It’s the white noise – the shuffling, murmuring of faceless people, the steady buzz of sound equipment, the hum of the lights, and the bright click of his footsteps as he takes center stage – that is his undoing. Fear bubbles up acidic and sharp from the pit of his stomach and he can’t seem to swallow around the lump lodged in his esophagus. He inhales sharply, hand rising to block the glare of the too bright artificial lights, as he sinks down onto the black stool. Sweat traces a slow path between his shoulder blades and beads on his forehead. His hands shake as he settles the beat up guitar across his lap. It shields him like a baby blanket protecting him from the demons of the past and the fears of the future. He is comfortable like this – right leg balancing on the bottom rung of the stool, guitar cradled against torso, shoulders falling forward (screw proper posture), hands finding home on the strings. Eyes dart to the wings of the stage quickly taking in the barely there silhouettes of the people waiting for him before returning to the sea of unknown people and closing. He inhales slowly through his nose until his lungs fill to capacity, hesitates, and then releases the burning air in a steady swoosh. He repeats; willing his pulse to following the slowness of the established rhythm. Even before his eyes opens, his fingers begin to shape the opening chords in a mess of muscle memory and the need to play his song within the vastness of white noise. It’s a slow song, a ballad, which hangs heavy of the edge of the stage in a hazy ebb and flow of notes and slide of fingers. It scares him how easy it is to let the song take over. How it throbs through his tendons and ligaments leaving him breathless, rejuvenated, and wanting more. It shudders through him electric, hot, pulsating potential energy that needs to be expressed, needs release. So he opens his eyes, smiles, and starts to sing.

It starts with a conversation, a telling of a plan, really, during a momentary lapse in the B-movie zombie marathon that he and one of his best friends were partaking in on a Friday night near the middle of May. He is currently sprawled face down on the cream carpet too lazy to move the few feet necessary to switch to a new movie ignoring the looping measures of the theme song playing in the background of the menu screen.

“So what happened between you and Charlie?” Asked the boy stretched out on the couch, wholly black converse draped off the end of the couch, idly throwing left over popcorn cornels at his back.

He sighed. “What do you mean, Nick?”

“She has been rather . . . touchy lately,” Nick shrugged tiring of his popcorn attack and refocusing his attention on the glossy pages of Paste magazine.

“And you automatically assume that it has to do with me.” He rolled over ignoring the crunch of popcorn under his back. “Nothing happened between Charlotte and me. Thank you very much.”

They fall back into a comfortable sort of silence. One that is almost a necessity for a lazy Friday night spent with someone who knows you better than you know yourself. He throws an arm over his eyes and refocuses on drowning out the annoying, too loud theme music flowing from the television and the steady swish of turning pages.

“Blaine,” Nick called, all long, loose syllables, tone fluctuating as he draws out the name. The boy on the floor hums his response. “So you really don’t think that it is weird that she’s not here tonight?”

“No,” he says slowly cracking an eye open and staring up at the boy on the couch who had twisted onto his stomach. “She is probably busy.”

He buries himself in the comfortable familiarity of the restored silence. Nick shuffles on the couch before wandering into the kitchen in long, lazy strides and then returning with a cold soda gripped in his hands.

A toe is shoved under is ribs. “Go away Nick.”

“What’cha humming?” Nick didn’t move except to wiggle his toes, nudging them harder into his side.

“A chord progression that is stuck in my head,” Blaine shrugged swatting at the offensive leg that is still wedged between the floor and his side.

“So here is the deal,” the toe disappears only to be replaced by the whack of the magazine hitting his chest. “Turn to page fifty-three, please.”

Blaine squints in a half-hearted glare, “Was that really necessary?”

“Yes. Now shut up.” He said, eyes rolling. “So this is what I am thinking.”

“I really don’t think that I need to or want to know what you are thinking.” Blaine said rolling onto his stomach.

Nick nudged his side again. “Page fifty-three, now, please.”

He casually flipped through the magazine stopping at some of the bright advertisements. “Why?”

“Blaine, just do it.” Nick paused until he heard the rapid succession of turning pages hands automatically rising to quell any sort of foreseeable argument. “Before you say anything, it is not American Idol. It’s a contest for singer/song writers in which the winner ends up with a three CD recording contract with Major Riff Records whom, if I may add, is known for finding up and coming indie artists.”

Blaine sat up, legs folding underneath him, shoulders squaring, magazine held taught between two clenching hands. He remained quiet, eyes darting over the black type face, jaw dropping slightly as he processes, “Why . . . why do you even consider this a good idea?”

Nick shrugged, falling back onto the couch, eyes closing. “Music is your life. You are so incredibly talented. Take your pick.”

