“I think we were cursed from the start.”

---

I groaned in frustration as I flipped through my notebook. In an attempt to prepare for my audition that was fast approaching I was looking through my lyrics, trying to find a song to sing. One of the requirements was to sing a song that meant something to you. Why that was a requirement I have no idea, but it was and I was stuck. It wasn’t like my lyrics were meaningless; there were just many songs that I liked. There wasn’t necessarily one that meant more to me than the others.

“You mean to tell me that there isn’t a single song you like in there?” Lynn asked. I shook my head.

Our group of misfits were sitting at lunch, but Lynn, Tyler, and Sav were the only three focused on me and my problem.

“Why don’t you just sing a song on the radio or something?” Tyler asked. “It would save you all this frustration.”

“I’ve thought about it but that wouldn’t be right,” I answered. “Plus I hate what’s on the radio. None of it means anything anyway.”

“That makes sense, but you’re still at square one.”

I groaned. “Thanks for the reminder.”

“Look, how about I solve your problems?” Sav asked. We looked at her and her confident smile.

“By all means,” I said skeptically.

“Why don’t you go down to one of those rooms all the music people go to and sing in there? Or sing in the choir room.”

“Oh yeah!” Lynn said excitedly. “Lots of people do it. Practice in the place you’re gonna perform so you know what you’ll sound like.”

I thought about it. “That doesn’t sound too bad. Will you guys come and listen to me though? Make sure I’m not just hearing things?” They nodded.

“Of course, Kell,” Tyler answered. “I’d love to hear what you have to offer.”

I couldn’t help but smile. All that was left to do was narrow down my song choices.

The bell rang before I had the chance to. We all packed up our things and headed out the cafeteria to our different classes.

“You know, you haven’t talked about Vic all day,” Lynn said to me when she, Sav, and I were walking to environmental science.

“Because there’s nothing to talk about,” I replied nonchalantly.

“Bullshit,” Sav said. I looked at her to see that know-it-all smirk on her face.

“What do you mean, red?” I asked.

“I mean that I heard that the little guy is pretty pissed at you.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Oh please,” she scoffed, “everyone knows when Vic is angry at someone. It starts off small but soon the whole school will know how much trouble you’re in.”

I gulped. “And how much trouble am I in?”

“Don’t know,” she shrugged, “depends on what you did.”

I groaned inwardly as we walked into the classroom. I wanted more than anything to walk right back out, but the bell had rang and our teacher had started the lesson.

Why did I have to open my big mouth yesterday? Why did I have to be so upset? Why couldn’t he have just left me alone? Or better yet, why couldn’t he have told me the truth?

The more I thought about it the more I realized that him being mad at me was his own fault. He could’ve been honest or he couldn’t have brought it up at all, but no, instead he decided to be all secretive. Well it was his own fault that I snapped. Besides, he should learn some day that you can’t just mess with people’s heads.

“Alright class, movie time,” our teacher said as he went around the room putting papers on the desks. “Answer the questions on this worksheet and put it on my desk at the end of the film. This is not a completion grade so pay close attention.”

A few students groaned but didn’t say anything else on the subject. Once our teacher was done passing papers out he turned off the light and pressed the space bar on his computer, starting the movie.

“Are you worried?” Lynn asked me while the opening credits rolled.

“Of?”

“Vic.”

I shrugged. I didn’t know what I was feeling. Yes I was a little nervous to see what he’d do but I was also focused on other things. He wasn’t a big priority to me at that moment.

“I don’t wanna talk about him right now, okay?”

She nodded and looked toward the screen. That’s the thing I liked about Lynn, she knew when to let things go. She wasn’t about all the drama that was high school and I appreciated that, considering I was responsible for the most recent drama.

After an hour of listening to a wannabe Morgan Freeman tell us about the different biomes of the world we were free to go.

“Off to the land of music!” Sav said a little too excitedly. I looked at Lynn who just rolled her eyes.

“She gets like this,” she explained. “You could try to calm her down but there’s really no point.”

