FIFTEEN
THE SONG OF ALEX
ALEX
I used to love singing.I think. My mom always joked that she knew I was coming home when she heard a kid singing in the distance. That kid was me. Whenever I was out on my own, my mouth would just fly open, and the melodies would come out. Singing quieted all the noise from the world long before I knew headphones existed.
My mom and I used to sing together a lot, too. We sang while doing the dishes, when she put me to bed, and even when she drove me to school, since the radio in her car had been broken for a long time.
This only changed when her first boyfriend, the one with the headphones and records, moved in. He was a burly guy she adored. I can’t remember his name—it was Brad or Chad or something like that—but I remember he had strong hands, twice the size of mine, and she was always seeking his touch. He wasn’t a bad guy. He let me listen to his records. He took us out to restaurants at least once a week. He even paid for a new radio for the car.
But he always had headaches.
He told me to keep my voice down in the apartment, which I did. I didn’t want to cause Mom any trouble. When I was outon the street, though, I sang at the top of my lungs. I didn’t care what anyone else thought. I was too young to even understand that others might hear me. Until one day, he suddenly stood in front of me on the sidewalk.
“What are you doing, kid?” he asked.
His gigantic hands wrapped around my wrists. It hurt.
“You can’t bother the neighbors like this,” he said. “Not everyone wants to hear your croaking. Do you want to give everyone a headache?”
His words stayed with me. I never sang in the streets or at home again. During music class at school, I faked being sick on the days we had to sing.
It wasn’t until I started making music at the Drapers’ house that I tried singing again, but everything just sounded wrong. The moment I opened my mouth, a headache set in. It didn’t occur to me that my voice might not be the reason my head was throbbing until Sebastian told me how much he liked my singing.
I didn’t know why I agreed to sing in front of him in the first place. Maybe I wanted him to confirm what I had been told. If he had gotten a headache, too, then at least it would have settled things. After all, he knew what he was talking about. He had the training. But since he didn’t get a headache, I had to rethink everything—although Sebastian didn’t give me much time to do that.
As soon as we got home, he picked up his guitar, played one of our songs, and told me to improvise a second voice over it. He looked at me with such encouragement that I couldn’t deny him.
As he sang, a melody that could enhance the song emerged in the back of my mind, and once I opened my mouth, it flooded out. Our voices melded together, and the parts that had seemed boring before became the most interesting elements of the song.We went through all of our tracks and could improve each and every one.
An hour later, I sat in my room with a microphone in my hand, my gut twisting the same way it had the last time I tried to record myself.
“Usually, the frontman sings the background vocals, too, so they match perfectly,” I said, hoping to get out of this somehow.
“No one’s voice fits this better than yours.” Sebastian laughed, seeing right through my attempt. “This isourproject. I want both our voices in there. Just so we can hear it together. If we don’t like it afterward, I can still record it myself, okay?”
No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t argue with that. I put on my headphones and hit record. The familiar beat filled my ears. My stomach twisted tighter, and I slumped forward—but then Sebastian helped me in a way I would never have thought of. He placed his palm between my shoulder blades, showing me that he was in this with me, that he wasn’t going to let me fail.
I sat up. My lungs expanded as I inhaled and opened my mouth.
My voice flowed through the microphone, into the laptop, and back out through my headphones. His vocals in the playback stayed in the foreground, giving me confidence as I realized that his voice would always be there to guide me.
Before I knew it, the song was over.
His palm, which had been holding me steady, ran up and down my back. “That was awesome.”
“Let’s listen to it first,” I countered, taking off my headphones and switching the output to the studio monitor so we could both listen. With a quick push of the space bar, the song started again.
Sebastian’s hand wandered from my back to my knee, where it stayed as we waited for our duet to begin. My breaths becameshallower as the build-up to the chorus approached, but when I heard us together, it wasn’t as bad as I’d convinced myself it would sound. It wasn’t perfect either. I couldn’t hold the notes as steadily as he could, which led to three minor slip-ups. They didn’t ruin the song, but they weren’t good enough to show it to someone else.
When the chorus hit, and our voices melded together, Sebastian held his breath. His fingers clamped around my knee, and as we hit the high note, he nodded along to the beat.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“It’s not perfect. But I guess it’s not the wrong direction either.”
“You little—” Sebastian leaped toward me and threw himself on top of me. I landed on my back, and he tackled me to the ground. “You’rewaytoo humble for your own good.” He wrapped his hands around my wrists, pinning me down. “It’s not perfect, yes, but it is alreadygood. It’s definitely the right direction. You’re so good with words when you write lyrics, but when you talk about yourself, you use all the wrong ones.”
