Keeping the Beat Read online

  Of course, she was also positively rigid with terror that the others would hate the music she’d written. What if Robyn was completely delusional about her musical abilities? What if she was actually a crap composer who should never be allowed to scribble a single note ever again?

  Robyn twisted to check that her butt hadn’t grown since the stack of chocolate cookies she’d inhaled at lunch because she was so depressed over Ryan George and his bony university girl. That was the last time she’d let Ryan make her fatter. She swore it was. She was better than that, wasn’t she?

  “You are better than that,” she told the mirror, then she looked around her, suddenly sure Harper and the others were just outside, watching her and laughing.

  They weren’t, but she definitely wasn’t alone in the music center. A soft, winding melody was beginning to find its way through the thin walls. Someone was next door, playing Chopin — and playing Chopin rather brilliantly.

  The music swelled into thunderous, driving arpeggios filled with so much emotion that they nearly made Robyn’s hair stand on end. Whoever was playing was pissed off — the way they were bashing out the notes was quite rock and roll, despite it being a classical piece. A sudden image of Chopin with a battered leather jacket and black-polished nails shot into Robyn’s brain, making her giggle.

  Robyn slipped out of the practice room and silently padded down the hall to peek into the room next door. When she peered through the observation window, her jaw dropped.

  Izabella Mazurczak sat on the piano stool, completely absorbed in her music. Izabella was possibly the shyest, quietest girl in their year. Yet here she was, creating a wave of violent emotion with the piano keys.

  “Sorry, Robs, I know we’re late,” Harper called as she hurried past Robyn to the Crush practice room. With her was Lucy Gosling and a tall brunette who Robyn recognized as Toni Clarke, their year’s resident wannabe supermodel, in her wake.

  Lucy stopped beside Robyn at the practice room window.

  “Bloody brilliant, isn’t she?” Robyn whispered.

  “Better than brilliant,” Lucy said, beckoning Harper and Toni back to join them. “Come here.”

  “What?” Harper asked.

  “Shush and come here,” Lucy said. “We’ve found her.”

  “Found who?”

  “Our fifth member.”

  “No,” Toni said when she caught sight of Izabella. “Absolutely not. We’re not making Izabella Mazurczak part of Crush. We’ll have a four o’clock curfew.”

  “But listen to that,” said Lucy. “Nobody’s going to confuse us with a Disney Channel act if we’ve got a baby grand on stage.”

  “Maybe,” Robyn said, mulling over the possibilities. She could already hear how she’d weave Izabella’s piano into the melodies she’d written. Delicately sometimes, and pounding like a drum in others. It was so spectacularly perfect that she had to stop herself running back to their practice room for her pad of music paper and pencil.

  “I mean, adding piano variations for the songs would be brilliant, actually,” Robyn said, containing her excitement so that she didn’t look insane in front of the others. “But Toni’s right; we wanted Iza to accompany the musical last year but she’s literally not allowed out of the house after dark. How would we even rehearse, let alone deal with being on TV or going to LA for the whole summer if we win?”

  “When,” Harper said, a smile spreading across her face as she listened to the percussive passion of the piano ringing through the walls of the music center. “When we win.”

  Izabella Mazurczak had never been so wildly, incredibly, disastrously embarrassed. Ever.

  She still couldn’t believe that Miss Littleton, the headmistress, had actually called her mother in for a conference to discuss Iza’s social life — or rather lack thereof. Listening to them talk about her “challenged interpersonal skills” being a “serious obstacle at the Cambridge interview” would have been bad enough, but her mum’s English was so useless that Iza had needed to translate the entire humiliating conversation into Polish for her.

  Iza had wanted to scream. Really, really loudly. She wished she’d done it, too, or at least tried to stand up for herself, but Iza had always found that the angrier she was, the harder it was to get the words in her head out of her mouth. And Iza had been very, very angry.

