Page 45 of Places I've Never Been

Adam muttered something under his breath and looked embarrassed.

Mattie suppressed a smile and held up her hand. “What I heard in the studio was a lot of songs about change. Big life changes.”

Cooper looked impressed. “Yeah, I get that.”

“I don’t think we did that on purpose,” Brandon said.

“It doesn’t matter if it was on purpose,” Adam said. “It’s there and we’re running with it.”

“Right,” Mattie said. “We came up with the idea of making new friends while keeping up with the old ones. Does that spark any ideas for you guys?”

LT chewed on chips with a distant look in his eyes. Cooper plucked a few notes on his guitar. Flynn stared blankly at her.

Adam shook his head.

“Change sucks,” Brandon said. He looked around at the rest. “Right?”

LT nodded. “Sometimes. But not all the time.”

Adam looked at Mattie. “Sometimes it’s exactly what we need.”

He looked at her like she was the only one in the room.

“Yeah, but even if it’s something you think you want, it sucks,” Brandon said as if he’d stated an obvious, universal truth.

“Why?” Mattie asked. Somewhere in this idea was a song, if they could get to it.

“Because…because…” Brandon rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. Because it’s hard. Because even if it’s something you want, it means what you had is gone.”

“Does it?” LT asked. “I mean, just because we came to thisisland, a big change of place, doesn’t mean we left everything behind.”

“Well, except we did, kind of,” Flynn said. “I mean, wasn’t that the whole reason we came here? To leave all the crap behind?”

Mattie thought about that. He was right. That was exactly why she came.

“Yeah but the crap isn’t gone. It’s just hanging out, waiting for us to come back,” Brandon said.

“What if it helps us face it, though?” Adam asked. “That’s a good thing, right?”

Cooper made an impatient noise. “How is this therapy session going to get us a song?”

Mattie held up a hand. “Just a second, I have to write this down.”

Adam started humming, which annoyed her at first, but the longer he went on, the more the words she was trying to write slid into place.

Once she had the words down, she sang them out to Adam’s hummed tune.

Change is hard,

Change is tough

Change is not always enough

If you want it, if you need it, you can’t let it pass you by

You have to try, you have to try

Adam boosted the melody,adding in a little bit of harmony at the end.

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