Big Time by Tom; Ryan Page A

says Macy.
    â€œWow,” I say, after I’ve had time to pick my jaw up off the floor. “That sounds awesome.”
    â€œMost of the time it’s pretty cool,” says Macy. “As long as we get to do stuff like this.”
    â€œMusic, you mean?”
    â€œMusic and sports and stuff that involves other people. Davis is in an amateur radio club with a bunch of middle-aged men.”
    â€œHey,” he says. “It’s fun. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!”
    â€œWhy are you in choral?” Macy asks me. “Have you been doing music for long?”
    â€œNot exactly,” I tell them. “I mean, I’ve been singing my whole life, but I’ve never done any kind of musical training. I guess the real reason I’m doing it is because I auditioned for Big Time and didn’t make it, so I thought I’d try to get some experience this way and maybe audition again next year.”
    â€œWhat’s Big Time ?” asks Davis.
    â€œAre you serious?” I ask. They both look at me with blank faces. “It’s, like, the biggest show on TV . People sing and then judges critique them and then people at home call in and vote for their favorite and then somebody wins and gets a record deal and a car.”
    â€œWe don’t have a TV ,” explains Macy.
    â€œNo offense,” says Davis, “but that sounds awful.”
    We turn and look as Ms. Kogawa and Bernice come around the corner and walk toward us.
    â€œWow,” says Bernice. “You guys are keeners.”
    â€œHow did your sight-reading practice go, Gerri?” asks Ms. Kogawa as she unlocks the door.
    â€œI think it went pretty well,” I tell her.
    Unfortunately, it hasn’t gone quite as well as I’d hoped. Ms. Kogawa wants to use today’s practice to get through four of the songs in our workbook, but after a couple of attempts at starting from scratch, it becomes obvious that neither Tyler nor I can keep up. We revert to our old method, this time with Macy at the piano, and begin to slowly work through the individual parts until we can finally do a full song all the way through.
    It’s a lot slower this way, but it works better, and eventually Tyler and I start to catch on. Still, I’m happy when Ms. Kogawa tells us to have a seat. We’ve been rehearsing for two hours and we’ve only gotten through half the songs we wanted to. I can’t help feeling that it’s at least partly because of me, and Bernice doesn’t help matters.
    â€œIt’s too bad everyone can’t sight-read,” she says. “We’d be able to get through so much more during a rehearsal.”
    â€œYeah, too bad, hey?” says Tyler.
    Bernice doesn’t pick up on his sarcasm. “It’s not your fault, guys,” she says. “It’s just that you don’t have a background in music like the rest of us.”
    I’m getting a little bit sick of hearing Bernice talk about her background.
    â€œWe have a couple of things to consider,” says Ms. Kogawa. “We should really start thinking about developing a performance piece. We’re not there yet, but I think we will be soon, if we all work hard. It would be great to kick off our year with something of our own ready to go.
    We should start thinking about where we might want to have our debut performance too.”
    â€œWhat kind of song are we going to do?” asks Olive.
    â€œUltimately that will be up to you guys,” she says. “But I think it would be fun to do a mashup, where we take two songs and bring them together, so start thinking of some possibilities to discuss next week, and we’ll work from there.”
    â€œHow do you know what songs will sound good together?” asks Macy.
    â€œA lot of it is instinct,” says Ms. Kogawa. “Some songs just sound great together—they have similar tempos and structure. Mood is important too. I