Page 1 of Reggie and Delilah's Year of Falling

New Year’s Eve

Delilah

I’m sitting in the hallway closet with two beach towels shoved into the crack under the door, trying to make myself sing.

Now. I have to do it now. I’m running out of time.

I take a deep breath, shake out the nerves, open my mouth, and—

There’s a loud bang on the door.

“Delilah, why are you in the closet?” Georgia, my sister, yells from the other side. “Are you doing something weird?”

She pulls the door open, filling the small space with bright light, and I squint up at her. She has a sparkly, plastic New Year’s Eve crown perched on top of her cloud of tight auburn curls, and her lips are stretched into the shining smile that got her the role of Glinda in Willmore Prep’s production ofWickedlast semester as a freshman.

I stand up, kicking the towels out of the way. “Shouldn’t you wait for my answer to that question before barging in here?”

“Where’s the fun in that? Though I gotta say, this is a bit of a letdown.” She taps an old fleeceFrozenblanket on the floor next to me with her foot. “Are you just, like, taking a nap?”

“No, I’m, uh—”

I’m trying to finally sing. Really, actually sing.

Not the quiet singing that sometimes sneaks out when I’m sitting in Mom’s car and the song is so good it just kind of pulls it out of me before I can think about it too much. Or the halfway singing I’ve been doing in band practice, trying to get every one of Charlie’s lyrics, scribbled in his precious Moleskine, exactly right. Even with the mic in my hand and all the guys’ expectations, I feel like I’ve been sprinting right up to the edge of a cliff with my voice, ready to leap, but then I just... stop. My voice sounds like I’m gripping the earth with my toes, staring at the ocean below.

And that kind of singing isn’t going to cut it in a few hours at The Mode, where we’ll be playing our New Year’s Eve show.

Our show, not just their show. As in... including me.

Instead of tagging along and trying to push the guys’ merch at a table in the back, as I’ve done most Saturday nights for the past few months, I’m going to be up on that stage with them for the first time tonight.

Because I am officially the new lead singer of Fun Gi.

Me. The girl who can’t read a single line of music. The girl who can only carry something tune-adjacent, at best. But who even knows when I still haven’t made myselfactuallysing?

Georgia smirks and twirls her hand in front of her, waiting for an explanation. But there’s no way I can tell my Broadway-boundsister all that. She wouldn’t understand.

Before I can make up a reasonable excuse for why I’m sitting in the dark with the extra linens, though, Mom appears behind Georgia, wearing tuxedo-printed pajamas and a matching gold crown.

“You were hiding in the closet?” Her face cracks open in concern. “Oh no, honey. You know you don’t have to go. You can stay home and watch theHouse Huntersmarathon with us until the ball drops.”

My whole body tightens and she reads it right away. “Not that I don’t think you can do this. I know you can do this, and I’m proud of you for putting yourself out there, but... if you’re hiding in the closet...”

“Yeah, this is weird,” Georgia cuts in. “I feel like we all need to acknowledge that this is weird.”

“I wasn’t hiding in the closet!”

They both cross their arms and narrow their identical dark brown eyes at me.

“Okay, I wasinthe closet,” I admit, crossing my arms right back. “But I wasn’t hiding. I was practicing.”

They both start talking at the same time.

“Oh, Lilah-girl, do you not want to sing in front of us? I’m sure your voice is so beautiful and there’s no reason—”

“Is it because you think I’m going to judge you? Because I won’t. I know a voice like mine only comes around once in a generation.”

“Even if it’s not, um, conventionally beautiful, as long as you believe in yourself, that is what will shine through!”

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