Tenney Shares the Stage

by Kellen Hertz

  As he sang, his eyes drifted to mine. I couldn’t tell what he was feeling, but I chimed in, harmonizing with him on the chorus. “Gonna be myself, nobody else. Gonna reach the sky if I only try.”

  I shut my eyes, focusing on our voices blending. We sounded the way we had when we’d performed at Cumberland Park, I thought—in tune and united. So much had happened since then. If only we could go back and try again from the beginning.

  I opened my eyes. Logan was watching me. This time when I smiled at him, he smiled back. We sound good, I told him silently, and his eyes warmed like he understood.

  As he started the measure leading into the second verse, Logan gave me a sharp nod, letting me know he wanted me to sing lead this time. I let my voice ring out, soaring through the lyrics. Then we harmonized again on the chorus, our voices weaving together. From chorus to bridge to chorus, we passed the melody line back and forth as we sang, sharing the song better than we ever had before.

  There was a breath of silence when we finished, until Alice’s tiny claps broke the quiet.

  “That was so good!” Alice piped up, beaming at us. “I wish I could see you guys in concert.”

  Logan darted a glance at me. “Yeah, well …” he trailed off. “I really gotta get home,” he said, standing up.

  “Wait! Logan …” I started.

  He looked down at me and tightened his jaw. This was my chance to talk to him, but now that we were face-to-face, doubt crept inside me like a chill. I’d felt horrible when Logan had quit. How would I feel now if I told him I wanted to get back together and he said no?

  I blinked hard, and Portia’s advice echoed through my mind: It doesn’t matter if it’s hard—you have to be honest, say what you feel, and trust that your partner’s going to listen with open ears.

  “Can I talk to you?” I said to Logan, before I could chicken out.

  He flushed an uncomfortable pink but nodded. “I’ve got to get home to take care of Jude, though,” he said. “So I only have a minute.”

  Mason picked up Alice’s guitar. “Why don’t you two go for a walk,” he said. “I’ll keep Alice company.” She grinned.

  Logan and I went into the hallway. We silently fell into step, both of us staring at the speckled green floor tiles. I didn’t know how to start, so I just watched the circus of painted animals pass by on the walls.

  At the end of the hall was a small sitting area with a view of downtown. We stood by the window and both started talking at once.

  “Listen—” I began, just as Logan said, “I’m sorry.”

  I blinked, stunned. I’d never thought he’d begin by apologizing. “I’m sorry, too,” I said.

  “You don’t need to be sorry. You were trying to help,” he replied, shaking his head. “I just over-reacted. You came over with Portia, and I was so humiliated and mad at myself for messing up …” He trailed off, taking a deep, sad breath. “I know you don’t only care about your music. It was my fault. This whole thing is my fault.”

  I swallowed hard. “I wish you had told me what was going on, that’s all,” I said.

  “Me, too,” Logan mumbled, leaning against the window. “I didn’t think you would understand. I mean, your family’s perfect.”

  “I promise, we’re not perfect,” I assured him. “But I do know how lucky I am. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to be so far away from your dad.”

  Logan nodded.

  “How are you doing?” I asked him.

  Logan shrugged in that way he does. I used to think he shrugged because he didn’t care. But now I suddenly understood that he was shrugging because he was upset. He did care. He was just afraid to say it. Instead of nudging him to say more, I stayed quiet until he was ready to keep talking.

  “I really miss my dad,” he said after a moment. “I keep trying to remind myself that he loves music just as much as I do, and that he had to go on tour because it’s his job. But everything’s gotten harder since he left. I just kept pushing everything down and trying to ignore how I felt, and trying to work hard and get everything done, but all it did was make me more upset.” He took a big, deep breath, like he was coming up for air. “Sometimes I don’t even want my dad to come back,” he said in a whisper, “because I’m so angry at him for leaving.”

