“Good,” I said after we’d done a few scales. “Shall we try a piece of music? Something everyone is familiar with?”
Max bit his lip, and I glared. Max held his hands up. “Hey, you picked it. This one is all on you.”
Julian arched beautifully sculpted brows. “Now I’m intrigued.”
“Let’s… yeah, okay. The piece.” I lifted my eyes. “Queen. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’”
Chapter Two
Theo
Milo fist pumped.“We’re insane. I love it.”
Julian groaned. “You’re starting a brand-new group with one of the most notoriously over-arranged, vocally acrobatic?—”
“—iconic,” Finnley breathed. I swore he had stars in his eyes.
“—songs of all time,” Julian finished. Then he grinned. “I call that a bold strategy.”
Zane folded his arms. “It’s a choice, but then so is chewing kitchen foil.”
Max peered at me from his rear position. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. It was true, but only on a technicality. I was like a violin string tuned past comfort, one more twist from snapping. I squared my shoulders. “Let’s get one thing straight. We?—”
“If we do, it’ll be the only thing in this room that is,” Julian said with a smirk.
I ignored him. “We’re not trying to perform it, okay? Today is about listening. Locking. Let’s map entrances, get the blend in our ears, and—Milo, stop staring at the piano. Concentrate.”
Milo jerked his head back. “You’re fun.”
“I am,” I said, aiming for a deadly tone. “When people follow directions.”
He gave an exaggerated hard swallow. “Got it.”
I passed out the song sheets I’d printed that morning.
Zane chuckled. “I suppose if I used this to put under my chair leg to stop it wobbling, you’d take offence.”
Max laughed. “Don’t even go there.”
I waited until everyone was looking in my direction.
“From the top. Finnley has the first line. Elliott, shadow harmony. Julian, breathe and wait. Baritones under. Max, you and I anchor at half-voice.” I paused. “Everyone?” I fixed them with a hard stare. “Listen. To. Each. Other.” I gave Finnley a nod.
Finnley’s voice poured out, sweet and shockingly pure. “Is this the real life?—”
Elliott slid in a hair late but locked fast. Liam anchored. Oliver split the third cleanly. Max’s bass rumbled, I brought my own bass in and?—
Milo burst in three bars early with, “Scaramouch, Scaramouch, will you do the fandango?—”
“Stop,” Sebastian snapped. “Wrong section.”
“Don’t ‘wrong section’ me. I have range.”
“You have volume,” Julian said dryly. “It’s not the same.”
I hit my thigh with the clipboard, and it landed with a dullthwok. “Back to bar three.”