The scarecrow shuffles papers on the clipboard. “Just April? Looks like we have a Madonna on our hands.”

Everyone laughs, but I pretend they aren’t real. They are eyeless. They are bowling pins. Giant black bowling pins in chairs, wearing hats and beaded necklaces, hand-woven shawls. They can’t see me, and I can’t hear them.

I climb on stage and sit on the stool. I don’t know what to do with the microphone. Scarecrow must sense that, because he’s almost back to his seat, but he returns to pull the mic closer and angle it at my mouth. “Thanks,” I say, and it echoes through the room, bouncing off the bowling pins.

My first strum sounds wrong and I realize my fingers are not where they should be. I strum again, pretend to fiddle with the tuning. “Okay,” I say into the mic once my fingers are firmly in their starting position.

I strum three times, close my eyes and start to sing:

Your eyes tell me what we’re gonna do,

And it’s not like I haven’t thought it too,

And it’s not like it’s wrong.

No, it’s not like that.

So I close my eyes, and you take my hand.

We’re both in the right place,

And it seems like the right time…

The right time.

I keep my eyelids shut tight and hear my voice coming back to me from the corners of the room. Bowling pins wearing wire-rimmed glasses, the black lines around my eyes, the change from Mrs. Varnick’s car, hot water in a cup. I think of all these things and I see myself on stage, like I’m up in the rafters watching.

When I’m done, there’s applause and it’s loud, and the audience is full of people again. People who like me. It’s not polite. It’s real and it just keeps going. I wait and wait. I adjust my guitar on my lap and the applause dies to a few random claps.

For the next song, I am brave. I sing about my father. I sing, “Don’t forget you made me. Don’t forget you made me the way I am.” And I look right at people in the audience. Right in their eyes, like I wrote the song about them. A guy with dreadlocks, King Neptune, the scarecrow. I sing to Marion Strong and the girl with the white eyelashes. I finish the song looking right into Jim’s eyes. When it’s over, he stands to clap. A few other people stand too, and the applause is the loudest sound I’ve ever heard.