  When it was over, Iza had practically run from the office to the practice room. She hadn’t wanted anyone to see her crying; it would just make things worse. Though she didn’t know how things could get worse than her mother and the headmistress spending three-quarters of an hour discussing what a pathetic, friendless loser she was.

  In here, wrapped in the music, she didn’t have to think about it. She didn’t have to feel lonely or wonder if Miss Littleton was right and the fact that she hadn’t made any friends since the Mazurczaks had come to London five years ago meant that something was wrong with her.

  Things had been so much easier in Warsaw when she was small. Or even in Cambridge, where Papa had been on a teaching fellowship before he’d been offered the Classics chair at University College London. She’d had friends there. Not a lot of friends, but enough. So what had changed? Had she got uglier? More awkward? Had she spent so much time playing the piano that she’d forgotten how to talk properly?

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  Iza nearly jumped out of her skin. She looked up to find Harper McKenzie and Lucy Gosling waving at her through the observation window.

  Lucy pushed the door open. “Mind if we come in, Izabella? It is Izabella Mazurczak, right?”

  Great. They had two subjects together this term, but Lucy could hardly remember Iza’s name. Iza really must be a social disaster. Or possibly invisible. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps she was actually acquiring superpowers and it just seemed like she was “under-socialized” and “troublingly introverted.”

  “Oh no, have I pronounced your name wrong?” Lucy said.

  Suddenly Iza realized she hadn’t actually responded to the other girl’s greeting.

  “I’m so sorry, I’m always mangling things,” Lucy continued, growing flustered. “My mum says I sound as though I learned to speak from wolves, which makes no sense now that I think of it. But she’s right, I’m rubbish with new words.”

  “No,” Iza finally managed. “I’m sorry, I was just surprised. You pronounced it right. Most people just call me Iza, though,” she added.

  “Ah. Iza. Right. That’s lovely,” Lucy said. But then she didn’t seem to know what to say next. Neither did Iza.

  “Stop hovering in the doorway, Luce!” Harper pushed past her friend into the room. “Hi, Iza! You’re in my advanced math class, right? Mr. G is a nightmare, isn’t he?” Harper flashed her a warm grin that made Iza feel as though they were the best of friends, and that they always had been.

  Iza felt herself smiling back; it was impossible to do anything else. “Yeah, I guess so,” she replied.

  “Rather you than me,” Lucy jumped in. “I hate math. I’m just glad I dropped it after last year. I don’t know how you two manage.”

  “It’s not so hard,” Iza said. Then she wished she could take it back. She sounded like such a geek.

  Harper broke the awkward pause, taking control of the conversation. “We’re totally sorry to interrupt, but we were in the practice room next door and we heard you playing.”

  “Was I too loud?” Iza asked. Of course. They’d come to complain. Why else would they bother to talk to her? “I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh no!” Lucy said. “You were amazing. That’s why we’re here. We need your help.”

  “My help?”

  “We’ve just started a band,” Harper said, “and we were hoping we could convince you to join us.”

  “A band? Like, a rock band?” Iza said, confused.

  “Absolutely,” Harper replied. “It’s called Crus
h. It’s going to be awesome, but it’ll be even better if you decide to join us. We’ve written some really killer songs and adding a piano to the mix will make us totally stand out on the show. We’re going to try out for Project Next, you know — the new reality show? After we get through to the final, we’ll get to go to LA for the summer and record an album and do gigs and everything.”

  “And even if we lose, it’ll be a blast to try,” Lucy said.

  “We’re not going to lose, Lucy.” Harper shoved the smaller girl playfully. “Stop being such a downer.”

  “I am not a downer,” Lucy shot back. “I’m just realistic, that’s all. But that doesn’t mean Crush won’t be fun. And totally worth —”

  “I’ll do it,” Iza said, before she had the chance to talk herself out of it.

  “You will?” Lucy looked surprised.

  “Yes. I will. Definitely,” Iza repeated. “Absolutely. No question.”

