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Back Undone Save as PDF
Chapters (34)
  1. Cover
  2. undone
  3. Dedication
  4. one
  5. two
  6. three
  7. four
  8. five
  9. six
  10. seven
  11. eight
  12. nine
  13. ten
  14. eleven
  15. twelve
  16. thirteen
  17. fourteen
  18. fifteen
  19. sixteen
  20. seventeen
  21. eighteen
  22. nineteen
  23. twenty
  24. twenty-one
  25. twenty-two
  26. twenty-three
  27. twenty-four
  28. twenty-five
  29. twenty-six
  30. twenty-seven
  31. twenty-eight
  32. twenty-nine
  33. thirty
  34. Acknowledgments

I easily picked the producer out of the crowd. He had a table all to himself and filled it just fine. No suit or tie, but he had an all-business look about him. No, not intimidating or anything. I made a silent prayer of thanks that he would be taking a piss while I sang. While I sang? I barely knew the song she’d prepared, barely knew how to hold a mike. People would be watching. These people. All of these restless, drunk people. What was I thinking, anyway? I can’t sing.

An image of Kori flashed in my head. She winked one heavily shadowed lid at me. “Picture them naked. That’s what I like to do.”

And I did my best to do that, I really did. But … then I turned around and looked at Shay, who was sitting on the stage behind the speakers.

“Oh, shit.”

“What?” Shay asked. “Gotta go pee?”

“No. But thanks, I probably will now. No. I can’t do this. I … I can’t do anything right. I’m trying to picture the audience naked, but I keep picturing myself naked.”

Shay’s eyes shot up. His gaze locked on something in the crowd behind me. “Shit is right.”

“What? What now?” I craned my head around, expecting to see Denver’s finest parting the crowd looking for underage drinkers. Thank God I didn’t have an alcoholic drink on me—Shay had only bought us Cokes. The judge would have to take that into account, wouldn’t he?

But I didn’t see anyone. “Shit is right what, Shay?”

“Now I’m picturing you naked.”

twenty-five

When the man at the solo table got up and headed with his cell phone to his ear for the door, Marc gave me the nod. Time was of the essence, so I rushed to the stage. “So, um … Kori was going to sing Alicia Keys’s ‘Fallin,’ right?”

“Right. Start out trad but build lots of anger into it. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Right. Are you going to, like, introduce me—no? Okay.”

I strangled the microphone stand with sweaty hands. The naked audience and a way too pleased Shay stared back at me. I closed my eyes. The guys started in, but I had no idea when to start singing.

They repeated the initial rift twice before I managed to stumble in. My throat clenched tight against the words, speaking them poorly, rather than singing them traditional or angry or any other way. Every word sounded like it had to hack through my tongue in order to escape my mouth. My throat closed. I couldn’t continue; it was literally too painful to try.