by Ryan, Tom;
The audience claps when they hear the dramatic shift in the music, and I hear my granddad holler out from the back of the room. At this point, the rest of the group joins in—Keith singing a deep repetitive bass line, everyone else filling in the lyrics.
I’d rather die than say goodbye, and when we
look up at the sky
I think that you and I could fly,
All we’d have to do is try
Come on, baby, let’s try…
From here on, the two songs begin to intertwine, Bernice leading the way on her song and me leading the way on mine, with everyone else singing with and against and around us. By the time we’re done the first mashup, the audience is clapping along and enjoying themselves, and we finish to a loud round of applause. There’s no time to relax though, and we break immediately into Macy and Davis’s mashup. The audience loves this one, and we’re having fun too, letting loose and hitting all our notes perfectly. By the time we’re done, the room is totally into us, and I feel an electric thrill coming back at us from the crowd.
“That was awesome!” Bernice says to me as we leave the stage. “Thank you so much for helping save the song!”
“I think we all saved the song,” I say. “And you’re right, that was awesome!”
“Great job, guys!” Ms. Kogawa says when we’re all off the stage. “I can’t wait to start planning our next show!”
I manage to reach through the crowd and grab Keith’s arm to get his attention.
“That was fun, hey?” he asks.
“Totally,” I say. “I was thinking about what you were saying the other day. About getting together or whatever. Do you want to do that soon?”
He smiles widely at me. “How about tomorrow?” he asks.
“Perfect.”
Still smiling, I squeeze my way over to my family.
“Gerri, you were incredible!” my mother says, reaching up to grab my hands.
“I have to admit,” says Meg, “that was way better than I expected.”
“Jeez, thanks,” I say.
“Hey, it’s a compliment!” she says.
“I’m proud of you, Gerri,” says Granddad. “You were just as great as I expected.”
I hang out with my family, still buzzing from the excitement of being onstage, watching while a harmonica player busts out a couple of blues songs. When he leaves the stage, the announcer comes to the mic.
“Next up,” he says, “we’ve got the old-school country stylin’s of Nelson Jones!”
“What’s going on, Granddad?” asks Jack.
“You don’t think I’m going to let a perfectly good opportunity to play for an audience go to waste, do you?” asks Granddad. He turns and winks at me, then gets up and retrieves his guitar from behind the counter. The audience claps as he climbs cheerfully onto the stage, and the loudest applause in the room comes straight from our table.
Chapter Fifteen
Poppy gets cut from Big Time a couple of weeks before the finale.
I’m surprised and not surprised all at the same time. On one hand, I still think she had the best voice of anyone on the show. On the other hand, it had become clearer every week that she didn’t really fit in to what the producers and the judges wanted. She kept trying to be herself, singing the songs she liked, dressing the way she wanted to, and they kept trying to turn her into something different—slicker and more commercial, a brand-new Poppy.
By the time she was voted off, it was obvious that she wasn’t enjoying it as much as she had when she started. Still, I write to tell her how bad I feel for her, which is the case until I meet her for coffee at Human Bean when she’s back in town.
“What a relief, Gerri,” she says. “You have no idea!”
“Really?” I ask. “I figured getting voted off would have been super crappy.”
“Sure, it was,” she says. “But only because I let myself get into that mindset. I stopped caring about the songs I was singing and started obsessing about making it further in the show. I hated the whole beating people part of things, and that became more and more what it was about. It was all stress, all the time.”
“I can see that,” I say.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she says. “It was a cool experience for a while, having people dress me up and getting to stand on that glitzy stage every week. It was just the way I’d always imagined it. But it stopped being fun after a while. I grew up singing in church and with my family and at school concerts. I sing because I love singing. Not because I wanted to prove I was better than all those other people.”
“It’s too bad nobody stood up for you,” I say.
“Maria Tillerman did,” says Poppy. “She tried to, anyway, but the producers weren’t really looking for her to make suggestions. They just wanted her to sit in her seat and do her job, same as us, I guess. She’s leaving the show anyway.”
“What?” I say. “Really?”
“Yeah. She hates it, so she didn’t sign a contract for next year. They’re waiting until the season ends to make the announcement. I shouldn’t even be telling you. After I got kicked off the show, she told me that she’s looking forward to making real music for a change. I know the feeling.”
Even before talking to Poppy, I’d decided not to try out for Big Time again next year. I’ve got enough on my plate with the choral group. We’ve started working on a new round of mashups, and Bernice and I are actually working together for real this time, looking for a new way to combine the show tunes she loves with the classic country I’m into.
Keith and I have been hanging out a lot. Sometimes we meet up with Macy and Davis and mess around with different compositions. Sometimes it’s just the two of us, and we try to come up with lyrics as he fools around with melodies on his guitar. It’s not all music though. We’ve been to a couple of movies and gone for walks together, and of course we spend a lot of time at Human Bean. Like Meg said, Big Time wasn’t such a waste of time after all. If I hadn’t tried out, I never would have met him.
In fact, it turns out that getting rejected from Big Time was one of the best things that could have happened to me. Not just because of Keith, but because it helped me understand what being a musician is really all about. It isn’t about getting picked out of a crowd and being told you’re the best; it’s about learning and practicing and making music wherever and whenever you feel like it.
It’s a beautiful crisp day in early December when I get on the bus to visit Granddad. I’m weighed down a bit, and climbing up the steps is kind of cumbersome, but people smile at me as I walk down the aisle and squeeze myself into a seat.
It’s too cold for Granddad to be out on the porch, and I find him in his room. He’s in his chair by the window, playing his guitar so intently that he doesn’t notice me standing in the doorway.
“Knock knock!” I say. He turns from the window and smiles broadly as I walk over to him and bend down to give him a kiss on the cheek.
“What have you got there, girl?” he asks, pointing at the case hanging across my back.
I unsling the guitar from my shoulder and unzip it from its case. It’s not mine—it’s one of Keith’s. He’s letting me borrow it until I decide whether I should really push for one of my own for Christmas.
“I was thinking it might be kind of fun if you taught me a few things, Granddad,” I say.
“Make music with my granddaughter?” he says. “I can’t think of any way I’d rather spend my time.”
I know exactly what he means.
Acknowledgments
As always, thanks to my friends and family for their continued love, support and encouragement. Thanks to everyone at Orca for being such a pleasure to work with. Thank you to Sarah Harvey for creating the awesome Limelights series and for reminding me to always keep the reader at front of mind. Most of all, thank you to Andrew for keeping the train on the tracks and for always believing in me.
TOM RYAN was born and raised in Inverness on Cape Breton Island. He once sat in
line overnight to audition for a televised singing competition, only to be told that he was potentially the most boring performer in the world. Ouch. He lives in Ottawa, Ontario, with his partner and dog. Big Time is his fourth book. You can find him online at www.tomwrotethat.com.