“Come on, man, you can’t be serious.” He said, scrubbing a hand down his face, the magazine flopping limply to the ground. “What record company is going to take a sixteen-year-old seriously?"

“What do you have to lose?” Nick asked, settling into the couch.

“My dignity,” he snorted, “Or, maybe, what little bit of social standing that I have been able to scrap together at school.”

“Nope, not good enough. Besides you could do with a kick in the ass every now and then. Keeps you grounded.” He said, hands rising to dismiss the excuses immediately. “Look, all you have to do is show up and sing. Life goes on whether or not you make it the next round. It’s really not a big deal.”

“You are not going to let me say no, are you?” He groaned, flopping onto his back once more.

“My plan actually involved kidnapping you,” Nick shrugged, casually picking at his cuticles, “but Charlie thought you should be informed prior to next Saturday. Hence, this conversation we are having.”

“I hate you, Duvall. And Charlie, too,” He sighed his defeat.

“You love me.” He grinned making his way to finally change the DVD. “So are you going to tell me what you and Charlie are fighting about?”

Blaine groans and the taller boy laughs until the dramatic swells of opening music drowns him out.

He bounces. It’s that knee jerking, finger drumming, lip-gnawing kind of frantic energy that drives everyone crazy but even the glaring threats of the people in his vicinity (friends included) does nothing to stop him from moving. If he stops, he will be sick. Again. He already has become intimately familiar with the tile pattern in Major Rift’s lobby bathroom. A repeat performance is really not necessary.

“Dude,” Charlie muttered, red hair piled messily on top of her head, hand with bitten finger nails pressing insistently into his knee in an attempt to still the staccato beat of his heel slapping the ground, “You need to chill the fuck out, Blanderson.”

“I really have no idea what you are talking about, Carson.” He said, eyes following another person as they disappear into the conference turned performance room. “I am so incredibly chill, I am practically a freezer.”

Nick snorted from his right side never looking up from his game of Angry Birds that he has been playing studiously, full of muttered threats and curses, for the past couple of hours.”

“Have I told you guys how much I hate you lately?” Blaine asked his silent friends as his stomach gave another turn. His friends chorused their affirmative without sparing him a look. “Good, I just want to reiterate that fact and inform you that, if I were a sociopath, you both would be dead by now.”

The only thing he remembers about the first round of auditions – besides the sleek, monochromatic d�cor of the bathroom – is that they pass him through to the next round with a unanimous vote. He was also starving.

Going home, doing homework, assimilating back into his real life, if only for a short time, is somewhat anticlimactic.
But then the next round arrives and, Jesus Christ, is he still nervous.

Nick and Charlie ban coffee after the second round with Nick muttering, “Six cups, Blaine, six cups. Was that really necessary?”

And Charlie threatening to kill him dead if he didn’t sit still for once. So he resorts to energy drinks which leave his nerves singing fire and his heart beating so fast that he can’t breathe properly. He crashes hard afterwards and they ban all artificial stimulants for the next and every round after that. A Blaine preparedness pack is implemented and organized with bottles of water, toothpaste (he can tell you exactly how many steps and how many seconds it takes to get to the bathroom), and snacks (jelly beans, red vines, skittles) for his friends. It becomes a routine: sit in the modern, geometric orange and chrome hallway for less and less time, sing, and, then, reinsert himself into his regular life. Rinse. Repeat. But then school ends and there are endless days spent sitting at the beach with his guitar planning for a future that hasn’t even been secured yet. It is too easy to picture life after. Too easy to contemplate how much his life has changed and will change. His friends try to tell him not to get his hopes up because there are so many fucking talented people that probably deserve to win more than he does but he is sixteen, almost seventeen, and so close to winning. Then the semifinal round creeps in and he cannot sit still enough to sleep so he plays and plays until his fingers ache and then walks to the beach with his guitar strapped to his back and watches the day blush awake in the horizon. He knows that he looks like hell when he walks into Major Rift that day (Nick also tells him so as a form of greeting when he slides into the car) but, for once, his body is still. There are no unnecessary trips to the bathroom before he slips into the performance room, guitar in hand, and a smile on his face. And he sings. He feels it tingling in his finger tips, cursing through his veins, joyous, up-tempo, and possibly a little frantic (honey let me sing you a song / and listen to my words as they come out wrong / but don’t run away, run away, this time). This feeling, all potential energy crackling through his body, is what he wants to remember regardless of the outcome. He is exhausted by the time he walks out of the room with the judges’ comments ringing in his ears (music has such infectious energy, there is such a maturity to your lyrics that was not expected in a person your age, we are looking forward to seeing you in the finals). Nick and Charlie straighten from their slumped positions as soon as he crashes through the double doors. He stops and stares at them and considers their anxious foreheads with lines etched deep from furrowed eye-brows, the tightness around their eyes as they squint in order to assess the damage, and the barely contained excitement that ripples through their faces.

