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“You’re trying out for this?” I wasn’t sure why I looked at Brooks when I said that but I did.
“If we can actually write words to this song,” Brooks said, slowly twisting a tuning key on his guitar and then testing out the string.
“You’re a band with no finished songs?”
Levi answered, “We all just met a couple weeks ago. Kai and Brooks play back home together, but Ian and I were hired this year for the house band.”
I held up the flyer. “And after your first magical night together you decided to try out for this?”
“That was Brooks’s idea,” Levi said as I handed him back the paper.
“But we’re never going to finish a song, so it was a stupid idea,” Brooks said in a tired voice, like he’d pointed this out a hundred times.
“We’d finish a song,” Levi said, “but Brooks doesn’t like anyone else’s lyrics.”
Ian, who seemed much more comfortable singing than he did talking, nodded at this. I laughed.
“Oh, you’re on his side?” Brooks asked me while throwing his guitar pick at Ian.
I held up my hands. “I didn’t realize there were sides.”
“There are!” Kai called out as though he’d been following along, even though he was being interviewed. “There’s Brooks’s lame lyrics and then there’s—”
“Nobody being able to build on them,” Brooks finished. “Because you all get distracted too easily.”
Lauren’s camera had now panned to the group, recording this exchange. I backed up so I was out of the shot.
Levi stepped closer to Lauren’s phone and said, “I will sing you his lyrics.” He pulled the microphone from where it sat in a stand and sang, “Hope is the lie that keeps us hanging on to madness.”
“What’s wrong with that lyric?” Brooks asked.
I lowered myself back into the chair, feeling bad I had started a fight with my questions. It obviously wasn’t a new fight, though.
“We don’t want to suck the life out of the audience,” Levi said.
“But that’s my number one goal,” Brooks deadpanned.
“What was that other lyric?” Kai said. “Something about love being for fools?”
Brooks, who had been tuning his guitar that didn’t need tuning for the last several minutes, said, “Love is just child’s play for the dreamers and the fools.”
“Yes, that one,” Kai said.
Lauren laughed along with the other guys. I wondered if any of these lyrics were drawn from life experience. Was that how Brooks really felt, or were they just words for a song?
“Levi,” Ian said. “Put the microphone back.”
“Uh-oh,” Levi said, holding the microphone in the air like a game of keep-away. “I’ve touched Ian’s pretend instrument.”
Ian just rolled his eyes, which seemed to work because Levi tossed the mic to him. He barely caught it with a fumbling grasp.
Kai rubbed the back of his neck and looked at Lauren. “Did you have any more questions for me?”
“Oh, yeah.” She rejoined him.
Levi patted his stomach. “Think there’ll be food at the campfire?”
Maybe I actually was on Brooks’s side of the lyrics argument because I hadn’t heard them come up with any ideas, just criticism. Plus, I actually liked the lyric. Love is just child’s play for the dreamers and the fools. Out loud, I added, “You want me to play your game but won’t teach me all the rules.”
Brooks’s hands stilled on the strings of his guitar and he looked at me. “What?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”
“No, say it again.”
“It was just a passing thought. I don’t write lyrics.”
“But she loves words,” Lauren said. “And poetry. You write poetry sometimes.”
“It was a lyric idea?” Levi asked. “Let’s hear it.”
Kai pounded a beat on the drums and started chanting, “Avery, Avery, Avery.”
I felt my cheeks heating up with so much focused attention on me and wanted to crawl inside myself.
Brooks, as if sensing this, said, “Kai! Stop.”
He immediately did. “Too much?” He smiled sheepishly at me.
Brooks swung his guitar to his back and dug through his guitar case, coming up with a notebook and pencil. “Something about rules?”
He wasn’t going to drop it, so I said, “Your lyric was ‘Love is just child’s play for the dreamers and the fools.’ And then I added, ‘You want me to play your game but won’t teach me all the rules.’ ”
“That’s good,” Levi said.
Ian nodded. “I’d sing that.”
Brooks scribbled it down, then gave me a curious look. His eyes scanned the group. “See, that’s how you build.”
With those words, they all broke out into another argument, talking over each other. “Who needs a gold star now?” “You never listen!” “We just need to finish the other song!”
I stood. “Lauren, we should get going.”
Brooks’s head whipped around. “You’re leaving?” And I couldn’t tell if his intense expression was saying, Finally or Don’t go yet.
“We have a few ghost stories to think up,” I said.
I could see Lauren wanted to argue, but she knew I was right. “We’ll come back next time,” she promised, and that was either the best news or the worst news for Brooks.
A sharp tapping noise brought me out of sleep. The spiral edging of my notebook dug into my cheek, reminding me that I had fallen asleep the night before trying to write out a schedule of new things to try this summer. I pushed the book aside and rubbed at the bumpy indentation it had created on my skin. The tapping noise was back. It took me several sleepy moments to realize it was something hitting the window.
I sat up. My sister groaned and turned toward the wall. I checked my phone on the nightstand—six-thirty. What woodland creature was waking me up at six-thirty in the morning? I started to lie back down when another series of taps made me jump.
I moved the curtain
