MOURNING DOVE
Chapter One: First Flight
The number on his wrist is already smudged.
Teddy licks his thumb and tries to fix it, like that’ll make it matter more, like the judges might see him and think this one kept himself together. The ink just spreads, a bruise of black across his skin.
“Whatever,” he mutters, and wipes his hand on his jeans.
The hallway smells like nerves and cheap hairspray. Too many voices trying to sound like they don’t care. Too many people pretending this isn’t the most important day of their lives.
Teddy leans against the wall, boot pressed flat behind him, guitar case at his side like it’s part of his spine. His hair’s a mess on purpose. His shirt hangs open just enough to make someone uncomfortable. He hasn’t slept much. He never does before things like this.
There’s a girl down the hall crying into her phone. A guy doing scales under his breath. Someone laughing too loud.
Teddy watches all of it like it’s already a show he’s not in.
“Number 148?”
That’s him.
He pushes off the wall slow, like he’s got nowhere to be. Like they’ve been waiting on him, not the other way around.
The room is colder than it should be.
Three judges behind a table. Lights too bright. A camera that feels like an eye, not a machine. Teddy doesn’t look at it. He looks at them.
“Name?” one of them asks.
He knows this part matters.
“Teddy Dove.”
“And what are you going to sing for us today, Teddy?”
He shrugs, one shoulder, loose.
“Something honest.”
A pen taps. Someone leans back. Skepticism, dressed up as boredom.
Teddy doesn’t wait for permission.
He starts.
His voice isn’t perfect. That’s the first thing. It’s not clean, not polished into something safe. It drags a little, cracks where it should, like it’s been through something already. Like it didn’t wait for a stage to start living.
But it sticks.
The room shifts before they realize it.
That’s the second thing.
Teddy doesn’t perform like he wants to be liked. He performs like he’s letting you in on something you’re not supposed to hear. His eyes don’t beg. They hold. Like he’s daring you to look away first.
Halfway through, one of the judges stops writing.
By the end, no one’s pretending anymore.
Silence.
Real silence. The kind that feels like it has weight.
Teddy lets the last note hang just a second longer than necessary. Then he drops it. Looks at them like, well?
The woman in the middle leans forward, elbows on the table.
“Where did you learn to do that?”
Teddy smirks, just slightly.
“Do what?”
A pause.
“You don’t sound like someone who’s seventeen.”
“I’m not,” he says, easy. “Not really.”
Another glance between them. This one longer.
The man on the left clears his throat.
“You’ve got… something. It’s rough. It’s undisciplined.”
Teddy nods like that’s fair. Like he agrees.
“Yeah.”
“But it’s interesting.”
There it is.
Teddy doesn’t smile. Not fully.
“Okay,” the woman says, almost to herself. Then louder:
“We’re going to send you through.”
It doesn’t hit him right away.
Then it does.
Not like fireworks. More like a door unlocking somewhere inside his chest.
He nods once. Casual. Controlled.
“Cool.”
But when he turns to leave, his hand tightens around the neck of the guitar just a little.
In the hallway, the noise rushes back in.
The crying girl. The scales. The laughter.
None of it sounds the same now.
Someone asks him, “How’d it go?”
Teddy keeps walking.
“Guess we’ll see.”
But there’s a new rhythm in his step. Something just under the surface, alive and pacing. Like he’s already halfway out of this life and into the next. Like something just started… and it’s not going to stop.
***
What I imagine Teddy auditioning with.
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