Page 51 of Serenade Me

News travelled fast that the guys had gotten out their instruments and were having an impromptu jam session in our first class car. Sebastian and Jez sit on the facing seats while Brad and Marius stand by, shit-eating grins on their faces as they take requests.

“Come on guys! Stump us, give us something hard!” Jez yells out, and someone in the crowd answers with a pair of songs for them to mash-up.

And of course, they kill it every time. They have an innate ability for weeding out the essence of every song, and finding that common thread that two completely different songs will inevitably share. Every song’s DNA is just a combination of those twelve notes, after all.

“Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata in G Minor and Nickelback’s Lips Of An Angel!” I yell out, and they all throw their heads back and groan. I double over in a hysterical cackle at my own evilness, and I’m leaning against the carriage door, holding my stomach, gasping for air.

“You complete and utter witch,” someone yells out over my head and it just makes me laugh even harder. It’s Marius. Who else would it be? I force myself to stand straight so I can watch their torment. He narrows his eyes at me and points his bow in my direction, threateningly.

I waggle my eyebrows and sing the first few lines of the song. I may know my way around a cello, but I was NOT gifted the talent of voice. Marius’s eyebrows spring up and his mouth drops open.

“I know, awesome, right?”

“Uh yeah, I’m… awed, that’s for sure. Like ‘Awwww… God must hate her to have given her a singing voice like that.’”

“Hey!”

“Excuse me, shush, we’re performing now. We Grammy-award-winning artists, that is.”

I poke my tongue out at him.

Which quickly turns into an all out, jaw-on-the-ground, how-the-hell-do-they-do-that expression when they turn my turn songs into a modern day masterpiece.

“I hate you,” I mouth to him when they’re done, the applause so deafening that I worry that the shaking of the train isn’t just from poor engineering.

“No, you don’t,” he mouths back.

And he’s right. What I feel is about the furthest thing from hate that you can feel.

Fuck.

“What’s next?” Brad yells out.

“Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem and Billy Ray Cyrus’ Achy Breaky Heart,” I yell out over the other voices.

All four of their heads whip around, mouths agape.

“FUCKING WITCH!” They yell in unison.

And this time, I laugh so long I actually think I’m going to die from oxygen deprivation to the brain.