Chapter 12. Learn To Do It
"Dude, you got it!"
Vert looked up from his music to see Zoom smiling at him. He blinked in surprise. Had he really? This was only the fourth practice he'd had with Zoom so far, and he didn't think he had been doing that well. The look on Zoom's face said otherwise.
"Really?" He asked Zoom. "Because I still got lost halfway through."
"Yeah," Zoom said. "But you got back on track when you realized where we were. You know what that means, right?"
"No?"
"It means you know the music, Vert. The extra practice is working."
Vert thought about the hours spent working on this music. Between practice with BF5 and Zoom, almost all of his free time lately had been dedicated to three specific songs. Sure, there were others he was supposed to learn as well, but these three were the Most Important according to Stanford.
The challenge in Hallelujah had come in the second verse of the song when he was no longer singing the melody he was familiar with, but had been banished to the very bottom of his register so Sherman could take over the melody. Vert didn't even know he could sing that low. He'd never tried. That, and the only person whose line had some consistency was Spinner's. Everyone else was jumping all over the place, switching who sang what on which verse, and when something went wrong it was chaos. But Zoom said he'd held his part this time.
The very thought of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy activated Vert's fight or flight response, and not just because of the absolute ridiculous choreography Stanford had planned. Unlike Hallelujah, he was singing actual words for most of the song, but the rapid pace at which they were going by gave him whiplash worse than when AJ turned corners. They had been practicing it considerably slower than what they were supposed to, but at least he wasn't tripping over words anymore. He was till tripping over his feet on the step-touch, however. Also, he was pretty sure Zoom had started speeding it up and not saying anything to see if he noticed.
Jolene was the kind of song that made Vert want to grab Dolly Parton by the shoulders and tell her to get a handle on her man. Viv too for that matter, since she was essentially Dolly at the moment. It was like Spinner had said, either she and Sherman were actually that oblivious, or they were secretly married and love watching everyone else suffer. There was no in between. The song itself was actually pretty easy as far as music went, it was just that he hated it.
Zoom scooted closer to him, still smiling brightly. Vert's breath caught in his throat, and he really hoped Zoom didn't notice how obvious it had been. He promised himself he wouldn't do anything until after the competition so that way Stanford wouldn't kill him. But with each practice he found himself falling for Zoom a little bit more, and suddenly that promise was very difficult to keep. He didn't want to fuck this up, but he was absolutely fucked. It made him think that maybe there was a reason Sherman and Viv hadn't done anything about their extremely obvious feelings for each other.
"Wanna do a run through of everything and see what happens?" Zoom asked.
Vert nodded slowly, rising to his feet with Zoom beside him.
They sang through everything without stopping, even attempting to do the choreography on Boogie Woogie. By the time they were finished, both were out of breath. Zoom's smile had somehow grown impossibly wider.
"I can't wait to see Stanford's face at practice" tomorrow."