by Marie Powell
“Jason tells me you’re going home,” Alexander said finally, as the silence stretched out around them.
“Yes. I’m going to finish school. I promised Mum and Dad.”
“I understand.” Alexander nodded, still staring out over the grave. “But when you’re done, come back to LA and I’ll find you a band.”
“Really?” Lucy was stunned. “You will?”
“Of course,” Alexander said. “You’re not going to get away with slipping off to a middle-management job somewhere.”
“That’s … Thank you, Alexander,” Lucy said. “And thank you for everything you taught me this summer. I couldn’t have done this without you.”
“You could have.” Alexander shrugged. “You’ll be a great drummer, someday, Lucille. Even without Crush. It’s just too bad …”
“What?” Lucy asked.
“It’s too bad you’ve got another year of school. Electric’s drummer just dropped out and they’re auditioning for a new one today. You’d be ideal.”
Lucy shook her head. “I don’t think Trent Eisner would be a big fan of that idea. I made a complete fool of myself with him after the Bowl.”
“Jumping to conclusions isn’t a useful habit, Lucille,” Alexander said cryptically.
What did he mean by that? Could Trent have said something about her? No. He wouldn’t have talked to Alexander about her. He wouldn’t have talked about her at all. And even if he had, it didn’t matter what Trent thought. Lucy was going home.
“I’ll just have to take you up on that offer next year,” she said firmly.
“Whatever you think is best,” Alexander said. Then, with another of his brusque hugs, he was gone.
“What was that about?” Lucy’s mum asked as they started up the hill toward the car park.
“Electric is auditioning new drummers today. He wanted me to try for it,” Lucy said. Before her mum could reply, Lucy added, “But I told him that I needed to finish school first.”
“Lucy,” Toni cried, hanging back from Iza to fall in step with Lucy and her mother. “You should audition. I’ve just told Jason that I’ll come back in two weeks to audition for this amazing new musical television show he’s put me up for. He’s pretty sure I’ll get it. It would be so much fun if you were based here, too. We could share an apartment, and then when Iza comes back for university, she can live with us as well. It’ll be just like old times.”
Lucy could just see the three of them in a little apartment somewhere in Hollywood, having a blast trying to cook for themselves and going to parties on the weekends. But she shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I need to finish school. I promised Mum and Dad.”
“I see,” Lucy’s mum said carefully, studying her daughter. “You really have grown up these past few months, haven’t you, Lucy?”
“I guess so,” Lucy said, turning back to look down at Harper’s grave one last time.
“You need a moment alone?” her mum asked.
Lucy shook her head. “No, I’m ready to go.”
Forty-five minutes later, Lucy sat in the crowded backseat of her parents’ rental car, squeezed between Toni and Iza, staring out of the front window as they crawled through traffic, toward LAX.
Los Angeles seemed as reluctant to let her go as Lucy was to leave it. The traffic was getting worse every minute. Which was fine with Lucy, really. The closer they got to the airport, the worse Lucy seemed to feel.
Her head hurt. Her stomach was in knots. She felt like she was getting the flu.
What was wrong with her? And why did it feel like every inch closer to the airport was making it worse? It was as though the very idea of going home was actually killing her.
Maybe I shouldn’t go back.
The moment the words formed themselves inside her head, her brain was convinced. She needed to stay. And she needed to get to the Electric audition.
Wait, Lucy thought. That wasn’t what she needed at all. She needed to go home. She needed to finish school. She needed to get out of the vortex of Hollywood. She tried to convince herself that she didn’t need the music. What she needed was to get her life back under control.
But the thought just wouldn’t go away. And worse, just thinking about turning around and going to the Electric audition made her feel better. Her stomach settled. Her head no longer hurt. Her skin stopped feeling too tight for her face. She felt … right.
“Mum,” Lucy said slowly, still not quite believing she was really saying it out loud. She’d only just sorted things out with her parents. Did she want to ruin everything again?
But she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was what she needed to do.
“Mum, I think … Would you guys be angry if I wanted to go to that Electric audition that Alexander mentioned?” Lucy blurted. “I know I said I’d go home and finish school, but I just … I think I need to do this. I tried not to, but I just … do.”
Her mum and dad exchanged one of their secret parent-looks, silently comparing notes.
“You’re sure,” Dad said finally. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “I don’t know why. I just know I need to go back.”
“And you promise, if you get the, ah …” Her mum searched for the word. “… gig — it is a gig, right?” She looked to Toni in the backseat who nodded, a big grin spreading across her face. “If you get the gig, you’ll finish school while you’re touring? They’ll get you a tutor, won’t they?” Mum continued.
“Yes, I’m sure they will!” Lucy said, hope swelling in her gut.
“Well, I guess we ought to hurry then, shouldn’t we?” Mum said, a smile almost as wide as Toni’s bursting from her lips.
“STEP ON IT!” Iza hooted, as Lucy’s dad pulled into the exit lane, and got on the freeway heading in the opposite direction.
Toni burst out laughing. “I think that’s the biggest noise you’ve ever made, Iz.”
“LUCY’S GONNA BE A ROCK STAR!” Iza shouted, not getting any quieter.
