Little Do We Know(11)

“Brighter Than Sunshine” wasn’t a new song or anything, but it was a fan favorite. We’d been singing it in local competitions for the last four years, so the whole thing came naturally for us, and we hardly had to think about the words and the harmonies anymore, which made it especially fun to perform. It was an easy pick for Admissions Night, one we knew we’d nail.

Aaron took his place in front of the stage. It was impossible not to look at him, so I sucked in a deep breath and pushed down my anger, telling myself to focus on the music and forget about him.

He gestured to Alyssa and she whispered, “Four, three, two, one.”

Then he pointed right at Jack and me, and we sang.

“Mm…bop-bop. Mm…bop-bop.”

All four of us had our eyes fixed on Aaron’s hands, watching them cut through the air, moving back and forth in time with the music. Then he pointed at Logan, who sang in his rich, clear voice, “I never understood before. I never knew what love was for. My heart was broke, my head was sore, what a feeling.”

Aaron’s left hand moved with the tempo, keeping the three of us on the beat while he directed Logan through the verses. And then he pointed at me for the chorus.

“What a feeling in my soul, love burns brighter than sunshine.”

By the middle of the song, we all relaxed into it, looking at each other, turning our palms toward the ceiling or closing our eyes when we felt a special connection to the lyric. We were having fun with it. We sang the last two lines in four-part harmony.

“I’m yours and suddenly you’re mine, and it’s brighter than sunshine.”

Aaron closed his left hand into a fist and brought his right finger to his lips. It was quiet again. The little red light on the camera was still on.

“That was good,” Aaron said. “Logan, you were a bit early on that second verse. You have to watch me. I’ll tell you when to come in, okay? And Hannah, I’d like you to hit those first few words in the chorus a little harder. ‘What a feeling in my soul…’” he sang. “Really deliver that line, okay?”

Normally, I would have thanked him for the feedback. Instead, I grabbed my water bottle off the pulpit and took a huge gulp.

“Awesome. Let’s do it again.”

Alyssa spoke quietly into her mic, “Four, three, two, one.”



Two hours later, after four more takes of “Brighter” and three rounds of “Dare You,” the other song we were planning to perform for Admissions Night, Aaron called it. The four of us let out a collective sigh and practically sprinted to the first pew, reaching for our backpacks before he had a chance to change his mind.

“Hey, Alyssa, can I catch a ride home with you?” I asked. “Dad’s working late again.” It was true, but mostly, I didn’t want to have to sit in the car with him again.

She checked the time on her phone. “I would, but I can’t today. It’s twenty minutes out of the way, and my mom will kill me if I don’t let the dog out.”

I looked over my other shoulder. “Logan?” I asked.

He stuffed his water bottle into the pocket of his backpack. “Can’t. I’m taking Jack home, and he’s clear on the other side of town.”

“Guess I’ll run the track.” But I didn’t want to run the track. The track bored me. I wanted my path. I wanted my rock.

“Sorry,” Alyssa called over her shoulder as she headed for the door. “I’ll text you later.”

I had nothing else to do and I wasn’t in a hurry to run, so once my friends were gone and Aaron had returned to the sound booth, I walked back to the stage and started disconnecting the microphones.

Aaron had demanded a ton of new equipment as a condition of employment, saying he couldn’t build the kind of music program Dad wanted without it. In addition to the velvet-lined microphone box sitting next to me, there was that camera, perched on a professional-quality tripod. And then there was all the stuff in the sound booth, like the 64-channel mixing board and a superfast computer he could use to edit our music and videos.

Aaron had to have known our school was in financial trouble when he’d accepted the job; he’d been hired to help fix it. Staring at all that fancy equipment made me wonder if he had any idea how much my dad sacrificed to hire him. Did he know Dad had picked him over me?

I was still lost in thought when I heard Aaron’s voice behind me. “You know they pay me to do this, right?” he joked, grabbing a cord and winding it around his arm.

“Yeah, straight from my college fund,” I mumbled.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

I snapped the buckles on the case and carried it backstage to the music room. I slid it onto the shelf next to all the boom mics and lav mics and other equipment. When I got back to the stage, Aaron was turning a dial on the tripod, disconnecting the video camera.

“Hey, do you have a minute?”

I tried to think of an excuse, but I was drawing a total blank, so I mumbled “I guess.”

“Great!” He sounded a little too excited. “I was hoping you’d be around tonight. I could really use your opinion on something.”

He picked the tripod up in one hand and the camera in the other, and headed for the back of the sanctuary. I followed him through the double doors, and then we took a sharp right and started climbing the narrow staircase that led to the balcony.