Chapter Four
Sunday 10th November
Yesterday we were all in the shed again. Jess was there too. She watched and smiled.
Then Mum poked her head in the door. “Isaac, we’re going to Thames. Do you want to come?”
“No, I’m good,” I said from the pallet stage.
“Okay. See you later.”
“Yeah.” After a few minutes, I heard car doors slam and Dad’s car leave.
About lunchtime, Luke and the others decided practice was over.
“Do you want a ride home?” Tessa asked Jess.
Luke’s got a car. I haven’t. I get a ride with Luke or borrow Mum’s if I need one.
Jess shook her head, “No Denis said he’d pick me up at three.”
“Want a drink?” I asked Jess when everyone else had gone. She nodded, and we went inside.
Yeah right.
This is how it really went.
I stood there just inside the door of the empty shed, and Jess sat on the saw horse and watched me with those eyes from behind the waterfall of hair.
This was the first time we’d been alone together. Really alone. And it was going to be for at least three hours.
She might have realised we’d stop practicing at lunchtime. But when she arranged for Denis to pick her up at three, she couldn’t have known Mum and Dad would be out.
So, we were alone, and no one knew. Well Luke did. He smirked and patted me on the shoulder as he left with Tessa. I wasn’t sure what Jess thought about this aloneness. Then she left the sawhorse and walked over to me. She slipped her hand into mine. That solved the problem.
“Do you want to come inside?” I asked. Jess nodded.
Inside the house, we kissed. We’d kissed before, but this time it was different because this kiss was the prelude, the beginning, the bridge that would lead to everything. Jess had on jeans and t shirt, and I wondered if that was what she wanted for her first time. Shouldn’t she be in a flowing dress or something romantic?
Jess slipped her hand into mine. “Do you have condoms?”
I looked at her like she was an alien. I was worrying she might want this to be more romantic, more beautiful, and she asked that? But it was just what she’d say, because she might be quiet, but I’d discovered she didn’t pussyfoot around.
“Fuck. No,” I said. With a mother like mine, the last thing you’d want to do is leave condoms about the place, even hidden.
Jess grinned and pushed that waterfall of hair out of her eyes. She’s perfect, with the cascade of hair, and S shape of her body, the legs that go on forever, her lips so red, her eyes somewhere between green and brown. She pulled a couple of condoms out of her jeans pocket.
“Tessa gave them to me. And that was lucky because you’re not very well organized.”
Bloody hell.
Then me and Jess found out about fucking.
In my room, the curtains cast flickering shadows.
Hands, mouths, legs entwined.
Light dancing on our skin.
Souls touching.
I never knew if someone you love runs their fingertips over your body it feels like the touch of a butterfly wing. It turns out all the love songs around don't prepare you for that.
By the time Mum and Dad came home we’d had a shower and were watching TV. Then Denis turned up and Mum recognized him.
“Is Jess one of that rowdy Murphy family?” Mum asked after they’d gone.
Monday 11th November
The rock star thing isn’t a joke anymore. Well not for me anyway. It’s the music. Funny thing about the music though, when I was a kid Mum did the work. She bought the piano and the guitar and the violin. She dropped me off at lessons, picked me up and made sure I practiced. It was her dream then. But, suddenly it is part of me too.
The other day I bought an effects pedal for my amp, so I could make the massive reverb sound the White Stripes uses. I’m the biggest Jack White fan ever. I live for the White Stripes and their albums and read about them.
Wikipedia says reverb is the persistence of sound in a particular space after the original sound is removed. That is the coolest explanation for the coolest sound.
It’s not just me. Stadium doesn’t practice just because Collins wants it now. We want it too, and it isn’t just the Smokefree thing either. We’re really starting to know we’re good.
A couple of days ago at school, Collins stopped me. “Have you written anything yet, Isaac?”
“Yeah.” But so far, I’d pretty much only written about Jess. I’ve been writing what I know.
“Had a go at lyrics?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“Did you watch the DVD?”
“Yeah,”
“What did you think of it?”
“Not bad. That guy Cohen can write.” I went to leave. I had maths in about thirty seconds.
“You might be interested in looking at a couple of books I own,” Collins said.
“What about?”
“Writing songs. If you are, come around to my house tomorrow afternoon. We’ll look through what I have. You’re welcome to anything that interests you,” he said.
So, that afternoon, I went to Collins’ place, a little villa on Station Road. I knew he lived alone, and the inside looked like it. In fact, it looked a bit like him. Sort of worn around the edges but friendly enough. The whole house was like my bedroom, like music had taken it over. A piano, guitars, and everything else to do with music covered every surface. And books! On the floor, on the table, some were in the bookshelf. Mum would have had a fit.
“Do you want something to drink before we start, Isaac?” He opened the fridge and pulled out a couple of cans of Coke. Then we went through his books.
He opened one and started to flick through it. He stopped a few pages in. “This book is about how to structure lyrics.”
Understanding the Parts of a Song, said the heading.
He passed the book over, and it was all there. Verse, chorus, bridge. I’d heard the words and sort of knew what they meant, but this book explained it all. Collins left me to read through it while he stuck the empty cans in the bin.
“Why do some songs have an introduction?” I asked when he came back.
“Not every song has one, but sometimes you need something to lead you in. You need to learn about how to use one and how it affects the rest of the number.”
That seemed reasonable. I flicked through a few more pages. Understanding Common Structures.
“Start with an AABA structure?” I read it out then looked up at Collins.
“That’s the most common structure. A for the verse, B for the chorus. So AABA is two verses, a chorus, then a verse.” That made sense too. I could think of a few songs structured that way.
“What other structures are there?”
And it was like Collins had been waiting years for someone to ask that question. He shuffled back and forth through the books, talking chorus, verse and bridge and AABB, ABCBA. It was like alphabet soup, but it made sense. And Collins knew songs that had these structures. He went to the piano and played them, talking his way through each one.
I always thought he was cool, but you should have seen him.
“How come teachers don’t teach this stuff at school?” I asked.
Collins shrugged. “Probably doesn’t interest too many kids.” Then he moved to the next page.
We kept going for a couple of hours. It was brilliant.
“Play around with the ideas,” said Collins as I left to go home. “Once you learn the theory, you’ll get it.