Page 35 of Doc Rock
“Play it again.”Ford pulled a pen out, ready to take notes, like he always did when she sang him something new. He wouldwrite down the bits he thought should be changed, then they would work on it until they agreed they had a finished product and recorded it on a cassette, so they wouldn’t forget it.
When she finished her second run through, he sattherethoughtfully.
Finally saying,“You should leave it at least six beats before you start the chorus. It’ll be more impactful.”
Mai frowned, singing it back in her head and getting to the two beats she'd left before the chorus.
Surely six would be too long?It wouldsound like dead air.
She strummed her guitar and played the last couple of lines of the verse, leaving two beats, then going into the chorus. Stopping, she started the song again, this time waiting longer as Ford suggested. Frowning, she stopped playing and started again, doing it the way he wanted a second time.
When she finished, she nodded at him.“Yeah. You’re right. It sounds better.”
Mai jotted a note above the lyrics to remind herself of the increased pause.
They went through the rest of the song that way—making small adjustments, changing words that didn’t work, adjusting tempo and key to make sure the song suited Ford’s deeper singing voice.
“Hi, kids,”Mai’s mum, Yvonne, greeted them as she and Darren, her stepdad, walked into their kitchen.
“Hi, Mum,”Mai said, noticing how exhausted she looked after her twelve-hour shift at the hospital.“How was work?”
“Youknow, the usual. I cooked whatfeltlike three thousand meals, and most of them won’t be eaten,”Yvonne said with a chuckle. She was a cook in the hospital, preparing patient meals on a shoestring budget.
“Oh no. We’ll go upstairs and finish. Give you guys some peace.”Mai hated that her mum needed to work so hard for them.
“Sure,”Yvonne agreed tiredly, gratefully sinking into the chair that Ford jumped up from and indicated for her to take.
Mai’s heart thumped. She was going to be alone with Ford…in her room.
In her mind's eye, she surveyed her room's décor, glad that she'd thought a year ago when she joined the band to remove all the ponies and pink things and replace them with posters of the bands that she loved.
Not that she didn’t love pink; it just didn’t fit with the person she was trying to be. All her clothes that weren’t black had been shoved aside in her wardrobe, and she went through more black eyeliners than shecouldcount in the last year.
Mai sat down on her desk chair and tried not to think too hard about the fact that Ford had flopped down on her bed. She instead set her guitar on her knee and played through the song again. It took them another hour to finish all the lyrics, and both be happy with the music.
Finally, Mai said,“Now you sing the whole thing, and I’ll accompany you.”
Ford nodded. He picked up the notebook and read it through a couple of times, frowning as he tried to make out some of her scrawls.
“Your handwriting is terrible. You should be a doctor,”Ford laughed.
Mai froze. She hadn’t told the rest of the band that she’d applied for medical school. She went to a different high school from the other three boys, so they had no idea that in school, she was Maisie, a science geek. Who, when makeup-free, with her black hair pulled back, was quiet and easily overlooked by everyone.
Only a couple of her closest friendsknewshe was in a band, and even they'd drifted away over the last year, as all of Mai’s time was taken up with rehearsal or schoolwork.
It wasalways her plan to apply for medical school. She didn’tknowwhy, but she’d wanted to be a doctor since she was twelve and ended up in the hospital with a broken wrist.
Her mum and dad encouraged her to apply for Medical School, never stopping her from playing in Midnight Thunder, but always making sure she realised that very few people made it in the music industry and that she needed to have another plan as well.
“Yeah,” Mai chuckled, hoping Ford wouldn’t notice how fake she sounded.
The other three only ever talked about the band. They’d made a pact to give it three years after finishing school toseeif theycouldmake it big, and if they didn’t, they would then go their separate ways.
Mai hadn’t agreed to the pact, and as she spent a lot of the time when they were together quiet—which was her default unless they really annoyed her—they didn’t realise she hadn't.
“Let me just write this down, so it’s legible, then we’ll give it a whirl.”Ford chuckled and picked up his own pink, sparkly notebook, copying the lyrics down in his neat handwriting.
Mai rolled her eyes at the memory of him turning up with his pink notebook for the first time, stating that only one band membercouldhave black covers, so they didn’tgetmixed up. It made no sense, but it made her laugh.
