CHAPTER XI

- practice makes perfect -

[Liam]

The places and times for rehearsals were always different each week, but Dom was true to his word: they never clashed with musical theatre rehearsals, his Further Maths lessons, which were usually scheduled during his free periods and Lunch 1, or the weekly Maths Challenge meetups he had with some of the people in his classes.

Liam liked the variation: it kept each week interesting, and him on his toes. He didn't mind being so busy, but part of him was looking forward to January, when his hectic schedule would ease off a bit. Also, they had mocks in January, and he liked exams, mainly because he usually did well in them.

This week they were meeting right at the start of lunch break, in the classroom on the top floor of the music and languages block. In truth, it was through these rehearsals that he learned more about the layout of the school. Their rehearsals were always in odd places when they were held at lunch, probably to stop people from finding them, and they'd shown him all around the school: the arts centre, the main block, the maths and technology block, the recreation rooms, all of the little nooks and quiet places that he wouldn't have had a reason to go to otherwise.

Nobody came into the music block during lunch because the classrooms were normally locked, and the practise rooms were in the main block in the music and arts centre. Dom did A-Level music, he explained, when Liam asked how he'd managed to get them into the classrooms.

"Alright guys, we're starting a new song this week," Dom said, enthusiastic as usual, when everyone had arrived. "A suggestion from our esteemed colleague," he added, gesturing to Wolfgang, who frowned and folded his arms.

"Jesus, Dom, I asked us to do this song last year," he said. Liam liked how he always found something to complain about. It had bugged him when he first arrived, but once he'd realised Chen was right - Wolfgang really didn't have an issue with him – he found his constant grumpiness slightly amusing. He focused most of his scorn on Dom, for reasons Liam couldn't quite understand.

"No offence, it's kinda a weird song," Dom said.

"Yeah, coming from you that means jack shit," he replied airily. "I wouldn't expect you to listen to actual music."

Dom looked confused. "Music is music, right?"

Chen coughed, getting their attention before Wolfgang could retaliate. "Look, Wolf, we're doing this song now, so try and be happy for once. Or we can do a Justin Beiber song or something, if you'd prefer."

Wolfgang shut up then, and Chen smiled at him. "Thank you. The vocal ranges on this song are all over the place, though, so we're gonna have to mix it up a bit. Dom and I will do the melody and Keats and Scottani will take the accompaniment—"

Scottani pulled a face.

"Noooo," Liam moaned, thumping his head gently on the table. "Not him."

Dom tilted his head slightly, confused. "What, do you two not like each other?"

Liam looked at him, surprised. How could he not have noticed? It was like every time he said something here Scottani responded with something sarcastic, like he was just waiting for him to speak so he could cut him down.

"This is a bad idea, Chen," Liam said appealing to her instead. "Can't we swap? I'll do the melody with Dom like normal."

"Hm," Chen said, tapping her pencil against the edge of the desk. "Did you listen to the song?"

"Yeah," Liam said. He'd skimmed it earlier, so he knew vaguely how it went, figuring he'd just pick it up as he went on, like he always did.

"Right. So you'll know that the top notes are pretty high, and Dom tells me your range ends at A4."

Liam could see where this was going, and he didn't like it. "I hadn't warmed up then," he protested. "I could totally hit that if I tried."

Chen looked at him like she didn't believe him, but instead of dismissing him like he'd expected she sat down at the piano and gestured for him to join her.

"Alright," Chen said, once he'd come over. The room was quiet now, the others watching with a tense interest. "Let's go. Middle C."

He copied her after she sang the note, and she moved up slowly, achingly up the piano, teasing the notes out of him. She sang loud and clear, even as they reached two octaves above middle C – still bright and softening slightly at the edges as his voice started to show familiar signs of cracking. Eventually he had to concede: there was no way he could go higher. He shook his head and Chen nodded slowly.

"You have a really good range, Keats," she told him, finally.

"Thank you," he said.

"But..." she moved her finger a couple of notes up from where he'd stopped and played it once. "This is where you need to be," she said. "Belting, not falsetto like you were doing. Can you do that?"

There was no way he could, and they both knew it. Liam looked down at his hands. "How about I sing with you and Dom does the–"

"Can you do it?"

