“Obviously.”
“You don’t think it’s a good idea?”
“What? No, I mean yes.” I was a horrible person for being jealous right now. Jealous that at fifteen, my sister seemed to be full of creative, thoughtful ideas and all I’d come up with so far was the title to a motivational playlist full of songs I couldn’t even listen to. “It’s a great idea, Lauren. Really.”
“It will be, I think.”
As we came to the main path leading up to the lodge, the walkways became more crowded. People filed in through the large, propped-open doors.
“What’s happening here tonight?” I asked.
“Bingo?” Lauren suggested.
As if she knew D might object to our band practice invasion, Lauren hung close to a large group of people as we entered the lodge and then peeled off to the right without looking back. Like the first night we’d arrived, I could hear the music as we approached the hall.
The stage was lit and the seating area was dark, so nobody saw us at first. The four guys were playing through a song, with Brooks on guitar, Kai on drums, the bleached-blond guy on bass, and the guy with floppy brown hair on vocals. The song had a punk rock feel to it with more energy and grit than the tune Brooks had played on his guitar the night before by the campfire.
When the song was finished, Brooks turned and said, “Better, but the chorus should be faster.”
Much to my horror, Lauren called out, “Hello!” The single word echoed through the mostly empty theater, and all eyes were now on us. Lauren walked forward and up the stairs to join them onstage, saying, “That was so good! And here we thought you were going to be practicing dinner songs.”
I wasn’t as fast to follow but eventually was standing next to her.
Brooks looked at me. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting him to do. Nod? Wave? Acknowledge that we’d had a conversation before this moment? Maybe he was expecting the same from me, but seeing him now brought back all the feelings of frustration from the night before.
“Avery!” Kai said from behind the drums; then he beat out a ba-dum-dum on the tom-toms.
Now Lauren’s eyes were on me.
“Hey, guys,” I said. “This is my sister, Lauren.”
“You know them?” she hissed.
“Not really,” I said under my breath. Because I really didn’t. I wasn’t even sure which guy was Ian and which was Levi.
As if reading my mind, the bleached-blond guy raised the head of his bass in a semi-wave and said, “I’m Levi.”
Which by default made floppy brown-haired lead singer…“Ian,” he said.
Kai tossed a drumstick in the air and caught it. “Lauren?” he asked with a big smile.
She nodded, her cheeks going pink.
“I’m the heart and soul and life of this band,” he said, as though already auditioning to star in her documentary. “But you can just call me Kai.”
“Oh please,” Levi groaned. “You’re the drummer.”
“What does that mean? Have you ever heard a song without a drum pattern?”
“Have you ever heard a song without a bass line?”
“Yes. A million,” Kai said.
Brooks let out a long sigh. “Do you both need gold stars tattooed on your foreheads?”
“Are you offering?” Kai asked. “Because that could be our band thing.”
“You must be Brooks,” Lauren said. How did she know that? Tia?
Brooks’s eyes went from my sister to me. Great, he thought I’d been talking bad about him. “Yeah,” he said.
I pasted on a big fake smile. “You said to come watch practice, right?” Now he’d have to admit that he really didn’t want me here and tell everyone it was because he thought I was a snob.
“We’re not supposed to hang out with guests,” he said.
Oh right. Or there was that.
“Off the clock!” Kai yelled out. “We’re not supposed to hang out with guests off the clock.”
Brooks shot Kai a look.
“Exactly,” Levi said. “They can stay. We need feedback anyway. Are you two any good at feedback?”
“I am excellent at feedback,” Lauren said. “Avery is not. She’ll just tell you what you want to hear.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“What? It’s true. You don’t like to hurt people’s feelings. I am great at hurting people’s feelings.”
“Well, that’s true,” I grumbled.
A smile played on Brooks’s lips and I narrowed my eyes at him.
“But if I’m going to give you feedback, I require something in return.” Lauren looked around, found a stack of chairs by the curtains, and freed one, moving it closer to the guys. “How do you all feel about being recorded for my channel?”
Surprisingly, they’d all agreed, with varying amounts of enthusiasm, that my sister could record their practice sessions. I was pretty sure Brooks only agreed so that he could have videos to analyze. But my sister didn’t care what the reason was; she’d been practically skipping around the stage for the last thirty minutes recording while I sat in the chair off to the side.
They’d just finished a song for the third time and now Lauren was over by the drums interviewing Kai. I couldn’t hear the questions from where I sat, but there was a lot of laughing.
“So I don’t get it,” I called out to the guys. “How come there are only a couple lines of lyrics? And if you can’t play this song in the dining hall for people, why are you practicing it?”
Levi leaned down to his guitar case, which was open beside him, and produced a neon-green piece of paper. He walked it over to me. I collected it from his outstretched hand and unfolded it. Do you have what it takes? A band? A song? A sound?
If you answered yes to those questions, audition for a chance to be part