“Quite right!” Mum cried.
Lucy was so caught up in their excitement that she hardly realized that they were already zooming back the way they came.
“Wait, how do you know where to go?” Lucy asked her dad, who was suddenly driving as though he were in an action film.
“We asked Alexander,” Toni said, still grinning. “While you were talking to Skye. Just in case. He told us they’re holding the audition session at Troubadour.”
Lucy looked from her parents to her friends, amazed. They’d known, she thought. They’d known what she needed to do all along. They’d just been waiting for her to realize it.
Then she burst into tears.
“Stop it!” Toni said. “Now you’re just ruining your makeup.”
“But you guys … You just … You guys!” Lucy babbled, incoherent with love for them all.
“Stop that right now,” Toni said, though she had to wipe away a tear of her own. “And sit still. We need a repair job on that mascara if you’re going to nail this audition.”
“I’m calling Alexander,” Iza said, actually bouncing with glee as she got out her phone. “To let him know you’re coming.”
“Do it!” Lucy’s dad called, cutting off a Porsche as he slid into the fast lane. “We’ve got to get our girl on stage!”
Lucy burst into the matte-black and duct-tape world that was the backstage of the Troubadour club, zipping through the milling crowd of auditioning drummers like a train on tracks. It was as though every nerve in her body had formed a straight line to the stage, with its big silver and white drum kit that read Electric across the kick drum.
“Alexander!” she called to her mentor, who stood at dead center of the backstage chaos, directing traffic with his iPad in hand. “I’m here!”
“Good, because you’re next!” Alexander sai
d. “Go on, get up there.”
Next? He wasn’t serious. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t warmed up. And Trent was up there. She hadn’t even considered the fact that coming here meant seeing Trent until just now. Not to mention the part where getting this gig meant seeing Trent every day. What was she doing here? She wasn’t ready for this. She’d never be ready for this.
“Lucy Gosling!” the stage manager read from his tablet. “Where is Lucy Gosling? We don’t have all day, people.”
Lucy knew she had to go on stage, but her feet weren’t cooperating.
Then, for just a second, she was standing outside her house with Harper, the night they’d found out they were going to Los Angeles.
This is what you’re meant to do. More than any of the rest of us, you belong up there on stage, on the drums. I can see it, and I hope you can see it, too.
“LUCY GOSLING?” the stage manager called again.
This is what you’re meant to do.
“Okay, Harper,” Lucy whispered to herself. “Okay, let’s do this.”
And then she walked up on stage.
“Wooooo!”
Was that Mum back there cheering? It was. Toni and Iza were shushing her but they were completely failing in their attempts to make themselves invisible at the back of the club. Lucy didn’t mind. She was just happy they were there at all.
“Lucy?”
Lucy felt a little breathless as she turned to look up at Trent Eisner. He wore rumpled cargo shorts, a black T-shirt and a pair of Birkenstocks that looked as though they might be older than Lucy. Perfect, Lucy thought. He looked perfect.
But she wasn’t here to stare at a hot guy with her mouth hanging open like an idiot. She was here to play the drums.
Lucy opened her mouth to speak, but a squeaky “Hi” was all that came out.
She caught a couple of covert raised eyebrows between the other band members and tried again.
“I mean, hello. I’m here to audition. For the drumming gig.”
“I suggested it,” Alexander said, stepping onto the stage behind her. “It seemed like kismet. Lucy being available at the same time Electric needed a new drummer. I think she’ll have great chemistry with you guys.”
“You’re the Project Next winner, right?” said a short guy with hot-pink hair, who Lucy recognized as Rick Peterson, Electric’s bassist. “That was harsh, what happened. Sorry, girl.”
Lucy nodded, fighting back a flash of tears.
“Okay. Cool,” Trent said slowly. “Let’s try this. Lucy, you know our songs? We’ve been playing ‘Storm the Gates’ as the audition piece.”
“I know it,” Lucy said.
“Then let’s do this thing,” Trent replied, indicating the drum set.
Lucy picked up the drumsticks that lay on the stool and settled in behind the drums. She took a deep breath and rolled into the tricky, alternating beat of the throbbing ballad without a second thought.
It was easy. When had this become easy?
She was having too much fun to think about it now. She sank into the song and, just like some kind of warm ocean, it rolled over her head, dragging her down into its heart.
When the last note rang out from Trent’s guitar, the silence that fell was almost painful. Lucy’s hands itched to keep playing. Instead, she carefully put the sticks back where she’d found them and stepped away from the drum kit.
“Great work!” Rick crowed. “You’re awesome.”
“Thanks,” Lucy said. “That was amazing. It was a real pleasure to play with you guys.”
“Believe me, the pleasure was ours,” said Lars Madison, the guitar player. “Right, Trent?”
Trent didn’t reply to his bandmate. He just stood there staring at her, an unreadable expression on his face.
“Trent? Dude?” the guitarist tried again. “Earth to Trent.”
Trent said nothing. He was probably trying to work out how to let her down gently, Lucy thought.
Suddenly, she just knew she couldn’t handle another rejection from Trent Eisner. Not today. Before he could say anything, Lucy jumped off the stage and ran past the tables at the front of the club, across the dance floor and out into the blinding Los Angeles sunlight.
