Tenney in the Key of Friendship

Really Listen

The next day, Jaya arrives at school with a stack of flyers she’s designed for the book drive, announcing in splashy lettering that donated books will help rebuild a school in Bangladesh, with an illustration of Mina and her classmates at their school. Tenney gushes that it looks amazing and wishes Mina could see it, so Holliday suggests emailing her a copy. Jaya lights up and high fives Holliday, and Tenney feels a small pang of being left out before she pushes the feeling away.

The three roam the halls taping up flyers around the building, and Tenney recounts her disastrous jam session with Logan, expecting Jaya to share her outrage. Instead, Jaya points out that if Portia and Zane liked what Logan was doing, maybe his ideas are worth considering. Frustration flares in Tenney. Logan doesn’t understand her song, and she won’t let him ruin it.

Holliday and Jaya push back, and Tenney’s patience breaks, snapping that Jaya can’t understand because she doesn’t even play music. Jaya goes quiet and hurt, and Tenney regrets it instantly, but before she can apologize, Holliday jumps in with a plan to recruit more collectors. She names Charlie Wakida, who offers to collect from the senior center, and Tara Higgins, who’ll cover the post office and grocery store.

Jaya and Holliday plan the Friday work session while Tenney tapes posters in silence, getting only half-hearted nods when she tries to rejoin. Finally Jaya asks, pointedly, whether Tenney can really handle showing up given how busy she is, and Holliday agrees smugly. Tenney insists that of course she’ll be there.

That evening, a cymbal crash, the alert tone Tenney assigned to Logan’s texts, rings out as she and Aubrey set the dinner table. He’s sent an MP3 link with a note: “So you can hear my vision.” It opens with percussion, then a fuzzy guitar, and Tenney’s stomach drops as she recognizes her own melody warped into something new, Logan’s growly voice belting the first verse. Furious, she declares he had no right to change everything without asking first.

Mason squeezes past Mom, who’s dicing carrots by the stove. He admits the song doesn’t sound like Tenney but isn’t bad, and Mom agrees. The longer it plays, the angrier Tenney gets, and she begs Mom to let her call Portia before dinner.

Upstairs, Tenney unloads on Portia about Logan taking her song and doing whatever he wanted with it. Portia tells her that collaborating doesn’t mean she has to like him, only that they both respect the music, and that she needs to set her emotions aside and really listen to what he’s bringing to the song, not just assume he’s ruining it. Portia adds that really listening means hearing somebody else’s point of view.

Alone afterward, Tenney gets a second text, an isolated drum track for practicing along. She plays it on guitar without singing first and notices the song feels angrier and bolder than the ballad she wrote, though not entirely awful. She restarts the track and sings this time, the driving beat pushing her voice rougher as she works through her bottled-up frustration at Holliday, at Jaya, and at herself. By the end of the first verse she realizes she likes it. By the end, she feels like she’s just stepped off a roller coaster, emotionally spent but relieved. She’s certain this rock version of “Where You Are” is good, and she can’t wait to play it again.