“You'll have to hit me a lot harder than that to keep me from going, Mama,” she said, forming each syllable carefully in spite of lips that felt too thick. She walked to the table and scooped up her music.

“You are not going to New York,” her mother said, but the tears were streaming down her face, and Lu's face was dry.

“How are you going to stop me?” she asked gently. Then she turned and walked out of the house.

Chapter 11 - New Haven 1943

LU DIDN'T TELL Ricky about the fight with Mama. She met him at the corner as they'd planned, and climbed on the back of his motorcycle fast so he wouldn't see the marks on her face. By the time they reached the train station, she was sure the redness had died down, because Ricky didn't say anything about it. He did say she looked beautiful and she should wear lipstick all the time. But when they were inside the terminal buying her ticket, Lu's hands started to shake. She still couldn't tell him why. “I think I'm a little nervous,” she said.

Ricky bought her a McCall's magazine to read on the trip, to take her mind off the audition, he said. She took the magazine from him, and her teeth started to chatter. He put his jacket around her to warm her up as they walked out to the platform to wait for the train. He rubbed her shaking hands, but nothing helped. Finally, as the train was rolling into the station, he said sharply, “Lu, you've got to get a hold of yourself. No matter how scared you are, you've got to be great at this audition. These producers do a lot of shows in the city—not just this one. You don't want to make a bad impression on them.”

It was the wrong thing for him to say. She'd just had her face slapped and now Ricky, who always told her he knew she was going to knock 'em dead, was warning her about making a bad impression? It had never occurred to Lu that she might fail. She'd been so focused on getting out of the house without Mama knowing that she'd never thought about something going wrong with the audition. But when she saw how worried Ricky was, fear crashed in on her.

Suddenly she realized that this was going to be very different from singing for the director of the New Haven Children's Theater Workshop. Today the men who were going to hear her were professionals. They could make or break her, and they didn't know she was Maestro DiTullio's best pupil. They'd never heard of the maestro. An icy sweat started under Lu's arms and trickled down her sides.

“Hey, I'm going to knock 'em dead,” she said, and she managed to produce a jittery smile. Ricky didn't look convinced.