Maggie’s voice lessons were every weekday at nine in the morning. Nathan booked most of his students on Tuesdays when he didn’t have classes, but Maggie was an exception, probably because she was so awful. She wasn’t sure. On this particular Tuesday, Cole dropped her off and went to wherever the heck he went every day, and she took the elevator up to Nathan’s apartment for her seventh lesson.
He had told her to bring her guitar, so she had it strapped to her back as she squeezed into the elevator with an overweight man and an elderly woman holding a poodle. It was snowing outside and they all had white flakes melting in their hair. The poodle was shivering. Maggie reached out to pat his little head, but pulled back when he growled.
“Don’t worry, dear,” the woman said. “He hates everyone, even me.” She was wearing a wool coat so intensely red that it made Maggie blink a few times. “Are you going to Nathan’s place?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “Do you know him?”
She smiled with her red-caked lips and said, “He’s right below me.” Maggie couldn’t tell if she was upset or happy about living above a musician.
“He’s nice,” Maggie replied, wanting to turn away to look somewhere else. But the only other place to look was the heavy man squeezed over in the corner. She could tell he was annoyed she was in here with her huge guitar case. She looked at the woman’s eyes again. They were milky.
“Yes, he is very nice. I can hear his music all the time.” She smiled softly. “I can even hear his students when they’re loud enough.”
Maggie tightened her grip on her guitar strap. “How much can you hear?”
Her smile deepened and she winked. “Enough to know you’re getting better.”
She was getting better? The elevator door slid open to Nathan’s floor. Maggie wasn’t sure if she should be embarrassed or annoyed with the old lady, or both. She nodded to her and her poodle, which was now growling at the heavy man, and stepped into the hallway. She waved goodbye as the door closed.
When she reached Nathan’s apartment, he was in the doorway saying goodbye to another student, an eight-year-old boy who grinned up at her as he took his mom’s hand and left. Nathan held the door open for her and she took her guitar off her back and slipped past him.
“How are you today?” he asked as they headed to the music room.
Maggie’s heart beat a million miles an hour, as it usually did around Nathan. She was a kid attracted to the water. She wanted to jump in, but she knew she would drown, so she stood on the shore like a good girl.
“I’m great,” she answered, sitting on the sofa so she could unzip her guitar case. Nathan had told her he would like her to bring an instrument she was comfortable with, and not many things were more comfortable than her guitar.
“Is that a D-28?” Nathan asked as she set the guitar on her lap and ran her fingers up the fret board.
“Yeah. 1957. My parents gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday.”
Nathan moved like melting butter as he sat next to her and reached out to stroke the Brazilian rosewood side. She handed the guitar to him, giggling. “Would you two like to be alone?”
He was so distracted she was sure he hadn’t heard her.
“This baby’s worth ten grand,” he said with a sultry sigh as he positioned the guitar and played a few chords. His face lit up, and for a full five minutes he ignored Maggie as he played. He was in a different world, and it allowed her to study his face closer than she had been able to in the past. His sharp features were suited to being clean-shaven. She especially liked the way he put the tip of his tongue between his lips when he concentrated. Most of all, she liked the way he played her guitar, so determined and deliberate with the light touch of his hands, as if he was making love to it. Every note he played on the steel strings was pure gold, and it made her want to wrap herself up in him. He felt so deeply. What would it be like to kiss him?
She swallowed.
When he looked up, he laughed and stopped playing. “What is that look for?”
“What look?” she answered a little too fast. She tried to wipe the dumbfounded expression off her face.
Gently handing her guitar back, he shrugged. “I’m guessing you like to hear me play?”
She patted the side of the guitar. “You play this thing better than I do.”
He chuckled. “I’ve wanted to play that guitar since I was a kid. You’re lucky to own one, especially one so old. I can’t afford something like that.”
She felt ashamed all of a sudden. Her parents could buy dozens of these with the money they made, and even though she paid Nathan a fair bit of money for her lessons, it wasn’t ten thousand dollars. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You can play it anytime you like.”
He smiled and stood from the sofa. “Thanks, Maggie. Should we get to work?”
She nodded, the excitement in her gut nearly boiling over. She loved her voice lessons, and not because she was attracted to Nathan. It was her voice she was most excited about. Maybe the lady on the elevator was right. Maybe she was really improving. It was a powerful prospect—almost so impossible she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to sing well, to know she might be able to do what she had dreamed of doing as far back as she could remember.
