19

I jump out of bed the next morning and run across the hall. I’m about to knock on my parents’ door but Mom comes up behind me and whispers, “He’s sleeping.”

I put my arm down and follow Mom into the kitchen. She’s grabbing eggs from the fridge and a can of beans from the pantry and there’s chopped cilantro on the cutting board, which means she’s making Dad’s favorite breakfast: huevos rancheros.

On the living-room computer, I go to the website for the contest and click on the Rules page. Entries will be judged on originality, melody, composition, and lyrics (if applicable).

I grab my notebook and read through John Lennon’s Ten Rules of Songwriting again. Rule no. 1: Get to It. On ten of the forty songs I studied, John starts singing as soon as the music begins, and on nineteen of the songs he starts singing within the first five seconds. He hardly ever waits more than ten seconds.

Rule no. 2: Repeat the Song Title. If John names his song “Sexy Sadie,” that means you’re going to hear him say sexy Sadie a lot during the song (twelve times). He loves to repeat the title: “Help” (sixteen times), “Julia” (fifteen times), “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (fifteen times). His personal record is “Power to the People” (thirty-one times).

Then there’s rule no. 3: Start with the Chorus. And rule no. 6: Lyrics Don’t Have to Make Sense As Long As They Sound Good. And rule no. 8: When in Doubt, Fade Out. Now that I’m thinking about it, our song breaks almost all of John’s rules. Maybe that’s because our song follows rule no. 10: The Best Songs Sometimes Break the Rules. The best example of rule no. 10 is “A Day in the Life.” Still, if we really want him to, Dad can give our song a fade-out, it’s not too late.

Speaking of Dad, he’s finally awake. I follow him into the kitchen. He sees what Mom is cooking and he pulls her forehead to his lips. He reaches for me too and squeezes us both, his two girls. I break away and do a little dance on the kitchen floor. “When can we start?”

Dad splashes sink water on his face and dries it with a dish towel, which is pretty gross. “I need a few hours, honey.”

“How many?”

“Joan,” Mom says, pouring the cracked eggs into the pan. I think she wants some of Dad’s time too, which is fine, but does it have to be today?

Dad scoops coffee into his machine and I wonder if I should have coffee too because it’s a very important day and I have a lot of work to do, but the truth is I don’t need more energy and I also don’t drink coffee.

I have to leave the kitchen because the smell of eggs is starting to hurt my nose. “I’ll go see if Gavin’s awake.”

“He left,” Mom says, swinging the spatula.

“What? Where’d he go?”

“He didn’t say.”

“When is he coming back?”

“I don’t know,” Mom says, and she says it like she wouldn’t mind knowing the answer herself.

Dad is finally back where he should be, in his studio. All the lamps are glowing and the computer tower is doing its low hum and Dad has his roller chair set to his height. I know Dad has been the one missing but in a way I feel like I’m the one who’s been gone and I just came home.

I sit on a stool in the Quiet Room and Dad tells me to tune up the Gibson while he sets up microphones around me. I’m so excited to be here with him, finally, but then I notice the Monkey Finger tattoo on his arm and I can’t help but get sad.

Monkey Finger is the name of Dad’s music company and it’s from a line in John Lennon’s song “Come Together.” Once Dad shuts down the studio and stops making music for his company, it’s going to hurt when I look at that tattoo. Sometimes reminders aren’t a good thing. Gavin knows that too.

Before we start recording, Dad wants me to run through the song with him. I play my guitar part and hum the melody and my hands start to sweat because I’m nervous about what Dad will say.

He stares at the guitar a long time after I finish. “I’m sorry I wasn’t around to help you more,” Dad tells me, and he says it like it’s a hard thing to say.

“Does that mean you don’t like the song?”

“No, honey, I love it. I’m really proud of you.”

After so many days of feeling like I was getting nowhere, it’s so good to hear this from Dad, especially because I was worried he might be mad that I wrote the song with Gavin and not him. Also because I went to all those cool John Lennon places in New York City without him and normally he’s the one who shows me those kinds of things.

