The Key to Peace

Originally sent to newsletter subscribers in July, 2024. Sign up for the free newsletter now to receive exclusive stories months in advance.

From the time she was a little girl, all Adelaide ever wanted to do was be a singer. At two years old, she would stand in front of the mirror and belt out the lyrics to her favorite songs, mimicking the dance moves she saw in music videos and using an old hair brush as a stand-in microphone. She dreamed of being a star, touring the world to perform in front of her millions of loyal fans. There was nothing that would get in the way of her ultimate goal.

Except for the fact that she couldn’t sing.

At all.

In fact, she was terrible. Her parents, who had always loved music but accepted the fact that they weren’t made to be singers, had tried to help her. They enrolled her in singing classes, watched videos from vocal coaches, and did everything they could to help their daughter find her voice.

It was no use. It didn’t matter how much she practices, or how bad she wanted it, she couldn’t find a pitch if her life depended on it. When she was old enough to realize how bad she sounded, it devastated her. The first time a classmate told her she was bad at singing, she spent the next three nights holed up in her room, wallowing in her tears. It was only after watching old videos of herself singing and listening to recordings of her voice compared to actual famous singers that she realized the girl was right. She couldn’t sing.

It was a tough pill to swallow at a young age, and it killed her confidence in just about every aspect of her life. She was still a good student who made just enough close friends, but she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. She was convinced that she would fail at any dream she conjured, just as she had failed at becoming a singer. She had her whole life ahead of her, yet she was lost in a sea of possibilities that all seemed unattainable to her adolescent mind.

That all changed on her eighteenth birthday, when her Ability was awakened. Almost everyone in the world has an Ability, enhancing some part of their body or mind. Almost, but not everyone. When Adelaide turned sixteen and nothing changed, she grew certain that she was cursed to live the life of a Bland, someone ostracized and belittled for their lack of an Ability. For two years, she lived her life in a haze of sadness and disappointment as everyone around her discovered their Abilities.

Her parents had developed, by reasonable standards, fairly useful Abilities. Her mother had the Ability to discern every ingredient used in any food, down to the smallest measurements. It helped her become an excellent chef and food reviewer. Adelaide’s father, on the other hand, could recall from memory everything he had ever read, heard, or seen, which made him an absolute force on game shows. He ended up starting a tournament specifically for people with similar talents that he ran for twenty years, until he retired and passed it off to the winner of the show’s first season.

Not every Ability was quite as useful. Some were actually debilitating. Adelaide could remember reading a story about some guy in Europe whose Ability allowed him to see smells as colors floating in the air. It helped him become an adept investigator for the police, but it was so overwhelming for him to be outside that he kept himself confined to his home, where he could more easily control the scents, except for extreme cases.

There was another case of someone who had the Ability to ignore pain completely, just totally block it out as if he wasn’t experiencing it at all. It was apparently great, at first. But after walking on a fractured ankle for weeks and severely damaging his lower leg, he had to spend years learning to control his Ability, and even still limited his exposure to potentially injurious situations for fear of accidentally hurting his body more than he could register.

Adelaide was positive she would take just about anything, even if it was something like that. She just didn’t want to be the only person she knew without an Ability. She didn’t want to be a Bland.

When she woke up on the day of her eighteenth birthday, she figured the chances of her Ability blooming this late in life were next to none. She did her normal morning routine and got in the car to drive to school, eager to get through the attention of her birthday and move on. She shuffled her new favorite playlist and backed out of her driveway. Her throat felt a little weird as she hummed along to the song’s opening notes. She cleared the phlegm and hit the cue.

Her voice was different. It was good. No, not just good. It was perfect. She finally found her Ability.

#

Adelaide’s newfound singing voice wasn’t the “perfect pitch” so many people proclaim. It was truly perfect, to a level no one had ever experienced before. When she sang, the notes came out clear and strong. She could manipulate emotions with a subtle change in her tone. She could mimic any note she heard from any source. There was even a study done. Her vocal patterns could replicate the vibrational frequency down to the thousandth of a hertz.

Suffice to say, she rocketed to stardom. It didn’t matter what she sang. Her own songs, covers, even nonsense syllables, each video and each new release broke streaming records. Within a year, she was selling out the biggest stadiums in the world, meeting her idols, and inspiring millions with her story of patience and acceptance before finally awakening her Ability.