  If Mum and that awful Miss Littleton wanted Iza to be social, then she’d be social. And if her mum didn’t like the fact that she’d chosen to do that by joining a rock band that would suck up hours of study time with practice and might take her five thousand miles away for the summer, then that was just too bad.

  “I’m in.”

  Lucy still wasn’t quite sure how Harper had talked the Mazurczaks, who had to be the most overprotective parents in London, into allowing their daughter to join a rock band — and Lucy had been there when she’d done it. Somehow, with a little smooth talking, Harper had managed to convince them that Crush would be a “wonderful educational experience” for their precious daughter and that being on a hit television program would “look great on university applications.”

  Too bad Lucy’s mum and dad thought Harper was the devil in teenage form. She could have used Harper’s help in convincing them that Crush wasn’t going to completely wreck Lucy’s life.

  Lucy had mentioned the vague possibility of joining a band at dinner the night before and her mum had forbidden it straight off. “You need to focus on your studies now. You can join a band once you’re at Oxford.”

  Mum talked of nothing but Oxford these days. She was obsessed. That was John’s fault, of course. Since Lucy’s big brother had gone there, her mum wasn’t about to settle for anything less for the rest of the Gosling brood. It didn’t matter that Lucy didn’t particularly want to go to Oxford or that she hadn’t got the grades or brains to get in. Mum would still ground Lucy for the rest of the year if she found out Lucy had joined a band instead of cramming for hours every day in a futile attempt to match John’s achievement.

  Lucy sighed and looked up at the poster above her bed. It was a blowup of Electric’s first album cover, with the band rocking out, their backs to the camera. A drummer’s eye view, Lucy thought. A view she’d give anything to have. A view she’d never see if she didn’t get moving. They were rehearsing at Harper’s house today and Harper would murder Lucy if she was late.

  Her mum would find out eventually of course. Lucy knew that. Nina Gosling’s children never managed to put one over on her for long. But Lucy had already survived being grounded for six months after her fifteenth birthday party fiasco. She wasn’t about to let the prospect of a little more time in solitary confinement keep her away from something that had already changed her life for the better in just a few days.

  It wasn’t just the music. Crush was more than that. Today, when first Toni, then Robyn, and then Harper — dragging Iza along from their shared fourth-period math lesson — had elbowed their way into her lunchtime bubble, Lucy had felt something she hadn’t experienced in a long time. She’d felt like she belonged.

  Studying at the library, back by six thirty, she scribbled and stuck the dishonest little note to the fridge with her mum’s Yellow Submarine album cover magnet. Then she yanked her drumsticks from her backpack and fled out the front door to Harper’s house.

  An hour later, Lucy decided she didn’t have to worry about how her parents would react to Crush after all.

  Crush would never actually make it to Project Next. At this rate they wouldn’t survive their first full practice …

  Toni had been fifteen minutes late. Then Iza’s keyboard stand fell apart halfway through their first attempt to actually play. Even after they’d finally reassembled the stand, they could barely finish a song without Harper stopping to snipe at Toni for missing a chord or Toni stopping to suggest an alternative harmony — or, after a while, stopping just to point out that Harper was off-key. All the bickering had Iza so nervous she could barely play.

  Robyn leaned back to Lucy. “Do something. We’ll never get anywhere like this.”

  “Do what?” Lucy asked. “Harper doesn’t listen to anyone and neither does Toni. And Iza looks like she’s about to faint.”

  “I dunno, lady. You’re the drummer,” Robyn said.

  What did that have to do with anything? Lucy doubted that hitting Harper or Toni over the head with a cymbal would be productive, even if it sounded like a bloody good idea.

  She looked longingly at the marked-up copies of their songs clipped to the stand in front of her. The downbeat was right there. If only they could get playing.

  Suddenly, she realized what Robyn meant. Lucy was the drummer. She called the beat, or at least she was meant to. If anyone could get this medley of disaster moving, it was the drummer. The others probably wouldn’t pay any attention … but it was worth a shot.

