Encore to an Empty Room (11 page)

Jon's eyes narrow. “No? Why's that? Because you're more important than the rest of us?”

“No . . .” This takes Caleb aback. I know he hates that
idea. “It's not that, but finding the songs isn't just for the band. It's personal.” He glances to Val and she nods.

Jon rolls his eyes. “Right. I forgot we're like the next great family band.”

“Guys,” I say, before this goes any further. “I think we can still have both.” I wish I could say the same about my own college situation, but I press on. “We have a good plan. We can look for the songs and hold off Candy Shell the same way we're holding off Jet City. And like, even if Candy Shell were to figure out what we were up to: what's the worst that could happen? If they want to sign us, they'd probably want to help us find the songs.”

I don't add that I also have a part of me that agrees with Matt, too. Because don't think I haven't considered that finding Eli White's lost songs and performing them like we've planned would be such a huge deal that a girl couldn't be blamed for taking a year or two off to manage her band full-time. Even parents and admissions officers could be swayed by such a narrative. . . .

But I feel like a mercenary for thinking that way. What matters is that Caleb and Val need to find the songs, and the band needs to not break up because of it.

Everyone is silent. “Well,” says Val, “we still have to do the EP for PopArts so right now we need to practice, right? Let's talk about this after tomorrow's studio session.” She looks at Matt. “Wanna check if that's okay with your girlfriend and Candy Shell?”

She says
girlfriend
with a condescending note.

Matt just shrugs and looks away. “Yeah, I'll check with her later.”

Everyone nods and starts to get back to it but the vibe in the room is obvious: we're on unsteady footing. Or maybe it's just me. The band tension, the songs, the offer . . . And how exactly do I fit in? Jason says they'd let me stay involved, and I think I actually believe him, but . . . to do what? If Candy Shell is throwing down that kind of money, they're going to have opinions, designs, plans.

My next thought surprises me: maybe this is my perfect college out. I could be involved as it all comes together, and maybe then they'd be fine without me.

But ugh! I can't even believe that we're considering dealing with Candy Shell, who has stood for exactly what we don't want to be. Or what I don't want.
We can do this right, this time. . . .
Can I possibly believe Jason? Can a shark change? I don't even know how to think about it clearly now, with the money involved.

And I can tell from the mistake-filled run-through of our songs in practice, that the rest of the band is lost in their own version of these new waters, too.

I'm on my way to the studio after dinner the next night when Caleb texts me.

Shit.
I hate that my mind immediately jumps to drinking, but I know that's what Caleb is thinking, too.

I was going to take the bus. Now I'll need the car, but my parents don't mind. They're still basking in Stanford interview glow.

The Hive is twenty minutes in the wrong direction. The whole time I'm driving I'm thinking that I don't want to mistrust her like this. Val was the most motivated at practice last night. It doesn't make sense that she would be flaking now. But with Val, despite how much better I know her, I still have this sliver of doubt. I wish I didn't. Unless tonight proves me right.

I arrive at the door to the practice room and listen. At first I don't hear anything, but evening practices are well underway on all sides so really, how could I?

I get out my key. I never use it, always knocking so the band can let me in and it won't seem like I'm barging in on them.

It's dark inside except for white holiday lights that Jon strung in a trapezoid across the ceiling. They hang low in spots where the duct tape came undone.

“What are you doing here?”

Val's voice makes me jump. Now I see her, lying on the couch on her stomach. She's wearing big silver headphones. The cord trails down to a laptop, an old Mac that she inherited from Charity.

I scan the floor for beer bottles or any other sign of what she's been up to. I see a few tissues. Her bass is lying next
to the couch. There's a bottle of Mountain Dew. Val drinks it all the time. Then again that green-tinted bottle could be hiding anything.

“The guys are all at the studio,” I say. “Why are you here?”

Val pulls the headphones off and I hear a tinny voice. “I've been working on something,” she says. She taps the laptop to stop the track. “I didn't mean to, but it started coming out on the way over here, and I couldn't help it.” She picks up the computer. “This was the inspiration.”

She hands the clunky machine over and I see a message on a Facebook page. I didn't realize that Val was even on Facebook but then I see that the profile name she's using is “Ginger Carmelita,” and the profile photo is a silhouette of a house cat.