He exhaled slowly. "No."

"Good," she said, standing up and clapping her hands together. "So, you and Scottani. No more complaining."

"Or what, you'll kick me out?" he asked sarcastically under his breath, as he sloped off to sit with him.

"Cheer up," Scottani told him, a sly smile curling the edge of his mouth. "I don't want to work with you, either."

"You're really bad at cheering people up," Liam replied, grumpily.

"Don't worry about it, Keats," Dom said cheerily. "Scottani's really nice. I'm sure the two of you will get on fine."

He wondered if they were talking about the same person, or if Dom was being sarcastic. Liam couldn't see Dom being that snide though: sarcasm didn't suit him. Perhaps he really was just oblivious to it.

"Anyway, enough wasting time. Pair up and practise, and we'll run through at quarter to," Chen said, getting up and walking over to where Dom was sitting. "And Scottani," she told him as she passed by the two of them, hitting him lightly at the back of his head. "Stop being a dick. It isn't like you."

Liam smiled.

"Ow," Scottani muttered, rubbing a hand through his curls. "I'm not a dick."

"Then don't act like one. Remember, we like Keats, okay?"

"You like Keats," Scottani corrected her, but she'd already started walking on and didn't hear. Liam folded his arms and looked straight at him. There was no way this was going to work, not if Scottani was planning to keep this up.

"I've never done anything to you," he said. "Why don't you like me?"

Scottani shrugged.

"That's not an excuse. You've been like this since the first day I was here."

He didn't say anything for a bit. "Look, we should start rehearsing. You listened to the song, right?"

"Yeah, of course." He'd given it a precursory listen through that morning, and it had seemed alright; the tune was less regular than he was used to, but nothing he couldn't pick up in the space of a rehearsal. He didn't remember anything about what the accompaniment had sounded like, of course, but how hard could it be...?

"So...straight in then."

Liam soon realised when they started singing that it was so much easier when he was doing the melody. There was a repetitive structure, the notes he was singing made sense and there was always that consistent framework to the music, something to hold onto.

Here he was all over the place, and he felt like he had when he was doing the cinematic part of Antigravity: lost and out of his depth, but worse, because he didn't even know the song. But he didn't want to give Scottani anything else to complain about, so he tried to run with it.

They'd been going for about ten seconds when Scottani broke off abruptly.

"I thought you said you listened to the song," he said.

"I did."

Scottani shook his head. "You're doing it wrong."

"Well, it's hard." Liam told him.

"It's not that hard," Scottani said, matter-of-factly. "You're just bad at this."

He couldn't even argue because he knew he was right. "As my partner, I feel you should be more supportive."

"This is supportive. Constructive feedback."

"'You're bad at this' isn't constructive."

"Why, because it wasn't nice?" Scottani shot back. "Would you rather I lied to you? 'You're doing great, Keats. Keep up the good work. What would we ever have done without you?'"

He frowned. "I don't think any of that was helpful."

"So we're on the same page."

Liam sighed, loud and frustrated.

"Well, seeing as you didn't listen to it, we'll just start it from the top and go through each bit at a time," Scottani said.

"I totally listened," Liam protested. "I just didn't think I'd be singing the accompaniment. If I was singing the melody I'd be brilliant at this."

"My heart bleeds for you."

Scottani found the song and played it through for him. "You're singing the high bit you can hear in the background," Scottani said, over the music. "Just listen to the synthesiser. It's the easiest part to make out, so I don't see why you're having trouble with it..."

Liam frowned, trying to mentally dissect the song. "I can only hear the lyrics."

"Then stop listening to them," Scottani said, like it was the easiest thing in the world. Liam had never done this before: listening to a song and not hearing the lyrics. It seemed wrong, somehow, violating some unwritten law of songwriting.

A minute into the playback, he managed to latch onto the high, ethereal synths in the background and tried to follow along with it, but when Scottani joined in with the harmony it sounded weird and he stopped.

"Are you sure that's right?" he asked. "It sounds terrible."

"It's supposed to be a discordant," Scottani said, playing it back to him so he could hear. He was right; it did sound dissonant. "See? Try it again."

"..."

"You're doing it again."

