✏️ Under One Roof

29. One Coincidence

"You said," Tegan said, shaking her head. "I should have recognised the sound, I was only thinking about it recently. One of your housemate's friends, right? Plays the bagpipes, and is looking for a band."

"I think it's more like Brit's friend's brother's flatmate," Theo answered. "But yeah. I was just talking about him, how everybody wants to be in a rock band these days even if their instrument isn't one you'd expect to be suitable. Maybe I should call Dean back, see if he can put you in touch with the guy."

"Might be good," Tracer said with a nod. "Realistically, we'll probably need to be a bigger band than the original anyway. Learning so many different instruments would be a big challenge for anyone."

"Yeah," Tegan nodded. "I was kind of thinking about that. Maybe it would be better to have as many members as we need for all the instruments. And then for the tracks that don't have a piper part, this guy could be in a kind of background chorus. Everybody has their chance to shine. And we... Okay, I really want to keep thinking about this. But this isn't band time, there's only two of us here. Unless the karaoke gang want to join the band too. But right now, we need to go see if Ness is joining us."

"Good point," Theo said. "If we're meeting him in Gaim Park we should probably have set off a couple of minutes ago. Let's get moving."

Nobody suggested leaving Ness to his own devices; even Tegan realised that she had to give him a chance. And she really didn't have to worry about any more pranks, because she had her secret weapon to protect her. She could take the high road, be nice to him, and hope that for once he wasn't going to throw it back in her face.

It did take a couple of minutes to get to Gaim Park, but Tegan wasn't surprised to see Ness sitting on a bench exactly where her dad had said he would be. People were walking in all directions; some of them filtering out of the day's last lectures in swarms, while many more were eating as they walked, and some were already setting off on whatever their plans for the evening were. Ness just sat there, staring into space. The only sign of life was his fingers drumming on the bench beside him, maybe composing music in his mind.

"I don't know if he'll be interested," she said to Theo. "He's kind of antisocial, don't think he'd be comfortable hanging around in a group where he's not in charge. But I promised my dad we'd at least offer."

"I'm sure we can redeem him," Linus said, and Tegan was immediately struck by worry that he would take Ness's side; believing whatever rumours her brother might come up with. The boys had always been more inclined to believe whatever Niles and Randy had said about her at school, too. But she didn't want to become as bad as he was, and she already knew that it could be just as easy to lose friends through being too suspicious. She wanted to give Ness a chance to behave, and promised herself that she wouldn't try to drive him away as long as he seemed to be acting reasonably. Maybe Theo had been right, and the right environment could really help him to grow out of whatever emotional problems he still had.

"Ness?" she said, walking closer. They were coming from the teal zone, so he was facing away from them, and didn't seem to have realised anyone was there until Tegan spoke. "Hey, Dad said you've got a couple of hours to kill. He asked me to come over and invite you to join us. We're going for karaoke this evening, not a big deal but... you want to come along? I don't think I ever heard you sing, but I think there's a whole range of talent in the group."

She blushed slightly as she said that. She knew that her own voice would be one for her friends to laugh at; she'd done a good deal of vocal training in an attempt to add one more instrument to her repertoire, but had never managed to be anything other than awful. She could perform technically, and probably hit all the right notes in the right order, but her lyrics always sounded too clinical and emotionless to her own ears, and so she'd been too embarrassed to let the other members of her band hear her sing. Tracer would hear her now, and she could only hope that his own weakness with high notes would keep him from openly laughing at her. In fact, now she thought about it, the two who were actually in a band would probably be the weakest singers in this group. Was that ironic, or just sad?