Interlude | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Interlude | Previous Challenge Entry
By Stephanie Urich
08/26/06
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“Please, Mel- I need you!” Amanda had to shout her request over the blaring music and loud customer conversations. It was a request Melodie would seldom have turned down, to sing a song for whatever embarrassed birthday recipient happened to be celebrating in the party room. As it was though, she had glanced at the clock three times too many in the past half hour. Her shift was finally over and there was absolutely nothing standing between her and the door.

Nothing except this petite little waitress who refused to let her walk out without singing to the birthday boy.

Melodie hesitated just one moment before answering. It was all Amanda needed. She shoved the five-layer double chocolate cake into her left hand and grabbed tightly to her right.

“His name is Caleb…you’ll love him the moment you see him, Mel, I promise.” She whispered these quick words of justification as she opened the doors. Melodie let her voice release the first note clear and strong. It always surprised the guests.

She noticed him immediately, not only because he sat at the head of the table and was wearing the ‘happy-birthday- hat’, but also because Amanda had been utterly correct in her prediction.

Melodie loved this boy without even knowing him.

His gaiety was enigmatic as he clapped his hands enthusiastically, though totally off-beat, to the birthday song. She moved closer to Caleb as she set the monstrous chocolate confection on the table before him. She watched his already large green starburst eyes grow round as he blew out the seven candles and couldn’t help but laugh when he smashed the fullness of those round cheeks between two little palms.
For a fleeting moment, she wondered at his small stature. ‘Incredibly tiny’ was probably a more apt description.

These irrelevant thoughts abruptly left her mind as he wrapped his skinny arms around her neck, giving a tight hug of thanks to this lady, this bringer of cake and songs. Jumbled sounds of excitement tumbled from his gaping lips, seeming to offer her a song of his own along with a handful of cake.

“Caleb absolutely adores music,” his mother, Claire, leaned over to share as she pushed her dark-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Do you sing often? You have a beautiful voice…”

“Thank you. I used to sing…” Melodie’s voice trailed as her heart sank, remembering the dreams she had lost.

Thankfully, Claire sensed her unease and didn’t pry. “With a name and a voice like yours? Honey, that’s a calling on your life! It’s your calling for tonight anyway!” She said the latter as she indicated Caleb, bored with the seriousness of adult conversation.He wiggled his fingers at Melodie, pretending for the hundredth time that night that he was going to wipe his chocolate-covered hands on her pink t-shirt. She laughed and submitted to his threat, knowing by now that he wanted another song.

And so the night went on, Melodie weaving her songs in and out of her and Claire’s conversation at Caleb’s demand., Melodie becoming more certain as she watched him that Caleb suffered from some physical affliction, though ‘suffering’ did not seem to be an accurate word use at all. No, this child was positively bursting with life.

Still, to question his health was something she could not bring herself to ask Claire.

Instead, they spoke about Melodie and her broken dreams, Claire standing firm in her passion about this 'God-given gift.' In the moments when Melodie sung to Caleb she would lose herself in the song, hoping that Claire was right. That she had been created for this very purpose, and that she shouldn’t give up so easily.

As the weeks went on, Melodie drew strength from the memories created that night. She would laugh aloud when she remembered Caleb’s little bottom wiggling to familiar tunes, and smile fondly when she thought of his soft curls tickling her chin as he curled up on her lap.

Even with his own challenges, he had shown her selfless and unmerited love, and because of that she felt it was impossible to fail at what Claire had called her “God-given gift”. He had become a musical interlude in her life. Simply put, something so different than anything that had happened to her thus far, and certainly her life would never be the same.

Anyone else would have said he was just a child. But Melodie knew different…

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