The Funeral Singer (6 page)

“The New Moon,” though, was different. It gave the altos center stage. And, of course, I had my solo.

The next hour and a half flew by. Much as I enjoyed performing songs that I’d sung a million times and could practically sing in my sleep, I loved learning something new. Each inflection, each pause, each tone change. It was almost enough to make me forget what was waiting for me after rehearsal. Almost.

***

“Please say you’re kidding.” Pete shook his head and leaned against the side of his Impala.

I’d decided to tell him about The Grime. For one thing, I needed a ride to Ty’s house. For another, I knew he was the one person at school who wouldn’t be impressed by the news, so he was the one person who wouldn’t care if The Grime decided to call the whole thing off. Still, I’d hoped for a slightly more supportive reaction than this.

“Will you give me a ride or won’t you?”

“Go on. Get in.” Pete opened the driver side door and slid in behind the wheel.

I threw my backpack onto his backseat and climbed in beside him. “This is something I really want to do. Can’t you be excited for me?”

Pete shrugged. “If you say so.”

“Lana’s excited for me, you know. She thinks it’s awesome.”

“I’m sure she does.” Pete’s face clouded over. “What’s the name of that lead singer guy she’s so into? Brutus? Bluto?”

“Bruno.” I sighed. I’d meant to appeal to Pete’s adoration of all things Lana. Instead, I’d reminded him of how far out of reach she was. “She’ll grow out of it, you know. Her infatuation with tough guys. She’ll get tired of having her heart broken all the time.”

Pete said nothing.

“You know, if you gave The Grime a chance, you might decide you actually liked them.” I pulled out my iPod. “Here. One song. That’s all I ask.”

Against Pete’s protests, I stuck the earbud in his ear. He had to respect the lyrics and the emotion in “Altogether Blue” even if he didn’t like the music.

Pete frowned, but he listened. I watched his face. Did he like the song? Hate it? Nothing. The song ended as we turned into Ty’s neighborhood, and Pete pulled the earbud out.

“Well?”

“It’s crap.”

“What? How can you say that? It’s not crap.”

“Okay, it’s not
total
crap. Not ‘American Idol’ level crap, but it’s crap.”

I doubted Pete had watched much “Idol,” and I happened to think there were some very talented people on there, but I decided not to pick that fight with him just then. “Remind me to get a testimonial from you if I ever record an album with these guys.
Not total crap. — Pete Sanderson
.”

“No, if you ever record an album with them, you’ll elevate them to a whole new level. Maybe,
Occasional flashes of brilliance
.”

I sighed and looked out the window. The houses were getting larger and more elaborate the further back into the neighborhood we drove. “Why do you always have to be such a music snob anyway?”

“It’s just … The Grime? Seriously? What about chorus? What about All State?”

“You sound like my dad. I can do both.”

He looked doubtful. “You say that now.”

“Come on. I love chorus. You know that. But this is about me doing something more. Something … real.”

“So chorus isn’t real?”

“I don’t know. Who do you think of when you think of ‘Moonlight Sonata’? Beethoven, or one of the millions of other people who’ve played it over the past two hundred years? I’m tired of singing other people’s songs all the time. I want to be Beethoven.”

“Uh huh. By joining The Grime.”

“You know what I mean. We’re going to
create
music. Our own, original, never-before-heard music.”

“Pop music.”

“So … what? Just because something is popular, it can’t be art?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, but that
is
what you think.”

Pete’s face softened. “Okay, broadly speaking, maybe it is art. But, it’s not ‘Moonlight Sonata.’ And if you wanted to create the vocal equivalent of ‘Moonlight Sonata,’ you could. You have a gift, you know.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, jeez. Now you really do sound like my dad.”

We rounded a bend in the road, and a huge mansion came into sight. Surrounded by iron fencing, it resembled a small castle, with a light stone façade and turrets rising up on each end. Flagpoles sat atop each of the turrets, one holding a U.S. flag and the other a flag with The Grime’s logo.

I smiled and raised my eyebrows at Pete. “Guess there’s something to be said for pop music.”

Pete pulled to the curb, his mouth hanging open. “Whoa. How old did you say this dude was?”