  Lucy raised her sticks and beat them together.

  “One … Two …”

  With a glare at Toni, Harper stepped back to her microphone. Toni glared right back as she shifted the strap of her bass on her shoulders.

  “Three …”

  Iza set her hands to the keys.

  Robyn shot Lucy a grin as she gripped the fretboard of her guitar.

  “Four.”

  And then, as one, they started to play.

  2. Everything Is Impossible

  “And … we’re out,” the producer yelled. “Three minutes, ladies and gents. Contestants, stay put, please!”

  Lucy kept her toes glued to the X of tape that marked her spot on the massive Project Next stage. Robyn stood beside her, looking a bit green, and Iza was practically bouncing out of her skin trying to contain her excitement. Toni and Harper were too busy flirting with the guys in Dead Kitten Mambo — semifinalist band number three — to be bothered with being nervous.

  Lucy didn’t know why she was nervous. They weren’t going to win. Crush had come a long way in the past six months. They’d had to eat, sleep and breathe their music, but none of them had minded. Each weekend had been a whirlwind of rehearsing, trawling for costumes in vintage shops or bickering about choreography … and it had been the best six months of Lucy’s life. But they would still lose. She was sure of it. Even if Toni and Harper had suddenly, after two months of never being quite in sync, discovered how perfectly their voices blended if they just sang together. Even if Robyn had written positively brilliant piano solos for Iza into “Emotional Bloodbath” that made Lucy want to cry in the best possible way. Even if Lucy could feel the music pumping in her veins like fire every time they played. None of that mattered. Five schoolgirls from Greenwich who’d only been playing together since January were not going to trump bands who’d been playing the club circuit for years. Black Tuesday even had an album out on an indie label. Crush would never beat them. Lucy just hoped the others wouldn’t want to quit once they’d lost Project Next.

  Crush couldn’t win anyway, because if they did, Lucy would have to tell her parents that she’d been lying to them for months and that she was disappearing to California for the summer.

  How they’d actually managed to get this far without her mum and dad catching on, Lucy had no idea. She had never got away with anything in her entire life, but somehow she’d managed to get away with this. Her mum had even congratulated her o
n “being so devoted to her daily study sessions,” which were, of course, Lucy’s crap excuse for getting out of the house. The time they thought she spent at the library was really spent practicing at Harper’s.

  Lucy really had meant to tell her parents the truth, particularly after Crush became semifinalists. She’d been terrified they’d find out on their own; Project Next was everywhere, after all. But still Lucy had put it off, and somehow her parents had managed not to notice that their middle child was on TV. Of course, her mum and dad had never been much for TV. They didn’t read entertainment magazines and Dad insisted that the only programs worth watching were BBC nature documentaries.

  It was after the Miracle of the Answering Machine that Lucy had given up on trying to come clean altogether. A few weeks prior to the Project Next UK semifinal, Dad’s weird cousin from Wales had noticed Lucy’s name in an article about the show and called to congratulate them.

  Fortunately, he’d called while Mum and Dad were out and Lucy was babysitting her little sister, Emily. Unfortunately, Lucy had been helping Emily hunt for her guinea pig, Pippa, who had chosen that moment to go AWOL, so she’d let the call go to the answering machine.

  Lucy had debated what to do with the message for a long time. Just when she’d decided that actually erasing her parents’ messages was a step further than she was willing to go, Emily had raced by in hot persuit of Pippa and sent the ancient answering maching flying. It had been thoroughly smashed, and Lucy’s secret had been safe once more.

  That was when Lucy had decided that it was fate. The universe obviously wanted her to be on Project Next. Who was she to argue? Besides, all of this would be over soon. It wasn’t as though Crush was going to win.

  The flashing red light above the stage, which signaled that live recording was about to resume, brought Lucy back to the present.

  “We’re back in five … four … three … two … and —” The producer pointed at Liam Michaels, the international host of Project Next, and mouthed, One.