How To Write the Soundtrack To Your Life by Fiona Hardy

Author:Fiona Hardy [Hardy, Fiona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Published by Affirm Press in 2021
Published: 2021-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

Track 19

Road to Nowhere

It was actually time for music class, but that was okay. We studied sheet music a little more, then everybody smashed out some random sounds on the instruments for a painful ten minutes, and then we all had to write a four-bar song of our own.

One of the songs I’d made up once was so ridiculous it didn’t even have a name. I’d written it after Axel and Junie had a very elaborate fight about whether candied pineapple was allowed on pizza. Junie said pineapple had been on pizza for years, then Axel said that candied pineapple was not the same and it was like having Skittles on a pizza, then Junie put Skittles on a pizza and everybody was mad, even though the pizza went a pretty great colour. That night I made my keyboard into a war, the high end for Axel’s louder and louder shrieking and the low end for Junie’s very rational explanations for her very irrational idea. The notes had gone back and forth, back and forth. It’d been more fun than serious, but I’d recorded it and tinkered around with it and played it at Pluck’s a little the next time we were there and Pip had come up when I wasn’t looking and said, ‘Are you okay?’

‘What?’ I’d hid my hands behind my back like that hid the music too.

‘I just heard the end of that and it sounds … I don’t know. Wrong. Like it’s not working? Not like your usual stuff.’

I’d stared at her, offended.

‘What? Oh, you know I think you’re amazing at this. Just … not this one time.’

I’d almost forgotten about it until today, when everybody was writing songs and I was simmering so much with anger that I couldn’t think of anything new. I’d watched Noah on the keyboard next to me playing a note from the high end and then its opposite on the low end and it had reminded me of the pizza song. I’d never played it again after Pip was mean about it, but I wondered if I could remember it. The back and forth.

I turned the volume down, put my fingers on the keys, and tried. Low. High. Down. Up. Candied pineapple. No candied pineapple. I could taste the Skittle pizza on my tongue, I could hear their fight, feel it all and –

Somebody was tapping me on the shoulder.

‘Huh?’ I said, looking up at Jock and blinking.

‘I said it’s time to play your song,’ Jock said.

A lot of other kids were still tinkling around. Some talking. I wondered what they’d say if they heard me now. Whether they’d make up new, mean lyrics for it. Whether they’d laugh. Whether they’d steal it.

‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘Not out loud.’

He groaned. ‘Kid, I don’t want to send you to the principal’s office again. Don’t make me be that guy.’

I shook my head. ‘I just can’t. I can’t let other people hear it. There’s a whole … a whole thing.’

‘Oh, yeah, I remember.

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