The Divas: Aaliyah by Victoria Christopher Murray

Author:Victoria Christopher Murray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2009-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

It wasn’t so bad working with Zena.

I mean, I was still doing the Big S, but at least now I didn’t want to run out every time she came into a room.

After the barbecue on Monday at Pastor’s house, we’d only met with Zena and Sybil one time, because we were all studying for finals. But three times last week, Zena had called my father and asked to speak to me, just to say hello and wish me luck on my tests. (She must not have known that I didn’t need luck—I was blessed.) But anyway, I never talked to her for more than a minute—I wasn’t tryin’ to do the daughter thing with her. The best she was going to get from me … was maturity.

But like I said, this wasn’t bad, because Zena wasn’t just having us sing—she was teaching us stuff, and I loved that part.

We were all sitting in chairs in the learning center, and Zena had one of the maintenance guys bring in a big blackboard.

“Ms. Z,” Diamond said, calling her by the name that everyone called her now—everyone except for me. I just called her Zena. “Are we going to get to sing today? I’m getting a little nervous.”

“Why?”

“Because we missed all last week and you know those other groups are practicing.”

Zena said, “Sweetheart, the first thing you must learn about being a great singer is not to worry about anyone else. Don’t even think about other people. When you’re the best that you can be, nothing else matters. That’s what’s called confidence.”

Diamond smiled. “Oh, I got plenty of that.”

“You got that right,” Troy yelled out.

Zena said, “Good, because you all are going to need that.”

Even though we were just practicing singing right now, Zena had told the guys that she wanted them to be at every rehearsal, too. At first, that didn’t make sense to me since the guys didn’t do any singing, just dancing. But then she explained that if the guys knew everything we knew, we’d be more cohesive. I kinda liked that word, liked that thought.

“Anyway,” Zena began. She was smiling, but clearly she wanted to get back to work. “The best way to get started is to learn about singing.”

“Learn about singing?” Veronique asked as if that didn’t make sense to her, not that it made a lot of sense to me, either. “Don’t we just need to know the song? I mean”— Veronique looked around at all of us—“we can all sing.”

When Zena said, “A little,” the guys busted up laughing.

Oh, no she didn’t! I couldn’t believe that she just dissed my girl like that. Truth—we could sing. More than a little, or else we wouldn’t have gotten this far. Zena needed to recognize.

But Zena said, “What I mean, Vee, is that it’s clear you girls can sing. But I want to turn you into singers.”

That didn’t make a lot of sense, and the way my girls were frowning, too, let me know they were with me.

“Let me explain,” she said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.