  His chin quivered, and for a moment I thought he might cry. I didn’t know what to say. I’d never been that angry at anyone in my family before. Even when my parents had told me I couldn’t perform at the Bluebird Cafe, I hadn’t felt like that. Still, I knew how I felt when I was upset, and how I made myself feel better.

  “Playing music helps, right?” I told Logan gently. “I mean, I know it doesn’t fix anything, but it helps.”

  “Sometimes,” Logan said, studying his feet. “I love rehearsing and performing, but they’re both painful on the days when I miss my dad the most.”

  “You know, you don’t have to go through everything alone, even if it feels like it,” I told him. “That’s the biggest thing I learned from playing music with you.”

  Logan looked confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Before we started playing together, I thought that being a real singer-songwriter meant that I had to do everything myself,” I said. “When we first started playing together, I didn’t want you to change a single note I had written. But then I realized that you made my music better. You made me better. You taught me that admitting you need help is hard. It takes courage. But when you lean on someone else for support, that makes you both stronger.”

  Logan put a hand on the window thoughtfully. “I really taught you that?” he finally said.

  “Well, maybe not on purpose,” I said lightly, and he laughed. “My point is, you can talk to me,” I said, nudging him with my shoulder. “Because we’re friends. Right?”

  “Right,” Logan said, his eyes lighting up, as if he was just realizing it. For the first time since I could remember, he broke into a real, wide smile.

  Then I did something crazy: I hugged Logan Everett.

  And he did something even crazier: He hugged me back!

  In that very moment, I realized that although I cared about our music, I cared even more about Logan’s friendship.

  Before I could tell him that, though, he stepped back and blurted out, “I wish we could still play together.”

  My heart leaped into my throat. “Me, too!” I said, nodding so hard I felt like a bobblehead in a speeding truck. “Maybe we still can …”

  As we walked back to the community room, I told Logan about the solo contract and how I hadn’t signed it yet, which meant our Tenney & Logan contract was still valid. “If we tell Zane and our parents we want to keep playing together, they have to listen,” I insisted.

  But Logan looked doubtful. “Look, Tenney, I love playing music with you,” he said. “But Zane needs me to be a hundred and ten percent committed to the band. I don’t think I can do that right now. My family needs me too much.”

  But what about our music? I wanted to shout. But when I saw how sad Logan looked, my frustration evaporated.

  “I understand,” I said finally. “Even if we’re not a band, we can still play together sometimes, right?”

  Logan nodded, looking relieved. “Are you kidding?” he said to me as we entered the doorway of the community room. “I’ll perform with you anytime.”

  “What about next weekend?” Alice shouted to us from across the room.

  Mason, Logan, and I looked at her, confused.

  Alice sat forward, her face brightening with excitement. “You guys should perform here in the Gathering Place for the kids in the ward!” she declared. “On Saturdays, the nurses get us all together to have lunch and watch a movie, but it’s always something we’ve all seen before. I’ll ask Nurse Jim if Tenney and Logan could play instead!”

  Before we could even respond, Alice eased herself out of her chair and pressed a button on the wall. In a flash, a round, cheery-looking bearded man in purple scrubs appeared.

&nb
sp; “Everything okay, Alice?” he said.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “These are my friends.” She introduced us to Jim, the head nurse, and told him her idea for the concert. Before she’d even finished explaining, he was nodding enthusiastically.

  “What a great idea, Alice!” he said. “We’re always looking for experiences to give the kids that’ll take their minds off being in the hospital. Live music would be amazing! I bet Doctor Farkas would love this idea, too.”

  “Great,” said Alice, beaming. She turned to us. “So will you do it?”

  Logan and I glanced at each other and grinned.

  “Yes!” we said in perfect harmony.

  I was so happy that Logan and I were friends again, and so excited by the idea of performing with him that I practically floated back to the truck with Mason. It wasn’t until we were driving home that a troubling thought brought me back to earth.

  “What if Mom and Dad won’t let me play the gig with Logan?” I asked Mason.

  Mason scoffed. “They will,” he said. “It’s for a good cause.”

