Big Time Page 7

  “I think she means wake them up,” Tyler whispers to me.

  We run through each of the songs from start to finish before wrapping up for the day. Bernice heads toward me as I’m filling my backpack. Tyler glances over and bolts when he sees her coming.

  “I was thinking we should get together one more time tomorrow and make sure everything’s in order with the piece,” Bernice says. “Can you come to my house after supper?”

  “I can probably do that,” I say.

  “I guess there’s no point asking Tyler,” she says. “Even when he does show up, he doesn’t contribute anything.”

  I’m left wondering what it is she thinks I contribute, but I’m not about to make an issue out of it.

  Keith comes up to me as I’m leaving. “Hey, Gerri,” he says. “You interested in grabbing a coffee at Human Bean?”

  My heart skips a beat. Is this a date?

  “Sure,” I say. “Sounds great.”

  “Cool,” he says. “Macy and Davis and I were just gonna hang out for a while and talk about the mashups.”

  It’s a bit of a letdown that he isn’t actually asking me out, but I’m still happy to tag along with them. I’ve been wishing I was in their group since the day Ms. Kogawa assigned us. One of the things I’ve regretted most about the way she broke up the class is that while working with Bernice is a boring chore, the other group has gotten really friendly. I know that they’ve been hanging out regularly and messing around with other ideas for songs, which sounds like a lot more fun than sitting in Bernice’s basement twiddling my thumbs.

  Macy has their parents’ car, so she drives us downtown to the café. Inside, we grab seats near the empty stage. I hadn’t noticed how small it is before.

  “We’ll be crowded up there, hey?” I say.

  “Yeah,” says Keith. “We’ll probably have to spill over onto the floor.”

  “Maybe we can arrange it so that Bernice ends up standing in the bathroom and we can conveniently forget to do her song,” says Davis.

  Macy elbows him in the arm.

  “Sorry, Gerri,” he says. “I forgot you were here. Your group’s song is lovely and emotional.”

  I laugh. “You don’t have to worry about offending me,” I say. “I don’t really have anything to do with it. I just show up and she tells me what to do.”

  “You shouldn’t let her get away with that,” says Macy.

  “It’s true,” says Keith. “You’re really good. You could bring a lot to the song if she’d let you.”

  I’m surprised to hear them talk like this, as if I have something to contribute besides my voice.

  “I don’t really know much about that stuff,” I say.

  “What stuff? Music stuff?” asks Keith. “Come on, Gerri. You’ve got a great voice, and you have a better ear for harmony than anyone else in the group.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “I don’t even know how to read music that well.”

  “You’re learning though,” says Macy. “You really have a great sense of what sounds good. It’s not just being able to sing a melody line—it’s being able to interpret it, to know when to sing loud or soft, how to balance with other singers. It’s really cool. Anyone can learn to read music and understand theory. The hard part is the stuff that comes naturally to you.”

  My first impulse is to assume they’re just being nice, but they look totally serious. What if they’re right? What if I’m actually talented, not just with a decent voice but with a good head for music? Not that it really matters now, at least as far as the song is concerned. Our last meeting is tomorrow, and it’s not like I can come up with any suggestions by then, let alone convince Bernice to take them.

  “The problem,” says Davis, echoing my thoughts, “is that it really doesn’t make much difference at this point.”

  “Doesn’t hurt to try,” says Keith.

  “I wouldn’t know how to begin,” I say.

  “How did you guys figure out your songs?” Keith asks Macy and Davis.

  “We just kind of messed around with different songs and stuff,” says Macy.

  “Only took an hour or so to get the basic idea down,” says Davis. “The rest was just figuring out how to make it work.”

  “I don’t think I can come up with anything that quick,” I say.

  “Don’t worry about it,” says Macy. “I’m sure it will all sound great when we have the chance to do it in front of an audience.”

  None of them look all that convinced, though.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After we leave Human Bean and Macy drops me off at home, I can’t get their suggestion out of my mind. I keep running through “Love Doesn’t Die” and “The Brightest Star in Space” in my head, trying to drop a new song into the center, something that will make the other two sound different the way “Pop Goes the Weasel” turns “Rock and Roar” into something unique.

  Eventually, I just give up. It’s too hard to imagine introducing something to those two dramatic, powerful songs that will help make a new sound. By the time Dad calls me down to eat, I’ve pretty much decided that Keith, Macy and Davis were mistaken about my abilities.

  “Go call your mother in from the garden, will you, Gerri?” Dad asks as he dishes up spaghetti.

  I yell into the shadows at the back of the yard and grab a seat at the table. Mom comes in a few moments later, her hair a mess and her hands covered with dirt. She looks totally frustrated.

  “What happened to you?” Dad asks as she washes up.

  “Oh, it’s that stupid lilac stump near the shed,” she says. “I spent almost two hours hacking at it with an ax, digging as far down around the roots as I could, and it won’t come out.”

  “Why don’t you just leave it in the ground?” asks Jack.