“I want to show you some data from our recordings yesterday,” Nathan said, leading her out of the room and down the hall to his office with all the computers. He pulled up a window on one of the monitors and showed her a screen displaying her voice patterns. There were three of them. Each one looked like a string threaded with misshaped bubbles, some tall and skinny, some fat and short. One string was purple, one orange, one green, all stacked up.
“Cole did this once,” she said as Nathan sat down and she stood behind him. “I liked being able to see my voice instead of just hear it.”
“Exactly.” He spent the next ten minutes showing her how he could digitally fix her voice with tune correction software.
“My parents have always been against this kind of enhancement,” she explained with trepidation once Nathan stopped for a minute. “I know it’s used on their professional recordings, but they’ve always taught me how important it is to get your voice right without tweaking it.”
It was practically their religion—singing naturally—but she didn’t dare say that.
Nathan looked up and nodded. “I agree with them. You can’t be a truly great singer if your voice isn’t spot on to begin with. I wanted to show you this not because I want to use this to fix your voice, but because I think it’ll be a good tool for you so you can fix your voice on your own. I’ll be saving your recordings once a week. In a month or two we can look at your progress. The more I’ve worked with you, the more I’ve seen how visual and tactile you are when it comes to music.”
She nodded.
He stood up and motioned for her to take his seat. She handed him her guitar and eased into the chair.
“Now that you know the basics, I want you to start fixing your voice here on the computer. A lot of this software is visual, but a lot of it is auditory as well. The more you recognize—and see—where your voice falters, the more your brain can learn what you need to do to fix it. You want to build intuition, so you need to immerse yourself in your voice in every way possible. Does that make sense?”
Surprisingly, it made perfect sense. Nathan handed her a pair of headphones, and she spent the next thirty minutes fiddling with the voice strings. When she finished, they worked on warm-ups, scales, vowels, and then singing a song while accompanying herself on her guitar. Nathan kept reminding her to breathe correctly, and at one point stood behind her to put a hand on the small of her back.
“Expand your diaphragm all the way around,” he told her for the eighteenth time. “Breathe in.”
She tried to relax with the feel of his hand on her, and took a deep breath.
“You’re not there yet. You’re keeping too much up on top. Try it again.”
She breathed out and then in again.
“That’s it.”
He moved his hand and helped her roll her shoulders back. “Keep your posture, okay? You have to get used to doing all of this with your guitar in your arms.” Then his hand was on her back again. She had given him permission to touch her like this on the first day, but she wondered if it was such a good idea now. Breathing in and out a few more times, she felt herself open up inside. Her voice came out more easily.
“Wonderful,” Nathan said then looked at his watch. “We’ve got a few more minutes before my next lesson. Anything you want to work on in particular?
“I don’t know. I like working on the song. That’s fun.”
“All right. Do you mind if I play accompaniment?”
Laughing, she handed over her guitar and watched as he cradled it into position. If she were a 1957 Martin D-28, Nathan would be dead in love with her.
* * *
Cole’s band started coming over every night. It was a nice break from all the work Maggie did during the day. There were her voice lessons every morning, then she rode the light rail and the bus home where she practiced singing for hours on end. She shut her bedroom door even though Cole said he wanted to listen to her if she was up for it. She wasn’t. Yet. She knew he could hear her through the door when he was home, but it wasn’t the same as being in the same room. She came out for meals and to help him clean, but that was it.
Tonight, she was exhausted as she sat in the beanbag chair to listen to the band practice—only now she had a harder time listening because she was so busy wondering what music sounded like to everyone else. She had to admit, it seemed to make most people happy. They wouldn’t shell out money and show up by the thousands to hear her parents sing if it didn’t. It made her happy too, but for her it was more about what surrounded music than the music itself. She might cringe at how loud and cluttered it was in her head, but she loved the feel of a bass tremor through her bones, the clash of cymbals shivering up and down her skin, the sound of Cole’s voice melting her insides until they were mush. His voice never sounded messy to her.
Right now, he was playing the drums and singing some backup harmony. Maggie could hear him above everyone else, like her brain knew how to amplify that killer voice. He caught her watching him, and smiled as he moved with the beat. Sometimes she wondered who was more complicated—him or her. She couldn’t make up her mind how she should feel about him. She had a sweet little high school crush on Nathan, but Cole was the one who reached inside her and twisted her up like a rope.
