The Teddy Bear Habit by James Lincoln Collier

Author:James Lincoln Collier
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: AudioGO
Published: 2012-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

SO THERE IT was. After everything I had been through, after all my planning and lying and cheating and worrying, it had come to nothing. I started carrying the teddy up to the rehearsal in my gym bag, and flinging it over in a corner where nobody would notice. There wasn’t any problem about that. Most of the kids came up right from school, and they would be carrying gym bags or briefcases and such. There were always piles of sweaters and books and boxes and bags lying around on the grand pianos and the folding chairs. Nobody paid any attention to my gym bag.

But it wasn’t the same. The magic didn’t work when I couldn’t see the teddy. I don’t mean that I went completely to pieces. I just lost my confidence. As long as I had had him where I could see him I knew I wouldn’t make any mistakes, except the normal ones. I had confidence. I just knew I never fouled up too badly when the teddy was there.

But now I didn’t have him, and I just knew I was going to foul up. Of course when you know you’re going to make a mistake you always do. So I began making little mistakes here and there. Seeing the magic slip away and the mistakes come on like that made me nervous and worried, and of course being nervous and worried made me make more mistakes. I told myself over and over again that there wasn’t anything to be nervous about, that I’d done the songs perfectly a thousand times. I told myself that the teddy wasn’t magic, that he was just a lousy bag full of cotton wadding. I’d be telling myself this and playing along and suddenly I’d realize that I wasn’t paying any attention to what I was doing. I’d break out in a hot sweat and of course about two measures later I’d hit a wrong chord, or play when I was supposed to be resting. Damon Damon would stop us and say, “What’s the matter, Georgie? You never made that mistake before.”

As I say, I didn’t collapse, I just began fouling up here and there, and three days later, when they picked the four stars, I was an understudy. I ought to have guessed from the start: I’m a loser.

Of course there was an advantage to that: since I wasn’t going to be shown on television, there wasn’t any chance I’d get in trouble with Pop. I’d go up there, watch the show from the side, go home, and it would all be over. I’d learned a lot and gotten some good experience; that was to the good.

Still and all, when I went home the night they picked the losers, I felt lousy. I’d rather have gotten in trouble with Pop. I’d rather have been a winner, even if it meant being drowned four or five times, and boiled in oil on the weekends. As I walked up the stairs I tried to think of some way I could blame it all on Pop, so I would have somebody to be mad at.

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