When It Drops

by Alex Dyson

  ‘You’re going to rip this place to shreds.’

  Caleb opened his eyes to see his dad’s face directly in front of him.

  Although, it wasn’t exactly his dad’s face. It was a bit narrower, with fuller lips and vibrant blue hair.

  ‘Have the best time,’ Rachel added, her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Thanks, Rach,’ he said. ‘And hey, Rachel?’ Caleb called as she went to leave. ‘I just wanted to say thanks. For helping me out, through everything. I wouldn’t have made it here without you.’

  Rachel smiled. ‘No worries, Caleb. It’s been a big month, but that’s what managers are for –’

  ‘No, not just for the last month. For the last year. I wouldn’t have made it through without you.’

  She smiled. There was something in that smile that melted away the very last of his misgivings. A smile with just the right amount of pride in it.

  It was their father’s smile.

  ‘I love you, Button,’ she said.

  ‘You too, Tiny,’ he said as he hugged her.

  ‘BVTTON!’ a voice boomed from beside them.

  ‘Yeah?’ said Caleb.

  ‘YOU’RE UP!’

  The stage manager, headset on, pointed at him.

  This was it. He could hear the murmur of the crowd from behind the curtains, but he didn’t have the guts to look at how many people had come. It doesn’t matter anyway, he told himself. I just need to do my own thing.

  Caleb and Rachel walked back to the group for a final goodbye.

  ‘Good luck, Caleb!’ Miralee squealed.

  ‘All the best, Button,’ Mum added.

  ‘Don’t stuff it up,’ said Nat with a smirk.

  Caleb smiled.

  Here goes nothing.

  The tent lights went dark, and the spotlights at the back of the stage lit up. The crowd roared; the sound seemed to double as Caleb stepped from behind the curtain. It almost knocked his heart from his chest.

  He walked to the riser and stood behind his equipment. The backlights hid his face from the crowd, but illuminated the crowd’s faces for him. There were hundreds – no – thousands of people staring back. Smiles. Braids. Sombreros. Teddy bears on sticks. Beach balls. So many faces.

  Caleb tentatively raised his hand and waved. Another roar. It was as if he were a weird teenage wizard in charge of a tsunami of sound. He hovered his hand over his laptop and realised it was shaking. He took a deep breath and hit the space bar.

  Sound drowned out the noise of the crowd. The opening bars of ‘Total Swarm’ filled the air, the strobe lights syncing with the jittery, insect-like beats that splashed from forty-eight amplifiers pointed into the heart of the tent. Another cheer. And then the movement began. Caleb allowed himself a single, solitary look at the gyrating mass before forcing his concentration back to the laptop.

  Feel it.

  Feel it.

  Despite the shakes, his hands were making all the right movements. It was just like his rehearsals, except with much more sweat. The stage lights were hot. The huge screen behind him had the word BVTTON glitching across its pixels. Almost as soon as it had started, ‘Total Swarm’ was over, and he was on to the next song.

  Then the next one.

  Then the next one.

  Then, suddenly, it was easier. Caleb indulged himself with glimpses at the crowd. People filled the tent all the way to the back. He could even see people dancing outside. At one point, someone climbed one of the pylons in the middle of the tent. People started to throw cans at him, but he seemed to relish it, waving madly until security coaxed him down.

  Caleb glanced to his left, where his family was watching from the wings, looking less nervous than before. He gave them a sneaky thumbs up. Four sets of hands returned it.

  It was coming towards the end of his set. The remix he’d made of Japanese Wallpaper’s song ‘Arrival’ finished and the crowd roared. Only two more songs to go: the new one, then ‘Ella’. The light from outside the tent was turning golden as the sun went down, illuminating the dust from so many feet moving on the dirt floor.

  Caleb hadn’t said a word to the crowd yet. He’d been far too terrified. But he knew he would regret it if he didn’t at least give it a try.

  He leaned over the microphone and gave it a nervous tap, sending a dull thud through the speakers.

