Chapter 44: Wally's Song.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Fosters.
AN: Please leave lots of reviews. A filler chapter. Decided that I had to put something out while I flesh out the details for the new arc. This chapter takes place two months after the previous chapter.
Connor's POV:
Wally sat in front of us, looking nervous. He had called a meeting with Jude, me, Jax, Austin, Castor, and Jeremy, because he wanted to discuss something with us.
"Why do you look like you're about to pass out?" Jeremy asked, "You don't have to be so nervous, buddy."
"You guys remember the song Nuclear Fire?" Wally asked, "How the lyrics were mine?"
"Yeah, of course we do. We play it at every show." Castor said.
Wally pulled out a small stack of papers and sat them on the table. It took only a few seconds for us to notice that it was sheet music.
"I uh, have been working on this for a while." Wally said, "Since I got adopted. It's taken a long time, I had to learn to play the instruments, but I've almost finished it. Tim helped me with the music. I just need a couple of solos, and I was wondering if you guys would, maybe, help me record it? Uncle Jax, you could write your own solos, you're better at it then I am."
"I'm down." Jax said.
Everybody else nodded.
"I want to sing it though." Wally said, "If that's okay?"
"That's fine, kiddo." I said.
Two weeks later, all the instrumental parts had been recorded, and it was time for Wally to record the vocals. We had called James and had him come down from San Francisco to help us with it. Wally sat inside the sound booth in front of the microphone, looking nervous but eager at the same time.
"What's the title again, Wally?" James asked.
"Broken Child." He responded.
Jude and I shared a look. James looked taken aback.
"Um. Alright, Broken Child, vocals, take one." James said.
Wally took a deep breath as the music started playing through the headphones. When it got to the point in the music where he was supposed to start singing, he started shouting the first verse into the microphone.
"The child is broken,
He's given up hoping
For a home
Where a beating doesn't follow.
The child is broken.
The bruises are a token
Of parents dissatisfaction.
He's emotionless and hollow.
In misery he wallows,
As his pained cries he swallows,
Avoiding excess pain
The rules he sadly follows."
A solo followed, and Wally subconsciously recognized it as one of Jax's solos. It was fast, and complex. When the tempo slowed down, Wally sang the chorus.
"Can you hear me screaming,
Begging you for help?
I can't handle all of this
By my lonesome self.
Alone, he's slowly dying,
Locked away and crying.
God show mercy please?
Show mercy on this broken child."
The music immediately sped up to sonic speed again and Wally shouted the second verse.
"The fires of parents wrath
Rising and smoking.
Smothered is the child.
Hear him choking.
Fighting for his life
Against the evil man and wife.
They've the souls of a demon,
They love to hear him screamin'.
Unless the abuse is uncovered,
And he's finally taken away.
He wonders and he wonders,
Will he live to see another day?"
Again a solo followed before the music slowed down, and Wally repeated the chorus.
"Can you hear me screaming,
Begging you for help?
I can't handle all of this
By my lonesome self.
Alone, he's slowly dying,
Locked away and crying.
God show mercy please?
Show mercy on this broken child."
The music sped up again, and instead of shouting, Wally started screaming the words into the microphone.
"The broken child,
His will as broken as the body,
He gave into temptation,
And gained his liberation.
Swinging from a noose,
His soul was set loose.
The pain he held inside,
Destroyed by suicide.
Rain pours down
And soaks the grave,
Of the child
They failed to save."
The music slowed down again, and Wally growled the final chorus into the microphone.
"Could you hear him screaming,
Begging you for help?
He couldn't handle all of that
By his lonesome self.
Alone, he's slowly died,
Locked away, he cried.
He begged for mercy.
God showed no mercy
For the broken child."
The music stopped. It was at this point that Wally realized that there were tears rolling down his cheeks. He wiped the tears away furiously and quickly left the recording booth. Jude, James and I shared a look.
"Damn." James said, "He's actually a really fuckin' good singer."
"Yeah, damn is right." Jude said in agreement.
"I think that's the first time we've ever got a vocal track perfect in one take." I commented.
The door opened, and Wally stepped inside.
"How'd I do?" He asked, sniffling.
"You okay, buddy?" I asked.
"I think so, yeah. Just... that's the first thing I've ever written that was, ya know, kind of personal." He answered.
"We heard." James said, "You sure you're okay?"
Wally nodded.
"Yeah." He said again.
"Would you cared if we use this on the next album?" Jude asked.
"Go ahead." Wally agreed, "What'd you guys think of the music I came up with."
"For somebody who's never written music arrangements before?" James said, "I was impressed. You did better than Lars and I did with the original version of Hit The Lights."
Wally flushed from the praise.
"Thanks." He said.
"Heck, if you could find members, you could probably have a kick ass band of your own." Jude said.
Wally looked thoughtful about that.
"I don't know. Maybe." He said, "I can play guitar, and Tim plays bass really well. But, I like this, having you guys make my stuff. But having my own band? I don't know. It'd be like Megadeth, it'd have a revolving door lineup with new members every other album."
"Why is that a bad thing?" James asked.
"Yeah, Megadeth is a pretty successful band, if you haven't noticed." I commented.
"Yeah, I have noticed, believe it or not." Wally snarked back, "What, with the millions of copies sold."
"If you do decide to form your own band," Jude said, "As long as you don't start doing drugs, we don't care what you do with it."
"And don't start drinking either." James warned, "Trust me, it's a slippery slope. I've been there. It nearly destroyed my band, don't let it happen to you."
