Everyone has a song that captures who they are. No one but Leila Gonzalez can hear them.
Melodies and tunes fill her head everywhere she goes, and all she wants is to replicate them in her songwriting. There's just one problem: she sucks at songwrit...
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TWO WEEKS LEFT. Leila breathed in and out as she stared at the pink pony calendar hung on Elisa's side of the room. Sweat formed on top of her eyebrows as she imagined herself on stage in front of a huge crowd.
She could barely manage a word in front of her classmates back in school. How would she sing a full-blown song? A song that wasn't even finished yet. She pinched the bridge of her nose as the familiar spell-binding tune crept up into her head.
"Mom?" She spoke up without even looking.
"I don't know how you can always tell who's coming." Leila turned to find her mother leaning against the door frame. "Nervous about your performance?"
Leila nodded, and her mother spread her arms wide. She wasted no time in stepping between them and burying her face into her shoulder.
"You're going to do so great, Leila," Mom said. Her song twinkled in her head, dimming in volume so as to allow her mother's external words to gain the full spotlight. "We're so proud of you."
Leila stepped away, holding onto her hands. "I just don't know how to feel."
"They're just jitters," she reassured her. "Vas a estár de lo más bien."
"I hope so."
"Are you going out today to work on your performance?" Her eyebrows furrowed in the same way Leila's did, like she wanted to hide the frown but it still went through.
"Yeah," Leila turned to her guitar case on top of her bed, "Neil told me to meet him in Townsquare today."
"You be careful, alright?"
She nodded, and they embraced one more time.
LEILA TRUDGED UP TO Townsquare with her headphones plugged into her ears. She wasn't in the mood to deal with absolute noise. The guitar melody Neil made blared inside, counteracting everyone else's song that tried to infiltrate her senses despite her best efforts.
She kept her eyes peeled, hoping to find Neil quickly. Alas, that wasn't in the cards as she sat down at a lonesome bench like she always did when she visited the place.
Although the morning brought a bright sunshine, clouds plagued the sky in the afternoon. She welcomed the shade as she scrolled through her phone, debating whether or not to text Neil that she was there. The melody played on loop inside her ears as a pair of worn-out Converse came into view.
Leila looked up at Neil, who wore dark shades over his eyes.
"Wanna go somewhere more private?" He asked. She didn't respond, but gave him her hand. That grin of his appeared as he helped her stand up, already picking up her guitar case without another word.
He led her to a secluded area in Townsquare, away from the center plaza. She pulled out her headphones to find silence greeting her once again. Neil plopped down on a patch of bright green grass and patted the space beside him.
"We'll be performing here soon," he said, taking off his shades. "The stage is gonna be built right here."
Leila looked around and found that he was right. That was where they always built the big stage. Her leg began to shake as she imagined how it would be like, overlooking the rest of Townsquare.
"Relax, Leila, you'll do fine," Neil said. "We're gonna blow them all away."
"You're too confident for your own good," she replied.
"Confidence is the best armor." He winked at her.
She pulled out her guitar and her notebook. Neil took the liberty of going through her words, reading any new additions she might've done since the last time they saw each other: the day before. Leila tuned her guitar and strummed a few chords.
For the first time ever, the basic chords came out sounding how they were supposed to on her first try. Although she was still a beginner, Neil began to teach her the pentatonic scale, solely for the purpose of their performance. Apparently she needed to know how to riff onstage if they wanted to show a good performance.
Thus far, she could only play the E minor pentatonic scale, and it only came out as it was supposed to every once in a while. How she was going to play guitar at the music festival was beyond her, but Neil tried his best.
The day before, he started teaching her the melody for their song. Even if she didn't know the theory behind it, he wanted her to at least know what she had to do for the performance. He still slipped in the theory regardless.
"A smile in the dark, everyone screamed stop, but I threw my arms around you?" Neil looked up from her notebook. She faltered in her chords. "This is gonna be dope."
Leila flushed and shook her head. "It was nothing."
He leaned back, reading the rest of her words as if he wished to inhale them all.
"Screw the world but you," he went on reading another lyric. "Leila Gonzalez, now you're sounding hardcore." He playfully nudged her. She laughed.
They went on to work on the rest of the song. Neil agreed that her latest addition worked better for the bridge as it broke away from the normal flow of the rest of the song. She went over the lyrics, still thinking up ways to fix or change anything.
After an hour of picking at her words, Neil suggested they move on to guitar. She closed her notebook with a sigh and let him lead her into the song.
In her ears, the music sounded fine, but one look at Neil's eyes told her she wasn't doing it right. She stopped playing and gazed at him expectantly.
"What if I just do the simple background while you go off doing your thing?" Leila suggested. "I'll be singing anyway... I'm probably gonna make a thousand mistakes on stage."
He chuckled. "Fine, fine. Stick to the basic melody I taught you."
Leila went back to the guitar and strummed at her strings, letting the soft yet forceful tune come out. Had Neil brought his guitar, they could've made the song come to life.
"Despite your lack of skill, you're advancing a lot," Neil said. Leila shoved him back as he grinned.
"Let's hope this pays off," Leila said.
"It will," he said. "Your lyrics will speak for themselves."
The sky turned a warm orange as the sun started to set. Neil cleared his throat as Leila went on to practice the basic melody. She had two weeks to perfect it.
"Leila?" She looked up at him. "Thank you for giving this a chance."
She smiled. "Not like I had much of a choice, but I'll admit...it has been fun."
"We make a great team, don't you think?" Neil poked at her side, and she giggled. "Why don't we take this great team out for milkshakes, hm?"
"Milkshakes?"
He hummed with a soft smile on his lips.
"Yeah, okay," she agreed. Her chest warmed. "Screw it, right?"
The nerves inside pooled at the bottom of her stomach as he helped her pack up her guitar and notebook. Putting his shades over his eyes, he walked right beside her, their arms brushing with every step. Her skin tingled no matter how hard she tried to be unfazed.
As time went on, she didn't know what was more nerve-wracking: being around Neil or performing at the Hillbourne Music Fest.