  “I can’t leave it there,” she says, “because I want to plant a new perennial bed on that spot, and the stump is in the way. Nothing will be able to put down roots because there’s a big hunk of dead wood taking up all the space.”

  “That’s it!” I exclaim. Everyone turns to look at me.

  “What’s it, sweetheart?” asks Dad.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I just got an answer for a homework question.”

  I hurry through supper, then race up to my room and go online. The problem with the two songs Bernice chose, I’ve realized, is that they’re just too powerful together. For something else to fit in and change the sound, one of them has to be removed completely. I doubt Bernice will agree to it, but at least nobody can say I didn’t try, even if no one ever hears what I come up with. I almost want to do this more for my own satisfaction than to change Bernice’s composition.

  I spend more than an hour watching videos and listening to songs online, closing my eyes and trying as hard as I can to imagine how each song could drop into “Love Doesn’t Die,” but nothing seems to work.

  After I’ve unsuccessfully run through what seems like a hundred options, I groan and spin around in my chair, wondering if there’s any point at all. That’s when I glance across my room, and everything clicks into place.

  I walk to Bernice’s house early the next evening, wondering how I’m going to bring up my idea. It turns out to be easier than I expected.

  She opens the door before I even have a chance to knock.

  “Come on in,” she says. “We need to get to work.” She waits impatiently as I take off my shoes, then bounds down the stairs to the rec room so fast that I can barely keep up. She drops onto her piano stool and looks at me frantically.

  “What’s the matter, Bernice?” I ask. She’s acting bizarre.

  “It just isn’t working!” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My—I mean our—mashup,” she says. “I tried to do everything properly. I picked songs that have similar tempos and are in the same time signature, but it just doesn’t work!” She pauses and looks at me almost desperately. “You need to help me out—you’ve got a good ear. Yo
u need to help me make the harmonies more exciting or something.”

  I’m so astonished at how stressed out she sounds that I barely register her compliment.

  “Bernice, it isn’t that bad,” I say.

  “Oh give me a break,” she says. “I know everyone hates it.”

  “Bernice,” I say. “You’re being too hard on yourself. Your mashup is great, technically. It’s just that—”

  “What?!” she asks, spinning around on her piano stool and leaning toward me.

  “Well,” I say, “you could stand to loosen up a bit, let things come a bit more naturally.”

  Her face pinches up and I expect her to snap at me, but instead she spins back around and drops her head onto the keyboard, filling the basement with a mournful, discordant drone. “I don’t know, maybe you’re right,” she says, her face smooshed into the keys. “It’s too late though. There’s no time to do anything different. There’s only one rehearsal between now and the show. We don’t have time to figure anything out.”

  “Maybe you’re wrong about that,” I say.

  She raises her head and looks at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I might have a solution,” I tell her. “But I think we should get Tyler over to help. He’s supposed to be part of our group, and I think he can contribute something.”

  Tyler and I text back and forth for a few minutes. He’s understandably hesitant, but once I explain what’s going on, he agrees to come over and try to help.

  At first Bernice doesn’t understand what I’m trying to do, but Tyler picks it up quickly, and once we start singing out the different pieces, she begins to come on board. It turns out that we’re a pretty good team. I have the tune in my head, but it’s not much more than a rough concept when we start. Once Bernice understands the idea, she applies some theory to it, and slowly it all starts to come together. Tyler is able to do the tenor parts and has several good ideas about how the two songs could relate to each other lyrically. By the time Mom comes to pick me up, near midnight, all three of us are feeling pretty good about what we’ve accomplished.

  Ms. Kogawa is a harder sell. We stop at the music room to see her before classes begin the next morning, and at first she doesn’t like the idea of changing things this close to the performance at all.

  “Guys,” she tells us, “the piece is going to go over very well.”

  “Sorry, Ms. Kogawa, but I don’t think that’s true,” says Tyler. “It’s a total snoozefest.”

  “That’s not very nice, Tyler,” she says. “Bernice put a lot of work into that piece, and it’s very technically accomplished.”

  “No, he’s right,” says Bernice. “It’s super boring.”

  “Even if I agreed with that, which I don’t,” she says, “we have four other people to think about here. We’ve been working on this piece for weeks. How do you expect people to take it when we tell them we want to go back to the drawing board after they’ve already put all this work in?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” I tell her. “I’m pretty sure everyone else is willing to change things if it makes for a better show.”

  “At least let us try to sing it for you,” says Bernice.

  Ms. Kogawa sighs and looks at her watch. “Okay,” she says. “You’ll have to be quick though— the bell is going to ring in a few minutes.”

  We’re prepared for this and quickly break into the piece, stopping just before the bell starts to ring. Ms. Kogawa waits for it to stop and then looks at us for a long moment.

  “You’re right,” she says. “It’s much better. We’ll bring it to the group and see what they say. If they’re willing to put in the extra time, we can switch it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Considering the conversation I had with Keith and Macy and Davis, it’s no surprise that everyone’s on board to change songs for the open mic. When Bernice and Tyler and I unveil the changes at the beginning of rehearsal on Sunday, I can practically hear a sigh of relief ripple through the room.

