The next morning, I stumble down to our practice room in the studio for another day of hard work. Another day of trying to “find my passion” or whatever. Another long day where I don’t get to see Ryan at all.
Cassandra starts our lesson by scolding us. “Last night was not your best work. Obviously, there was Eve’s mistake—”
Casey and Delia shoot me smug grins.
“—but you two lost the soul of the music as well.” She turns to them. “You threw Eve off when you tried too hard to take the spotlight. This was a team performance. Your team is four people, not a duo with some backup singers.”
Cassandra claps her hands. “Let’s get it together. And stick together.”
During vocal training, Cassandra shows Casey and Delia how to hit high notes. How to sing without growling. Lark and I practice adding more strength to our voices. That means getting loud.
When Cassandra takes a break and leaves us alone in the room with the cameras, the punks home in on me.
“We’ll show you how to put power into your voice,” Delia says. “You’re too gentle. This is a competition. Act like it!”
“You want your voice to be like this!” Casey pounds her fist into her palm.
“That’s what my guitar is for,” I say.
“What if you don’t have your guitar?”
“Well, then Ryan—”
“You don’t have Ryan now,” says Lark.
I fall silent.
“Remember what I said yesterday? About needing to step outside your comfort zone? I think that means letting go of your duo.” I frown at her, not liking the idea of forgetting about Ryan. “It’s like Cassandra said. We’re not individual members of different duos. We’re a band—together. We’re here to do new and different things with our music than we ever did before. That will help us all improve.”
I realize she’s right. I rely on Ryan to fill in when I’m not good enough. He does all the dancing. He makes the beat. I think about all our songs, from “The Quiet Night” to the first one we ever made together when we were eight years old—a silly little tune about how much doing chores sucks. In all of them, my voice is the same: gentle and quiet.
So I should learn how to sing differently, I decide. It will help me write and perform different kinds of songs with Ryan after one of us wins the competition. When we go on tour, we’ll be able to take everything we learn here with us.
Casey and Delia nod too. “And we want to learn how to sing more like you two.”
“Then let’s work together,” Lark says. She sticks her hand out. Casey and Delia put their hands on top of hers. Then I add mine. I grin at the cheesiness of it, and we all laugh.
But even if we’re a band, I’m still in a duo with Ryan too, I think. I need to talk to him. I need to tell him what I’ve been thinking about these past few days. Right when Cassandra comes back, I ask to be excused to the bathroom.
Instead of heading to the bathroom, though, I sneak down the hallway to his team’s rehearsal room. I creep along the wall so the cameras can’t see me through the doorway. I listen for a moment as Asher sings some kind of country music. Then the coach—Peter—announces it’s time to take a break from singing and do some interviews for the viewers of the show. Ryan’s going first.
“How come he gets to go first?” Asher complains.
“Because he’s better than you,” Peter says. “Now, let’s go.”
There’s the sound of shoes shuffling as everyone else clears the room. Asher comes out, his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. I duck around the corner to hide from the group of them, but thankfully they all go the other way.
I emerge from around the corner, hoping to catch Ryan before the interview. But instead I hear a low grumble of a man’s voice—Tix. And then Ryan’s voice. But I can’t make out the words. I sneak closer to the open door.
“—she wasn’t happy for me at all. She seemed kind of bitter that I’d won.”
Wait. Is he talking about me? I wonder.
“Usually, people think she’s the leader of our duo because she’s the vocalist. But you saw how she did last night. She got too nervous and froze up. And I did way better in my performance.”
He is talking about me, I realize with a sudden burst of sadness.
“So you think she’s jealous?” Tix asks.
“She isn’t jealous. Eve isn’t like that. But maybe she’s disappointed. Because she isn’t the star of the show for once. I am.”
Wow. I slump against the wall. My emotions claw at my insides, leaping from anger to hurt to confusion all in a single second. Since when has Ryan thought that about me? He has always seemed like the star to me. Why would he say something so mean?
The only reason I can think of is that he’s also realized he doesn’t need me to become a star.
I slink back to my own team like a scolded dog. For the rest of the day, my voice stays stuck in my throat. Casey elbows me and asks if I flushed it down the toilet while I was in the bathroom. I give her a half-hearted smile.
That evening, there’s a knock on the door to my room. I open it to reveal Ryan in his pajamas. He grins maniacally. “Guess what the reward was for winning yesterday’s competition.”
I shrug and sit on my bed. “Does it have anything to do with your interview today?”
His face falls. “Huh?”
“I heard what you said about me.”
“Oh.” He laughs. “I only said that stuff because it adds drama to the show. That’s what they’re looking for in these interviews. They don’t care about the truth because the truth’s boring.”
“So you don’t actually think that I’m an attention hog?” I blurt out.
“No way,” he responds with a shrug.
I stand up, clearly frustrated. “Then why pretend that you do? You made me look like a selfish jerk.”
Ryan crosses his arms. “No, I didn’t. That’s all up to the editing team. If they want you to look like a nice person, trust me—you will. My interview will either make me look like a jerk, or that part won’t go on TV at all.”
“That doesn’t make it okay, Ryan! You really hurt my feelings.”
He frowns at my anger. “It’s just a game, Eve. We have to play it by their rules to win. Don’t you want us to win?”
I look away from him. Ryan scuffs his shoe against the carpet for a moment, and then leaves my room with a quiet, “Goodnight.”