Sunkissed Page 5

  “I thought you were trying new things, not old things,” she said.

  “Yes, I am. I just…” What, Avery? You just what? Had still been trying to convince myself that I had chosen my future and it hadn’t chosen me? That I wasn’t as pathetic as I felt right now? “Nothing, you’re right. New things. Let’s go.”

  Mom and Dad were sitting in the living room as we headed to the front door.

  “Where are you girls off to?” Dad asked. I’d been avoiding him since cornhole. I’d begged off dinner in the dining hall, opting for a bowl of oatmeal here, and had been in my room ever since. I’d get over what he’d said eventually. He had no clue he’d insulted me; if he knew, he’d feel bad, and I really didn’t want to make him feel bad. I just needed some time.

  “They’re telling ghost stories at the lower fire pit tonight,” Lauren lied effortlessly.

  “Ooh, fun,” Mom said. “Maybe I should come with you.”

  Lauren leveled Mom with a stare.

  “But I won’t,” she said, laughing.

  “See you later.” Lauren pulled the door closed behind us and aimed a flashlight on the path ahead. As we walked, trees loomed dark on either side of the path, like large sentinels.

  “I have a really good ghost story. Do you think it’s audience participation tonight or no?” I asked with a straight face.

  “We’re not really going there,” she said. “I just picked something from the schedule in case they checked it.”

  “I know.”

  “Oh, right. You and your dumb jokes.” She pulled out a notebook. “So, you trying new things got me thinking.”

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s been something I’ve wanted to try forever now.” She took a breath and showed me the notebook. In black Sharpie on the front cover was the word Documentary. “I think I’ve found my subjects.”

  “Subjects?” I asked.

  “The band.”

  “A documentary?” A loud toad croaked in the distance in a deep baritone. “About the band?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I love doing videos. You know that. And I love all those true-crime documentaries. I’ve watched like a million of them. So this will be perfect.”

  “Ooh, what crimes has the band committed?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes, proving once again that she didn’t appreciate my jokes very much. “None, but the same principles apply, right?” She flipped through the book and I could see she’d taken notes, pages and pages worth. She really had been thinking about this for a while. “Find out their backstory, what makes them tick, what brought them here. Address their obstacles, what’s holding them back, what conflicts they’re facing. Then watch them succeed…except…not at being convicted for murder. At the whole band thing, obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  “You don’t think it’s a good idea?”

  “What? No, I mean yes.” I was a horrible person for being jealous right now. Jealous that at fifteen, my sister seemed to be full of creative, thoughtful ideas and all I’d come up with so far was the title to a motivational playlist full of songs I couldn’t even listen to. “It’s a great idea, Lauren. Really.”

  “It will be, I think.”

  As we came to the main path leading up to the lodge, the walkways became more crowded. People filed in through the large, propped-open doors.

  “What’s happening here tonight?” I asked.

  “Bingo?” Lauren suggested.

  As if she knew D might object to our band practice invasion, Lauren hung close to a large group of people as we entered the lodge and then peeled off to the right without looking back. Like the first night we’d arrived, I could hear the music as we approached the hall.

  The stage was lit and the seating area was dark, so nobody saw us at first. The four guys were playing through a song, with Brooks on guitar, Kai on drums, the bleached-blond guy on bass, and the guy with floppy brown hair on vocals. The song had a punk rock feel to it with more energy and grit than the tune Brooks had played on his guitar the night before by the campfire.

  When the song was finished, Brooks turned and said, “Better, but the chorus should be faster.”

  Much to my horror, Lauren called out, “Hello!” The single word echoed through the mostly empty theater, and all eyes were now on us. Lauren walked forward and up the stairs to join them onstage, saying, “That was so good! And here we thought you were going to be practicing dinner songs.”

  I wasn’t as fast to follow but eventually was standing next to her.

  Brooks looked at me. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting him to do. Nod? Wave? Acknowledge that we’d had a conversation before this moment? Maybe he was expecting the same from me, but seeing him now brought back all the feelings of frustration from the night before.

  “Avery!” Kai said from behind the drums; then he beat out a ba-dum-dum on the tom-toms.

  Now Lauren’s eyes were on me.

  “Hey, guys,” I said. “This is my sister, Lauren.”

  “You know them?” she hissed.

  “Not really,” I said under my breath. Because I really didn’t. I wasn’t even sure which guy was Ian and which was Levi.

  As if reading my mind, the bleached-blond guy raised the head of his bass in a semi-wave and said, “I’m Levi.”

  Which by default made floppy brown-haired lead singer…“Ian,” he said.

  Kai tossed a drumstick in the air and caught it. “Lauren?” he asked with a big smile.

  She nodded, her cheeks going pink.

  “I’m the heart and soul and life of this band,” he said, as though already auditioning to star in her documentary. “But you can just call me Kai.”

  “Oh please,” Levi groaned. “You’re the drummer.”

  “What does that mean? Have you ever heard a song without a drum pattern?”

  “Have you ever heard a song without a bass line?”

  “Yes. A million,” Kai said.

