Big Time (10 page)

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 was 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
…

The audience claps when they hear the dramatic shift in the music, and I hear my granddad holler out from the back of the room. At this point, the rest of the group joins in—Keith singing a deep repetitive bass line, everyone else filling in the lyrics.

I'd rather die than say goodbye, and when we
      look up at the sky
I think that you and I could fly,
All we'd have to do is try
Come on, baby, let's try
…

From here on, the two songs begin to intertwine, Bernice leading the way on her song and me leading the way on mine, with everyone else singing with and against and around us. By the time we're done the first mashup, the audience is clapping along and enjoying themselves, and we finish to a loud round of applause. There's no time to relax though, and we break immediately into Macy and Davis's mashup. The audience loves this one, and we're having fun too, letting loose and hitting all our notes perfectly. By the time we're done, the room is totally into us, and I feel an electric thrill coming back at us from the crowd.

“That was awesome!” Bernice says to me as we leave the stage. “Thank you so much for helping save the song!”

“I think we all saved the song,” I say. “And you're right, that was awesome!”

“Great job, guys!” Ms. Kogawa says when we're all off the stage. “I can't wait to start planning our next show!”

I manage to reach through the crowd and grab Keith's arm to get his attention.

“That was fun, hey?” he asks.

“Totally,” I say. “I was thinking about what you were saying the other day. About getting together or whatever. Do you want to do that soon?”

He smiles widely at me. “How about tomorrow?” he asks.

“Perfect.”

Still smiling, I squeeze my way over to my family.

“Gerri, you were incredible!” my mother says, reaching up to grab my hands.

“I have to admit,” says Meg, “that was way better than I expected.”

“Jeez, thanks,” I say.

“Hey, it's a compliment!” she says.

“I'm proud of you, Gerri,” says Granddad. “You were just as great as I expected.”

I hang out with my family, still buzzing from the excitement of being onstage, watching while a harmonica player busts out a couple of blues songs. When he leaves the stage, the announcer comes to the mic.

“Next up,” he says, “we've got the old-school country stylin's of Nelson Jones!”

“What's going on, Granddad?” asks Jack.

“You don't think I'm going to let a perfectly good opportunity to play for an audience go to waste, do you?” asks Granddad. He turns and winks at me, then gets up and retrieves his guitar from behind the counter. The audience claps as he climbs cheerfully onto the stage, and the loudest applause in the room comes straight from our table.

Chapter Fifteen

Poppy gets cut from
Big Time
a couple of weeks before the finale.

I'm surprised and not surprised all at the same time. On one hand, I still think she had the best voice of anyone on the show. On the other hand, it had become clearer every week that she didn't really fit in to what the producers and the judges wanted. She kept trying to be herself, singing the songs she liked, dressing the way she wanted to, and they kept trying to turn her into something different—slicker and more commercial, a brand-new Poppy.