Wally sat there, with a contemplative look on his face.
"I might. I'd have to talk to Tim about it." Wally said.
"Aren't you meeting up with him after this?" I asked him.
Wally nodded.
"Yeah, I should probably get going actually." Wally said, getting up and grabbing his bicycle helmet.
"If you do decide to form a band and record this yourselves, tell us." I said.
"I will. I'll see you guys later."
He walked out and James, Jude and I shared another look.
"And it begins." I said.
Wally's POV:
I rode my bike the ten miles to Tim's house, my dad's and James' words whirling around in my head.
Could I make a band of my own work.
I don't really not know. Not even a little bit. I mean, I had forced myself to learn to play guitar, and I was pretty good at it. Tim had been playing bass guitar since he was six years old. He knew his instrument inside out, backwards, sideways and upside down. We could both write lyrics, and that would only get better with practice.
I rolled to a stop in his garage and dismounted my bike, marching into the house. I quickly noticed that Tim's parents were not home, like they almost never were anymore. I found Tim sitting on the couch, writing something down on a sheet of notebook paper.
"Hey man." He said, not looking up from his writing.
I plopped down next to him and kissed him on the cheek.
"What are you doing?" I asked him.
"Had an idea. Had to write it down." He responded.
"Can I see?" I asked.
He handed me the paper.
"I just started writing it down. So there's not much there." He said.
"Death caused by howitzer's hand
Spreading ruin across the land.
As the government always planned,
Nothing survives to stand." I read.
Immediately, a thought pooped into my head.
"You mind if I add something to this?" I asked.
"Go ahead." He said.
"All the while,
The children are dying
While we are trying
To win a pointless war." I jotted down while reading aloud as I did so.
"Do you know a word that rhymes with traumatize?" He asked me, "I've got this one line that I'm trying to make work."
"What's the line?" I asked.
"When the intent of man's heart is traumatize... but that's all I've got." He said.
"How about... The only course left to take would be to euthanize. Does that work?" I said offhanded.
"Thanks!" He said, "I can't believe I didn't think of that before."
It was in this moment that I realized a band with us in it could work.
"I've got something I want to talk to you about." I said.
Tim looked at me strangely.
"Oh god. What is it? Is it bad?" He asked.
I rolled my eyes at my boyfriend and shook my head.
"It's nothing bad." I assured him.
"Then what is it?"
"How would you feel about forming our own band?" I asked him.
"It'd be cool, but we'd have to hunt down more members." He said, "There's only one other person at school who can play metal lead guitar, and we didn't get along with him very well until recently."
"Oh, yeah. Jason." I agreed, "Our friendship with him is still pretty fragile, I don't know if it would survive being in a band together."
"We could always ask him." Tim said, "But we'd still need a bassist and a drummer. Nobody at school knows how to play them well enough to play the kind of music we're thinking of."
Until recently, Jason Donnovan had been the eternal thorn in mine and Jason's collective side. He was the only person in the world, besides the deceased pedophile that was my former foster father, that I truly fantasized about beating the ever loving shit out of. Constant comments about our sexualities. Constant slurs. Constantly trying to piss either me or Tim off. Constantly spreading rumors, and trying to start fights. It wasn't until a couple of weeks ago that he came up to us and asked to speak to us. He told us that he was sorry that he had been such an ass. When asked why the sudden change of heart, he replied it was because his little brother had just came out, and he realized what an ass he had been to us. It took us a while to really be comfortable around him, and for him to be comfortable around us, but he really isn't that bad of a person to hang around with. He can be a bit obnoxious sometimes, but then again so can everybody else at Anchor Beach.
"We could always check Craigslist." I joked, "There are ads on their for musicians looking for bands to play with.
"I don't know about that, Tim." I said, "Craigslist still has a bad reputation. We know a couple places downtown where bands play. We could always go down on Saturday and poach players."
"I'm not looking to piss off other bands by stealing members..." He started to say.
"Well, we may not have another choice, because I am not going to answer an ad on Craigslist and get myself killed." I said.
"Fine. We'll do it. But if we get into a fight, I'm blaming you." He said.
"Fair enough." I said, "You got anything else to add to this?"
I motioned to the paper with our writing on it.
"Give me a second." He said, and started thinking.
We sat there for a couple of hours, working out the rest of the lyrics before I called Dads and asked them to bring my guitar and amp over so we could jam ideas for the arrangements.
'Yeah,' I thought to myself, 'A band really could work.'
AN#2: Okay so that's the new chapter, please leave tons of new reviews. You people spoiled me on the last chapter. Please keep doing that. It's much appreciated. Also, any ideas are again welcome. I'm almost to chapter 50, and I'm thinking of shooting for chapter 60 before ending the story. Also, if anybody wants to adopt my stupid Terminator/The Fosters crossover, feel free to message me, take it and rip it apart for all I care.
AN#3 August 26th 2015: I decided to begin the revision of Shared. As of today, I have revised and posted eight chapters, one of which is brand new for the revision. If the rewrite goes it's current course, it'll end up having a word count twice that of the original. I am going to be focusing mainly on the rewrite, and I have also decided that I'm going to outline the rest of this story before posting anything else. I have the next four chapters thoroughly outlined, and I am hoping to have the next ten chapters outlined before I start writing chapter 45. In the meantime, check out the rewrite of Shared, and review and tell me your guys' thoughts and ideas.