I arrive at rehearsal a bit early the next day. Ms. Kogawa isn’t there yet, and Macy and Davis are sitting on the floor outside the locked classroom. I drop my bag and sit down across from them.
“You want some halvah?” asks Davis, handing me a Tupperware container.
“What is it?” I ask, pulling out a piece.
“Hippie fudge,” he says.
“It’s actually a Middle Eastern dessert,” says Macy.
“That hippies feed their kids instead of real fudge,” says Davis.
“We’re vegan,” explains Macy.
“For the time being,” says Davis. “Oh man, I am going to eat all the hamburgers when I ungraduate and leave home.”
“Ungraduate?” I ask.
“We’re unschooled,” says Macy. “Most people would call us homeschooled, but that’s a different kind of thing. We don’t have classes or structured study. We just kind of learn about what interests us.”
“And sometimes what interests our parents,” says Davis.
“That too,” says Macy.
“Wow,” I say, after I’ve had time to pick my jaw up off the floor. “That sounds awesome.”
“Most of the time it’s pretty cool,” says Macy. “As long as we get to do stuff like this.”
“Music, you mean?”
“Music and sports and stuff that involves other people. Davis is in an amateur radio club with a bunch of middle-aged men.”
“Hey,” he says. “It’s fun. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!”
“Why are you in choral?” Macy asks me. “Have you been doing music for long?”
“Not exactly,” I tell them. “I mean, I’ve been singing my whole life, but I’ve never done any kind of musical training. I guess the real reason I’m doing it is because I auditioned for Big Time and didn’t make it, so I thought I’d try to get some experience this way and maybe audition again next year.”
“What’s Big Time?” asks Davis.
“Are you serious?” I ask. They both look at me with blank faces. “It’s, like, the biggest show on TV. People sing and then judges critique them and then people at home call in and vote for their favorite and then somebody wins and gets a record deal and a car.”
“We don’t have a TV,” explains Macy.
“No offense,” says Davis, “but that sounds awful.”
We turn and look as Ms. Kogawa and Bernice come around the corner and walk toward us.
“Wow,” says Bernice. “You guys are keeners.”
“How did your sight-reading practice go, Gerri?” asks Ms. Kogawa as she unlocks the door.
“I think it went pretty well,” I tell her.
Unfortunately, it hasn’t gone quite as well as I’d hoped. Ms. Kogawa wants to use today’s practice to get through four of the songs in our workbook, but after a couple of attempts at starting from scratch, it becomes obvious that neither Tyler nor I can keep up. We revert to our old method, this time with Macy at the piano, and begin to slowly work through the individual parts until we can finally do a full song all the way through.
It’s a lot slower this way, but it works better, and eventually Tyler and I start to catch on. Still, I’m happy when Ms. Kogawa tells us to have a seat. We’ve been rehearsing for two hours and we’ve only gotten through half the songs we wanted to. I can’t help feeling that it’s at least partly because of me, and Bernice doesn’t help matters.
“It’s too bad everyone can’t sight-read,” she says. “We’d be able to get through so much more during a rehearsal.”
“Yeah, too bad, hey?” says Tyler.
Bernice doesn’t pick up on his sarcasm. “It’s not your fault, guys,” she says. “It’s just that you don’t have a background in music like the rest of us.”
I’m getting a little bit sick of hearing Bernice talk about her background.
“We have a couple of things to consider,” says Ms. Kogawa. “We should really start thinking about developing a performance piece. We’re not there yet, but I think we will be soon, if we all work hard. It would be great to kick off our year with something of our own ready to go.
We should start thinking about where we might want to have our debut performance too.”
“What kind of song are we going to do?” asks Olive.
“Ultimately that will be up to you guys,” she says. “But I think it would be fun to do a mashup, where we take two songs and bring them together, so start thinking of some possibilities to discuss next week, and we’ll work from there.”
“How do you know what songs will sound good together?” asks Macy.