  Brooks let out a long sigh. “Do you both need gold stars tattooed on your foreheads?”

  “Are you offering?” Kai asked. “Because that could be our band thing.”

  “You must be Brooks,” Lauren said. How did she know that? Tia?

  Brooks’s eyes went from my sister to me. Great, he thought I’d been talking bad about him. “Yeah,” he said.

  I pasted on a big fake smile. “You said to come watch practice, right?” Now he’d have to admit that he really didn’t want me here and tell everyone it was because he thought I was a snob.

  “We’re not supposed to hang out with guests,” he said.

  Oh right. Or there was that.

  “Off the clock!” Kai yelled out. “We’re not supposed to hang out with guests off the clock.”

  Brooks shot Kai a look.

  “Exactly,” Levi said. “They can stay. We need feedback anyway. Are you two any good at feedback?”

  “I am excellent at feedback,” Lauren said. “Avery is not. She’ll just tell you what you want to hear.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “What? It’s true. You don’t like to hurt people’s feelings. I am great at hurting people’s feelings.”

  “Well, that’s true,” I grumbled.

  A smile played on Brooks’s lips and I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “But if I’m going to give you feedback, I require something in return.” Lauren looked around, found a stack of chairs by the curtains, and freed one, moving it closer to the guys. “How do you all feel about being recorded for my channel?”

  * * *

  Surprisingly, they’d all agreed, with varying amounts of enthusiasm, that my sister could record their practice sessions. I was pretty sure Brooks only agreed so that he could have videos to analyze. But my sister didn’t care what the reason was; she’d been pr
actically skipping around the stage for the last thirty minutes recording while I sat in the chair off to the side.

  They’d just finished a song for the third time and now Lauren was over by the drums interviewing Kai. I couldn’t hear the questions from where I sat, but there was a lot of laughing.

  “So I don’t get it,” I called out to the guys. “How come there are only a couple lines of lyrics? And if you can’t play this song in the dining hall for people, why are you practicing it?”

  Levi leaned down to his guitar case, which was open beside him, and produced a neon-green piece of paper. He walked it over to me. I collected it from his outstretched hand and unfolded it.

  Do you have what it takes?

  A band? A song? A sound?

  If you answered yes to those questions, audition for a chance to be part of the showdown. Winning band takes home ten thousand dollars. Additional cash prizes available in several categories. It all happens Saturday, August 1, in Roseville!

  To purchase tickets to the Festival of Undiscovered Bands, call the number below.

  Or visit us online at festivalofundiscoveredbands.com

  “You’re trying out for this?” I wasn’t sure why I looked at Brooks when I said that but I did.

  “If we can actually write words to this song,” Brooks said, slowly twisting a tuning key on his guitar and then testing out the string.

  “You’re a band with no finished songs?”

  Levi answered, “We all just met a couple weeks ago. Kai and Brooks play back home together, but Ian and I were hired this year for the house band.”

  I held up the flyer. “And after your first magical night together you decided to try out for this?”

  “That was Brooks’s idea,” Levi said as I handed him back the paper.

  “But we’re never going to finish a song, so it was a stupid idea,” Brooks said in a tired voice, like he’d pointed this out a hundred times.

  “We’d finish a song,” Levi said, “but Brooks doesn’t like anyone else’s lyrics.”

  Ian, who seemed much more comfortable singing than he did talking, nodded at this. I laughed.

  “Oh, you’re on his side?” Brooks asked me while throwing his guitar pick at Ian.

  I held up my hands. “I didn’t realize there were sides.”

  “There are!” Kai called out as though he’d been following along, even though he was being interviewed. “There’s Brooks’s lame lyrics and then there’s—”

  “Nobody being able to build on them,” Brooks finished. “Because you all get distracted too easily.”

  Lauren’s camera had now panned to the group, recording this exchange. I backed up so I was out of the shot.

  Levi stepped closer to Lauren’s phone and said, “I will sing you his lyrics.” He pulled the microphone from where it sat in a stand and sang, “Hope is the lie that keeps us hanging on to madness.”

  “What’s wrong with that lyric?” Brooks asked.

  I lowered myself back into the chair, feeling bad I had started a fight with my questions. It obviously wasn’t a new fight, though.

  “We don’t want to suck the life out of the audience,” Levi said.

  “But that’s my number one goal,” Brooks deadpanned.

  “What was that other lyric?” Kai said. “Something about love being for fools?”

  Brooks, who had been tuning his guitar that didn’t need tuning for the last several minutes, said, “Love is just child’s play for the dreamers and the fools.”

  “Yes, that one,” Kai said.

  Lauren laughed along with the other guys. I wondered if any of these lyrics were drawn from life experience. Was that how Brooks really felt, or were they just words for a song?

  “Levi,” Ian said. “Put the microphone back.”

  “Uh-oh,” Levi said, holding the microphone in the air like a game of keep-away. “I’ve touched Ian’s pretend instrument.”

  Ian just rolled his eyes, which seemed to work because Levi tossed the mic to him. He barely caught it with a fumbling grasp.