When the song ended, Izanami slid Maggie a sneaky look and leaned over to grab her bottled water off the floor. She had been playing a lap steel guitar, so she was sitting down with her silky hair cascading over the back of her chair.
“So, guys,” she said in her deceptively miniature voice as she lifted the bottle to her lips, “we’ve played for Maggie, what—a dozen times now? I think it’s time we ask her if she wants to join the band.” She took a gulp of water and grinned at Maggie so big her teeth practically sparkled. There was nothing small about Iza, except her size. Every time she played an instrument, Maggie was blown away, and every time she made a suggestion, it was spot on in a big way. She was surprised Cole hadn’t told them about her voice.
Maggie’s attention flew to him. His eyes were big. “Um, Iza, I—”
“That’s a great idea,” Justin cut in as he turned to look at Maggie. “I mean, dude, your parents are Down Sugar Road. You’ve gotta be amazing, right?”
“Hell, yeah,” Miles chimed in. “If you’re anything like your mom . . . damn.” He pushed a hand through his hair. She hated to guess what was going through his head—probably images of her mom in one of her sexy outfits she wore in music videos. It used to bother her that guys thought her mom was hot, even in her forties, but she was used to it by now. She was gorgeous.
Blake opened his mouth to voice his opinion, but Cole stood up before he could speak. “This isn’t a good idea,” he stammered.
Oh, it wasn’t? She glared at him so hard flames should have erupted around him. He knew she wanted to be a part of the band. She was only waiting for the right moment to join in the fun, and thanks to Iza, now she had an invitation. Her heart was pounding in her throat now, her skin hot as she was torn in half by the biggest conundrum of her life—give in to her fierce need to sing, or cower in fear that she would bring endless embarrassment and pain to her parents and their career.
“Why isn’t it a good idea?” Krista asked, spinning around to face Cole. She had sparkly rhinestone hearts sewn into the back pockets of her jeans. Maggie wondered if it hurt for her to sit down.
Everybody looked at Cole now, including Maggie. He set down his drumsticks and glanced at her before turning to Iza. “Maggie is . . . unless you just mean for fun . . . she’s . . .”
Just say it, Cole! I suck!
“What he means,” Maggie said, getting up from the beanbag, “is I can’t sing.” She folded her arms and continued to glare at him. “As much as you’ve encouraged me in private, Cole, you sure aren’t anxious to help me in public.”
He winced and swallowed. “I was just trying to . . . I didn’t think you’d want everyone to know.”
Silence.
“We have this gig coming up in a few weeks,” he continued. “I’m not sure you could be ready in time for something like that.”
Maggie’s rigid stance relaxed a little. Maybe he wasn’t really ashamed of her, but she wasn’t sure what to think.
Krista turned around. “What do you mean you can’t sing?”
They all looked at her with expressions of shock. Of course they expected her to be amazing. Who wouldn’t? It was the cruelest joke of the universe. However, she had been going to voice lessons for two weeks now. That old lady’s words kept echoing in her head. Enough to know you’re getting better.
But how much better? Two weeks wasn’t that long.
She shifted her feet and focused on the band in front of her. They were watching her, waiting. Cole was speechless.
“I can’t sing in tune,” she answered Krista’s question. “I know my parents are Down Sugar Road and you think I’ll kick ass when it comes to music, but the truth is I suck. I can play the guitar and the piano and some other stuff, but I can’t keep time when I’m playing in a band. When I was growing up, my parents forbid me to go on stage or sing anywhere in public. I’m that bad.”
Krista’s mouth dropped open. Justin and Miles and Blake looked like they’d been kicked in the stomach. Iza squeezed her water bottle, and the crinkling sound was deafening in the silence. Cole looked surprised, probably because he hadn’t expected her to be so open with strangers about her issues. In the past, whenever anyone had asked her if she was going to sing with her parents one day, she’d always evaded the question or laughed it off. Well, she wanted to talk about stuff now. She didn’t want to keep secrets.
“None of this means I can’t try,” she said before anybody could sneak in a “I’m so sorry” remark. “I’m taking voice lessons now. I’m getting better.”
Krista looked over her shoulder at Cole. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
He stared at the floor. “I thought Maggie wouldn’t appreciate me saying anything about it. You guys told me you didn’t want anyone else in the band.”
