There’s a reason Charlie is largely considered the best singer in the school. Her voice is like the love child of Adele and Halsey, ensnaring everyone within hearing distance and rendering them completely powerless. The first time I heard her, we were fourteen and had known each other a week, though it felt like longer. It felt like a lifetime. We were in her room, and I’d joked that she was like one of those Sirens from The Odyssey. She’d smiled, almost shyly, and started singing some old song from some old movie, her voice all silk and sultry folk.
Go to sleep you little babe
Go to sleep you little babe
You and me and the devil makes three
Don’t need no other lovin’ baby
I nearly died then and I’m nearly dying now.
I wanted to kiss her then and I want to kiss her now. Do something wild, anything, everything, to match what this song and her words are doing to my blood right now. Scream and run with my fingers catching the air until I collapse.
Her song wraps up, a vehement slamming of her pick over the guitar strings, and the rich sound echoes through the room.
The crowd erupts.
I mean, it absolutely explodes.
I raise my hands in the air, clapping along with everyone, bouncing on my tiptoes and willing her to look at me. She smiles and gives the audience the subtlest of bows, all elegant composure and heaving breaths. Right before she turns away to walk off stage, her eyes find mine. She winks. Actually winks and I can’t help but laugh, something giddy and girlish bubbling into my chest.
The audience doesn’t quiet down once she leaves the stage. They’re not really cheering for her anymore, but there’s this restlessness in the crowd now. An expectation or a wanting—?I don’t know. My own fingertips buzz with impatience and I crane my neck around bodies and toward the stage door, waiting for Charlie to come out.
Needing her to come out.
I head toward the door, barely noticing the blaring multitude. Finally, I spot her dark head and smooth shoulders, a smile on her lips. When she spots me, her smile widens and she waves, moving toward me. She stops every couple of steps to talk, everyone wanting to tell her how amazing she is.
“Hey, oh my god,” she says when she reaches me, raking both hands through her hair, making it almost comically tall. “This is wild, right?”
“Yeah. You were amazing.” My words seem so paltry, so small. But along with all of this energy, there’s a shyness, too. I get it every damn time she sings. I’m not sure if it’s awe or envy or a little bit of both.
“Yeah?” she asks.
“Oh my god, yes.”
“You don’t think it was too—”
I cut her off by taking her hands. Her hands always fit so perfectly in mine. “Seriously, Charlie. That . . . you . . . just blew me away. You blew everyone in this room away.”
Color floods her cheeks.
“That song,” I go on, and her smile grows wider. “Beautiful. No, beautiful isn’t even the right word. I don’t think there is a word for what that song was.”
“Really?”
“Really. How did it feel?”
She sighs, her eyes fluttering closed for a split second. “Perfect.”
“Yeah? It was a good voice day?”
She breaks into another huge smile. “It was. It felt so right, Mara. And it just felt so damn good that it felt right, you know?”
I nod, squeezing her hands. Charlie vacillates between loving and despising her voice. Some days, she says her voice feels like her, expresses what she wants, sounds beautiful and unique in her ears. Other days, it’s too high or too clear or not gritty enough.
“It just doesn’t feel like me,” she told me one sunny afternoon in tenth grade. She was working on a song for her vocal teacher, frustration pushing tears into her eyes that she refused to let fall.
“I’m glad,” I say now.