"I don't like it," Liam protested. "It doesn't sound right."

"That doesn't matter."

"Well, I'm not going to sing it if it sounds weird, am I?"

"You're going to sing it because that's what the song sounds like," Scottani replied, a distinct edge to his voice. "Don't pay attention to what I'm doing; just focus on getting your bit right."

"What if my bit is right, and you're the one messing it up?"

Scottani smirked. "You keep believing that."

He tried again. Liam hated all of this, silently cursing Chen. They had it so good right now, he thought enviously, watching them work. Their stuff made sense and sounded good and had words. He felt like he was feeling his way along a cliff edge in the dark, always a step away from slipping and plunging headfirst into freefall.

"So this bit?" he asked.

"No, that's my part," Scottani replied.

"Then what am I singing?"

"The bit on the piano."

"..."

"Jesus Christ, it's one note."

Liam shook his head. "I can't hear it."

"How can you not hear it?"

Liam wanted to happy he was making him irritated, as if he was just doing this to spite him, but in all honesty, he had no idea what he was doing, and that frustrated him.

He was used to being good at things – he got things quickly and applied them without thinking about it – but this was different, and he didn't like it, and he didn't like how Scottani just seemed to get it, while he was flailing around and embarrassing himself.

"Here, let me sing it," Scottani said, finally. "Maybe you'll get it if you just hear it on its own."

"Knock yourself out." Liam shrugged, watching him as he put his headphones in and restarted the song, his dark eyes concentrating on the music, completely shut off from everything else. He'd never seen anyone engage in music like he did: he didn't tap his feet or nod his head or anything like that, just sat very still, barely blinking, like he'd retreated back somewhere Liam couldn't follow, buried deep within the intricacies of the overlapping textures, lost to the world.

Suddenly, he snapped back to normal, blinking a couple of times. He took one of the headphones out and looked at Liam. "Here," he said. "Listen."

"What you're just gonna..." Liam said, surprised. Surely he couldn't just pick it up that quickly, when Liam couldn't even hear what he was supposed to be singing...?

But Scottani replayed the song and then started to sing Liam's part out loud over it, hesitantly but without faltering, even when the notes strayed outside his range and he had to strain to reach them. For the first time in a while, Liam was astonished.

"How did you do that?"

"I told you, it's not hard," Scottani told him.

"Then why don't you help me?"

Scottani paused to think it over.

"Because I can't help you. I can't teach it to you note by note, we don't have time for that. You have to learn it on your own."

Shit. Back to square one. Liam didn't know how much more of this he could take. "Well, how am I supposed to do that?"

"Listen."

Liam waited for Scottani to keep talking, but he was silent.

"You're...not saying anything."

Scottani shook his head earnestly. "No, I mean you need to listen more. It's not just about the lyrics. Sometimes the best songs are the ones that can move you without words."

"I don't get what that has to do with–"

He rolled his eyes. "Just take a song, not just the one we're doing now, and don't listen to the words. Pay attention to the instruments and what they're doing, how they interact. Really focus on the layers of the song. Of course, listen to this one as well, but only when you're able to screen out the melody and appreciate the music as a whole."

Liam nodded, relieved this was finally going somewhere productive.

"And then come back and we'll practise some more, once you know what you're doing."

"Right." Something occurred to him, and Liam grinned. "Wait, what's this? You're being helpful?"

Scottani hesitated for a second, like he knew he'd been caught out, and then frowned.

"Don't get excited. The sooner you do this the sooner I don't have to work with you."

"Nice save."

"Shut up."

When he got to his usual table for lunch he was quite surprised to find it was covered in artwork. Eli was hunched over a thick A3 sketchpad, scribbling something aside some pencil sketches she'd done of a cat leaping at a bird in different colour schemes.

The pictures on the table were amazing: a sketch of a face, greyscale with vivid technicolour eyes, all the hues and vibrant shades of the rainbow captured in the irises and bleeding down their cheeks; a portrait of what looked like Anthea, done in spiky black ink with thick, straight strokes highlighted with green; a watercolour of a sky at night, hands raised softly illuminated by the warm glow of the lanterns they were releasing into the starry black sky. Liam reached over to have a closer look at one and Eli glared at him.