“It's just so I can keep up with a few old friends,” she explains.

The message is from Darren Peters. I recognize the name from a Kitty Klaws post I found on YouTube back in the fall.

“Oh boy,” I say.

“I knew it,” says Val. “That package was just the tip of the suck iceberg.” Her eyes are rimmed red. She picks up her bass and crosses the room, grabbing the mic stand from her usual spot.

“Um,” I say, “what do you think—”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

She sits on Caleb's amp, and starts bending the mic stand down to her. “Will you just listen to something for a sec?”

“Sure.” I sit on the couch.

“I know they're waiting for me,” says Val, adjusting the mic and then the knobs on her bass, “but I had to get this out before I fucking exploded.”

I feel my phone buzz against my thigh and figure it's Caleb but I'm afraid to get it out, afraid to do anything that might disrupt this strange and fragile moment.

Val gets the mic straight. She looks so small sitting on the amp, her skinny legs in her legging jeans angled up to support her bass. It's bigger than her torso, the neck thicker than her arms. In the meager light her eyes look hollow and her cheeks sharp, too much life wearing away at her too soon. Her usual eyeliner is like barbed wire around her eyes.

“Okay,” she says into the mic, like we are live
somewhere. For one second she glances up at me, and I feel that usual surge of inadequacy and insecurity that every one of her looks always inspires, but also I think now that some of the pain is my heart hurting for her. It would be too cliché to say that Val is heartbreaking, but she is a painful beauty, an exposed nerve that is all shadows but also searing bright.

She drops her head, recently green hair falling over her face. She starts to play a cycling rhythm on the bass, eighth notes, some of them chords, thirds I think, but that's never been my thing.

After one time through she senses, like I do, that the assault of bass frequencies through the walls is drowning out the tone, and she cranks up the treble, making the bass sound almost like some sort of low, watery guitar.

The rhythm has a tense pulse, but then the intervals she's playing hint at evenings, at cold temperatures, at moonlight (though I wouldn't tell her that because she makes fun of me and Caleb for those kinds of comments).

I slip my phone from my pocket, daring to look away from her, ignoring the texts I see from Caleb. I flick to the voice recorder app and hit record. I rest the phone on my leg, screen safely dark, when Val looks up and sings:

They say that you don't deserve me
I don't know what you deserve
I don't fault you the bruises
The blame
It doesn't do me any good
Nobody's innocent
If you give them enough time

But I won't go back, now
And you can't go forward
I'll find my own
I'll find my own
I'll find my own
My own . . .

I'll find my own . . .

Her voice breaks with each refrain, the “own” dipping up into her falsetto, each one seeming to disappear like a bird into the sky. She slaps the same note over and over, driving, and you can imagine how the band would create a storm around this. And what probably surprises me the most is how the song is . . . I want to say
inspirational
, but Val would want to punch that word in the face. Maybe more like defiant, or self-reliant, something like that.

Val finishes and I turn off the recording. She looks up. “What do you think?” I'm surprised she's even asking me.

“I think you have to show the guys.”

She kind of nods and shrugs at once. “Not too whiny?”

I laugh. “That is never a danger with you.” I check my phone. “We should get down there.”

“Yeah.” Val starts to pack up her bass. “Thanks for coming for me. And for listening.”

“Sure,” I say. “We thought—” I start to say but then think it's a bad idea.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You thought I was here getting sloshed?”

I shrug. “It wasn't fair.”

“It kinda was, but nope, just getting drunk on
feelings
.”

I glance sideways at her—and she cracks up. So do I. Suddenly we both lose ourselves laughing . . . for about ten seconds.

“You want to carpool down there?” I ask.

“Nope. See you there.”

And yet after all that, I still linger in my car, waiting until I see her exit the Hive, just to be sure she'll follow through.

She does.

We arrive and find Caleb and Jon sacked out on the studio couch, both gazing at the ceiling in that burned-out, vacant way that studio time can cause.

PopArts has a fully functioning recording studio, designed by a couple PTA dads who used to work at Sound City Studios. The only drawback is that the engineers and producers are students from the audio design track, and so while they're good at what they do, they're still learning. Sometimes they get stuck on things that a pro would breeze right through. From the look on Caleb's face, I'm guessing that's the case now.