“I do have a thought, though,” Dad says. “What if you walked up to the C on the chorus instead of going back to the E minor?”

He grabs another acoustic off the rack and plays the new part. I see what he means, so I copy Dad’s fingers and I start practicing it. He puts the big headphones over my ears and tells me to keep playing. When he shuts the door, it gets super-quiet.

I want Gavin to watch me record my guitar part but he’s still not home and I’m getting worried. He knows what today is. I can understand if he was having trouble finishing the lyrics and he wanted to go out and have more experiences, but we don’t have much time left, only a few hours. But if this is something different, like Gavin deciding to do something else today because our song slipped his mind, then I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m probably going to cry, baby, cry, which is a John Lennon song and also something to do when you’re completely out of ideas.

Dad’s at the computer now but I’m too short to see through the window. His voice comes through my headphones and it sounds like there’s a tiny person living inside my ear. “Ready to try one?”

I’ve recorded with Dad so many times, but each time is just as exciting as the last. “Let’s do it,” I say.

I play the song once and Dad comes into the booth and moves the microphone closer to the guitar. He tells me to play the song again and again and again and then he tells me to stop and come into the studio.

I take my headphones off and leave the Quiet Room and I hear my acoustic guitar playing through the speakers. “You got really good at fingerpicking,” Dad says.

It feels like I’m floating. Now I know what Mom means when she says Dad is in a cloud when he records his music.

“Do you want to add some bass?” I ask.

“Sure,” Dad says. “You take the controls.”

I take Dad’s place in his roller chair and start recording for him. I see a large red bar move across the screen and black waves start to form as Dad’s bass guitar follows along with my acoustic. He plays through the song a few times and then he asks me which parts I like. I like everything he does.

When Dad finishes recording the bass, he takes out a special little organ that he knows is my favorite because of the way it sounds and also because it doesn’t have a plug or batteries. It works by someone blowing into a tube. Dad does the blowing while I hold down the organ keys that match my guitar chords. Then Dad plays the snare drum and hi-hat and after that I shake the shaker and tap the tambourine and then Dad tells me to hit the cymbal each time the chorus plays. The song keeps getting bigger and bigger. I feel like I’m getting bigger too, stretching out, like my body is too small to hold all the feeling inside me. I think I’d be happy just staying down here with Dad forever.

While he listens back to all the instruments and makes everything sound right, I sit on the couch with my journal. On the coffee table in front of me is the thickest book you could imagine. It’s so thick because it tells all the secrets about how the Beatles recorded their music. Dad calls it his bible. Inside there are drawings of where each Beatle was standing in the Abbey Road studio when they recorded their famous songs because that’s how important the Beatles were: people want to know exactly where they were standing when they made their magic.

If the song we’re recording now does what I hope it will do, then people in the future will want to see a sketch of how we recorded too and they’ll want to know what Dad’s studio looked like before it got shut down. I slide a piece of notebook paper over the book and trace the outline of one of the rooms at Abbey Road, and then I turn my outline into a sketch of Dad’s studio:

I’ve got all the important stuff: the Quiet Room, Dad’s roller chair, the guitar rack, and the arrow leading down the hall to Gavin’s room. I’ve even got Dad and me in there. The only thing missing is Gavin.

“He’s supposed to be here,” I say.

Dad spins his chair around. “Listen, honey, I just want to warn you. Gavin is going through a really rough time right now, and even at his best, he can be a little flaky.”

“What’s flaky?”

“He goes off the map sometimes.”

“Which one is it? He’s flaky or he goes off the map?”

“Never mind. I just want you to know that if he doesn’t show up, it’s nothing personal.”

But if he doesn’t show up, my whole plan will be ruined. “Dad, what are we going to do?”

“Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out. I can always call another singer. Didn’t you originally want Christina to sing your song? I can give her a call. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind laying down some vocals.”

Dad wouldn’t be smiling like that if I had sung the lyrics to our song instead of just humming the melody. He’d realize that his idea of having someone else sing it is the worst idea ever, because the only person in the world who should be singing those lyrics is Gavin. He’s the only one who can put the true meaning into the words.