Despite the tour of the Academy the day before, I get hopelessly lost looking for the music department, so I am fifteen minutes late by the time I find the right classroom. I burst through the door, apologising profusely, only to have half the class turn round and angrily shush me.
Blushing, I slip into a chair at the back of the room, while the boy who is at the front continues to sing, seemingly not noticing the interruption. His voice is amazing, husky and sexy, but with the kind of control that spoke of years of vocal training. It is kind of like a mash up between Shawn Mendes, Harry Styles, and Hozier. It helped that he has the looks to match; long, shaggy brown hair and big brown eyes that are so dark they are almost black. The guy has star quality all right.
I don’t recognise the song he is singing, but it is beautiful; soulful and haunting. It makes my heart ache to hear it and as the final few notes die away, the whole class sits in stunned silence for a moment, held captive by the spell of his music.
“Well done, Declan.” The teacher finally speaks. “I love how you take on board the notes I gave you after your last composition. Your song writing ability is coming along nicely, but I would like to see you push yourself even further. I think the next assignment will do just that. You may go back to your seat.”
Girls are practically swooning as Declan picks up his guitar and comes to sit next to me at the back.
“Hi,” he whispers to me and I turn to see his face super close to mine. His brown eyes almost have streaks of green and blue in them, like a paintbrush has lightly skimmed those colours across his eyes. “Good to see a new face to brighten up the place.”
I am about to reply when Mr Metcalf calls my name.
“And our disruptive newcomer must be Ivy Archaic.”
I feel my face go an even deeper red than before as everyone turns in their seats to stare at me.
“Y-yes. That’s me,” I say, clearing my throat. “Sorry. I got lost.”
“Well, see that it doesn’t happen again.” He tuts disapprovingly. “We have a lot to get through and if you’re late again, I will request you leave the class so as not to disturb the more dedicated students. Be more organised in the future.”
“Yes, sir.” I slide down in my chair, wishing the ground would open up and swallow me whole as some of the other students laugh at my misfortune.
“Now, it is my understanding that you have already done some study for this course. Is that right, Ivy?” he asks.
“Yes,” I reply. “I was doing an online course before I came to the Academy.”
“Hmmm.” It is clear Mr Metcalf is less than impressed by the concept of online tuition. “I think you’ll find my standards are a little more rigorous than some internet teachers. I warn you now, if you cannot keep up, you’ll need to transfer to an easier subject. I don’t tolerate any slacking off in my class. So I think it best that you show me what you’ve got. If you’re not good enough to be here, it’s better we all know now so we don’t waste anyone’s time, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I guess.” I was beginning to regret not choosing art.
“So come on up. We’ve been working on original compositions. I would like to hear something of yours.”
“But I didn’t bring my guitar,” I confess.
“You can borrow mine,” Declan offers, holding it out to me with curious eyes. “Show me what you got, new girl.”
“There you go, Miss Archaic. You have no excuse. Let’s see whether you are good enough to be one of my students.”
Taking Declan’s guitar with a grateful smile, I make my way to the front of the class and sit where he had been sitting. I strum a couple of random chords to get a feel for his instrument while I debate what to sing. Something tells me this is the toughest audience I would ever face and right now all of my songs seem utterly inadequate.
“Come on, Ivy. We haven’t got all day,” barks Mr Metcalf. “There’s the door if you’d prefer to give up now.”
Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes and let my fingers run over the strings in a complicated melody. This is a song which always got a good reaction whenever I performed it–it sounds way more impressive than it actually is. Years of practise means it is very easy to play, but to the untrained ear, it sounds like I was pretty damn good.
The complex accompaniment is offset by a relatively simple tune which showcases the best of my vocal ability. I don’t have the biggest range, but I know how to work with what I had.
Swaying, I lost myself in words which had been inspired by the fear I felt knowing I wouldn’t be in the care system for much longer and would have to take responsibility for my own life. Most people thought I was singing about a boy who’d broken my heart, but it’s about me.
“You say we should fly away
When my heart tells me I should stay
And now I’m on my own, pretending I’m alright.
You say I will be okay.
That I will always find the best way,
And I suppose that you are right.
Now I’m on my own tonight.”
When I finish, I wince as I open my eyes, bracing myself for Mr Metcalf’s reaction.
“Not bad,” he conceded. “Perhaps you have some promise tucked away underneath all that pretension.”
“Pretension?” I try to stay respectful to a teacher who is clearly looking for any excuse to throw me out of his class, but I had just laid my soul bare to a room full of hostile strangers and this is his reaction? “I wrote that song from my heart.”
“And that’s exactly the attitude you need to move past,” Mr Metcalf states. “When we create music, we are expressing our soul, yes, but all too often we allow our emotions to cloud our judgement. We fool ourselves that because something has meaning to us, it therefore has meaning to our listeners. This is not always the case. I’m going to give you the same advice I gave Declan a moment ago. Push yourself outside your comfort zone. You can go a lot deeper than those superficial lyrics and you’re going to need to if you want to excel. You may return to your seat.”
Grateful to be out of the spotlight, I head back to my seat, handing back Declan’s guitar with a whispered thank you.
“Now then,” says Mr Metcalf. “For your next composition assignment, I want you to find a partner. You’re going to work together to create a piece of music. It can be a song or purely instrumental in any style of your choosing, whether that be classical or contemporary. But I want it to be completely collaborative, the pair of you working together to bring out the best in each other. I am familiar enough with all your styles to be able to identify if one of you slacks off, with the exception of Miss Archaic, but I’m sure as Head Girl we can trust her to respect the requirements of the assignment.
“What you are aiming for is to deliver something which is greater than the sum of its parts, the pair of you working to both your strengths to create something neither of you can come up with alone. You will spend the rest of this lesson planning out your ideas and then your homework will be to finish the composition. I leave it to you to decide who you’d like to work with.”
Great. Just what I need–having to work with one of these stuck-up preppy snobs. I am going to be the last one picked, just like in PE class yesterday. Not that throwing a ball between two people really needed much skill, nor was it enjoyable.