  I shook my head, worry rising inside me. “Dad said he didn’t want me performing with Logan.”

  Mason frowned. “Okay, but you do want to play with Logan, right?”

  “Of course I do!” I said passionately.

  “And do you think it’s right that Mom and Dad won’t let you perform with him?” Mason persisted.

  “No,” I admitted. “Logan has a good heart. I want everyone to see that.”

  “Okay, then,” Mason said, with a decisive nod. “So you and I need to come up with a plan.”

  So we did.

  Step one of The Plan began that night at dinner, when Mason and I told our parents about the concert at the hospital. We told them everything about the show … except that Logan would be there.

  “It’ll be really low-key,” I told them, as we dug into barbecued ribs and corn. “Just thirty or so minutes of music.”

  “I can go with Tenney and set up her sound equipment,” Mason chimed in, giving me a wink.

  “Sounds good,” Dad said, then turned to me. “How’d you get the gig?”

  My stomach tensed, but Mason saved me. “A friend of a friend asked if she could play,” he said.

  His explanation was true. Alice was the friend of my friend Logan. Still, it made me uncomfortable that I couldn’t tell my parents everything yet. If they knew I was planning to perform with Logan, they would put an end to it right away. But I needed to do something to show them why I believed in Logan and our music. If they see how important this is to me, they’ll have to change their minds, I thought, ignoring the fear cowering in the pit of my stomach.

  “Can I play, too?” asked Aubrey, her voice breaking into my thoughts.

  I opened my mouth, unsure what to say. Mason gave me a warning glance, but Dad spoke first.

  “Why not?” Dad said. “It would be a good experience for you, Aubrey. I mean, as long as Tenney’s comfortable with it.”

  I hesitated. Adding Aubrey would definitely make the show more complicated, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I also didn’t want to alert my parents that my “low-key” set was anything more than that.

  “Okay,” I said to Aubrey. “How about you play the last song with me?”

  With a squeal, my sister wrapped me in a hug.

  “You won’t regret this,” she said into my shoulder.

  “I hope not,” I replied honestly, thinking less about her than everything else still to come.

  Step two of The Plan was much easier: invitations. I e-mailed Zane, Ellie, and Portia, asking them to come see me perform at the hospital. I even got the idea to invite Belle Starr as a way of apologizing for having to cancel our opening performance at Riff’s. And when I told Jaya and Holliday about the concert after school, they promised to be there—and to keep their lips sealed about Logan.

  Step three was rehearsals. Aubrey and I practiced the song we planned to play together every night after dinner. Then I’d go upstairs and video chat with Logan and plan out our set list.

  I even managed to slip in a face-to-face rehearsal with Logan at the music store one afternoon when Dad went out to do deliveries and left Mason in charge of the store for a few hours.

  Logan and I played through our set list on the low stage, talking through each song. The plan was for both of us to play guitar, alternating who would sing lead. Maybe it was because we hadn’t played together in a while, but I’d never had an easier rehearsal with Logan. We were perfectly in tune with each other, musically and otherwise. Without the pressure of writing songs for an EP or making everything perfect for a big-deal show, we were both relaxed, and we plunged together into the joy of making music. By the end of the rehearsal, my face hurt from laughing, and Logan was happier than I’d ever seen him.

  As he hung up the guitar he’d been using, sadness passed over his face like a cloud across the sun. “I forgot how much fun this is,” he said.

  “I know,” I said.

  Sympathy for Logan surged inside me. He’d spend every moment playing if he could, I thought. If only he knew that this performance could make that possible!

  Suddenly, I felt guilty. I hadn’t told Logan that Zane, Ellie, and Portia were coming to our concert, because I knew he would refuse to play out of embarrassment and stubbornness. And he didn’t know that I hadn’t told my parents because I didn’t want to tell him that they didn’t want me to play with him anymore. But I hoped that by the time I got him to the Gathering Place, Logan would know that he couldn’t leave music—or me—behind.