Blake gestured toward Maggie. “Man, she’s Down Sugar Road. You thought it wouldn’t cross our minds? If we have her in our band we’ll get shitloads of publicity.”
Cole glared at him. “I’m not about to use Maggie because of her connections.”
Cringing, Blake shook his head. “Perk only, is all I’m saying. And I know you were in their band too, but you’re not . . . you know, blood. It’s not the same thing.”
Letting out a loud sigh, Maggie rolled her eyes. “I’m not Down Sugar Road. I told you, I can’t sing—at least not well enough to perform. But I want to, more than I can even say, so if you let me, I’ll try.”
Iza nodded, ready to accept anything. Maggie knew she would probably change her mind as soon as she heard her sing, but she had to at least show them what she was talking about. Maybe they’d let her keep practicing with them just for fun, even if she was horrible.
Krista clapped her hands and grinned. “Let’s hear you, then! Want to do something you’re familiar with? A Down Sugar Road song, maybe?”
She walked forward and stood next to Krista so she could use her microphone. “How about ‘Digging Home’? It’s in the middle of my range. You’ve played it a few times.” She glanced at Justin and he nodded.
“Yeah, we don’t perform it for pay, but it’s a fun practice song.”
“Sounds good.” She didn’t dare turn around to see Cole’s reaction to all of this. She was sure he was waiting for a catastrophe. In a lot of ways, she was too.
He counted off the ¾ time signature, and Iza began the first phrase on the fiddle. It was such a pretty song. In the music video, Sandy wore a strapless green dress with pearls sewn all over it. Maggie remembered the makeup artists had dusted her skin with white powder to make her super pale, and her fake eyelashes curled like black velvet to frame her crystalline eyes. Maggie knew the song so well, not only because she had written it, but because she had been around for the video production and the professional recordings, not to mention the dozens of times she’d seen her parents sing it on stage.
Justin looked over at her and smiled as he started the first line and moved into the second. His voice wasn’t her dad’s, but he hit the words and rhythm just right. Her brain went into overdrive as she prepared to come in on the chorus. When her mom sang it, she slid in with the power of a cracking whip. Maggie knew she wouldn’t sound the same, but she had to put her own spin on it, just like Justin was doing.
She started in on the chorus, her voice strong and confident, as it usually was in the beginning. Something was different, though, and she realized she had never actually sung with a live band before. It felt amazing. She was more powerful, more intense, more everything. The music wasn’t so jumbled. It came together, a fluid thing washing through her.
When Justin looked over at her, she could tell he was pleasantly surprised. Did that mean she was staying in tune? Did she sound as awesome as she felt? He leaned closer to the microphone and sang his heart out. She matched his energy, their voices melding together in perfect harmony. Even her messed up brain could tell it was perfect. This was what her parents felt when they sang. It had to be. It was a sun exploding inside her and she was singing out pure light.
But it didn’t last.
As soon as she reached her solo lines, she sensed her focus shift and Justin’s expression shifted with it. She was going out of tune and there was nothing she could do about it. She pulled deep inside, trying to dig out everything Nathan had taught her in her lessons the past week, but it was no use. At least she could tell she was out of tune. It hadn’t been that way before.
When the song finished and the room went silent, she turned around to look at Cole. He wore a mixed expression of surprise and confusion.
“See?” she said, looking at everyone one by one. “I told you.”
Justin stepped back from the microphone and shoved his thumbs around both sides of his big, shiny belt buckle. He was so over-the-top country she wanted to yell, “Yee-haw!” at the top of her lungs.
“You have an amazing voice,” he said sincerely. “I mean, damn.”
“Huh?” She furrowed her brow.
“Your voice is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G,” Iza spelled out. “You fell grossly out of tune a few times, sure, but do you have any idea how many big singers don’t sing on pitch one hundred percent of the time? Like, everyone. You’ve got your mom’s clarity and punch. Hasn’t anyone told you that before?”
She glanced at Cole, realizing he had told her plenty of times that she had an amazing voice. Unfortunately, she had always dismissed it as the same sort of empty compliment as her mom telling her she was pretty all the time.
“Just work on the whole in-tune thing and your timing, and you’ll rock the world,” Krista said as she patted Maggie on the shoulder. “You’re a million times better than you think.”