“Sorry, guys,” says Val as we walk in. “I was working some stuff out.”

“What kind of stuff?” Caleb asks. He doesn't sound mistrustful, more just brotherly.

“Just stuff.”

“Come on,” I say. “She's got a new song and it's fantastic.”

Val's face scrunches, but she doesn't deny it. “What did I miss?”

“Hit it again,” Alonzo says into the studio mic. Alonzo is the head of the tech crew, and lead engineer on our project.

The monitors explode with Matt thwacking the snare drum.

“Just this,” says Caleb with a sigh. “Something's wrong with the drums.”

Alonzo turns from his hunched position over the sound board. He's wearing a backward cap, unwashed ponytail hanging from it, and a Led Zeppelin shirt draped over his pale, bony frame. A Red Vine hangs half-eaten from his mouth. He's been known to eat a whole pack during a session, and he never offers to share. “The overhead mics are completely out of phase,” he says gravely.

“I thought it sounded fine,” says Jon numbly.

“Well, sure, it sounds
fine
,” says Alonzo, “but the phasing is definitely noticeable, and could be catastrophic in the mix.”

“Are you guys getting graded on phasing or something?” Jon asks.

“Well,” says Alonzo, “that's one of the criteria, but either way, you also shouldn't want it on your recording.”

“I also don't want to be found mummified on this couch.”

Alonzo sighs in annoyance. “Kylie, try another one degree off axis with the left mic.”

“Kill me,” Jon mutters.

Caleb checks his phone. “We've been waiting to start for an hour,” he tells me.

Alonzo ignores the comment. I remember this from the studio last year with Postcards. There's nothing you can say to an engineer when they're fixated on something. God forbid you challenge them on the importance of something like the 80 hertz, for example, or you'll get a treatise on all the different frequencies and the microphone patterns and how Tesla was misunderstood, and so on.

After five more minutes of skull-pounding snare drum hits, he announces: “Okay, it might be reined in enough. Let's everybody get in there.”

The band moves into their positions. Jon is at one side of the large studio room. Val at the other. Drums are center. Caleb is on his own in the vocal isolation booth.

“What's that?” I ask, noticing a tiny keyboard on a stand beside Jon's pedal setup.

“You'll see,” he says.

“Good luck, guys,” I say and head back into the control room. On the way, I duck my head into the vocal booth. Caleb is running quietly through “On My Sleeve.” It sounds so different, just his voice with none of the layers I am used to hearing. “Hey,” I say.

He turns. Fret Face. But also focused.

“Remember,” I say, “no record labels, no Eli or blog posts, just you and your amazing song and your awesome band. Got it?”

“Got it.”

I blow him a kiss and return to the control room, where Alonzo is bent over the faders and dials like a scientist trying to disarm a doomsday device.

Kylie selects a bunch of tracks on the monitor.

“Okay,” she says, “‘On My Sleeve,' take one. Here comes the click . . .”

She taps a few keystrokes and the cursor starts moving across the screen. Sixteen rectangle graphics start to grow, each a different shade of purple and representing a microphone or an instrument line. The click beeps like an old video game.

Through the large glass window, I see the other three band members waiting patiently, and through the monitors I hear Caleb count off: “One two three four . . .”

He starts to delicately strum his acoustic, a pulse with lots of string attack that sounds almost like an old clock ticking. He sings the first verse, and for a first take it's going great.

At the same time, I see Jon sitting down at that synthesizer. I don't remember us working on any new parts at practice. . . .

As Caleb sings the last word of the first verse, Jon strikes a brazen synth tone, like a laser beam through the song. He
starts nodding his head rhythmically in Matt's direction, almost like he wants him to thump along on the kick drum.

But everyone's thrown off. The song grinds to a halt.

“What was that?” Caleb asks.

“I wanted to surprise you guys,” says Jon. “I think it will give the song some more energy. Can we try it again?”

Nobody answers right away. They're probably thinking what I am: More energy? The song has plenty of energy the way we've been playing it for three months.

“Okay,” says Caleb. He couldn't sound less convinced.

Kylie rolls the tracks, Caleb counts, and back in they go.

He sings the first verse and then Jon starts that synth sound again. Caleb and Val press on, Matt waiting to come in. When Jon nods his head like he wants something new on the drums, Matt just shrugs.