“What’s up?” Rocco asks, turning toward me. He has a game face on. I like that about him. It’s probably why I thought he would be so great for the role of Angel. “Let’s hear it.”

Behind him stands the rest of the cast in varying stages of commitment—more members of an audience. I force myself to take a deep breath.

“I really think we need to tap into the hopelessness of the song,” I say. It’s difficult to keep all the emotion out of my voice as I describe what it must’ve been like to have AIDS in the eighties, when it was basically a death sentence. It’s difficult not to think of my fathers, who could’ve died, who lost so many people.

“It was basically genocide. No one released it, no one planned for it, but it was an epidemic that targeted a specific group of people,” I say. “Once it started impacting straight people and white people, it started to become important—but only a little bit more. To be in a relationship with someone of the same sex, and to be a person of color with AIDS—it was a hopeless situation because no one cared. So to find someone who gets it, who loves you, and to lose them because no one cares about what you’re going through—there aren’t words for that. The songs are all talking about it, but the words only tell part of the story. That’s why we need to hear about it in your voices. Do you know what I mean?”

“Okay,” Laila says, a breath of air rushing from her mouth. “I think that we can do that. Right, Eric?”

Eric doesn’t say anything. He’s chewing on his lip, pensive.

“Are we ready to run it again?” Ms. Klein asks behind us. “I don’t mean to rush, but we have to keep going.”

I clench my teeth, but don’t leave the stage. I’m not sure if I explained it well, if it’s even possible for me to share something so close to my heart. That’s probably why a song works so well—you don’t have to explain emotion when it radiates out of your lungs. It’s something you just get, even if you can’t explain it.

“Yeah.” Eric nods. “Let’s do it.”

As the pit orchestra begins to play, I’m hit with a burst of emotion. Their words are filled with all of it—angst, despair, passion. Maybe they touched on some of it before, but it feels like it’s so clear in their voices now. Listening to them, you would think they understand. You would think they lived it.

“Whoa,” Jesse breathes, standing beside me. “It’s beautiful.”