Page 30 of Second Song

“What will it be converted into?”

“More accommodation for teachers and support staff. We’re expanding.” He pulls back some construction netting to show me where a hole gapes along the roofline. “A storm made that. Now the whole gable is crumbling, so it had to be bumped up the list.” He frowns. “Maybe it really would be better to have you with us at the Rectory. This courtyard will be heaving with builders making noise soon.”

Someone else makes noise once Charles shows me into the main school building. It leads us to the music rooms I’ve visited already, where Charles winces and drumming fires like bullets through a propped-open doorway.

It cuts off abruptly when that older student I last saw building bridges in a sandpit spies us. He shoves off a pair of headphones while clutching drumsticks as if we’re about to steal them, and Charles winces again. “No need to stop, Teo. I’m only showing Mr. Byrn around. I’ll just”—Charles kicks away the wedge holding the door open—“let you practise in peace. That sounded very… enthusiastic!”

I stop the door from closing. “But it could sound better.”

Here I go, making another shit first impression—this student’s features harden. Or they do until I make a suggestion. “How about giving whipping strokes a go?”

Now he looks blank.

“I could show you?”

His body language screams no, silently yelling shut up, which is apt given that’s the title of the song a rapper hisses through his headphones.

I try a different angle. “Or did you want something even more staccato? More attacking?” Because that’s what I’d heard out in the hallway—someone fighting, only with drumsticks instead of their fists, and I remember that reaction to feeling helpless. I don’t know Teo’s reason, but I definitely heard him tiring, his beats lagging.

“This is what I do when I want to keep up that kind of tempo for longer.” I hold out a hand and, for a strained and stretched-thin moment, I don’t think he’ll surrender his sticks to me.

He does, if slowly, and I stand closer, demonstrating differences that make him sit up straighter. I don’t go all out—this doesn’t feel like the moment—but I end with a funky little half-time shuffle, and he smiles for a first time. I hand the sticks back as the song starts over through his headphones, faint but still aggressive, still telling me to shut up.

I don’t.

“Whipping strokes are easier on my wrists. Might be easier on yours too so you can play for longer.”

Teo’s eyes narrow again when I suggest that he move from his stool. “Why?”

“Because you’re way too tall for this setup.” That’s even more obvious when he stands, and I have to look up higher than I did with Liam. “How tall are you?”

“Almost six-four.” His accent is a reminder of a boy I last saw clutching a lamb as closely as Teo now holds his drumsticks.

“Huh. Like Stormzy.” I name the rapper who still spits bullets through his headphones and who Teo’s take-no-shit frown reminds me of so closely. He must take it as a compliment. His dark glare lightens.

“Got another inch to go yet before I’m as tall as him.” He grumbles that, but he stands straighter.

I make one last adjustment to his piecemeal setup. “Now let’s hear what happens when you’ve got room to really let rip. Start over for me?”

He does, and he also opens up about what else he does in here in a practice room that’s seen better days. He points a stick at an iPad. “I’ve been trying to record this solo all morning. Got the guitar part down, and keyboard. Drums?” He shakes his head. “Be easier with an electric kit and a loop pedal.” He turns the iPad to show me the app he’s running.

“GarageBand?”

He nods, almost defensive again as if expecting judgement, his shoulders tense and rising until I say, “That’s what I started recording with too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. You can do a lot with it.” Here’s a truth I never thought I’d see as lucky. “My last school had a professional studio setup.” Now I look around a room that has nothing like it. “What other sound equipment is here?” There’s no sign of any mics, only tangled cables. No monitors or midis. Not a single amp or equaliser, a lack that Teo’s headshake mirrors, prompting an easy offer. “I’ll bring my laptop over sometime if you want. I’ve got software with a few extra features.” At least that’s something, even it isn’t all the state-of-the-art equipment I all but ran away from.

We talk some more, speaking the same musical language before I remember Charles is waiting. Then we head upstairs together.

“Music was our key to Teo,” Charles tells me once we resume our tour of the building. “None of us realised until someone drew what Teo usually keeps so well hidden. And once we saw that drawing, none of us could ignore it.” He stops in a hallway next to one of those old diamond-paned windows. We’re also beside a framed artwork, and here’s Teo again, only whoever sketched him wearing headphones and hunched over an electric guitar didn’t just capture his concentration. They also highlighted what Charles names for me.

“Look at that dedication. That determination. Before seeing this, all I ever saw was Teo not wanting to be here. He kept trying to run back to London until this helped all of us to see him more clearly.” He touches the glass over a calm and focussed version of someone prickly. “A gifted student drew what none of us had noticed, and Luke brought it to the team to come up with ideas to give Teo more chances to feel like this.”

“Ideas like?”

“Like giving him his own key to that practice room.” That’s a blast from my own past. I still have the key to the studio suite at my last school, although I’ll never use it. Here’s another. “And Luke gave him permission to use it every time he felt like running. Just like that, Teo turned a corner.” Charles touches the artist’s signature with the tip of a finger. “Cameron saw what made him tick. Someone else listened and then brought it to the rest of us. None of us can do this without each other. It’s a real team effort, and it’s….”

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