Her most successful venture was a series of albums meant to elicit specific emotions in listeners. None of the songs contained words, and they were only produced with minimal background music. It was just Adelaide singing tones that would inspire hope, serenity, confidence, or any number of emotional reactions. When she released Peace, her latest installment in the series and the sixth in as many months, she shattered all of her own records, launching herself to even greater stardom.

“Ade, I just received a message for you.” Since discovering her Ability, Adelaide’s father had taken over as her manager and business partner. He was content in retirement and needed something to stimulate his impressive brain. He read everything he could about marketing and promotion, memorizing every word, and helped launch her career, helping her explode onto the music scene and become a household name around the world. Along with her mother, who was taking a break from her own fame, the entire family had dedicated themselves to Adelaide’s blossoming career.

“What does it say?” Adelaide asked in between the sweeps of makeup being applied by her artist.

“Well, that’s the thing, I can’t open it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it has some kind of device attached with facial identification.” He shrugged and handed her a large yellow envelope while the artist began brushing her long, amber hair. “You’re the only one that can open it.”

Adelaide flipped the envelope over in her hands, searching for any indication as to who could have sent it. The only identifier was a wax seal she didn’t recognize. Because why would she? Who used wax seals anymore, anyway? “Do you know what this seal is?”

Her dad gave her his “Of course I know what it is” look.

“Okay, so what is it?” To her credit, Adelaide hadn’t let fame strip away the childlike wonder, the grace and appreciation she had been raised to show. She was still a nineteen-year-old girl, though. One who was working with her parents, no less. So the sassy attitude was sure to come out every now and then.

Her dad only chuckled. “Just open it.”

She turned the envelope over in her hands again. “How?” A light appeared from the top of the envelope and scanned down her face. She held completely still, mouth still hanging halfway open. Something inside the envelope clicked, and the flap opened. Hesitantly, she peered inside, afraid of what she might find.

To her relief, it was only a single piece of paper. It looked like a very expensive piece of paper, but still just paper.

Adelaide pulled the paper from the envelope and read it aloud. “You have been invited to perform your latest album in full at the upcoming United Nations Summit for World Peace, held at Honor Hall in Washington, DC. This will not only offer you a chance to influence the future of this nation and the world, but you will have great exposure through media coverage. You will also be paid a sum…” Her words trailed off and the paper fell from her hand.

“That is awesome, Ade.” Her father and stylist wrapped her in a tight embrace.

“What’s going on?” her mother asked as she came into the room. “What did I miss?”

“Ade just got invited to perform for the UN.”

Her mom joined in on the group hug. “Honey, I’m so proud of you. This really is an amazing opportunity for you.”

Suddenly sweating, Adelaide wiggled out of their arms, her face pale and her heart racing. “No, it’s not.”

#

Adelaide’s palms were sweating. Her hair, which had been pristinely tied and pinned back in an elaborate braid, was threatening to come undone with how much she kept messing with it. The knot in her stomach was growing larger every second. She imagined her parents were feeling the same thing from their place at the back of the meeting hall.

She had performed in front of crowds a hundred times larger than the one she would step before today, but never like this. This was Honor Hall, a location renowned across the globe for its ability to block out all Abilities once inside. It had become the obligatory meeting place for foreign delegates and international negotiations. The lack of Abilities, and the overall construction of the space, made it one of the safest places in the world. It also put Adelaide at her most vulnerable.

She couldn’t refuse the invitation, even knowing what coming here could do to her career. Someone had already leaked the invite to the press. It was on the internet before she even got the envelope. How could she turn down the opportunity to use her music to help bring about a time of peace unlike any the world had seen before? Of course she had accepted.

Now that she was here, she wished she hadn’t.

She couldn’t prerecord her performance and lip sync. It would get out before she finished her first song, and her career would be over barely a year after it began. After all, if she could lip sync here, she could have been faking it all along, staging everything for fame.

At least, that’s what people would say.

She couldn’t back out now. She couldn’t go out there and sing with her normal voice. Adelaide truly had no idea what she was going to do. Why had they done this? Why had they invited her here, of all places? They had to know her singing voice was tied to her Ability, and it would be shut off inside Honor Hall. Were they trying to undermine her stardom, knock her down a peg? Or did they assume she had a good voice even without the Ability, and the effect would be mostly a placebo?

