Page 29 of With Stars in Her Eyes
The idea that I sucked at flirting pushed on an old bruise I had nearly forgotten.
“Dove needs to smile more.”
“Everyone else looks great, but Dove seems like she’s not actually feeling the Spirit.”
I don’t remember when my parents started calling me by my middle name all the time. It was after we had all begun performing together, back when the Starlings and their little Dove were announced from pulpits across America.
No matter how loud the applause was, the aftermath was the same.
The criticism picking me apart body and soul in an effort to shape me into their pretty and perfect little evangelical puppet. My mask became their paycheck.
“Maybe we should just put Dove in the back if she’s going to look bored when she sings.”
“Why can’t you just smile, Dove? Everyone else looks like they want to be here.”
It was never enough.
The applause was too loud.
And the lights were always too bright no matter where I was. No matter how hard I worked or practiced,thatpart of it never got easier.
I sighed and squinched my toes into the deep pile of the old carpet several times. My arms braced with locked elbows on the drop-leaf dining table. It had been shoved to the side to accommodate a setup of ten instruments—all the instrumentsI owned except the electric cello I used as Kestrel, which I assumed was with Demetrius, even though I hadn’t asked him to hold on to it.
The months’ worth of dust coating every key and string of my instruments sent a pang through my chest.
In the safe dimness of this room, I could admit I was afraid.
What if I justcouldn’tdo it?
What if I sat down to play and what I had before was gone?
Somehow the questions—the uncertainty—were easier than trying and failing.
My fingers traced the taut, untuned strings of my beat-up acoustic cello.
My eyes closed as if that would protect me from the onslaught of memories.
I didn’t want to remember holding that napkin backstage before I screwed everything up.
Or the familiar face in the crowd. The sirens or the accusation or the pain.
I took a deep, grounding breath, willing my fingers to pick up my bow. I couldn’t.
I also couldn’t block out the bad memories.
I was in Los Angeles on a stage. My life was about to change. It was going to be the biggest day of my life. I wasn’t Dove. I wasn’t Courtney. I was Kestrel.
That was the badass version of myself. When I wore that mask, my bow was a weapon protecting me from the past.
But that night it felt unsteady in my hands.
Still, I walked out onstage with Demetrius, and when the lights went up, I smiled. My eyes burned, and my head pounded, but I had trained my entire childhood for this exact situation.
Demetrius sang better than ever. He took the higher notes—the hardest ones that he didn’t always sing.
A hazer went off unexpectedly, then a pyrotechnic effect that sent sparks flashing directly in front of my face.
I was that little girl again.