  “What’s wrong?” Logan asked, squinting at me.

  “Nothing,” I covered, mustering a smile. “I think we’re going to have a great show.”

  I sounded confident, but that night it was hard to sleep. I felt nervous, wired, and guiltier than ever. Tomorrow, almost everyone close to me would find out I’d been keeping a secret from them.

  “At the end of the day, you need to do what’s right for your music,” Portia had once told Logan and me.

  That was what I was doing. I only hoped everyone would understand.

  The next morning I woke with a jolt, as if someone had smashed a gong next to my ears. At breakfast I felt like a bird—fragile, jittery, and ready to fly away—but I forced myself to sit still and eat some oatmeal.

  I dressed quickly, putting on a denim vest over a pink T-shirt and my favorite leather skirt. Aubrey was fretting to Mom about getting ready, so I did my hair myself, brushing it into a low side ponytail. I put on my ankle boots and checked my guitar case, making sure I had extra strings and my favorite capo and picks.

  Moving to the door, I glanced back at Aubrey sitting on her bed. She chewed her cheek nervously as Mom braided her hair. I could tell she had stage fright already. I remember feeling the same way the first time I’d performed in front of an audience.

  “You’re going to do great, Aubrey,” I said. I gave her an encouraging smile, but she just nodded and looked at her hands.

  “We’ll be down in a minute,” Mom said gently.

  Outside, Mason and Dad were loading cables and mic stands into the back of Dad’s truck.

  “Hey, chickadee,” Dad said, kissing me on the cheek as I reached them. “You don’t look a bit nervous.”

  “I actually am,” I admitted. But not for the reasons you think, I added silently.

  We weren’t scheduled to perform until eleven, but I’d asked Logan to meet at ten thirty. What would he say when he saw my parents and Zane and Portia? Would he storm off—or hear me out?

  I was about to run back inside and call Mom and Aubrey when they appeared. Aubrey was wearing a pink party dress, but her face looked like she was going to a funeral.

  We piled into Dad’s truck and took off, turning onto the broad, shady expanse of Woodland Avenue. Aubrey sat next to me, resting her chin on her accordion, her eyes as wide as cymbals.

  I didn’t feel much better, staring out the window as
worst-case scenarios continued to storm inside my head: How would my parents react when they saw Logan there? What if they didn’t let me play? What if Logan wanted to come back, but Zane refused to let him?

  At last, we pulled up to the hospital. We parked, unloaded the mic stands and cables, and headed inside. When we got out of the elevator on the fourth floor, I spotted Nurse Jim standing by the admissions desk.

  “Tenney!” he said with a grin. “Good timing— we’re just getting set up.”

  I smiled, but winced inwardly, grateful that he didn’t say anything about Logan being there. I introduced everyone as we followed Jim to the Gathering Place.

  We approached the door, and I looked nervously at Mason. He gave my shoulder a squeeze. You’ve got this, his eyes told me.

  Here goes nothing, I thought as I led the group inside. Nurse Jim had set up the space for our show, moving the chairs and couches into rows and clearing a space at the front for Logan and me.

  Otherwise the room was empty except for one person: Logan.

  He sat tuning Alice’s guitar under a large banner that had been strung from the ceiling. Its hand-painted glittery letters spelled out WELCOME, TENNEY & LOGAN!

  “Logan!” Aubrey shrieked, and dodged through the maze of chairs to hug him.

  My parents looked startled. Logan just waved, still unaware that my parents had doubts about him.

  “Alice has been talking about Tenney and Logan nonstop,” Nurse Jim said. “All the kids are excited for the concert, so they painted the banner to welcome you two. Some of these kids have serious medical situations,” he continued gravely, “so we’re grateful for anything that can help make them feel better.”

  “So are we,” I said.

  My parents looked at Logan and back to me, bewildered.

  “I’m sorry,” Mom said to Jim, “I don’t know—”

  “How to thank you!” Mason interrupted with a smooth smile. “This is fantastic. We’re really excited.”