  He took a breath.

  ‘Hey, sorry I’m not Dank Motion.’ An appreciative whoop and laughter emerged from the crowd. ‘He couldn’t make it and you got me. Um … my name’s BVTTON. Thanks a lot for coming along today. It means a lot to me.’

  More cheers. He thought about the two people who meant a lot to him, but who weren’t there to cheer.

  Ella, because she couldn’t get out of her argument with Damo.

  His dad, because he couldn’t get out of his coffin.

  Dad’s excuse was better.

  It was okay, though, because they were both there in audio form. And he knew which one of them he really wanted to finish with.

  So, quickly jumping ahead in his Ableton Live session, he triggered the song that had got him there. The song everyone knew.

  ‘Ella’.

  The first bars played, and the biggest cheer of the night rang out.

  ‘You might know this one,’ he said into the mic. The pulsing beat kickstarted and the mass of people began to move like a single huge organism with a thousand different heads. A guy with an ironic mo and a legionnaire’s hat was throwing his arms to the roof. A girl pressed up against the barrier was bopping her head off. There were thousands of people, and not one of them was the girl who had inspired the song.

  But Caleb looked at the crowd and realised it didn’t matter.

  The song belonged to them now.

  Westlake, you make my chest ache

  You know there used to be a time you were my best mate

  As the words blared out, what used to make Caleb cringe uncontrollably now made him smile. There were so many people listening. The chorus kicked in.

  I don’t want to be cold to you

  I just want to grow old with you

  Everyone sang along.

  Like, everyone.

  It was incredible. The phrase had started out heartfelt, then become cheesy, then famous, and was suddenly heartfelt again. And all it took for Caleb to realise it was a single, real-life glimpse of the people who were experiencing his song. Every single person had their own life. Their own problems. They projected whatever they wanted onto Caleb’s lyrics, moulding them into their own narrative.

  Caleb reached into his pocket and grabbed the glow sticks, tossing them out into the crowd. There were cheers from the front, people grasping to secure something from the stage. Caleb dug back in to get more, and his fingers wrapped around the key ring he’d stuffed in there earlier. The key ring he was saving for the girl he’d spent years pining over.

  He cocked his arm back, then hurled the tiny piece of plastic and metal into the crowd, where it disappeared into the colour, the movement, the noise.

  It was over as quickly as it started. The crowd yelled their approval over the final chords. Caleb quickly flicked back to his new closing track – the song he had finished with the help of Jake Townsend. It was a sentimental choice, so he fully expected people to leave. There were a lot of other acts to see at Splendour, after all.

  ‘So, uh, thanks so much for having me,’ he said into the mic, his words echoing around the tent. ‘I’ve got one last song for you. It’s about someone super special to me, and I hope you like it. It’s called “Dancer”.’

  Caleb hit play. The soft, electronic beats started, atmospheric bleeps pulsing through the space. The crowd began to move, getting sucked into the gradually building pace. The second chorus started, and Caleb could tell the crowd were getting on board. They had figured the track out.

  He was overcome with emotion. Rachel had told him it wasn’t possible – that he couldn’t bring his dad back. But here he was, and he could tell the crow
d could feel his energy. The energy Caleb’s dad had passed on to his son, who had then taken that energy and put it to music.

  If Roger Clifford were a sound, he would be this song.

  A clap started out of nowhere as the music reached the build-up before the drop. The noise was getting louder and louder as Caleb and Jake’s final vibrant outro surged to life. The music built, and built, and was about to punch back in – and right on the precipice of the final chorus, Caleb had an idea.

  He spun the mixer and filtered the sound out to a deafening, all-encompassing silence.

  The air was sucked out of the tent. The crowd, which was expecting to go nuts for the final time in the set, went to jump – but there was nothing. Nothing but Caleb Clifford standing onstage with his hand in the air, relishing the prank he’d pulled on his crowd.