“He’s, like, nineteen or twenty.”

“And this is his house?”

“Apparently.”

“He must live with his parents.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Zed made it sound like the place is his. As in,
his
his.”

Pete whistled.

I took a deep breath and reached for the car door. “Thanks for the ride.”

Pete nodded. “Sure. Good luck.”

He waited as I approached the gate. A security camera mounted on top twisted and whirred as it followed my every move.

What was this place? Did one hit song pay for all this?

The gate swung open before I even pressed the intercom button, and I turned back to look at Pete’s car. Part of me wanted to jump back into its safe, familiar front seat and go home to my safe, familiar room. Instead, I waved goodbye and turned to make my way up the long stone pathway to my first ever Grime rehearsal.

CHAPTER TEN

Zed opened the door before I even knocked. He led me through the foyer and into a great room with a ceiling three stories high. The space reminded me of an episode of “MTV Cribs” from a few years ago when they filmed 50 Cent’s house. He had all-white marble floors and pillars, with soaring windows and a staircase the shape of a huge DNA-strand. Beautiful, without being over-the-top like so many of the mega-mansions on that show. Ty’s great room looked like a mini version of that, with one big exception. In the center of the room stood a huge, amorphous purple sculpture. Jabba the Hut meets Barney.

“Any idea what that is?” Zed asked.

I walked all the way around it. It did seem familiar, but I had no idea why. “Is this some sort of Rorschach thing?”

Zed laughed and shook his head. He pointed to a spot on the floor just inside the entrance. “Stand here and look at it.”

I walked over, and then I saw it. “Aha. It’s from your logo.”

The Grime’s logo consisted of its name written in puke green in one of those gritty fonts they always use for rock bands. The type was set against a black background with a big purple splotch. The splotch made for a cool logo but a fairly obnoxious sculpture. Then again, I’d never been much for modern art.

“Nice, huh?” Zed said. “It’s a one-of-a-kind.”

I nodded and tried to sound impressed. “Mm hmm. Nice.”

As we walked toward the back of the house, we reached an alcove with a baby grand piano. Zed stopped and pointed to the wall behind it.

Oh, wow. It wasn’t just any wall. It was The Wall.

I felt Zed watching me as I walked over to check it out. In the center hung the band’s double-platinum plaque for “Medium Well,” and below that was a shelf with their Grammy. Framed articles from
Rolling Stone, Blender, Spin
and a bunch of other magazines and newspapers from all over the world nearly covered the rest of the wall. I noticed none of the articles about Mick’s early drug problems made the cut, and neither did the piece in
Rolling Stone
a few months back called “Whatever Happened to The Grime?”

I turned toward Zed and pointed to the Grammy. “Can I touch?”

He nodded.

I ran my finger around the cold, hard mouth of the golden gramophone. A shiver ran through me. I remembered watching this on TV. Lana and I had held our breath while they named all of the nominees for Song of the Year. When they finally named “Medium Well” the winner, we’d jumped up and down as though we’d won it ourselves. I smiled as I remembered the shock on the faces of the band. What did that feel like?

Zed came over and touched my arm. “Come on. We’d better get downstairs. The guys are waiting.”

We made our way through a dining room and kitchen that looked as though they were straight out of
Fine Living
magazine.

“So is this all Ty’s?” I asked. I wanted to add
, and do the rest of you live in fabulous mansions too,
except I didn’t want to be rude.

Maybe Zed read my mind, or maybe he got that question a lot, because he answered it anyway. “Yep, it’s all his. Unlike the rest of us, Ty didn’t waste all his money on stupid stuff like trips to Vegas and stretch Hummers. He took everything and invested it in futures or hedge funds or whatever it is people have been getting rich on the past two years.”

Ty’s basement looked a little more like what I might have expected, only with more drums. To the right of the stairs, a set of leather sofas faced a huge flat-screen TV. A girl who looked like she was a little older than me, wearing faded jeans and a cami, sat watching two women scream at each other on some late afternoon court show. She completely ignored Zed and me, which I took as a hopeful sign that she was there with someone other than him.

Overflowing ashtrays and beer bottles littered the room, and a small bong sat on a coffee table in front of the girl. A smoky haze filled the air, burning my eyes and giving the scene a dreamlike quality.