I chuckled. “As long as she’s ready to help,” I said.

We walked down the fine arts hallway to the practice rooms. Sav peeked in every window on every door until she stopped at on at the end of the hall. Without a word she walked into the room, leaving Lynn and I outside.

“I guess we should…,” I started. Lynn nodded and together we walked into the room.

I soon saw the reason behind Sav’s search. At the piano in the room was Tyler. He was singing a song I didn’t recognize and playing an accompanying pattern. I couldn’t help but follow his voice as it sang to me sweetly. I listened as he added more emphasis to some words and stretched the tone of others, giving new meanings to them. His voice was like honey and I was stuck.

He played a final resolving chord that rang for a few seconds before he looked towards me.

“So what’d you think?” he asked.

“That was amazing,” I said with a goofy grin on my face. “Why didn’t you tell me you could sing?”

“Well for one we’ve only known each other for a little over two weeks,” he answered. “And two, I wanted to surprise you when you made men’s chorus.”

“Surprise me how?”

“Well I figured seeing me in that class would be a big enough surprise.”

The lightbulb went off over my head.

“Oh!” I exclaimed.

“Yeah,” he said with a laugh, “‘Oh.’”

I brushed it off. “Anyway, you gonna help me or what?”

“Let’s hear what you got.”

I put my bag on the floor and pulled out my notebook. I stared at its cover thoughtfully. This was going to be the first time anyone would ever hear me sing one of my original works. What if they hated it? How harshly would they judge me? Suddenly I felt extremely nervous.

“You alright there Kells?” Sav asked.

I cleared my throat. “Uh, yeah. It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“I don’t exactly have instrumentals for these,” I thought up quickly. It wasn’t a complete lie. I had only recently started listening to demos when I wrote. I didn’t really like it very much anyway.

“Well it’s a good thing I’m here,” Tyler said proudly. “Pick a song and read off the lyrics. I’ll try my best to add to it.”

I nodded. This wouldn’t be too bad. I turned to a song I had written years ago.

“I know that hope weighs on your mind, lost within the seams;
It seems like we lose ourselves in between.”

Tyler started playing chords after I sang the first line.

“But the harder things become, the harder you push away.
"Oh, it kills me.”

I stopped reading and looked at Tyler who was now playing random shit on the keys.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He shushed me. “Just listen.”

He started playing the same chords as before with different alterations. He inverted some and after a couple minutes he was playing a rhythm.

“Sing along to this,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know…”

“C'mon Kell, just trust me. Sing along to this.” He repeated the same pattern while looking at me hopefully. I gave him a small smile and took a breath before I joined in.

“I know that hope weighs on your mind, lost within the seams;
It seems like we lose ourselves in between.
But the harder things become, the harder you push away.
Oh baby, yeah baby, it kills me."

Tyler stopped playing and smiled at me. "See? I knew there was something there, he said excitedly.

I beamed. "What did you guys think?” I asked the girls.

“I need more,” Sav said with a smile. Lynn nodded in agreement.

“Well Kell, let’s give the people what they want.”

I nodded. The four of us spent two more hours in that room before the security guard told us to go home.

“Kellin I’m serious, that’s the song you should sing,” Lynn said as we walked out of the school.

“I agree, and not because I basically put the whole thing together,” Tyler said smugly.

“I don’t know guys…”

“Kellin, you’ve been saying that you needed a song that meant something to you. Well obviously you wrote that one for a reason so sing it proudly.”

I mulled Sav’s words over in my head. “Yeah, I’ll think about it.”

Clearly she wasn’t happy about that answer but she let it go. The four of us parted ways as we reached the parking lot.

I had my reasons for not wanting to sing that song. I wrote it during a dark time that I was convinced I would never get out of. Hell, I was still living through it. It was as if no matter how hard I tried or how good things seemed to get I was always brought back to the darkest time of my life.

I got in my car and began the drive home, trying to forget the reason I had written that song in the first place.

Notes