Whatever the case, there was no way Adelaide was going to figure it out now. She could hear the rabble of dignitaries quieting in the hall beyond the double doors, her final shelter from the embarrassment that was about to befall her.

“Attendees of this Summit for World Peace,” the president said, her distinct voice rising above the crowd. She waited for silence to fall over the hall. “It is my great pleasure to welcome Adelaide Mackay, here to perform her world-renowned album, the appropriately-titled Peace.”

The doors opened before her. Camera flashed in her face, blinding her. She could hear the whispers coming from all sides, in every language imaginable. She forced her trembling knees to steady and took a tentative step. Then another. And another. She had done this so many times in the last year, it was like second nature. For now, all she had to do was be herself. She could worry about the rest when she got to the small stage that had been set up to the left of the Speaker’s Podium.

With a flourish of her arms, Adelaide skipped and trotted down the aisle. “Thank you all so much for coming,” she cried, her smile shining bright, hiding the anxiety threatening to paralyze her. She reached the stage and somersaulted up onto the platform, hopping to her feet with her arms extended above her head. A ripple of laughter crested through the attendees before silence permeated every inch of the great hall. Every eye was on her. Every ear anticipated that wonderful, healing voice.

“Thank you all for coming,” Adelaide said into the microphone, just as she did at the start of every performance. “As with all of my music, I hope these songs reach you. I hope they help you find whatever it is you are looking for in your heart. I know we just met, but I love each and every one of you. Let’s kick it.”

With a steadying breath, Adelaide nodded to the technician in the rear of the room. The opening notes of Peace rang out through the massive speakers hung above her head. She took another deep breath and waited for her cue. The lilting piano echoed off the curved walls before falling to a soft melody. She opened her mouth to sing.

But nothing came out.

She couldn’t do it. She was frozen.

As murmurs rose up in the crowd and eyes darted around in confusion, Adelaide could only stand and watch, her mouth still hanging open but unable to sing. With a sudden burst of anger, excitement, inspiration, and embarrassment all rolled into one, she spoke.

“I can’t sing.” Her revelation caused the media members to scramble to attention, charging to the front as each one vied for the opportunity to ask the first question. Adelaide held up her hand to stop them, though the rush of security probably had more to do with their retreat than she did. “Okay, I mean I couldn’t sing, at least not until I got my Ability. I’ve been open and honest about that fact, though I guess some people may have underestimated just how bad of a singer I really am. As many of you know, for a long time, I was afraid I would never even get an Ability. I was afraid I would be a Bland for the rest of my life.

“But you know what? Who cares if I was? Why should it matter? We all have different Abilities, anyway, and some of them honestly suck. So why would it matter if someone didn’t have one at all? That sure is a whole lot better than having to carry around eclipse glasses just so you can’t see all of the smells in the world around you. Now, I don’t know if the UN invited me here to embarrass me or if they thought my songs could actually bring peace to this messed up world. And, frankly, I don’t care.

“It shouldn’t take the Ability of one nineteen-year-old girl to bring about world peace. It shouldn’t take any Ability, for that matter. Each of you here in this room, I’m assuming has some Ability, some of which I know for a fact are amazing. Our own president can breathe underwater. I mean, that is freaking cool. But, for some reason, we don’t have the ability to come together and figure out what is best for the world? To figure out a way to stop fighting and killing each other all the time? How does that make sense?

“Look, like I said, I’m just a girl. A girl who can’t sing without her Ability, sure, but a girl who knows that the best thing any of us can do is be kind. I haven’t tried to spread that message through my music as some kind of marketing scheme or some way to appeal to a certain crowd. I mean it. Just be a good person. If everyone can do that, well, who knows what we can accomplish, even without our Abilities. I’m going to sing now.”

And sing she did. It was horrible, of course, but Adelaide sang every song from Peace to a crowd of onlookers who, even though they cringed at every squeaked high note and winced at every off-key intonation, spent more time considering her words than listening to her songs. And when she was finished, she walked out of Honor Hall without answering a single question, without even looking into a camera.

She strode out of the building, mother and father following closely behind, proud that she had used her voice, her real voice, in the best way she thought possible. If it hurt her career, well, she would live with that. She could rest easy knowing she had done everything she could with the platform she had to inspire hope and love in the world.

End.