“I’m sitting in for my dad until he gets here,” Brandon told them. “But I’ve done it before. Chase, you’ve actually sat in a few times, too. So... Sky. You ready for this?”
She smiled sweetly. “As ready as I’ll ever be,” she assured them.
Mark Reynolds, slim, wiry and with his own full head of snow-white hair, touched her gently on the shoulders.
“Your dad will be smiling from heaven,” he said softly.
“Thanks for that. So...”
“Hey, Chase has been the drummer before, and you’ve played and sung for your dad before, and Brandon sits in, too, so it’s just darned cool we’re together and doing this. Think about it! Your dad would be seventy-five, and he created the band in the seventies, several decades of music. We’re pretty darned...”
“Old?” Brandon suggested dryly.
“Hey!” Chris protested, glaring at his son when he arrived.
“Sorry, Dad!”
“Jagger is still older. Sir Paul McCartney is older! We’re classic rock,” Chris said.
“Classic, okay!” Brandon teased. “Come on, my fellow generationers,” he begged. “Help me out here.”
“Oh, hell no, you’re on your own!” Chase teased.
“Right. Age is all in the mind, and you’ve got a young mind, right, Dad?”
“Yeah. The mind is still young. The knees—not so much. But when the music is going...I’m young at heart.”
“Right. And whatever! Let’s go. I’ve got a list. We’ll start with ‘Rock the World.’ And go, go, go!” Mark said.
Chase slid onto the stool behind the drum set, Joe moved over to the keyboards, and the others picked up their instruments.
Sky knew the songs. She feared, though, that she’d be awkward, that her timing would be off...that something wouldn’t be right.
But she moved her fingers over the opening chords and slid easily into one of Skyhawk’s most popular songs.
“ROCKING THE WORLD, in the best way, come on,
I say, let’s make her the very best today.
There was a time my soul was sad, out there everything was bad,
in a world so bad, let’s change the fad, it’s time, it’s time, it’s time, today,
because we are the way.
In a world of troubles, we can hit a few doubles,
being the good
the way that we should.
Now my heart sings as I rock the world, rock the world, rock the rockin’ world!”
FAST, WITH GREAT riffs and a drum solo, it was one of the songs that could just about wake the dead and cause the staidest human being to dance or, at the very least, wriggle in a chair to the music.
Chase killed the drum solo.
She picked up with the second verse, thinking of the person her father must have been back in 1974. He’d fallen into a horrible place but come back from it, even through war and the horror of seeing friends blown to bits. But he was determined, as he had once told her, that the more good done in the world, the less the bad could conquer.
She sang the second verse, and they held a long note before the drums slammed in for the crescendo.
And while Chris Wiley was playing his guitar, Brandon was at a mic for backup on the chorus refrains, and to Sky’s surprise, the signature song went off without a hitch.
They were all silent.
“The rest of this can’t possibly go so well,” Joe Garcia said, shaking his head. “Wow.”
“Onward,” Mark said.
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Joe agreed.
“No, I meant ‘Onward’ is the next song on the list,” Mark said dryly.
“Onward and onward,” Sky said, surprised that, once again, her fingers moved over her father’s guitar strings, and the words came swiftly to her lips.
There were a few snags, a few suggestions from one band member to another, and a little reworking, but for the most part, they sailed through the rehearsal.
And they were shockingly good, in sync.