  An audible laugh emerged when people realised they’d jumped the gun. They waited patiently, but the amplifiers remained quiet. Caleb was holding the song there, prolonging the awkward silence. Relishing it. Making people wait. Making them want the noise. Knowing now that every second spent without sound would enhance their relief when the music exploded back. Each second felt like an eternity, but it was just a moment. A moment just like every other moment. A moment shared with every single person there.

  Caleb smiled.

  It was time for the silence to end.

  It was time for a new moment.

  He turned the filter. He pressed the button. The noise erupted. The beat dropped. The thousands of faces in the tent beamed.

  The song continued, the festival kept going, the moments kept on happening.

  And Caleb Clifford felt every one of them.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Whether they know it or not, there are an abundance of people who helped create this book. Firstly I’d like to thank Penny White for sending the message that sparked the journey. Marisa Pintado for reading the ungainly first drafts and helping me tame it, despite the fact that she made an entire human in the time it took me to write it. The other great team at Hardie Grant Egmont: Emma Schwarcz, Luna Soo, Lauren Draper and Tess Cullity, plus Pooja Desai and Julia Donkersley for their incredible design work. Melissa Keil for her magic copyediting wand.

  Personally, a huge thanks to the team at triple j, who are nothing like Phresh FM, I promise. Matt Okine for his inspiring words and work ethic, Tom Ballard for telling me in musical rehearsals in high school once that I should be a writer when I grow up, and Kyran Wheatley for being a proofreader extraordinaire and my business-partner-in-crime.

  To every single music artist I interviewed over the years: it was an honour, thank you for letting me play a small cameo in your pursuit of your creative dreams. Thank you to those artists who sat and chatted with me about what it was like to be a human being who makes music – Chris Emerson, Alex Sholler, Jon Hart, Dan Haggis, Gab Strum and Grace Shaw. In fact, thanks to anyone who ever listened to me on triple j and, by extension, is now reading this book. I really appreciate it – your passion for music and laughter is infectious and keeps me going.

  Thanks as well to Megan Jacobson for her advice and for taking a chance and inviting me to writing club one time. Also to Ruth Owen and Kevin Lynch for giving me a library to work in when I needed to focus. And even also-er to Elle Graham for her encouragement, and patience, and loveliness, and ideas, and cups of tea.

  Thanks to David Anderson for being my best friend, and – most importantly – a gargantuan thanks to my sister, Katherine, and father, Ian. I love you both, and your kindness and support is something I cherish above everything.

  Finally, to anyone who’s a teenager and overthinks, which is basically all of you: you’re wonderful, and are the true inspiration for this book. It’s such a weird part of life that’s hard to figure out, so with everything going on in your world, thanks for taking the time to read my rambling words. Now you’ve got to the end, so please throw it down and go and do something that makes you happy. See you back here next time if I manage to write another one!

  – Alex

  Photograph by Becki Moss

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  After graduating from the University of Melbourne with a Creative Writing degree, Alex Dyson became a co-host of the national triple j breakfast show when he was just twenty-one years old. In his seven years there he woke up with approximately one million listeners every week, and interviewed everyone from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Julia Gillard, as well as almost every up-and-coming musician the country had to offer. Since leaving radio, he has DJ’d at clubs and music festivals around Australia, hosted MTV Unplugged, opened a bar, run for parliament and dusted off his writing degree to release his debut young adult novel, When It Drops.

  When It Drops

  published in 2020 by

  Hardie Grant Egmont

  Ground Floor, Building 1, 658 Church Street

  Richmond, Victoria 3121, Australia

  www.hardiegrantegmont.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

  eISBN 9781743586785

  Text copyright © 2020 Alex Dyson

  Illustration and design copyright © 2020 Hardie Grant Egmont

  Cover design by Pooja Desai

  Typeset by Julia Donkersley

  We welcome feedback from our readers. All our ebooks are edited and proofread vigorously, but we know that mistakes sometimes get through. If you spot any errors, please email info@hardiegrantegmont.com.au so that we can fix them for your fellow ebook readers.