Jeffrey, Baritone

“Your name?” Samuel asked.

The boy wore black skinny jeans that were somehow too big on him and a faded black t-shirt featuring some obscure 80’s band. Beneath his shaggy black hair (he was obviously due for a haircut) he had thick-rimmed glasses, and Samuel was quite sure the boy had not made proper eye-contact the entire ten seconds he’d been onstage. Wasn’t there some sort of pre-screening process by underlings? The mite looked terrified beneath the bright lights, standing before a crowd of thousands.

“Jeffrey,” the boy said. His voice was soft, almost inaudible even with a microphone.

Samuel twirled his pen, the gesture impatient. “All right, Jeffrey, and what are you going to do for us today?”

His response was a mumble.

“Pardon?” Samuel asked.

Jeffrey cleared his throat. “I’m going to sing,” he said.

The Celandine and Ben cast Samuel dubious looks, but he nodded. “All right. Take it away.”

Jeffrey lifted a hand in an awkward gesture, likely to signal someone to start his chosen music, and then something happened. He uncurled his shoulders and stood up straighter, lifted his head, and for the first time the judges could see that he had a pleasant face, a wide-lipped mouth curved in the faintest smile, a strong, solid jaw-line. When the music poured over the speakers, Samuel raised his eyebrows. He’d been expecting melancholy electric guitars, not orchestral strains.

And then Jeffrey began to sing. Samuel dropped his pen. He hadn’t expected a voice that deep and powerful to come out of such a skinny boy, but he had perfect pitch and enunciated as if he’d been born speaking Italian. He scaled the notes with breathtaking ease as if he were simply speaking, and he sailed through the tricky syllables without tripping once. Impossible. It took years of training to be able to sing like this, didn’t it?

Whenever Jeffrey hit a particularly impossible note, the audience roared, and Samuel felt something spark in his blood. Whoever had decided to let this skinny moppet onstage had discovered something special; Samuel suspected the lads in the wings were smirking then and there.

Samuel held his breath, nervous, waiting, because that last note was the hardest to hit, the easiest to ruin, and then behind him, the audience was on its feet as Jeffrey hit that final, magical note and took it to the rafters. Beside Samuel, Celandine was crying.

Then the music faded, and the audience kept roaring, and Jeffrey seemed to shrink back in on himself, hunching his shoulders, jamming his hands into his pockets. He stepped back from the mic, and Samuel realized he was getting ready to bolt offstage, so he spoke.

“Where did you learn to do that?”

Jeffrey shrugged, clearly uneasy. “My grandmother always listens to opera music. I like to sing along sometimes.”

Samuel suspected there were two sides to this boy, and he’d just seen the best and the worst in turn.

(498 words)