her whole. She clutched a worn-out leather satchel to her side, a desperate shield against the world. I almost braced myself for another strained, forgettable performance, another singer who had mistaken a hobby for a calling.

But then she sang.

And suddenly the room shifted. It was a palpable change in the air, a collective intake of breath. The other judges paused their scribbling. The nervous energy in the hall, the low hum of conversation, all of it fell away, replaced by a profound silence.

Her voice wasn't flawless. It cracked in places, trembled here and there. But it had something most people couldn't fake-truth. There was grit underneath the silk, a rawness that made you lean forward instead of tuning out. Her eyes, when she finally stopped shaking, lit with something fierce. It wasn't polish-it was hunger. A deep, consuming, all or nothing hunger.

I know hunger when I see it. It's a language I am fluent in.

It reminded me of myself, years ago, when music was the only rope I could hold on to, the only thing that kept me from falling apart. When no one believed in me, when I was living on ramen and chasing a dream everyone else called foolish. I refused to let go, because that dream was the only thing I had.

Most singers come here rehearsed, armored, desperate to present the best, most perfect version of themselves. They have their stories memorized, their emotional beats planned. She came here cracked, unsure, but real. And that's rare. That's the kind of thing you can't manufacture in a studio or coach into someone later. Either it's there or it isn't. It's the difference between a copy and an original, between a polished stone and a rough, uncut diamond.

The head judge scribbled something on her paper. Another tapped his pen thoughtfully, his gaze fixed on the girl on stage. They saw the potential, the rough edges that could be smoothed out, the notes that could be perfected.

But me? I didn't write right away. I watched her. I watched how she took that bow too quickly, as though she didn't believe she deserved the applause. Watched how she fled the stage like a thief stealing a chance she thought wasn't hers, her shoulders hunched, her head bowed. She had just given a performance that silenced a room, and she left the stage as though she had committed a crime.

And for reasons I can't quite explain, I wanted to stop her. To tell her she belonged up there. That with the right guidance, she could shine brighter than anyone else in this hall. I wanted to tell her that every single person in that room felt the same thing I did, that her performance was a gift, not a moment of shame.

Maybe it was just instinct, the kind you develop after years in this business. I've coached enough voices to know when one carries weight, when it holds more than notes-when it carries a story. And she did. Every line she sang felt like it had lived in her, a part of her DNA. There's a danger in that kind of rawness-it can eat you alive if no one helps you harness it. But if it's guided? It can move mountains. It can change lives.

As a coach, I saw potential. A voice that could become a legend, a talent that needed only a steady hand to reach its full power.

As a man, I saw... something else. Something I shouldn't dwell on. Something that made my heart ache with a strange, protective longing. It wasn't attraction, not exactly, maybe not yet. It was... recognition. Like watching a younger version of myself clawing for a lifeline. Like watching a spark I knew could either become a wildfire or burn itself out.

I cleared my throat, forced my pen to move across the page, my hand steadying as I wrote. But when her name landed on the shortlist, I knew it wasn't just chance.

It was destiny.

It was a beginning.