December Spotlight Series – Christmas Karaoke Party – Part 8

Part of my Christmas Karaoke series! We’re back once again to the ‘Step Into Christmas’ group, this time with Derryl’s POV. Remember when Zabby told her group she had an idea for choreography? Here it is…

Singing and Signing

Roll Call: Zabby, Nallain, Denise, and Derryl
Song: Step Into Christmas
Scenelette Type: Meta

The costumes had arrived, and Zabby and Nallain were both wearing theirs. Derryl and Denise had opted to wait. Denise was waiting because she didn’t want to think about her clothes while she was still learning the choreography. And Derryl… well he just flat out didn’t want to.

He had (fortunately) been able to talk them out of the more garish options, but he still thought his green suit with the gold decorations looked a little ridiculous. As if to balance the cosmic scales, his outfits for the rehearsals had all consisted of black jeans, and plain black T-shirts.

Although, in fairness, this type of outfit was standard procedure when teaching sign language, to contrast with his lighter skin tone.

It had been Zabby’s idea. She and Derryl had talked about it before she suggested it to the rest of the group, but Derryl had liked it from the start. Well, he didn’t necessarily like the idea of being on stage at all, but if he was going to be, this had the potential to be fun.

The plan was, rather than work out a brand new dance routine, to use the sign language interpretation of the song as a starting point and ‘dressing it up’ as Nallain put it with some ‘extra jazz.’
Whatever that meant.

The point was, he was happy to teach them, and it had been interesting to see his versions of the words mold into something that was unique to this group.

They particularly liked the sign for “Step into,” which was now a whole-body movement rather than something exclusively with the hands. The also really got into the ‘watch the snow fall’ signs, and ‘forever and ever’ had somehow turned into excited jumping like at a rock concert.

He worried about Denise at first. She was picking up the signing easily enough, but she seemed disgruntled the whole time. He thought she resented being forced to sign the words as well as sing them, but it turned out she was just really focused when she was learning new things. Once they had everything mapped out and transitioned to practicing it, she enjoyed it as much as the others.

Though no one enjoyed it as much as Nallain. He’d worried about her, too, when the group first came together. In general, Derryl preferred mellow people in his life. Not just preferred – he needed them, and he thought that the energetic woman (wasn’t she a thief or something? Wasn’t anyone worried about that just a little?) would cause him nothing but headaches. But she was able to contain herself for the most part. She wasn’t quite as over-the-top as he feared.

And then, of course, there was Zabby. They’d met before, a few times, and it was nice to see her enjoying herself so much with the song. Some of those smiles were the most genuine he’d ever seen with her. He didn’t know her whole story, but got the impression that she didn’t smile a lot.

“Looking good, kids,” Nallain said when they finished another run of the song. She’d taken to calling them ‘kids’ even though Zabby was the only one technically younger than her. “Okay, we probably ought to start dividing up the lyrics.”

Derryl was actually sort of relieved that this didn’t involve him. From the looks of things, Zabby and Denise weren’t too thrilled about being involved either. “I sort of assumed you’d do most of the singing,” Zabby said, though he could tell her hope was a fragile breed.

“Nuh uh,” Nallain said decisively. “You’re helping me. Now tell me what verse you want or I’ll assign it on my own.”

Zabby and Denise shared a look that was despondent enough to make the groups lone extrovert offer, “I’ll take the first one, okay? Get the crowd warmed up.” She smiled as she said that last part, looking like she didn’t actually know what it meant. “And we’ll sing the chorus together.”

Nallain made notes of these important decisions and looked up to see if her offering had eased the heartache of the room. It hadn’t. “What’s wrong? Stage fright?”

“Maybe a little,” Zabby admitted.

Denise shrugged. “I don’t mind talking in front of people. I do oral reports and presentations at school all the time. But singing is different. Singing is like… people are looking at you to be entertained, not educated.”

Nallain gave herself a minute to think over this before saying, “Okay, I think I get it. And I’ll do most of the spotlight stuff, but I want you both to sing something. It’ll be good for you. And I know you can do it.”

Zabby gave her a weak smile.

Denise said, “You’re weirdly nice for someone who robs people.”

Nallain laughed at the bluntness of it, and Zabby actually gasped a little. Derryl didn’t have a big outward reaction, but inwardly was surprised to hear someone bring it up. He assumed it was just one of those things they weren’t supposed to talk about, similar to his type of magic or why he had a small, white mouse in his pocket most days.

“What can I say?” Nallain shrugged. “I like breaking the mold.” She returned her attention to the lyrics.

“So, how about we think of each verse as having eight lines – you each take two and I’ll take the other four. We can pass the microphone back and forth. It’ll be really adorable.”

Zabby still looked nervous, so Derryl sent her a text outside of the group chat, You’re not going to get a better offer than that. Take her up on it. He hit send, and then decided to follow it with a quick, You can definitely handle it. Promise.

Zabby read the messages, and then discretely gave him the signs for ‘okay’ and ‘thanks’ before facing down the page of lyrics to choose what she wanted to sing.

Author’s Note – Yeeaahh I know Derryl’s a tad cranky. I swear, the boy is trying his best, lol!

Also, if you want to take a look at how this song looks in ASL, here’s the video I watched before writing this

December Giveaway!

At the end of December, I’ll be giving these three bookish ornaments to one lucky person! I made these beauties out of upcycled novels (Left – Pride and Prejudice, Middle and Right – Sherlock Holmes)

To enter, just comment on any of my blog posts for the month of December! And, if you really want to increase your chances, you can also comment on the pinned post on my Facebook Page.

Last day to enter is December 30th. Winner will be announced on December 31st. Good Luck!