  “It’s going to take a lot of hard work to get things ready for Saturday,” Ms. Kogawa says. Nobody argues.

  The next six days are among the most fun, stressful and rewarding that I’ve ever experienced. All seven of us spend hours in Bernice’s basement, learning our new parts and fine-tuning the performance as much as we’re able to in the limited time we have. Bernice is still pretty bossy, but now that the rest of the group is involved, she’s less inclined to walk all over our suggestions. I’m just happy to hear some of my ideas come to life. It feels great.

  “Fun, hey?” Keith asks me at one point when we’ve taken a short break from practicing to eat a snack that Bernice’s mother has brought downstairs for us.

  “Totally,” I say.

  “This is why I try to get involved in as much music as I can,” he says. “When you’re learning a new tune or practicing for a new kind of gig, it always starts off messy and noisy and confusing, but if you give yourself the chance to work out the kinks and discover the sound, there’s no better feeling.”

  I know what he means. A couple of months ago, I didn’t really know any of these people very well, and now I’m making music with them. It has been messy, and definitely confusing, but I can’t remember the last time I felt this satisfied about anything.

  “Maybe you want to hang out sometime,” he says. “To mess around with some songwriting and stuff.”

  “That sounds fun,” I say.

  “I mean the two of us,” he says. “Like, hanging out, or whatever.”

  He starts to blush, and finally I catch on to what he’s saying.

  “For sure,” I manage to say, trying not to sound flustered. “That would be really cool.”

  “Awesome,” he says. We grin goofily at each other, not sure what to say, before he spins on his heel and goes over to the coffee table to grab a cookie.

  On the day of the show, we meet up at the school and head to Human Bean together.

  The audience is a lot bigger than I’d expected. Keith has mentioned that there’s usually a good crowd on open-mic nights, but he didn’t say that it’s standing room only. By the time we arrive, my family, including Granddad, has staked a claim at a table in the corner with a good view of the stage. Meg is sitting with them, and she waves wildly when she spots me.

  “You didn’t mention how cute the baristas are,” she says when I go over to say hello to everyone. “This choral thing sounds better and better by the day!”

  “I’m glad you could make it, Granddad,” I say, leaning over to give him a hug.

  “Are you kidding me?” he says. “As if I’d miss your big debut!”

  “I’m going to stand with the rest of the group to watch the show,” I tell them.

  “Break a leg!” says Dad.

  I push through the crowd and squeeze up next to Davis.

  “We’re on sixth,” he tells me. “Keith just went up to check out the list.”

  A man comes onto the stage and thanks us all for coming out. “I haven’t seen this place this packed in years,” he says. “I guess that’s what happens when six newbies sign up! Everyone they know comes out to cheer them on! Make sure to tip the staff and enjoy the show!”

  The acts that come on before us are as diverse as Keith told me they would be. One lady does a decent standup comedy act, and she’s followed by a beat boxer who spits and scrapes his way through a Michael Jackson song. A husband and wife get up and sing a couple of really nice songs that they wrote themselves, and when they get off the stage, I’m surprised to see Keith get up with a couple of guys I don’t recognize. They bang their way through some high-energy rock music that gets the crowd dancing and cheering. He wasn’t kidding about keeping his musical options open. Between this, our choral group and the laid-back surfer music he sang at the Big Time audition, he’s all over the map.

  Our group gives them an extra-loud cheer when they finish, and Keith pushes back toward us, flushed and happy.

  “That wa
s awesome!” I tell him.

  “Thanks,” he says. “Felt good to burn off some energy. Now we just have to wait for the main event!”

  After one more act, a girl with a keyboard doing covers of Tori Amos songs, it’s our turn.

  “Remember to relax and have fun,” says Ms. Kogawa as we make our way to the stage. It takes a few moments for us to arrange ourselves properly. Keith, Tyler and Bernice are the tallest, so they stand on the floor in front of the stage and the rest of us stand behind them. I look out at the crowd, catching the excited eyes of my family and Meg in the back corner and noticing the attentive faces of the rest of the crowd. It’s not a giant auditorium full of TV cameras like on Big Time, but at this moment it’s just as exciting. Not to mention nerve-racking.

  Ms. Kogawa pulls her tuning whistle out of her pocket and blows a tight clear C note to orient us to the right key, and then we begin.

  With serious faces, Bernice and Tyler begin singing, just the two of them at first.

  Every single day another part of me ages

  I keep on flipping through the pages of my life

  Then the rest of us come in, singing the parts Bernice wrote for us. She might be a control freak, but Bernice has a lot of talent, and her transcription is top notch. Boring or not, our voices come together beautifully.

  The Earth continues turning, the candle keeps

  on burning

  But my love, my love never dies

  It never dies

  It lives forever…

  At this point, the song gradually shifts to something more upbeat and cheerful as we begin to mix in the lyrics of my favorite Marla Belle Munro song.

  Forever and ever and ever and ever…

  Then I come in.

  You’ve got that look on your face that says

  never means never,

  That our love will last forever, that there’s

  nothing that could sever what we’ve got…