"Touch the painting and you die," she snarled at him, and he jerked his hand back quickly.

"Admire from a distance," Anthea advised, picking the pictures up and slotting them into a giant A2 folder.

"How come Anthea gets to touch them?" he argued.

"She won't damage them," Eli said, flipping over a couple of pages.

Robin patted him on the back. "It's ok, she doesn't trust us either," he said. "She won't even let us put food on the table. Come sit with us and wallow in self-pity."

Liam dropped down into a chair beside him. "What's going on?" he asked.

"She needs to submit a portfolio for Loughborough by half-term," Esther explained.

"And it's not ready!" Eli wailed. "I have to do all these annotations and explain my thought processes and I don't have time for this but I want a future..."

Liam fished out an apple from his bag and bit into it, watching them work. "Hey, you guys," he said suddenly, remembering what Scottani had told him. "How many songs would you say you have on your phone?"

Robin shrugged. "I don't have my phone on me, so I can't check."

Esther grinned. "Who doesn't have their phone on them?"

"Call me old-fashioned, but I like to talk to my friends and stuff, you know."

"What about you, Esther?" Liam asked, turning to her.

"Say...about three hundred," Esther replied offhandedly. "Why?"

"Oh I mean...I just feel like listening to some music, but I've only got like seven songs on mine," he explained. "Any chance we could swap over lunch?"

"That's what the internet is for," Esther said. "Just look up some playlists on YouTube or whatever."

Liam sighed. "Ok, rephrase. I feel like listening to your music specifically. You look like someone with good taste."

Flattery worked with most people, but with Esther it just made her suspicious. "What do you actually want?" she asked.

"Can you just drop this ulterior motives thing?" Liam said. "I'm actually a really nice person, you just haven't noticed yet."

Esther snorted derisively. "That remains to be seen."

"What's wrong with just giving him your phone, though?" Robin asked, somewhat unexpectedly. Liam smiled gratefully at him: Esther and Robin had gotten pretty friendly lately. If he was involved, Esther would probably change her mind.

Esther's eyes slanted reproachfully. "I don't trust him using my phone."

"I'll supervise him, don't worry," Robin said. "You trust me, right?"

"Yeah."

"C'mon Esther, I'll just listen to songs, I promise," Liam said, sensing he was winning her over. "I'll be right here next to you, what am I gonna do?"

She hesitated, then finally relinquished. "Fine," she said, handing it over. "Do anything crazy, though..."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Liam said. "I'll be good."

"And Liam," she added abruptly. Liam glanced up at her.

"Yeah?"

"Touch my phone again without permission and I'll set you on fire."

Robin burst out laughing. "What did the poor guy do to you?"

"He knows," Esther muttered.

Liam smiled. If Esther had realised what he'd done, that meant Diana must have responded. He didn't know what had come of it, but he decided to hazard a guess. "I was right, wasn't I?"

By the way her eyes narrowed at him, he figured he was. "It doesn't matter if you were right or not," she said. "Don't touch my stuff."

He waved an airy hand in her direction. "Sure, sure."

Liam put his headphones in and then put her songs on shuffle, while Esther picked up his phone and flicked through it absently.

"Wow, you weren't kidding," Esther said, looking through his music. "Do you just listen to the same nine songs over and over every day?"

"I don't listen to a lot of music," Liam said. "Only when I'm a really shitty mood. Those are my shitty mood songs."

They were mostly aggressive, fast paced songs. Linkin Park, Slipknot, Hollywood Undead, the kind you could put on and play really loud and engage with the anger in the words. Other people had therapy, he had metal. But apart from that, he didn't like the obstruction of listening to music all the time: it distracted him, and he couldn't focus on what he was doing. Silence was easier, letting the world work around him instead of shutting it out.

Esther's music wasn't what he was used to: softer, lighter, technical and simplistic. An eclectic mix of techno music with no words, upbeat folky music with glittering harp chords and strong drum rhythms, slow, wistful female vocal pieces with light chords.

It was hard at first to get out of the familiar mindset of just hearing the melody: usually he would just associate with the words and screen the rest out, but as he listened to the songs and for the first time, really heard them, he started to see exactly what he'd been missing. It was subtler than he'd expected, even on the more open songs with only three or four instruments, but once he started disassociating the melody and the background behind it he started to realise how complex it could be.

