Significance (4th in the Encore!!! tour)

Chapter Eight

Brighton Andrews' POV

As she did with essentially everything, Brielle had gone overboard.

Instead of a three-bedroom apartment, we had our very own penthouse, courtesy of McDonough Studios. Six months ago, if someone had said I would be living in the Big Apple with my two best mates, I would have laughed them off. Six months ago, I was still in England and I did not have mates, much less two as close as these crazies.

Adele did have her own room, which left Meth in a predicament. He could either stay with Ames, "jeopardizing her honor," or he could have his own room. Considering they had been sharing a room since Amy's mom kicked her out, and none of us honestly cared (it was more natural to see them together rather than apart), he stayed. That way, we had a guest room. Not that we were expecting many guests. Amy's mom disowned her, Meth's dad was out of the picture, and my mom was really busy working. She was a very (did I mention very?) popular novel writer. There was no place in the world where I could go to get away from seeing "Bryony Andrews" plastered on every bookshop window. And it's not as if she was a mystery or science fiction writer, oh, no. She was a romance writer.

Her newest book was due to the editors in a few weeks. Besides, having the house to herself meant that she could have peace and quiet.

My job, along with Meth, was to move furniture according to Brielle's wishes (Amy and Adele had gotten off easy, all they had to do was make the five beds). I took off my shirt before we even started, and Meth followed suit halfway through. For December, it was pretty warm in NYC. So after we finally moved the last couch into place, both of us fell onto it in order to rest for a moment.

"Oh, hush! Neither of you are actually tired, look at all that muscle," Brielle teased, poking both of us in the stomach, missing our abs completely. "Oops, my mistake. Just flab."

"Now, see here, woman..." I started to get up and protest but Meth pulled me back down roughly. Before I knew it, we were wrestling on the floor. The thing to stop us was Adele running in and launching her chubby, strawberry blonde self right on top of us. "Ouch. Adele, you must be growing up. You are getting really big," I teased as my best mate and I lay side by side on the fuzzy green carpet, playing with the baby who stood on our stomachs.

"Yup! I'm a big girl!" She crowed, doing some kind of dance that just looked insanely adorable. "I'm a big girl! I'm a big girl!"

Brielle just laughed at us from the kitchen and Amy peeked her head out of the room she shared with Meth to smile at us. We were the perfect family.

Later on that day, after we put everything where we wanted it to be, Amy, Meth and I headed to the Studio that was only a few blocks away. This was not as productive as we had hoped, considering people stopped us every three seconds to ask for autographs.

"Significance" had been dropped as our first single. Instead of a music video, Terra decided we should do a lyric video, so a lot of stills were strung together with the words to make up a very intense video. The ratings had skyrocketed, the song was playing on the radio... It was crazy. But it hadn't occurred to us that people would recognize us. It was so humbling to have all of these people treat us as if we were famous. Well, actually, now we were famous!

Finally making it to the Studio's glass doors, we closed the world out behind us. We had been writing like crazy to finish our EP album with five tracks on it, and we were just finishing up the last one. Amy was not the only writer, but she was the best with words, so she would take the idea and fix it so it made sense in this warped version of English that these Americans have.

The last song to finish was "Unique". No matter what we did to the lyrics, they did not say what we wanted them to say, yet, and it was driving us all mental. We had even pulled in some of the interns, and they knew what we were getting at but no one had the words for it.

Amy stood up suddenly off the couch and got a new piece of paper.

"Alright, guys, this is what we're going to do. I am going to go downstairs and kidnap two of the interns. We're going to do this more in depth than what we've been doing. Let's use actual fans' stories instead of this generalized ridiculousness." Her eyes looked stormy from frustration. "I have two in mind, and I think it should work. I will ask Terra about rights to their stories later, but this is my last idea to get this to work." Meth started playing around with the chords we had chosen again, seeing if he could pull anything from it.

When my strawberry blonde best mate returned, she had Alice and Zach in tow, two of the interns who knew the sound booth really well.

"Alright, now, Alice... I want you to tell the guys what you told me," she asked gently, sitting down on the ground with the electric keyboard on the coffee table. The blonde girl looked at us with wide, grey eyes.

"I was telling Amy about how, in freshman and sophomore year, the political debate team wouldn't let me compete because I was a blonde cheerleader," she informed us. "It was completely stereotypical, but they didn't ever give me a chance and I never competed for the school."

"But... she did go on to compete on a regional team, and won several trophies and medals and just did a spectacular job in general," Amy elaborated, giving the intern a side hug. "And Zach, here, transferred schools mid-year and they wouldn't let him on the football team because he's so skinny. They didn't even check to look that he had been at States three years in a row and had some pretty amazing stats."

"Yeah, I play on an out-of-school team now, so I can still be scouted for college," the brown-eyed boy told us, running a hand through his hair.

"So you went around the status quo and went on to do what you love anyway, regardless of what people told you was possible," I summed up, seeing where Amy was going with this. "I have lyrics now, let us see how they work."

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"...I know that we've said / you need to be significant / and then you'll see the change in your life. / Remember, change starts with you, / to thine own self be true, / be the unique person you are inside..." I rapped the bridge, leading us back into the chorus.

We were recording with the lyrics I had written, and Josh was listening in on the session. When we finished up the final chords, everyone who had come to listen stood up and clapped. Josh high fived each of us as we came out of the booth.

"Guys, that was great! The personal stories you threw in there were exactly what was needed. And that first line, 'Stick on stars and music boxes / soothe the girl to sleep'? Absolute gold! You guys have officially finished your EP!" The rest of the room cheered and I took a second to soak it in. We had done it!

"Final wrap up tomorrow afternoon and then Terra will take over for publicity," Josh announced, attempting to dramatically sweep out the door like a vampire.

He miscalculated and hit the doorframe.

"Good night, New York!"