Chapter 27

Since the weekend we’d really picked up the pace our songwriting work, going at it from essentially the moment I got home from school until well into the evening. It was more than a month until we needed to be ready to be in the studio, but I wanted to really polish as much as we could before that moment.

We were in the garage again. The AC I’d bought and convinced Mrs. Phillips to let us install made it so we didn’t melt while playing in the enclosed garage with the door down. Considering we were starting to get into summer, that was really important. We hadn’t used the garage nearly as much last year, but by late spring, it had been obvious we needed something.

The previous summer, we’d dragged in an old couch in for Kat to sit on as she took up her place as our groupie, even though we weren’t doing any touring then. Now, it was all but filled up by Mana, who’d quickly become my favorite of the three guards. I wasn’t wrong when I’d thought he sounded a lot different than his physical bulk implied. He really did personify the gentle giant thing, except his wit could be kind of cutting and he was pretty blunt. Both of which I found endearing.

Honestly, I kind of worried that the couch would collapse under his weight, and it did noticeably sag every time he dropped his huge frame onto it, but I kind of liked him there.

We’d just finished doing a run-through of Wild Fire Heart, the latest song Lyla had brought us the week before, and it was really in her wheelhouse.

“How do you keep doing it?” I asked as we finished up. “I swear, you never have a bad song.”

She waved me off. “It’s okay.”

“No. I’m serious. Each one is fun and upbeat, and yet you keep making them original and they don’t sound like copies of each other. Seriously. You are so good at this.”

She kind of shrugged and said, “I try. But you’re what sells albums.”

She couldn’t hide her smile though, and I knew she appreciated the validation. She had a weird dichotomy for an artist, needing strong validation about her music but with an insane amount of confidence and bravado in everything else.

“I don’t know about that. Look at Crossroad Heartache. I mean, it’s good, but it’s a deep cut at best. And not a good one. Feels like I’m trying to channel Willie, like with End of the Blues, you know? Especially since we’ve already got that in the can ready to go on the album.”

“No,” Lyla said. “It’s way more pop than End of the Blues. Besides, your blues stuff is where you shine. It’s your sweet spot. And you’ve got Starlight Fever, which I think rocks harder than mine. It’s so fast.”

“I’m not going to lie, I was channeling you.”

“She’s right,” Mana chimed in from the couch. “That one’s got a good vibe.”

“See,” she said, pointing at him.

“You haven’t ridden in a car with him and listened to the music he plays. It’s not as much of a compliment as you think it is.”

“Brah?” he said, holding up his hands in a what-the-fuck gesture.

“Ask Malik. I see it on his face when I’m with both of you. He agrees with me.”

“Psh,” he said, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture that caused me to laugh.

“Okay, so, Starlight, Crossroad, Wild Fire, the three from the EP, plus Lightning Whispers and Smallville Dreams gives us eight. So we need four more, at the very least.”

“That’s pretty good, though. Four in a month is doable at the pace we’ve been going,” Lyla said.

“I know, but I want more than just four. I want options when we hit the studio, you know? Room to play. I’m not sure if we’ll end up with Tran or someone else, but if we can’t get a song to work for whoever we get, I want the option to just bail and switch to a new one.”

“Okay, that’s a good point.”

“So, uh, I’ve got an idea for a song,” Seth said.

“Awesome. What’ve you got?” I asked.

“It’s called Velocity. It’s about living life in the fast lane, chasing thrills, that kind of thing.”

“Sounds like something I’d write,” Lyla said.

“You haven’t even heard it yet. Hit us with it.”

“Okay, so it starts with this melody...” he said, starting to hum the melody and then singing the words.

As soon as he started singing the melody, I froze. I recognized it instantly. It was a slowed-down version of Rage of the Forgotten by Black Horizon, a metal band from the mid-nineties. I was never into metal much, although I appreciated the guitar work, but this song had been huge and was one of those songs that just lived in the public consciousness.

Which meant he probably hadn’t done it on purpose. I tried to keep my face neutral, but when I glanced at Lyla, I saw the recognition in her eyes, too.

Seth finished his description, looking at us expectantly.

“That’s ... really good,” I managed, forcing a smile.

“Yeah, totally,” Lyla chimed in.

Seth beamed, clearly happy to be contributing more, and I felt bad for not calling him out on it right away. He’d just been so cautious to even mention it, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

I cleared my throat. “Hey, would you mind if we took a few passes at it? You know, tighten it up a bit?”

“Sure!” Seth agreed eagerly.

Over the next half hour, Lyla and I worked to transform the song. We changed the chord progression, tweaked the melody, anything to make it less recognizable. I tried to make it seem offhand, like it matched what we thought his vision was, but he could see we were changing it a lot.