In a way, it was a little surreal, and when the bell rang for registration he felt slightly dazed. Esther had to nudge him a few times before he realised where he was.

"Come on," she said. "Let's get to class."

He was never sure where he stood with Esther; he got the impression she didn't like him. That feeling made it hard to find things to say to her, apart from intermittent, awkward small talk. Sometimes they talked, and sometimes they didn't. It looked like this was set to be one of those silent walks to the classroom when Esther turned to him abruptly.

"So," she remarked. "You guys made the front page of the school paper, huh."

For a second, Liam was confused, and then he felt cold shock drench him. She couldn't be talking about the one Dom had shown them last week? Why was she so sure he was part of it...?

"What do you mean?" he asked, as casually as possible.

"Fives, that acapella group. They did a big thing on them in the latest issue."

"Yeah, but what does that have to do with me?"

She smiled mysteriously. "You have all their songs on your phone. All the ones from the thing they did at school, even though they didn't give out a tracklist or anything."

Oh shit. Chen usually sent the songs they were practising over so they could listen to them, and he'd downloaded them onto his phone and put them all in a folder: all the songs they'd learned, together in one place. No wonder she was suspicious.

"Yeah, I'm stalking them a bit," Liam said, rubbing the back of his head. "After you guys were talking about them earlier. I did some research."

"So you say," Esther said, not sounding convinced.

"You sound like you know them well," he said. Not changing the subject, just steering the focus off him.

"Like I said before, I'm interested. And I think you're hiding something."

"You just don't trust me, do you?"

The corner of her mouth tugged into a quick smile. "That's also true."

"Well, Gordon and Kim unmasked them in that issue, anyway," Liam said, tucking his hands into his pocket and assuming an air of extreme nonchalance. "And I wasn't on that list, so..."

"Hm," Esther said. "I don't know, that list didn't seem right to me."

Liam's interest was thoroughly piqued now. "You reckon? Who do you think should have been on it, then?"

She hesitated.

"Well, you, for a start," she said.

"I'm flattered."

She bit her lip. "The kid in Robin's form, with the glasses? Always wearing Harry Potter T-shirts."

"Right..."

"The Chinese girl who helps out with the registers sometimes."

That was Chen; he'd seen her once with Miss Derwent in the office, printing off the information sheets that appeared in their registers for the teachers to read out.

"Um...one of Wyatt's friends, I guess. The tall one."

"They're all tall," Liam shrugged. Wyatt and his friends usually hung out on the school steps in breaktimes, doing grinds on the railings until one of the teachers managed to shoo them away, and refused to move for anyone. You had to gingerly step round them if you wanted to leave the school using the front entrance.

One of them, Ryan, always wearing a baseball cap and a sneery expression and oversized football shirts, had made a sport out of trying to actively crash into kids who got too close to him, so it was easier and less hazardous to take the back entrance to leave school.

"No, he's like really tall. Blonde, well-built, could use a shave..."

"Oh yeah, I know who you're talking about."

"I think they were right on Karim, thinking about it," Esther mused. "You know him, right?"

Wolfgang would be so pissed, Liam thought, making a so-so gesture with his hand. "Anyone else?"

"How many people is that? Five?"

"Yeah, five."

She paused for a while. "And...maybe Win. I'm really not sure about him."

"How sure is 'not sure'?"

"Like 67%."

"Huh." He was impressed: four out of six was better than the entire news team's so-called "feat of journalism". Maybe it was because she was supposed to musically gifted, or whatever. He considered recommending her to the news team, but he didn't want to encourage her.

Esther looked at him carefully, as if trying to gauge a reaction. "So, how'd I do?"

He shrugged. "How would Iknow? I didn't even know they existed until like last week." 

---

a/n: 

that's a fortnight, right? sort of...?

(yes, that's the end of the chapter lol it's so abrupt)

if you noticed that the song in this chapter is a bit vague, it's because i don't actually know which song they're singing here. i had a song in mind, but halfway through this chapter i guess i decided it wouldn't work out, so...any suggestions welcome :D

see you next update! <3