Page 28 of Two Hit Wonder

"I hate that word."

"I know."

They ran through two more songs. Neither worked particularly well. By the end of the session, Maeve's throat was dry and her patience was thinner than the rehearsal room's walls.

"Same time tomorrow?" Cam asked, already gathering her things. Her phone had been buzzing intermittently for the past hour, and she'd been checking it with increasing frequency. "I've got to run, but tomorrow, yeah?"

"Tomorrow," Ellie confirmed.

Iona lingered as the others packed up. "You okay?"

"Fine." Maeve was stuffing her song sheets back into her folder with more force than necessary.

"The songs are good. Your songs, I mean. They just need…"

"I know what they need."

Iona nodded, still wearing that placid expression that made Maeve want to shake her. "Okay. See you tomorrow, then."

She left. They all left. And Maeve stood alone in the empty rehearsal room, surrounded by the ghost of music that hadn't quite worked yet.

She knew where this was going. She'd known these people nearly all her life. Cam would continue being chaos. Ellie would continue being sensible. And Iona would continue being relentlessly, impossibly sunny until Maeve either cracked or gave in.

Predictable. All of it.

She gathered her things and headed for the door. At least she knew what she was dealing with.

Except she really didn’t. As the next day was about to prove.

Chapter Eleven

The school had used the word "suspension" like it was a reasonable solution. Like the way to make Mo behave in school was to… not have her in school at all. Iona wasn’t at all sure she agreed with the theory, but then, she hadn’t been consulted, had she?

"It wasn't even that bad," Mo said from the passenger seat, arms crossed, staring out the window with the intensity of someone who knew they were in trouble and had decided to be angry about it instead of sorry.

"You wrote something on the bathroom wall."

"I didn't write anything. I drew something."

"What did you draw?"

Silence. Oh God. Iona had a feeling that she might know what Mo had drawn.

"Mo."

"It was artistic."

"It was a penis. Wasn’t it?"

Mo said nothing, but a slight smile crept around the corners of her mouth, and Iona had to bite her tongue to stop herself laughing.

She gripped the steering wheel and counted to ten. Right. She could do this. "You're coming to rehearsal with me. I can't leave you home alone right now, and I'm certainly not rewarding you with a day off."

"I don't want to come to your stupid rehearsal."

"Good. That makes both of us unhappy. We can be miserable together."

The rehearsal space looked exactly as depressing as usual, but on the bright side, at least today she didn’t have enough energy to be worried about what Maeve might do. She parked badly and didn't care. Mo trailed behind her with the enthusiasm of a prisoner being led to execution, phone already out, headphones in, the universal teenage signal for do not speak to me.