“Well,” Nick drawled, hands rising to press into his shoulders, grounding him, “what’s the verdict?”

“God, what am I suppose to tell my parents?” He breathed, words tumbling together, arms hanging heavy by his side, guitar leaning against the wall temporarily forgotten. “Fuck.”

“Care to elaborate, Blanderson?” Her words softened by the hand placed between his shoulder blades. Soothing in its weighty warmth.

“I never thought I would get this far so I never told them but I think I need to tell them before the finals, don’t you think?” He rambled. “Oh God. Maybe, I can wait and tell them only if I win and then deal with it.”

“Whoa, wait, cease talking.” Nick said breaking through his dialogue hands slipping to clutch as his biceps shaking him slightly in the process. “You are through to the finals?”

He blinks. “Yes.”

“So you are going to be singing on stage at the Orpheum in two weeks for a chance at a record deal.” Charlie repeated staring up at him, gray eyes wide.

“I am.” He said, slowly, an eye-brow quirking up before drawing down into a frown. “My parents are going to kill me.”

The moment of cognizance comes with owlish eyes and a slackened jaw. “I am singing in the finals at the Orpheum in two weeks.”

Nick and Charlie grin and nod simultaneously, “Yes, you are.”

“God, I am going to be sick,” is the only thing that slips out of his mouth before he is running the fifty-four and a half steps to the bathroom.

His friends are waiting outside the bathroom with a bottle of water and a tube of toothpaste when he finally emerges.

There are two empty seats in the audience at the Orpheum Theater two weeks later when he peeks around the heavy, red velvet curtains and looks out at the crowd settling into their seats for the evening. He didn’t really expect anything else but the actual evidence is much harder to swallow than merely the knowledge of their lack of support. The curtains swish shut as he turns away from the stage. Feet pull him down the darkened maze of hallways that winds through the backstage of the theater until he is alone and can slide down the cool wall and burry his face in his hands. Brian and Elaine Anderson are people governed by tradition and their only son, with his hot pink Wayfarers and his love for the arts, did not fit in their preconceived notions about his life. They did not yell when he explained about his participation in the Make It or Break It competition over grilled Alaskan Salmon, brown rice, and steamed vegetables. The Andersons do not yell. They lecture and he listens to his father ramble on about family image and how his ultra-conservative overseas clients are going to react when they find out that his only son (and heir to the Anderson Corporation) is pursuing an alternative lifestyle while still in high school. He watches as his father drags his fingers over his eyes and downs the rest of his whiskey in one long drag before leaving the dinner table, chair clattering to its side, and retreating to his study. The slamming of the study door and the sharp clink of half finished dishes being cleared by his mother marks the definite end of the conversation. Not another word was said about the potential recording contract until the Wednesday before the finale when his father called him into his study to inform him that signing any sort of contract will result in the forfeit of any and all support from the Anderson family upon completion of high school. There were other stipulations as well but that was the most important one. He was dismissed by a shuffle of papers and left, sparing one last look at the man (black hair graying around the temples, stern frown lines bracketing a mouth that looked unnatural when he smiled, thin wire-framed glasses perched low on his nose) who was only a father in name. His mother, with her brunet hair knotted on top of her hair and diet thin body hidden beneath a boxy black dress, stood rigid, painted mouth quivering, as he passed her and headed up the stairs to his room. A body sliding down the wall startles him back into the present. The wall vibrates cool beneath his cheek when he finally lets his head tip to the side and eyes open.

“They didn’t come.” His voice is rough even in his own ears.

“I know,” she said reaching out to entangle their fingers. “I’m sorry.”

He nods, swallows hard, and releases her hand. “How much longer?”

“About fifteen minutes.” She replied wrapping her arms around her knees. Gray eyes following him as he pushes onto unsteady legs before offering his hand.

He smiles and pulls her to her feet. “It’s time to face the music.”

Arms brush with every other step or so as they retrace their steps in silence with only the rattle of the over the top bass line (probably belonging to the melodramatic, Jesse St. James) making its way into the deserted corridors.

“Hey, Blaine,” she stops him with a hand to his arms right outside the greenroom. “I know that it is kind of last minute but will you play my so – Beautifully – tonight?”

It’s his newest song. He finished it just before he started this whole Make It or Break It quest of self discovery or whatever you want to call it as a way to voice his confusion and, even more so, as an apology.

“Are you sure, Charlie?” He asked closing his eyes against the look of hurt that had chiseled across her face and sank achy and hard into his bones on that night that he sang it to her.

