#FlashFictionMagic: Forgotten Lyrics

Chris had been waiting all of high school for this night. Finally, the team had made the regional baseball championship. Everything was perfect, except for the singer selected to perform “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Agnes Crenshaw, with her huge glasses, long dangling necklaces, and strangely patterned skirts had been practically laughed off the stage at the school talent show just two weeks ago. Her singing was fine, but everything else about her seemed to invite ridicule. Chris didn’t like to see it happen, but he also didn’t like the kind of attention he got whenever he tried to defend her. 

“There’s your girlfriend,” said the pitcher, Dom, nodding up toward the bleachers where Agnes had just sat down next to the music teacher. This was the comment Chris hated most of all, probably because just the other night, when he and Agnes had met up in the woods behind their houses, she had kissed him, and he had definitely kissed back. That Agnes, confident and chatty, didn’t seem to have much in common with this Agnes, reserved and standoffish.  

After a few minutes, the announcement everyone was waiting for came over the PA system: “All rise for the singing of our National Anthem.” Chris removed his cap, held it over his heart and took a deep breath as Agnes, now standing at home plate clutching a microphone, launched into the opening lines of the song. He closed his eyes to avoid seeing the looks people were giving her, and the smirks they didn’t bother to conceal. 

Agnes really could sing, he realized, as her performance got underway. “Whose broad stripes and bright stars,” she sang, “through the perilous fight.” But then, instead of the next line of the song, there was complete silence. Chris opened his eyes and found that Agnes was looking his way in desperation, with the face of a rabbit caught off-guard. Chris understood instantly. She had forgotten the lyrics. 

The laughter was already starting, and Chris felt anxiety rising in his chest on Agnes’s behalf. Come on! he thought, willing Agnes to remember the next line. O’er the ramparts… Seconds ticked by, though, and Agnes just stood there, hand to her cheek, face burning red, her expression as blank as her mind seemed to be. 

There was only one thing to do. Chris, who was tone-deaf and had never sung a note in his life, picked up where Agnes had paused. “O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.” The notes were all over the place, he was sure he changed keys three times in just that one line, and he was beyond embarrassed at having made those sounds in front of the entire school and half the town.  But it did the job. Agnes got over her mental block and finished the song.   

Amidst the applause upon the traditional cheer of “Play ball!” Agnes nodded to Chris and mouthed, “Thank you.” 

Chris locked eyes with Agnes, and gave her a grin and a big thumbs up. 

Dom slung an arm around Chris’s shoulders. “She really is your girlfriend, isn’t she?” 

“Not yet,” Chris said, but he was already thinking about ways to change that situation. “But ask me again tomorrow.” Then he jogged off to the dugout to watch the first pitch.