To our left were the drums: six sets of various shapes, sizes and colors, plus dozens of bongos, cymbals, tom toms and rattles. If you could beat, scrape or shake it, Ty apparently owned it. Zed led me through this maze of percussion toward a door at the back.

A Grime poster—my favorite, the one with them standing in front of the stegosaurus exhibit at the Smithsonian—hung at an angle on the door. A tingling feeling rushed through me. This was it. Their studio and rehearsal space. Soon to be
our
studio and rehearsal space.

As we grew closer, I felt a strange sensation. The floor, in fact the very air around me, seemed to vibrate. Was that coming from inside the studio, or was it coming from inside me?

I soon had my answer. When Zed opened the door, my head snapped back at the sudden blast of music, and I had to catch myself or I would have totally dorked out and covered my ears. Zed noticed the expression on my face and laughed. “Sorry, forgot to warn you. Ty’s installed some serious soundproofing.”

One by one, Bruno, Ty, Jon, and some guy I’d never seen before on keyboard noticed us and stopped playing. For a moment, no one spoke or moved.

Zed placed his hand on my back and led me into the room. Still no one said anything.

“Hi, I’m Mel,” I ventured.

Ty and Jon came over, shook my hand and introduced themselves. “Nice to meet you,” I said. As if I didn’t know exactly who they were and where they were from and who designed the suits they wore to the People’s Choice Awards two years ago.

The new guy, a tall, gangly kid with a bad case of acne, waved at me from behind his keyboard. “Hey, I’m J.B.”

“He’s Jon’s cousin,” Zed said. “We’re trying him out for … ” His voice trailed off. For Mick’s position.

I gave J.B. a smile, then turned to say hello to Bruno, but he looked down and busied himself with tuning his guitar. Really? He was going to ignore me? What on earth did so many Grime fans see in him? Including Lana. Too bad I
wasn’t
taping this for her. Maybe she’d finally see what an arrogant ass he was.

“Alright. Let’s get started.” Zed clapped his hands. He seemed almost as nervous as me. He handed me a pair of earplugs, a mic and a stack of lyric sheets. “I thought we’d riff for a while on some of the old stuff. If you know it or start to get a feel for it, join in. Sing whichever parts you want, and we’ll worry about fine tuning later.”

We started with “Medium Well.” Guess they figured I’d know that one best, but we could have started anywhere on the play list. I knew every song at least as well as I knew all the standard funeral songs.

It felt weird jumping in without warming up or receiving instruction first, like we did in chorus. My voice shook a bit through the first verse and I blew one of my high notes, but no one really seemed to notice. Probably because they were playing their instruments at a decibel level that could have drowned out a shuttle launch. By the end of the chorus, I began to settle into the song and project into the mic better, and when it came time for the bridge, I even tried harmonizing a little with Bruno. The more sultry I made my voice, the better it complemented his gravelly style. As we ended the song, Zed, Ty and Jon all smiled, first at me and then at each other, but Bruno shook his head and scowled, muttering something about me being “too sweet.”

Whatever. Zed seemed to think I was doing just fine.

As we played the next couple of songs, I noticed Zed glancing at a bank of monitors on the wall beside him. It wasn’t until a large flash of white—a van—appeared on one of the screens that I realized they were the monitors for the security cameras. The logo on the side of the van seemed vaguely familiar, but I could only make out a piece of it on the monitor.

“They’re finally here.” Zed jumped up, interrupting Ty’s solo on “Shame to See.” He turned to me. “Time to roll. You’re gonna do great.”

Bruno slammed his guitar onto the floor, making a loud vibrating sound. “Such bullshit,” he said, though I wasn’t sure whether he was talking to me or to Zed or to anyone in particular.

What was going on? Whose van was that? And what did Zed mean,
I
was going to do great?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Andrea Little was primping at a mirror on Ty’s front porch. Turned out the van was Channel 4’s news truck, and they were here to interview Zed and me.

“What?” I turned to Zed. “I can’t do this. What am I supposed to say?”

“Just be yourself and talk about your music. And don’t worry, if she asks you anything you don’t know how to answer, I’ll jump in.”