The Truth in the Stars

Part 9: Song

I looked through the list of songs I had compiled. I think I had about one-hundred songs, covering the front and back of two sheets of paper! Songs like Perfect by Ed Sheeran, Someone You Loved by Lewis Capaldi, and Yesterday by the Beatles made up my list. I knew I had to cut down this list to a single song.

Eddie and I were sitting in the Cafeteria trying to eliminate each song. The cafeteria wasn't the quietest place in the school. Red pillars help up the ceiling.  The Eddie had his smartphone out on the red table, and was searching for the songs on the list and playing them.

"This doesn't sound too bad, but Elvis's voice doesn't match yours," he stated.

"Okay, so we can take that one off the list," I said as I put a line through it.

"Why do you have Hallelujah on here?"

"Haven't you ever heard the Tori Kelly version?" I asked.

"No. I'll listen to it."

Before he got to pull it up the bell rang to go to our next class.

"We only got through ten songs!" I cried.

"Relax, we'll work on it while we're running at track."

We didn't have the same class this period so he headed off to the gym, while I had a study hall in the library. I kept looking at my list and thinking about how much longer I would have to spend listening to these songs. With about ninety songs left I would have about five hours of listening to do. I was so focused I didn't realize that Fiona was talking to me.

"Hey, you in there?" she asked as she waved her hand in front of my face.

"Huh? Oh yeah, Sorry. What did you say?" I said as I snapped out of my thoughts.

"I wanted to know if you wanted any help for the talent show? We could go down to the band room right now."

"I could definitely use some help."

We walked down to the band room. It turns out that Fiona was in my study hall the entire time, but she goes down to the band room everyday. She just happened to be bringing up a book to the library when she saw me.

"Do you have a song yet?" she asked.

"That's what this list is for," I responded showing her the list.

"We can cut about half of these songs because you don't know fingerpicking."

"Wait, what's that?"

"It's a different style of playing, where you pluck individual strings instead of strumming."

"Oh. Do you mind crossing those ones off?"

"Yeah."

She began crossing a variety of songs off. I didn't know how she knew which were which. Many of the songs I was strongly considering were crossed off.

"There's only thirty-five left now," she said.

"Thanks. That saved me about three hours!"

"Now, make sure you consider who is singing into which song you pick. I can help if you tell me who it is."

"I'm singing," I announced.

She looked at me for a minute, like she couldn't believe it. When she finally spoke it was to suggest a few songs.

"We can knock off about fifteen of these, since a girl sings these ones," she continued.

By the time my study hall was over we had ten songs left. I was scanning through them all day until school was over. Like always I had track. I met up with Eddie so we could listen to the songs.

"As soon as the coach sends us to run three miles, we'll start," he whispered.

Sure enough a few minutes later our coach had us run three miles. We drifted to the back of the group as we ran on the road. Eddie pulled out his phone.

"Well, I have Mercy, Perfect, I'm Yours, Wanted, Thinking Out Loud, Your Song, Love Yourself, Falling, Ring of Fire, and In My Life left," I stated.

" Let's skip Perfect, because I think it's too slow. Same with Thinking Out Loud," Eddie suggested.

"Ring of Fire might be too deep also."

By the time we finished track practice we had it narrowed down to two songs: Mercy and I'm Yours. It was all up to me now. I spent the whole walk home with Eddie running over the lyrics. If I did decide on I'm Yours then I would have to change some words. I decided that the only way to decide was to practice singing them.

I closed my bedroom door I went over each song twice. I'm Yours didn't have enough lower notes to compliment my voice. Mercy was a better choice because I could stretch to the highest and lowest of the song and I could confidently sing it. I also hoped that the students would enjoy it more because it was newer. I would find out in about two weeks.