“Um, hey.” What was he doing outside my class? He’d graduated from UCLA a year ago, so there was no reason for him to be here. I conjured up all kinds of horrible scenarios: He wanted to yell at me for touching his guitar. Or I’d broken the drums and now he wanted me to pay for them. Or he just wanted to see what kind of freak played his song from memory.

Calm down, I told myself. Maybe he wasn’t here for me. Maybe he was waiting for Kyle. Yes, that made a lot more sense. Except…Kyle wasn’t in my music history class.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, taking my bag from him.

“Looking for you.” He rubbed the stubble along his chin, like he was thinking. “Kyle told me you play piano, but I had no idea you played guitar, too.”

No one did, other than Carla and Julie. To everyone else, I was geeky Maddie who played piano—and sometimes violin or clarinet—but that was it. Only my roommates knew I practiced guitar for hours in my room, losing myself in the sound of the strings buzzing from my amp until my fingertips were sore and my hands cramped.

“And you can sing, too,” he continued.

All the mortification from the previous night came back and set my cheeks aflame. I couldn’t believe he’d heard me singing one of his songs.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, clutching my bag to my chest. “I shouldn’t have touched your guitar. I don’t know what I was thinking—”

“You’re really good. Do you know all our songs?”

“Yes.” No, wait, why did I say that? Backtrack time. “No. Maybe. I mean, I might.” I tried to shrug casually, like it was no big thing, but I wanted to melt into the linoleum floor, seep into the cracks, and disappear. I prayed for an asteroid to hit the spot I was standing in and wipe me off the face of the Earth, but no such luck.

“I need your help,” he said, fixing an intense gaze on me. “We have a live audition tomorrow for The Sound. Problem is, our bassist quit last night, and we need a fourth member of the band.”

“What?” Was he saying what I thought he was saying? No. Impossible.

“I know—worst timing ever. Can you play bass by any chance?”

“No…”