“As I said, you came to the right place then. Miss Tilly’s gotchu covered,” she said.
Over the next few hours, Miss Tilly led me through a series of alternative and energetic medicine meditations, crystal and Tibetan sound therapy, Reiki sessions, and aromatherapy treatments. I wasn’t sure any of it was actually helping my voice, but I had to admit, I did feel significantly more relaxed than I had in months.
“You carry a lot of tension in your shoulders. Has anyone ever told you that?” Miss Tilly asked as she finished up my spine adjustment. “We’re just about done here. Let me go and grab your complimentary crystals from my office.”
Miss Tilly went into the back room, leaving Lyla and me alone in the studio.
“How do you feel?” Lyla whispered.
“I feel good, but is it odd that she didn’t have me sing a single note? How do I know any of it worked?”
Lyla pointed her finger in the air. “Oh, it worked. Trust, girl. Trust.”
“All right,” Miss Tilly said, clutching a small brown suede bag in her closed fist. “I have the most fantastic assortment for you.” She motioned for me to hold out my hands and gently shook a rainbow of crystals into my cupped palms. “The garnet kick-starts belief in personal power, the kunzite encourages forgiveness and helps ease emotion, and finally, the sapphire reaffirms purpose and direction. The amethyst reduces anxiety, helps reestablish boundaries and a sense of control, and most importantly, strengthens confidence and self-empowerment.”
I closed my fingers around the stones. “I need like literally all of these. How did you know?”
She lowered her voice. “If I’m being honest, you don’t need any of these. You possess all their powers inside yourself. The crystals are just a way to help you manifest them a little quicker.”
Though hard to believe considering I’d taken directions from a mysterious phone booth, the truth was I had never been a particularly spiritual person. Marisol was the one who believed in all this stuff—psychics, fortune tellers, and tarot cards. I liked to see things with my own two eyes, not some mystical third one. But, for some reason, I trusted Miss Tilly and her new age methods. I mean, what did I really have to lose?
Miss Tilly reached into the pocket of her robe, pulled out a receipt pad, and started scribbling out my list of treatments. When she got to the third page, my palms really began to sweat. Finally, she presented me with the bill, and my eyes nearly fell out of my head. In total it was a little over $600 and that was with the friends and family discount. Without any tangible proof that any of it actually worked, regret and images of overdraft alerts were racing through my panic-stricken mind, and I mentally calculated how many songs from Wicked I’d have to perform at Mimi’s to make up that amount of money.
“I take cash or credit. But not Amex,” Miss Tilly said.
I reluctantly handed over my bank card and prayed the charge would go through, breathing a heavy sigh of relief when I saw the word ACCEPTED flash across the small screen of her Apple Pay. I pushed the suede bag of colorful crystals into my tote but held on to the amethyst one, tucking it deep into the front pocket of my jeans.
Miss Tilly handed Lyla a few samples to try, and we started our ascent up the narrow staircase back to ground level.
“I’m not meeting my Bumble date until way later if you want to grab a quick bite or something?” Lyla said.
“Yeah, sounds good. Nothing too bougie, though, I just donated a small fortune to Miss Tilly’s retirement fund.”
“There’s this falafel spot I’ve been dying to try in the West Village. The lines are always super long, though.” She glanced down at her watch. “But it’s after one, so we might’ve already missed the lunch crowd? And it’s not too cold today. What do you think?”
With little to no wind, the mid-February day, warmed by rays of the unobstructed sun, felt more like a day in March. “Sounds perfect.”
We walked up to Union Square, which was even more crowded with people taking advantage of the unseasonably nice day, and hopped on the 6 Train to Bleecker Street. We got out of the subway and used our phones to navigate our way to the restaurant. When we got there, the line was still wrapped halfway around the block.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lyla grunted and turned to me. “What do you want to do?”
I backed up and surveyed the line, my rumbling stomach vying for a vote. “I’m game to stick around. I mean, we’re already here.”
Lyla nodded and opened up her TikTok app. “I’m working on increasing my followers. I’m up to like 5,700! When you hit 10K, that’s when the brands start sending all the free swag to advertise. I’m gonna try to grab some new content while we’re waiting.”
Almost twenty minutes later, Lyla returned to where I was still standing in line, having only moved up a few feet from where she’d left me.
“How’d it go?” I asked. “Did you get anything good?”
“Some cute stuff. Snapped some pics for the Gram and put together a reel asking people waiting in the line what they ‘falafel about.’”
I leaned in, certain I didn’t hear her correctly. “Huh? What they falafel about? What does that even mean?”
“Yeah, a play on words. What they feeeeeel awful about. Get it? ‘Falafel about?’”
“Ohhhhh, I get it now. Funny.”
“Most were just hungry, but a few gave more thoughtful answers. Let me get you.”
“Me?”
“Do me a solid. When I ask you what you ‘falafel about,’ just don’t say hungry.” She held up her phone to face me before I could protest. “So, we’re standing outside the West Village’s newest hotspot eatery, Chick Pea, tell me, what do you falafel about?”
“Today or generally?” I asked.
“Generally.”
“Auditions,” I admitted.
Lyla stopped filming and lowered her camera. She sympathetically placed a hand on my arm and said, “That’s great you’re putting yourself out there again. You’re so good, Avery. Really.” Her eyes suddenly lit up. “You know what you should do? You should audition for The Voice. They’d hear you sing, swivel their chairs around, see what a babe you are, and boom, record deal in no time.”
I appreciated her words of encouragement, but I wasn’t sure The Voice was my chosen path. “I should have mentioned it sooner, but I was already feeling the pressure and just . . . didn’t want to have to tell you all and Charlie and everyone how I didn’t get cast again, and again, and again. My stats are pretty awful. Seven auditions so far, no callbacks.”
“Seven? That’s nothing. I do seven in my sleep,” she joked in an effort to be supportive. Her voice turned more serious. “Avery, it’s the biz. But you have to keep putting yourself out there. Your break will come. Mine too. We’ve got to believe in ourselves, right? I mean, if we don’t, who will?”
Lyla was right—no one was going to do it for me. This time I didn’t have a scapegoat or another road I could hide down. I had to either face the challenge or abandon my dream altogether—and was I ready to do that? Throw in the towel completely because it was what . . . hard?