He hasn’t played it since; although, the rhythm sneaks its way into his fingertips especially when his mind is pre-occupied. A certain kind of sadness, or maybe regret, still haunts her face, eyes swimming in watery tides of grays, when caught unguarded and it makes him want to love her so much. But he can’t at least in the way that she needs. A smile works slowly over her features, softening, rearranging into something that is sweetly familiar. It’s a smile that he has come to rely on and, maybe, one that he has unconsciously taken advantage of.

She sighs, a full bodied release of air, before tipping her forehead against his bicep. “I know that I said that it was too personal for you to perform. But, Blaine, you have to know that you are amazing and that song is so incredibly you. How could I possibly stop you from singing something that is a part of you?”

He brushes a thumb across her cheekbone. “I love you. You know that, right?”

“I know.” She straightens, eyes crinkling as she grins at him. “Come on, Blainers, let’s go win this thing.”

Nick and Charlie don’t say anything as he bounces to the rhythm of his heart flipping between his stomach and his throat. They gather around him – a solid presence anchoring him against the swirling motion of too bright lights, humming energy, and rolling applause. Then its time and they are announcing his name and his feet need to move but his brain is not communicating to his limbs and he doesn’t know what to do. A firm hand settles between his shoulder blades and pushes him into motion. He trips onto the stage but its ok because he is there and it does not feel like the end. So he pulls himself onto the stool, takes one last deep breath, opens his eyes, and sings.

There is a predictable tension when he files back onto the stage completely spent but happy. He is not alone this time; instead, he takes his place with the five other finalists shuffling with nervous energy. They link hands in solidarity, resigned to the fact that they cannot do anything more, as they wait in the buzzing white noise laughing at the host’s attempts to relieve the tension on the stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the inaugural winner of Major Rift’s Make It or Break It songwriter competition walking away with a three CD recording contract is . . .” The host’s amplified voice echoes over the audience’s tangible intake of air. The pause lingers weighty and harsh as the host tares through the sealed envelope and reads over the results. “Blaine Anderson.”
The world erupts and he is swallowed alive.

He doesn’t breathe again until he finds a quiet booth (at least slightly quieter) that he can curl into and sort out the jumbled events that took place between shaking the President of Major Rift, Shelby Corcoran’s, hand in the blizzard of confetti and now with big screens looping the video montage of his journey to the finals and the room pulsating hot to the thick beat of dance music. It’s disorienting, this feeling that everything is actually going right and he doesn’t quite know how he is supposed to react. He doesn’t have much practice with things going according to plan. One thing he does know is that he cannot stop smiling. It makes his face hurt and reduces him to an inarticulate babbling mess (not that he has ever been entirely concise and eloquent) that is only enhanced by the ache of exhaustion that has settled into his joints and clouded his mind. The couple (2, 3, 4 he isn’t quite sure anymore) glasses of champagne that he has had in celebration (underage, be damned) manifests in drooping eyelids and a world that he has to swim through in fuzzy, slow-motion strokes.

A warm body slides into the booth leaning heavy into his side. “Hey Rock Star, how are you doing?”

The warm timber vibrates through his body and his head lulls on the back cushion of the booth as he contemplates the spoken words. “‘M tired, Nicky.”

“I know.” He said slipping out of the booth and pulling the smaller boy to his feet. “But I have been given permission to take you home now, Cinderella. You ready?”

He nods shuffling a few steps forward. “Where’s Charlie?”

“She had to go but she told me to tell you that she is very proud of you.” He answered slithering them through the thinning crowd towards the door.

The cool outside air hits him like a soothing balm when they finally step outside leaving the encompassing heaviness of the building. It stings his cheeks but he no longer feels like he has to tread the air the way he would paddle through water.

“I sang her song tonight.” He whispered partly to himself and partly to the boy helping him settle securely into the passenger seat. “It scares me.”

The worn head rest is solid beneath his spinning head and he can feel it in his stomach when Nick accelerates into the late night traffic.

“What scares you?” Nick murmured weaving his way through the lines of cars heading towards Santa Monica.

He closes his eyes, tips his forehead against the cool glass, and loses himself in the rhythm of heading home. “I’m gay, Nick.”

He exhales a slow release of pent up air that burned through his chest cavity, and lets the silence consume him.

It’s a while later, after the car has slowed to a creep in the persisting traffic, that Nick finally spares him a glance and offers a crooked smile. “I know, Blaine, and it’s going to be ok.”

A smile stretches across his face and his body vibrates in the way that neon lights do when lighting up the night sky. Maybe this is what tomorrow feels like, he thinks, as he drifts in the layers between consciousness and dreams.