Page 22 of Behind the Lights

“Ah-ha, I’ve got it!” Brett exclaimed, clapping his hands loudly. “QueenWe Will Rock You. It’s a crowd pleaser at every event. Not too loud, it's got a couple higher notes for you to hit Joey and everyone knows the words to it. If that doesn’t draw the crowd to their feet then I don’t know what will.”

“All right guys, what do you think? I say yes,” I told them, casting the first vote.

“Works for me,” Mickey added.

“That’ll work, but we’ve got about eight weeks to get it down.” Stoli, always the adult in the group.

“I’m good,” Diamond chimed in.

“Right on, I’ve got the sheet music for it. I’ll bring it out to you guys. I have to say, I’m fairly excited, and it’s not even my show,” Brett announced as he left the room, returning a few minutes later with the sheet and his Queen CD before leaving us to practice.

“Let’s head over to the library and make copies of this. I wanna make some notes on it and don’t want to mess up Brett’s copy.”

We agreed and made the short walk to the Everett Public Library. After doling out the copies, we parted ways with Diamond and Mickey and continued walking home.

“I’m gonna head in and get started,” I said as we came up to our houses.

“Same,” Stoli agreed. “I think we should increase practices to three times a week until the show. Hopefully Diamond can get away from his tyrant parents long enough to join us.”

“Cool, I’ll see you tomorrow,” I told him before walking inside.

The next day, I walked outside to find Stoli waiting on the front porch as he did every morning for our walk to school.

“How’d it go?” he asked me, somewhat excitedly. “Dude, I’m totally stoked for this. I got the opening intro down last night.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Someone had their Wheaties this morning. Hopefully the guys were able to get going on their parts as well. I’ve got the lyrics down, pretty much knew them already, but felt better verifying what I thought they were. Don’t want to get up there and make a fool of myself.”

“Nah, you’ll do great. I have faith in you.” He bumped shoulders with me. “Maybe instead of only practicing on Wednesday and Saturday, we could do Sunday’s as well.

“That’s easy for everyone but Diamond. You know Sunday’s church day for him,” I reminded him.

“Ugh,” Stoli grunted. “I know there’s no money riding on this, but who knows. If we don’t embarrass ourselves then maybe someone says something to someone else that lands us a gig somewhere.”

“I hear ya.”

“Hey guys.” We turned finding Mickey and Diamond waiting outside the school entrance.

“Did you guys get any practice in last night?” Stoli asked them.

“Yeah, some,” Mickey replied.

“Not much for me, we had church stuff yesterday.” We knew how much Diamond didn’t like to talk about his dad’snothing but church on Sunday’srule, so we let it go.

“We’re gonna have to find a way to take practice up a notch guys,” Stoli told us, “I don’t want us to look stupid on stage and then have to face everyone the next day. That will suck major ass.”

We agreed just as the bell chimed announcing first period. We disbanded, heading to our respective classes.

After Econ class, I found Lucas waiting in the hall for me again. It surprised me considering it had been quite some time since he’d last done this.

“Hey,” he said walking up to me. “I heard you guys signed up for the talent show.”

“Um, yeah,” I said, fidgeting with my Econ book.

“Are you guys any good?” he asked, seductively chewing on the end of his pen.

I shrugged, of course we thought we were good and so did Brett. But what others would think sat like a lump in the pit of my stomach. “Did you enter?” I finally managed to find my voice.

“No, my gifts lie in sales and marketing. Did I ever tell you my dad is a talent agent?”

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