"I was right, you know. That jerk. Didn’t call me. Didn’t even acknowledge my presence when he saw me in the hall at school. Well, that’s okay."

Rosenbaum nodded. "It seems as if you are more than over him."

"Yeah. I think when I realized how much happier I was without him…"

"You feel Brian treated you badly."

She laughed. "Am I wrong?"

Rosenbaum seemed thoughtful. "No, I don’t think so, not if what you’ve related has been honest."

"It has. Why would I lie?"

He looked at her, smiling a little. "Who knows?"

She grinned back. "I guess you’re right. Well, I’m not."

"So what happened then?"

She sighed. "Summer. The longest, loneliest summer of my life. I hadn’t realized how much I had depended on Brian for companionship, and it wasn’t as if there were a lot of people around for me to make friends with. Well, I finally figured out my best bet was to just head off to the local U and declare an undecided major. I just didn’t know how I’d feel if school started in the fall without me."

"Things got better?"

She shrugged. "The classes were great, and I got to know a few people okay. My roommate Carol and I got along famously. She’s fantastic. I met a lot of her friends, and they became my friends to, so I had a little clique of my own going. The transition was a lot easier for me than I had expected. It was great. Well, Amanda Sommers was there, too. At first I didn’t think she’d pay me any mind, and at first she didn’t."

"But eventually she did?"

Melanie gave him another sunny smiles, running her fingers through her blonde curls. "Auditions for Hello Dolly."

Rosenbaum settled back to listen.

*****

Summer went by so fast. Jareth was with me a lot of it, and there was the List. I got buried in reading and writing fics and having peach wars and the like. The people on the List were wonderful to me. I even started a story about Jareth haunting me. It was great fun, mostly because most of it had actually happened.

School started up, I moved into the dorm. Carol and I started out as roommates, sharing half a suite with two other girls on the other side of the bathroom. Those girls transferred as soon as they could to the next suite with some friends of theirs, and Carol moved into their room and so we still shared the suite but now we had our own rooms. I thought later Jareth might have been responsible for removing our suitemates, because he could visit me a lot more after I wasn’t in a room with someone. Maybe not. Can’t blame everything on him, I guess.

The posters were up one night as I went to dinner with Carol and her boyfriend Mark. Carol tapped the glass double door and looked at me. "You should do it."

Mark looked at the poster advertising the Drama department’s search for cast and crew for the musical Hello Dolly. "What is it?"

Carol rolled her eyes. "It’s a musical."

"I know that, but what kind? What’s it about?"

"About this woman who meddles in all these people’s lives."

"Kind of like you," he said. She smacked his arm.

"I saw the movie," I said. "Streisand, right?"

"Forget the movie," Carol told me. "Forget all about it. I saw it on stage with Carol Channing. Babs was too young to play Dolly. Too young and not nearly funny enough."

Carol slipped into the door, singing in her faulty soprano. "I’ll be wearing ribbons down my back…this summer…" She stopped and looked at me. "I bet you could do a sensational Irene Malloy. Oh, yeah, I can see it. Heck, if nothing else you could at least be chorus. But you’d probably be part of the main cast."

I shook my head, blushing. "I can’t sing."

She laughed and so did Mark.

"What?"

"You forget, I share a bathroom with you."

Now I was really blushing. I sing in the shower, it’s just something I do. Jareth sings with me when he knows the songs. Oh yes, he would still drop in on my showers, but by that time I was rather used to it.

"It’s just the bathroom echo. Covers a multitude of sins."

"Then why doesn’t Carol sound good in there?" Mark asked.

Carol gave him a healthy elbow to the ribs. "Come on. Edith is going to audition. You can go with her. She’ll find you something to sing, too."

"Really? You think I could?"

"Just do it for fun, you’ll be fine."

That night I stopped by Edith’s dorm room. She was a slight, doe-eyed, brunette art major auditioning more out of her intense love of theater than any real interest in the show. She was thrilled I would be auditioning. She gave me a handful of tapes and cds full of showtunes and even found a second copy of the audition material for me.

I got back to the room and got into my headphones and started listening. I was fairly deep into the pile of tapes when Jareth’s hands touched my shoulders.

I squeaked in surprise and sat up on the bed, turning around to see him. He smiled as I pulled off the headphones.

"What are you doing here?"

"Just checking up, as usual. What’s this you’re listening to?"

"Um…I’m auditioning for Hello Dolly."

He nodded. "I know it."

I laughed. "Of course."

"What’s that supposed to mean? Does this have something to do with tights?"

I laughed harder, laying back down and burying my face against the pillow. "Nevermind."

He gave me an exasperated little sigh. "So, which part will you be auditioning for?"

"Carol thinks I have a shot at Irene Malloy," I said, rolling over on my back.

"Not the lead?"

I shrugged. "I doubt it."

"Why not? You want it, don’t you?"

I considered this. "Well, it would be fun to play Dolly. But…that’s aiming a little high, don’t you think?"

"No," he said simply. "Why don’t you think you could get Dolly?"

"Because I’m nothing like Dolly."

He laughed at me this time. "So act."

"I don’t know if I can," I confessed.

He held out his hand to me. "Come here, Melanie."

I took his hand and got up, and he pulled me over to the full-length mirror on the back of my door. "Acting. It’s like wearing a mask. A mask that fits inside your mind. That mask reshapes your expressions, your gestures, your voice, and not the least of all your character." His hands were on my shoulders still; he was whispering in my ear. "Melanie…Irene Malloy is a woman who might be a great deal like you. But why be someone you could be any day? Why not take the once in a lifetime chance to be someone you only dream about being like?"

I thought about it.

"Dolly Levi," he said. "Dolly Levi is a woman for whom there are no uncertainties. She alone holds the reigns of her destiny. And that of everyone else who is—er—fortunate enough to fall into her hands. If she believes in Fate, she believes it’s working for her. Dolly Levi is a force of nature. And yet beneath this mask is a softer side, a woman who can love deeply, who has loved deeply, who wants to love that way once more. She believes in everything good, most of all in love and in herself.

"The comedy, that comes naturally. We find Dolly Levi an amusing character because we *don’t* have that kind of faith. Our disbelief is where our laughter is springing from. We simply cannot imagine how she will overcome. And yet she does, each and every time."

He patted my shoulders. "Go to sleep. The auditions are next Friday. You’ve got a bit to think about it."

I didn’t sleep for a little while. I lay awake in the dark, seeing myself as Dolly Levi.

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