“You’ll be great.” He reached over and took my hand. A jolt ran through me—the same one that I felt whenever we touched. Over all these nights, all these loops…it had never changed. “Thank you for doing all this,” he said quietly.
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“But youhave.” Even in the backstage darkness, his eyes found mine. “You tried to fix this. You told me the truth about Niall—you saved all those lyrics. You must really…care about the band.”
There was a question at the end of that sentence, and I squeezed his hand, the one that was still holding mine. “More like one member of the band,” I said, not letting myself look away. “Don’t tell Alfie.”
“Tell me what?” Alfie asked as he passed by backstage.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, not able to keep the alarm out of my voice. I knew all too well what was about to happen, even if he didn’t.
“It’s okay,” Alfie said, holding up a trash can. “I’m prepared for the worst. I just didn’t want to miss the show.” He slapped Freddie on the back. “Break a leg!”
I took a breath, then looked back at Freddie. “I just…” I began, as I heard the crackle of a speaker, and I knew the band was about to be announced.
“We’ll talk after?” Freddie whispered.
“Absolutely.”
“Disney Grad Nite seniors and chaperones!” the announcer intoned. “Please welcome—all the way from jolly olde England—Eton Mess!”
The lights started ?swirling. Freddie squeezed my hand one more time, then strode out onstage. I took a big, shaky breath and followed, trying to tell myself that it would be okay. That normally, this performance involved food poisoning and hives and very little music actually being played. So the bar waslow.
I stepped out onto the stage, squinting a little against the bright lights. I couldn’t see the crowd—it was just a blur, but a verybigblur, and looking at it was enough to make me even more nervous. So I turned away? and walked to where the keyboard had been set up, at the back, next to Doug and his drum kit. He shot me a grin as he settled himself behind it.
I spread out the sheet music, covered in the notations that Freddie had made for me. Toward the bottom of the first page, I saw he’d written, You’ll do great,? Cass!
“Hi, Grad Nite,” Freddie said. He stepped up to the lead singer’s microphone as if he’d been doing it forever, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “You guys having fun?”
The crowd roared back, and Freddie’s smile widened. “I’m so glad. It’s a special night. One that just comes around once, right?” He glanced over at me, giving me a tiny wink, and I smiled back at him. “Just wanted to clear something up. We are Eton Mess, but I’m actually the only one ?from England. Tonight we thought we’d show you who we really are. Doug there is from Chicago. And Alfie’s normally part of the band—sadly, he’s a little under the weather tonight. But he’s from Australia.”
“Yeah!” came a faint reply from backstage. From how weak it had sounded, I had a feeling that Alfie’s food poisoning had shown up, right on schedule.
“And that’s Cass,” Freddie said, nodding to me. I smiled out at the crowd, and even though I couldn’t see them, I was pretty sure I just heard a gasp of shock. Whether it was Bryony, or one of the Emmas, or any of the other people that I’d made amends with tonight, I had no idea. “She’s not British?, either. She’s from California.”
I leaned forward into the microphone. “Harbor Cove,” I said, and I heard a loudWoo!from all the people from my school who probably hadn’t expected to hear their town shouted out by what was supposed to be a British prep-school boy band. “I’m from Harbor Cove,” I said again. “I’ve only been there for six months—but it’s my home.” As I said it, I realized that it was true. Harbor Cove was where I belonged?—and I wasn’t about to leave it before I had to.
There was anotherwoo, a little quieter and more confused-sounding this time, and I smiled. It was okay that the audience didn’t know what I meant. I did?—and that was enough.
“Ready?” I looked over and saw Freddie leaning back from the microphone, asking me the question.
I nodded, and Doug counted outone,? two,? three,? fouron his drumsticks—and the show began.
The performance passed in a blur. I focused on keeping time with everyone else, playing the right chords, making sure I wasn’t missing my cues. I had been concentrating so hard on playing, it wasn’t until the show was nearly over that I finally looked around, and took it all in.
I was standing onstage, playing piano in a band.
That was a sentence that would have been incomprehensible to me when I’d first arrived here, but I was doing it. The crowd was cheering and singing along with the choruses, and from the looks I could see Freddie and Doug exchanging, they also thought things were going well. The adrenaline was coursing through me, and my heart was beating hard—but not in a panicked or scared way. It wasfun. I wasn’t sure I was going to run off and join a band, but for right now, it was fantastic.
I hit the last chord and Doug crashed his cymbal and the crowd cheered. This was normally when the show ended—but not tonight. I stepped back from the keyboard, and Violet hustled out. She moved the keyboard to center stage, just behind the mic. She gave me a grin as she melted back into the darkness of the wings—I had a feeling she was still grateful about her poker winnings.
Doug got up from his drum kit, and we both walked off, letting Freddie take center stage.
“Hey, everyone,” Freddie said. He smiled at the crowd, and you could practically feel it—the power of his genuine charm, how he was holding the audience in his hand. I just hoped that the manager was noticing it, too. “So for the last song,” he said, and I was pleased to hea?r some disappointed groans from the audience. It meant they’d liked it! “For the last song, I wanted to play you something new. Something that I…wrote,” he said, not quite managing to keep the wonder out of his voice. “But I never would be able to share it with you without someone very special,” he said, glancing back at me in the wings. “So thank you, Cass.”
Doug shoved me good-naturedly, and I shoved him back, feeling my cheeks get hot.
There was a smattering of polite applause, and then Freddie leaned forward and started to sing. He was singing the song he’d written, even without knowing it. All those fractions of lyrics that I’d saved for him—he’d spun them into a beautiful song, elegiac and yearning. And even though he was singing it to the crowd?—it also felt like he was singing it just to me.
