Chapter 23: Moth

The auditorium held five hundred seats, and on Friday night every one of them was taken.

I stood in the wings with a paper mask in my hand.

It was the same mask. White, a little creased, with a small gray moth drawn on the forehead in pencil.

"Two minutes," Cassie whispered, with her headset on.

"I know."

"Your mother's in row twelve. Drake's mother is next to her. They're holding hands."

"Cassie."

"I'm just reporting."

I laughed, and my voice shook.

"And Drake's at the back," she said, more quietly.

"Standing by the door. He came straight from the kitchen. He still has the apron strings tied around his waist."

I looked through the gap in the curtain.

He stood against the back wall, in the dark, apart from everyone. His hair was flat from the hairnet.

He was not looking at his feet. He was looking at the stage, steady, waiting.

The headmaster said my name into the microphone. Then he said, "Moth."

A rustle went across the seats.

I walked out on the stage in my mother's black dress, with the brooch on my strap.

The white light was so bright I couldn't see the faces.

I stopped in front of the stool and the microphone.

I put the mask down on top of the piano, face up.

"I'm Moth," I said.

My voice did not break. It was a small voice, in a big room, and it carried.

"For two years I sang to strangers in the dark. I told myself it was because I liked being unseen."

The room was silent.

"It was because I was scared. Somebody once told me, if I'd only let people see my face, I'd be famous."

In row twelve a woman put her hand over her mouth.

"I don't want to be famous," I said. "But I'm tired of hiding."

I sat down on the stool.

"This first song is for the person who listened to me before anyone else did. He signed off every night."

I looked into the light.

"Keep climbing."

I sang "Paper Boats."

I sang it in my real voice, with no mask and no screen, to five hundred faces and one boy by the door.

The first verse was steady. By the second, I could hear that the whole room had stopped moving.

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