For the two months leading up to the audition, Emma was a mess of anxiety. Every note, every pitch--every rhythm had to be perfect. Every single dynamic. Every single musical notation.

She couldn’t mess this up.

Not again.

She listened to ethereal music. She listened to the big and bold confidence boosters. She even listened to a single note being held over two entire hours while doing homework, hoping that it would seep into her brain and crush her nervous tensions forever.
She had to nail this audition. If she didn’t, Wren would remain concertmaster and continue to lead the section like the conductor’s little puppet instead of the leader she was supposed to be. The concertmaster was the hottest seat in the orchestra. If Wren played like a puppet, the rest of the orchestra would play like puppets as well...and the concert would be a disaster.
On audition day, Emma was feeling sick and shaky. She told herself she could push through it, but when Wren came out of the tiny little practice room and tapped Emma on the shoulder, Emma suddenly didn’t remember the notes. She desperately tried to find them--reaching, grasping, searching--Emma found nothing but a jumble of mismatched pitches.
Inside, the coach was taking notes--reflecting on Wren’s performance. Emma wondered if she was writing down good things or bad things, or if she wasn’t writing about Wren but pre audition notes about herself.
When the first violin coach motioned for her to come in and set her music on the stand, Emma felt her stomach free fall into the abyss. As she laughed off her anxiety at the coach’s warm greeting, Emma’s sheet music rattled in her hands. She set it on the stand and lifted up her violin to playing position. Just as she put her bow on the string, she realized just how unprepared she was and how unfamiliar the violin felt. Had it shrunk? Stretched? Morphed into a completely different instrument?
“Whenever you’re ready,” said the coach.
A million years could go by and Emma would never be ready.
Calm, Emma, calm.
Emma took a deep breath...and began to play.
The first note came out as a high pitched squeak. The second, a low snarl. Her fingers, racing each other in nervousness, struggled to stay in sync with her ricocheting bow.
And then, it was over. Emma sighed in relief, but inside she wanted to do it again and again--until the damage could be reversed. She didn’t even care about her placement. Not after what had happened. Not after the audition she’d just had.
The coach came out just before the ten minute break. She held a paper in her hand--the seating arrangement. Emma’s heart pounded in her chest, and she quickly told Wren how terrible she did. Wren, of course, said that she did terribly as well, but it wasn’t true. Wren never got nervous. That’s how a puppet like her could end up in the most prized seat in the orchestra.
The paper fell onto the stand--sounding once on the aluminum frame. It was one of those moments that Emma saw in slow motion--as if she were in a movie.

Emma Meyers
Wren Patterson
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“Congratulations,” Wren said. Emma could see Wren swallowing hard.
“It should have been you,” Emma said. “My audition was terrible.”
They solemnly underwent the process of switching places--dragging their cases, kicking their coats out from under their chairs.
Emma looked around her. Everything was so big. The people, the chairs, the conductor’s podium--all of it so close but so far away. Her eyes drifted forward. No one ahead of her--just a strip of floor riddled with holes from cello sectionals.
After all this time--after all this hard work, she was in the hot seat.
But if anything, she felt even more of a mess.
Because she was now the new puppet.