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“Bauhaus,” says Izzy.

“Right,” says Miray. “I’ll just put on the radio, then.”

The radio comes to life with a faint crackle. Miray switches through the static until she finds a channel that works, only for Florence to recoil as her father’s voice blasts from the speakers. Wincing, Miray skips to another channel.

A moment later, they’re rolling out into the street to the sound of an upbeat French pop song. Florence takes a fortifying sip of her drink before saying, “So. What did we do well last night?”

“Really, Florence?” Izzy protests, temple resting against the window. “Right now?”

In truth, Florence thinks she displayed a remarkable amount of self-restraint by refraining from asking until now. Usually, it’s the first thing they talk about the moment they finish a performance, whether that’s in the practice basement or in a pub. It’s a habit she, Miray, and Toni picked up during their bachelor’s degree. She can still hear her professor’s voice in her head: What did you do well?

“I’ll start,” Toni says while she seamlessly merges into the traffic on the motorway leading away from Paris. “I think our energy was good throughout. And I liked my solo.”

“Your solo was perfect,” Florence agrees.

“I liked the way you introduced each of us,” Miray says. “And our harmonies were really good.”

“I agree,” Florence says. “I felt like the audience was with us for most of it. And I think all the cardio paid off—I wasn’t too out of breath even though I was moving around the stage a lot.”

Izzy scrubs a hand over her eyes. “I liked the song order,” she says after a moment. “It was the right choice to put ‘ballad’ toward the end. It felt like the climax of the set.”

Florence suppresses the urge to grin triumphantly and settles instead on a gracious, “I think so too.” She turns to Luca. “What about you?”

Luca’s fingers are picking at the lid of her cup. “Um. I . . . I just had a lot of fun.” She smiles, a touch too nervous for Florence’s liking. It’s the same way she’d react during practice whenever Florence asked for her input—every time, Luca briefly froze, like it was a trick question, some kind of test she had to pass. “I forgot about the audience for the most part. I feel like once we got into the flow, it all felt really natural.”

“That’s good,” Florence says. She takes another sip, savoring the sweetness. “What can we improve?”

“I think we can move around the stage more,” Toni says, looking at Izzy through the rearview mirror. “We have a huge amount of space. We should make use of it.”

“Yes,” Florence agrees. “I sounded flat on the bridge of ‘alexandria.’”

“Not the whole bridge,” Toni says. “Just the last line.”

“And I could probably interact with the audience more,” Florence continues. “Miray, I still think you can sing louder on the harmonies. Your voice adds so much.”

Miray ducks her head, ears pinking. “Sorry. I got nervous.”

Florence reaches through the gap between the two front seats to scritch Miray’s head. “That’s all right. It was our first show. We’ll get there.”

“I think,” Izzy says suddenly, “our outfits are shit.”

At that, everyone in the van—except for Toni, who is a wonderfully responsible driver—turns to look at her.

“What do you mean?” Florence asks.

Izzy gestures impatiently with her drink. “There’s no cohesion. We’ve got you in a suit. Toni looks like someone from the ’70s jumped forward in time and accidentally landed on our stage. Miray looks like an art teacher and Luca like she just got back from the gym. And then there’s me.” She gestures down at herself: her black T-shirt showing off the tattoos on her arms, a leather jacket draped across her lap. “We just don’t make any sense, visually.”

Grudgingly, Florence concedes that she has a point. She had bigger problems to worry about last night, but now that she thinks back to the photo they posted, she has to admit that they clashed horribly.

“What do you propose we do?” she asks.

“Figure out what our aesthetic is supposed to be, for starters,” Izzy says. “A band isn’t just music, right? It’s . . . everything. The logo. The stage visuals. The outfits. Scorpio Season isn’t just the five of us fucking around on stage. It’s a brand.”

Toni frowns. “What is our brand?”

“Well,” Izzy says. “We’re called Scorpio Season. Mystical. Dark.” She counts off on her fingers. “We’ve got the logo. We’ve got our sound. Then we’ve got Florence’s unhinged lyrics about—I don’t fucking know, the moon, cannibalism, whatever.”

“They’re quite feminist,” Miray says.