"The cue is where we set it yesterday," Aaron replied through the talkback. He spoke mildly, but Zara saw the technician's fingers tighten against the edge of the console. "We can bring the playback in just before the transition if that's more comfortable."
"I don't want comfortable. I want perfect." Chase rubbed his throat and drank from his expensive glass bottle. "Turn it up. I don't need tonight becoming another rehearsal."
They began again. This time, as Chase approached the difficult phrase, a brilliant high note bloomed out of the speakers while his mouth moved in an almost perfect imitation of singing it. It had an uncanny steadiness, the kind of precision Zara heard in recorded vocal exercises, where every breath and note had been chosen in advance. She understood at once that there were two different things happening: the man onstage was supplying the image, and a sound stored somewhere in Aaron's equipment was supplying the hardest part of the music.
That alone was not a mystery. Ms. Johnson had explained that recordings and backing singers could support a live performance, especially a complicated production with dancers and a large band. Singers used harmonies and prerecorded layers all the time, and doing so was not necessarily dishonest. What bothered Zara was the way Chase behaved as though the note came from his own throat while insisting in interviews that he sang his signature passage live without help.
She leaned toward another choir student, twelve-year-old Naomi Price. "Can you hear the change?" she whispered. Naomi frowned, listening hard. "It sounds the same to me," she said, and turned back toward the conductor.
Zara wished she could explain it without sounding rude. The attack of the recorded note was identical on both attempts, down to a tiny shimmer on its edge. Live voices changed with the breath, even when the pitch stayed exact. This one seemed to sit above the band instead of moving through it, and when Chase coughed after the phrase, the note still rang cleanly for a fraction of a second.
Aaron glanced toward the wings as though he felt somebody watching. For a moment his eyes settled on Zara, who was standing slightly apart from the choir with her head tilted. He looked back at his console too quickly. Zara sensed that he was not surprised by what she had heard, only afraid of what might happen if she understood it.
The stage manager sent the children to a side room for dinner. There were paper cartons of pasta, a tray of fruit, and small bottles of water labeled with a sponsor's logo. Zara ate half her meal and saved the remaining roll for later because she had been taught not to waste food. At the opposite end of the table, two boys debated whether Chase owned the theater, while Naomi wondered if their names would appear in the program.
Ms. Johnson inspected the children's costumes and made them practice walking on and off the risers without bumping the microphone stands. When Zara had finished, she asked if she could get some air in the corridor. Her teacher studied her face, noticed the worry there, and followed her rather than sending her alone. Together they stopped beside a rack of neatly pressed stage curtains and listened to the soft thump of equipment being rolled across the floor.