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For once in your life, sit still!
Learn from Marie.
She knows when to be quiet—
And if you don't learn fast, you're going to your room.

"Dum, bum. Bum, dum. Da-dum, dum. Duuuum, dum dum."

"That is not helping, Cal."

Callie shrugs. "Sorry. But it's a good baseline."

"It is a good baseline," Marie says, "but you're doing it backwards. We need the words and melody before the background."

Callie grabs a second lollipop and starts drumming the rhythm on the table. "Just because we did it that way for Calamari Inkantation and Ink Me Up doesn't mean we need to do it with everything. Getting a great beat and background and layering things on top of it was terrific for City of Color!"

Marie groans and grabs for her laptop, checking on Agent 3 even though the agent is done for the day. Callie can't blame 3 for taking off early; the Ravenous Octomaw was terrifying. She shrugs and doesn't comment. "Anyway, I was thinking we should tell them we'll release the new song when the Great Zapfish comes back."

Marie closes the laptop and looks at Callie, her eyes gleaming. "That'll buy us an extra week, maybe two, at the rate 3's going."

"Yeah!" Callie pumps a fist in the air. "That way, our new release'll be to celebrate that, and we'll delay it out of concern."

"It also implies our confidence that the Great Zapfish will return," Marie murmurs. "People are starting to get nervous again."

"Yep." Callie stops drumming and kicks her feet up on the table. "Maybe we can get some time off then, too. We had to postpone our planned vacation because of this mess."

Marie screws up her face and drops her voice. "People need familiar faces, now more than ever," she drawls in a passable imitation of their manager. "I'm sorry, girls, but you'll just have to put off your plans."

Callie chuckles. "We'll spend a weekend in Calamari County with our parents, then spend the rest of the week eating junk food and playing turf for the first time in three forevers."

"And then they can visit us the next weekend, and we'll take them to Museum d'Alfonsino and Shellendorf." Marie closes her eyes and stretches. "Maybe get a hotel room for a few days and be really pampered."

"Or take a day trip down to the shore and just lie on our blankets, eating chips and listening to the waves." Callie leans over and pokes her. "You can bring your eight-hundredth novel and I'll bring my sand castle supplies."

Marie brightens. "Remember the time we made that one castle taller than we were?"

"And Unc had to lift you up to put the flag on top!" Callie snickers. "And then we were eating ice cream after-"

"And this freaking ginormous wave came and knocked the whole thing over," Marie says, laughing a little too. "Man, I miss those days."

"It's why I like the winters here better," Callie says. "Sure, it's colder, but snowmen stay made. No rogue waves with them!" She puts her hands behind her head. "I miss them, too," she says. "And... right now, I really miss spending time with Gramps. He was always with us, on the beach."

"He was," Marie says. "All those memories—oh!" She sits upright. "Callie, Sea Memories! That's what our song should be called!"

Callie sits up, too. "Yeah, we should totally write a song about home! Not sure that flows well, though. Sea, um, Soliloquy?"

"Maybe not sea... ocean? Mariner?"

"Marine time memory," Callie says. She grabs for her notepad—she always does her songwriting on paper—and rips out the page of doodles and failed lyrics. "Let's do this."