Let My Heart Rest In Pieces

Let My Heart Rest In Pieces 080

Star Of The Show

“This is going to be the best day in history.”

Mr. Smith gave me an unenthusiastic look when he turned his head to me, for only a moment, before going back to staring at the road. Moments before, he had told me to stop bouncing in the seat. I had done what he had said—only for a moment. As of right now, I was bouncing around the whole passenger side of the car from the giddiness bubbling inside my chest.

“Honestly, you girls are all the same. Tamara acted the same way yesterday. It’s just dresses.”

I gasped and put a hand over my mouth and was so shocked that I had stopped bouncing. I glared at my gorgeous teacher and huffed.

“There is no such thing as just dresses! Because this place is so huge and amazing, they’re going to give us the best dresses. And it’s all free!”

“Again, just dresses,” the man concluded, shaking his head and moving some of his silky black hair.

“What kind of gay man are you?”

It was Mr. Smith’s turn to act all offended, though he couldn’t hide the smile that tilted his lips. “Not the average kind. Only the really feminine ones enjoy shopping.”

For the rest of the car ride to the Performing Arts Center, my teacher and I sat in silence; mostly because I was deflated, but still excited about creating my own outfits.

Because the Arts Center was a big deal in this town—a place where the best of the best actually played, and where the richest came for entertainment—the owners expected every performance to look the part. Since we were only teenagers, they didn’t expect Tamara and I to provide our own clothes. So they were picking up the bill for us.

We even got to keep the dresses, which was a huge bonus that I was not about to complain about.

When the two of us finally found ourselves in front of the building, I almost jumped out of the car as it was moving. But I restrained myself and stepped out of the vehicle like the dignified person I was. Not.

“Alright, follow me and we’ll be in the dressing rooms. They have a couple racks you can choose from. If you like a dress but it doesn’t fit you quite right, they will send it out for alterations. But please, just try not to make this as painful as Tamara did.”

“Hey, she had to choose five different outfits. That’s a hard job.”

The man rolled his blue eyes unsympathetically. “I am sure.”

I didn’t make any more sarcastic remarks to my teacher as we entered the center, not wanting to put on an unprofessional air before I even got to perform. I didn’t have to worry about making a fool of myself, however, when I saw the sizes of the whole auditorium, if you could even call it that anymore.

To me, this place was bigger than Broadway. The stage was huge, leaving enough room for three full sized bands to create music at the same time. How Tamara or I were going to fill it was confusing, but I let that leave my mind.

The design of the place had a very old effect, like something you would have found before there was electricity. The seats were a popping read color, and there were thousands of them on the floor. Don’t even get me started on the balcony seats and the box seats. The whole place was overwhelming and I wondered if I looked like an ant compared to all of this.

“Wow,” was the only thing I could say to sum this all up.

Mr. Smith looked back at me with a genuine smile on his face, one that said that my shock was similar to something he had seen before. “Yeah, wow.”

It took me a second, but I followed him as he started heading towards the side of the stage where a small staircase would allow us onto the showcase. My mind was in such a blur that we were in the dressing room in front of what seemed like hundreds of dresses in seconds.

“How could you not expect us to take forever? There are so many choices!” I shouted, glaring.

“Is it really that hard?”

“Men don’t understand how important this is,” a woman’s voice said, coming in from the door we had just entered. I turned around to see a tall woman standing there, her light brown hair piled on top of her head and a kind smile on her face. I smiled back at her and nodded at her statement.

“I’m Sarah, the coordinator of all changes for our upcoming show, so I’m here to help you.”

“So you’re going to help me dig through all of these dresses?” I asked her with relief in my voice.

“That I am,” she said with a laugh, her smile growing wider, “And I think I already have some dresses in mind for you. Trust me, I’ve seen every single one of these.”

“While you two go do that, I’ll go talk to the music director about the girl’s songs.”

Sarah and I both rolled our eyes as the male left, knowing full well he was going to use any excuse to get out of the room and do “manly” things. It wasn’t really that bad doing this, was it? I didn’t know, because I wasn’t a guy.

“You’re the girl with just three songs, right?” Sarah asked me, looking down at the clipboard she held in her arms. I only nodded and she smiled at me.

“They are all beautiful songs; I can’t wait to hear them.”

“It was really hard picking them, Tamara must have had a hard time seeing as she gets to sing five. I can’t wait to hear what she picked.”

“You don’t know what she picked?”

While she asked me the questions, I started looking through the first rack, noticing that finding the perfect dress for each song might be a little harder than I thought it would be. “No, Mr. Smith thought it was best that we don’t know what was going on between each other. We’re both going to be watching the other perform, and he would rather it be like we were in the audiences shoes.”

“I have to say, that is a good idea,” she said with a nod, moving passed me to grab to dresses from the second rack. I didn’t question her taste, just kept moving through the line. By the time I had made it to the third rack, Sarah had six dresses draped over her arm, ready for me to try them on.

“I’m a professional when it comes to this, so I think these should be good,” she told me with a grin, throwing them my way. I caught them all, and looking at them, saw promise.

Unfortunately, I had only picked two out of the seven to actually wear. The other four didn’t seem right. And after thirty more minutes of trying to find the third one, we were becoming frustrated.

“It’s just… the first song is something extremely casual, nothing that these dresses could really represent. They are gorgeous, but I don’t need a gown, I just need something simple.”

Sarah pondered on that thought for a while, settling us in silence. A second later, she snapped her fingers and stood up straighter. She told me to stay right where I was, and without giving me a chance to say anything, dashed out of the room and slammed the door closed behind her. I was left there flabbergasted.

Sarah was a real character.

Mr. Smith poked his head in soon after, his eyes curious though I could tell he was bored. “Are you almost done?”

“Yeah, I just need one more outfit for the first song. I told Sarah that nothing in here fit it right, then she got an idea and ran out of here.”

“It sounds like her,” he admitted, fully entering the room and plopping himself down in a stool. He looked over the dresses that were hanging on the back side of the door, waiting to be put in protective bags, and nodded his head in approval.

“Those look good. Did you have fun picking out the shoes to go with them?”

A wicked grin came to my face when he said that and I nodded my head over and over again.

“Shoes are the best part. It makes me sad that I can’t keep them, though.”

“Shoes are harder to come by in this place, so they’d rather get the dresses out of here, which will got out of style much sooner than the shoes.”

Just at that moment, Sarah burst back through the door and stuffed the outfit into my arms, almost making me fall over at the aggressiveness, as well as trying not to drop anything she had given me.

“These are really special. Well, not special like we can’t get more, but dressing up this way is a special case. It’s not all fancy like they want, but the boss man approved of it. Go, try it on!”

I was shoved into the dressing room—man she could be pushy—and was left to just get into the outfit designated for me. It didn’t take too long, and as I looked at it in the mirror, I knew that it was absolutely perfect.

“Sarah, I love you!” I shouted, jumping out of the room to give her a hug. She laugh full heartedly and gave me a look over, my teacher doing the same.

“It works, but if you were an audience member, you’d be kicked out in a flat second.”

“Good thing I’m the start of the show,” I teased to the man.

“No, that would be Tamara.”

“You’re so mean!”