“A lot of it is instinct,” says Ms. Kogawa. “Some songs just sound great together—they have similar tempos and structure. Mood is important too. I think it would be really neat if we could pick songs with different musical styles, but that’s not totally necessary as long as they sound good. We should probably pick something that’s got good energy too, since we’ll hopefully be doing it for an audience.”
“What kind of audience?” I ask.
“I’m not sure yet.” She smiles at us. “I’ll figure something out. I know I don’t want to keep these beautiful voices all to myself. Speaking of beautiful voices, I need everyone to take one last shot at thinking of someone who can possibly step in as a bass for us. It would be great to have the low register covered. Come on, guys, one of you must know somebody who fits the bill.”
I’m looking around at the blank faces in the room when I realize I do know somebody. The only problem is, I don’t know how to find him.
Meg is only too eager to help me figure out how to contact Keith.
“You didn’t even get his last name?” she asks.
“No,” I tell her. “Except for the audition and a couple of minutes at the mall, I’ve barely even talked to the guy.”
We’re in my room. Meg is on my laptop, trying to find him online. She does a quick Facebook search and comes up with a bunch of Keiths who go to local high schools. I stand behind her and peer over her shoulder as she scrolls through the list, but I don’t recognize any of them.
“This is probably pointless,” I say, sitting back down on my bed. “I tried to find him on Facebook too. He’s either not on it or he has pretty tight privacy settings.”
“Don’t be so quick to give up,” she says. “We’re just getting started. Haven’t you seen CSI? We just have to dig a little bit deeper.”
“I don’t even know what to say if we find him,” I say.
“I think you’re going to have to explain this to me one more time,” she says. “Why exactly are you looking for this guy?”
“The choral group needs a bass,” I say. “A deep male voice.”
“He’ll probably be all over that,” she says. “Guys love when girls ask them to join nerdy music clubs.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I say. “Maybe he’ll think it’s stupid.”
“Relax,” she says. “I’m just joking. Kind of. It’s a reason to get in touch with a cute guy, at least.”
She closes her eyes and chews on her lip, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. Then she starts typing, quickly throwing different word combinations into the search box.
“Is this him?” she asks after a few seconds. I come back over and look at the screen. Sure enough, it’s Keith’s face in a YouTube window.
“That’s him!” I say.
“He has his own channel,” she says, clicking through. Not only does he have his own channel, but he’s posted dozens of videos and has a ton of followers. Meg plays one video and we watch as Keith says hey to his audience, then picks up his guitar and begins to play and sing. It’s an old blues tune and it sounds really great. His guitar playing is excellent, and his voice is deep and smooth. I know he could easily sing the bass parts for choral. When the song ends, we start another one, then another. He plays lots of blues and folk music, some of his own stuff and even a few newer songs that he’s put his own twist on.
“He’s good, hey?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says. “Now we just have to leave him a comment and tell him to get in touch with you.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea? Maybe he’ll be embarrassed that I found him this way.”
“He has his own online fan base, Gerri. Something tells me he isn’t a shy daisy.” She scrolls down to the comments section of his most recent video and is about to type something, but I stop her.
“Let me do it,” I say. She gets up and I sit at my desk to write a quick message.
Hey, Keith. This is Gerri from the Big Time auditions. I really like your videos, they’re great. I was wondering if you could get in touch with me, I have a question to ask you. About music.
“What’s with ‘about music’?” asks Meg.
“I don’t want him to think I’m asking him out or something,” I say.
“Yeah, ’cause that would be awful, right? You should take that out. Leave him guessing a bit.”
I take that part out, leave an email address and post the comment. To my surprise, he responds within ten minutes.
Hey, Gerri, great to hear from you! Do you want to meet for coffee sometime?
“That sounds promising,” says Meg.
“I told you, it’s not like that. We need a bass for choral, that’s all.”
“Suit yourself,” she says, “but I wouldn’t be so quick to assume the only thing he’s interested in is your voice.”