“Mia... Mia... it’s time to go on stage.”

Her voice reached me like a distant whisper, filtering through a heavy, dreamless sleep.

“Wake up.”

I felt the warmth of her breath before slowly opening my eyes, still disoriented. The exhaustion and the sleepless night had taken their toll right before the performance. The intense scent of freshly brewed coffee flooded my senses. I heard a laugh when she noticed I was completely out of it, my eyes open even though my mind was still asleep.

“I didn't realize you’d fallen asleep,” she told me.

She helped me hold the cup, filled with an espresso so strong that I surely wouldn’t sleep for days. Her fingers brushed mine as I took it, and she squeezed them gently.

“If you let go, you’ll burn yourself,” she laughed. “Get ready, okay? I’m going to leave you so you can get set.”

She said it softly before disappearing, closing the door so carefully that I didn't even hear the latch click.

I crashed back into reality; or perhaps it was that strange kind of reality that, being so sharp, ended up feeling like a dream. I finished sitting up on the sofa, feeling the weight of my eyelids as I scanned the dressing room. Everything around me shone with an artificial intensity: the rows of white light bulbs framing the mirrors, the open makeup palettes, and the empty cases of our string instruments resting in the corners. It was an unreal order within the mess.

It had been a little over a year since my arrival at EOS, though it felt like an entire lifetime compressed into a few months. I stood up slowly, feeling the fabric of the dress hugging my body, and I clung to that image of security that had cost me so much to build. I reached for my guitar and, as I wrapped my hand around the neck, the feel of the wood brought back my balance.

“I never thought I’d end up here,” I told myself in a mental echo.

I stopped in front of the dressing room door, my hand suspended over the metal knob. For a second, nostalgia dragged me backward. I remembered the day it all began; it was one of those days when the bed is the only refuge against the feeling of being insufficient, a gray day when going out into the world feels like a battle lost in advance. I had been mired in the same thing for many weeks, but that day I resisted all that crap and tried to keep going when everything hurt. I understood at that precise moment that my pain, and the decision not to let it defeat me, was what had brought me to the threshold of this door.

I turned the knob. On the other side, the silence of the dressing room was devoured by a deafening roar.

“EOS! EOS! EOS!” it thundered through the place; it was our turn.

An euphoric crowd screamed our names. I felt a chill. The moment I had feared so much had arrived, and I was standing before the four women who were waiting for me, leaving in my hands the destiny they had worked for all their lives.