  Kai rubbed the back of his neck and looked at Lauren. “Did you have any more questions for me?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She rejoined him.

  Levi patted his stomach. “Think there’ll be food at the campfire?”

  Maybe I actually was on Brooks’s side of the lyrics argument because I hadn’t heard them come up with any ideas, just criticism. Plus, I actually liked the lyric. Love is just child’s play for the dreamers and the fools. Out loud, I added, “You want me to play your game but won’t teach me all the rules.”

  Brooks’s hands stilled on the strings of his guitar and he looked at me. “What?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”

  “No, say it again.”

  “It was just a passing thought. I don’t write lyrics.”

  “But she loves words,” Lauren said. “And poetry. You write poetry sometimes.”

  “It was a lyric idea?” Levi asked. “Let’s hear it.”

  Kai pounded a beat on the drums and started chanting, “Avery, Avery, Avery.”

  I felt my cheeks heating up with so much focused attention on me and wanted to crawl inside myself.

  Brooks, as if sensing this, said, “Kai! Stop.”

  He immediately did. “Too much?” He smiled sheepishly at me.

  Brooks swung his guitar to his back and dug through his guitar case, coming up with a notebook and pencil. “Something about rules?”

  He wasn’t going to drop it, so I said, “Your lyric was ‘Love is just child’s play for the dreamers and the fools.’ And then I added, ‘You want me to play your game but won’t teach me all the rules.’ ”

  “That’s good,” Levi said.

  Ian nodded. “I’d sing that.”

  Brooks scribbled it down, then gave me a curious look. His eyes scanned the group. “See, that’s how you build.”

  With those words, they all broke out into another argument, talking over each other. “Who needs a gold star now?” “You never listen!” “We just need to finish the other song!”

  I stood. “Lauren, we should get going.”

  Brooks’s head whipped around. “You’re leaving?” And I couldn’t tell if his intense expression was saying, Finally or Don’t go yet.

  “We have a few ghost stories to think up,” I said.

  I could see Lauren wanted to argue, but she knew I was right. “We’ll come back next time,” she promised, and that was either the best news or the worst news for Brooks.

  A sharp tapping noise brought me out of sleep. The spiral edging of my notebook dug into my cheek, reminding me that I had fallen asleep the night before trying to write out a schedule of new things to try this summer. I pushed the book aside and rubbed at the bumpy indentation it had created on my skin. The tapping noise was back. It took me several sleepy moments to realize it was something hitting the window.

  I sat up. My sister groaned and turned toward the wall. I checked my phone on the nightstand—six-thirty. What woodland creature was waking me up at six-thirty in the morning? I started to lie back down when another series of taps made me jump.

  I moved the curtain to the side, expecting to see a bird or a squirrel or something, when I met a face. My hands flew to my mouth, barely containing my squeal of fear, the curtain dropping back into place. With my heart racing, I took several deep breaths, then moved the curtains again. My brain hadn’t made it up—Brooks was standing outside my window, an impatient expression on his face. This time, he pointed. I assumed that meant he wanted me to go to the front door. I nodded.

  Why was he here? Was he going to reiterate the fact that we shouldn’t have been at band practice the night before? That we had caused too much tension and distracted everyone? It seemed like an extreme way
to get that message across. Maybe this was just the time he started his workday.

  I slid out of bed and tiptoed to the bedroom door. I opened it as quietly as possible and shut it slowly, using both hands. I walked toward the front door, then found myself stopping at the bathroom and checking my reflection in the mirror. It wasn’t good. My normally straight brown hair stuck out in a spectacular display of bedhead, and sure enough, a long line of notebook-spine bumps decorated my cheek. I rubbed at them without any luck, and even though he’d already seen me, I quickly ran a brush through my hair, grabbed a tie, and pulled it up. I moved to leave, then stopped and squeezed a bead of toothpaste onto my finger. Morning breath was not good for anyone.

  The rest of the house was quiet, my parents obviously still asleep, as I finished my walk through the living room and went out the front door. I didn’t see Brooks right away and was beginning to think I had imagined him. That he was part of some weird dream my brain had concocted and that maybe I was still in that dream.

  Then a movement down the path caught my eye. He was leaning against a tree, waiting. I realized I hadn’t put on shoes. I held up my finger to him, opened the front door again, and grabbed the first pair of flip-flops I could find by the wall. I slipped them on and walked down the gravel path. A squirrel scurried across the rocks in front of me and up a tree. A crow squawked what seemed to be a morning wakeup call from a high perch in a pine tree up ahead. But other than that, the morning was quiet, not the normal low murmur of camp.

  “Hi,” I said when I stood in front of Brooks.

  His eyes were on my too-big shoes.

  “They’re my dad’s,” I said.

  “Are you going to be able to walk in them?”

  “Yes. But why do I have to walk in them?” I looked down at my feet. I really didn’t want to have to walk too far in them. Why was he even here? “About last night, I know my sister is a lot. And I didn’t mean to start a fight…”

  He narrowed his eyes in confusion. “What? You have a phone call.”