Toni and Iza were on her heels, her mum and dad not far behind them.
“Don’t mind that guy,” Toni said. “You were brilliant up there, Lucy. Completely brilliant. If you don’t get the gig just because he was too much of a wimp to ask you out, then he’s an idiot.”
“That boy wanted to ask you out?” Mum said. “The tall one who wouldn’t say anything? That’s why he’s not going to pick you?”
“Yeah,” Lucy choked out. “Sort of. It’s complicated.”
“Bastard,” Mum declared stoutly.
Lucy stared at her mother in shock. She’d never heard Mum even come close to swearing before. Ever.
“I’ve half a mind to go in there and give him what for,” Mum steamed. “You are clearly the perfect drummer for that band, and he wants to reject you because of a little romantic melodrama? Really, the nerve of —”
“Lucy!”
Trent was standing in the doorway of the club.
“You don’t have to —” Dad began, but Lucy shook her head.
“I’m all right, Dad,” she said.
Then she walked toward Trent.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” she replied.
Trent stood there.
Lucy stood there.
They stared at each other.
This was so, so awkward.
“That was amazing, Lucy,” he said, finally. The words were rushed, tumbling over each other. He was nervous, she realized.
The thought gave her the courage to nod in agreement. “It was,” she managed to say. She took a deep breath. “I’d like the chance to do it again.”
“The chance?” he said, bursting into a huge grin. “Do you think we’d let you get away after an audition like that? Oh no, you’re going to be our drummer girl, Lucy Gosling. You have to be.”
Lucy felt light-headed. She’d done it. He was offering her a place in Electric.
“But … Lucy,” he said, his voice becoming serious again. “We need to talk first. About Blvd3.”
Lucy had hoped he’d just let her pretend it had never happened. That she’d never lost her mind enough to think he wanted to date her.
“I’m so sorry, Trent,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as though she was babbling. “I should never have … It was a mistake. I won’t let it happen again. I promise.”
“You’re right. It was a mistake,” he said, nodding slowly. “When you kissed me, I should have kissed you back.”
Lucy’s breakdancing stomach leaped just as though she were at the top of a roller coaster.
“We had a moment, Lucy. The kind of moment you only get a few of in life,” he continued. “I should have taken it, but I was too afraid of how it would feel if it went wrong. Of how badly I knew you could break my heart, if you wanted to. I even came to Vegas, you know. I watched you play in the finale and, God, Lucy … you were incredible. I went there planning to … I don’t know what I was planning to do, but I wanted to get that moment back. Then, when I saw you play up there, I knew you’d win and I chickened out. I thought I was doing the right thing — that anything between us was just going to be too hard. But I was wrong. I should have tried. And now … I just hope, someday, we’ll find that moment again. I know it’ll be even harder if that happens while we’re both in the same band … but if I get that lucky again, I promise, I won’t let anything stand in my way.”
Lucy knew she was staring at him like an idiot, but she couldn’t seem to do anything else.
“Lucy?” he said, humor starting to dance in his brown eyes as he took in her stunned face. “You okay in there?”
She managed to nod.
“And you forgive me for being an idiot and you’ll join my band?” he continued.
She nodded again.
“Good.” He grinned as if he’d just won the lottery. “Well, I’ve got to tell a whole bunch of drummers they aren’t getting a place in Electric today, so I’m going to go inside. I’ll see you in there?”
She nodded again.
He strolled back into Troubadour, whistling to himself, and left Lucy standing on the pavement staring after him. She was going to be the drummer for Electric. And maybe, just maybe, someday she’d decide she wanted to kiss Trent Eisner again. And this time, he’d probably kiss her back.
“So?” Toni called. “What happened?”
Lucy turned to her friends and family and let the enormous smile that had been growing secretly, deep in her chest, bloom on her face. “I got it!”
Toni hooted with joy and swung Lucy off her feet in a spinning merry-go-round of a hug. Iza and Mum and Dad crowded in as well and the brilliant Los Angeles sunshine shone all around them like a spotlight as they hugged and patted and chattered their congratulations. But all Lucy could hear was the pounding of her own heart, beating steady and true.
Just like a drum.
Acknowledgments
Chasing your dreams long enough to catch them isn’t easy, whether you want to write books or rock out on your drums with a band. Luckily for me, I’ve had a lot of help along the way.
First, I was born to a pair of great parents, who told me many stories and listened to all the stories I ever wanted to tell. Then I managed to acquire a wonderful assortment of friends who’ve stuck by me through the great times and the truly miserable ones. Without them, I could never have told Lucy’s story — especially Janice, who has been a part of building Lucy’s world from the very beginning.
As if great parents and great friends weren’t enough, I’ve had more amazing teachers, professors and professional advisors than I can count or name here. In particular, Lucy would never have come to life if it weren’t for Kemper Donovan, Jeff Norton, Emma Goldhawk and all the other wonderful people at Templar Publishing. Then there’s Geoff Hollinger, who made it so much easier to write Trent by reminding me every day how it feels when your heart skips a bit every time the right guy smiles at you.
