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“This isn’t a song,” he said.
“Of course it is,” Val said, giving Remy an annoyed look. “I can play it on guitar—it’ll go like this.” He hummed a few lines. “I’d write it in notes, but I don’t know how to do that yet.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Remy protested. “It’s not a song. Not one we could play.”
Val rolled his eyes. “Just because it’s not holy doesn’t mean we can’t play it.”
“Yes, it does,” Remy argued. They’d been taking music lessons for five weeks and had so far learned to play a smattering of praise songs—songs their parents and friends and church elders knew the words to. Songs they approved of. It wasn’t that Remy thought them incapable of playing anything else—it wasn’t even that he worried it was wrong to play something else. It was that Val was suggesting something entirely foreign. He might as well be saying that he’d written a song in the language of minor surgical procedures or to the tune of the color green.
“Listen,” Val said and picked up his guitar from the corner. He glanced at the door once before carefully, quietly, and very slowly picking his way across the strings, whisper-singing the words to the song. It was about driving cars fast—which was also a little ridiculous, seeing as how their family minivan went anything but, so it wasn’t as if he had any experience with the sensation. The chorus—which was most of the song—went, “Then I shoutedaccelerate!Because I won’t besedate!”
“It’ssedated,” Remy said.
“You can say it however you want in songs,” Val answered. “If you write them, I mean. You can write whatever you want because it’s yours.”
“Hey!” a thundering, deep voice shouted from down the hall. In a few swift, water-like moves, the light went off, the paper went under a pillow, the guitar disappeared to the far side of the bed. “I hear you talking! You’ll wake up the baby! Go to sleep!”
“Or what?” Val whispered, defiance so quiet that even Remy could barely hear it.
When the homeschool music class ended to make way for classes in sewing (for the girls) and camping (for the boys), Val and Remy’s parents allowed them to continue taking lessons privately. This was a very big deal, and both knew it was largely because their parents needed a place to stash them while they cared for baby Mercy.
Mercy was sick. She’d come too early and was tiny, with limbs that had the smooth, slick look of plastic. Her eyes were big and vein-blue under her lids, and when she cried, it was more like an animal’s mew, tiny and frail. Nothing they did helped—not the pastor, or the elders, or the old ladies who had seen hundreds of births in their lifetimes.
“How’s your little sister?” their music teacher asked. He was brown-eyed, with slightly receding hair and a well-kept beard. Everything about him was warm and modern and unlike anyone they’d ever met before. He wore shoes with neon laces and had a phone with programs he used to click a beat for them to play to. They’d met him in the music store, where he taught lessons, but going through the music store was too expensive. Now they met in his living room after he got home from work, while his pretty young wife made dinner in the kitchen.
“She’s doing better,” Val said, but his face told the real story—that she was still sick, that she was always sick and tiny, with expressionless, thin features that made her more wormlike than person.
The music teacher nodded. “I’m glad she’s doing better at least. Does this mean she’s taking some medicine, now? Has she been to see the doctor?”
Val was motionless, while Remy shook his head a tiny bit. Remy said, “Pastor Ryan said that it’s like this, sometimes. That it will get worse before it gets better.”
The music teacher swallowed and looked uneasy; his wife poked her head out of the kitchen, and they made quick, grim eye contact.
“She really is getting better. She gained a lot of weight already. So we just don’t really need doctors. Our family heals really well,” Val said quickly, shrugging it off like the music teacher’s concerns were a little ridiculous.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure,” the music teacher said brightly, and the boys grinned.
They went about their lessons, first individually then together, playing a simple rhythm on their instruments. Val then played one of the songs he’d written for the music teacher, singing along so quietly that his voice could barely be heard over the simple, twangy guitar.
“Hey, that’s pretty good!” the music teacher said, and Val beamed. “You really wrote the entire thing by yourself?”
“Yep,” Val said.
“What about you, Remy? Have you written any songs?” the music teacher said warmly.
Remy shook his head, trying to not feel ashamed. Val was the musician; Remy was just the drummer. Drummers didn’t write songs, didn’t dream in melodies the way guitarists did. The idea of writing a song was as foreign as the idea of painting a masterpiece or cooking a lobster or touching snow.
The music teacher moved on swiftly, saying, “Maybe you can collaborate on Val’s songs with him. Almost all real musicians collaborate with another songwriter or producer.” He lingered on the terms—collaborate,songwriter,producer—making them sound exotic and desirable. To prove his point, he slid a CD off a nearby shelf and pulled out the liner notes, holding them open so Val and Remy could look. “See?” he said, pointing. “Eight different people worked on this song.”
“How?” Remy asked eagerly.
“Well, let’s say you’ve got Val’s song—can you play it again, Val? Only this time, just keep playing the guitar part over and over. We’ll add the words in a minute.” Val obliged, staring at his hands and hiccuping over fingerings every now and again. “Perfect. So, Remy,” the music teacher said, speaking up a little, “what you add to the song might change the whole feel. So, if I play this”—he played a quick triplet tempo, one that overpowered the guitar—“it has a big, powerful feeling, right? But if I play this”—he tapped the cymbal gently, so the guitar took the lead—“it’s quiet, right? Try it.”
Remy picked up the second tempo, and when he was feeling risky, began hitting the cymbal a touch harder on every fourth note then every eighth; he and Val grinned at each other. The music was becoming a wild thing, something bouncing between them rather than a song that lived in Val’s fingertips. The music teacher asked Val to start singing then harmonized with him.
“There you go,” the music teacher said, grinning, as the song faded from the air, notes still lingering like the scent of something bright and citrus. He looked between them, eyes sparkling with pride. “That’s the way real musicians do it. They help each other be better.”
