Tenney in the Key of Friendship

Banding Together

The week before the benefit concert races by. Tenney, Jaya, and Holliday spend every free minute planning, while their parents pitch in on logistics. At lunch on Friday, Holliday calls the planning meeting to order in the school library like a seasoned executive. Silver Sun Records is lending 125 folding chairs. Holliday’s dad will have them delivered to Grant’s Music and Collectibles the day before the show. Mom offers to park her food truck outside and donate every dollar of the day’s profits to Mina’s school.

Jaya asks if the crew has heard back from anybody yet in regards to a headliner, and Tenney reports that Portia is in. But she hasn’t heard back yet from Belle. Jaya pushes her laptop across the table, and Tenney logs into her email. A new message from Belle is waiting, and Tenney lets out a noise somewhere between a peep and a squeak before reading it aloud.

Belle remembers her and thinks the benefit sounds wonderful, but she’s on tour in Australia for the next three weeks and can’t make it back in time to perform. She asks Tenney to send updates in case anything changes and to keep using her music to make the world a better place.

Tenney’s heart deflates like a popped balloon. Without Belle headlining, she isn’t sure the concert can raise enough to finish repairing Mina’s school. Jaya points out that Tenney will just have to play a killer set of her own, and Holliday adds, only half-joking, that there’s no pressure at all. Tenney realizes she’d been so hopeful about landing Belle that she never seriously planned her own set. She could play the songs from the artists’ brunch. Except her voice trails off as she pictures Logan.

Tenney admits she can’t imagine playing those songs without him, and Holliday points out the obvious. Why not just ask him? Describing the argument they’d had after the brunch, Tenney realizes how unfair she’d been, making Logan feel like he didn’t deserve to be there. Jaya tells her gently that if that’s how she feels, she owes it to Logan to say so.

The moment school lets out, Tenney calls Ellie, who mentions Logan is already on his way to Shake Rag Studios to rehearse. She begs Dad for a quick detour. He hesitates, worried about leaving Mason alone at the shop with Aubrey. But he relents and gives her ten minutes once they arrive. At the studio, Tenney races through the maze-like hallways and nearly collides with Logan, who looks startled, then annoyed that she’s shown up uninvited. She follows him into his rehearsal room anyway, updating him on the benefit concert and how, with Belle Starr unavailable, it’s come down to just her and Portia.

The more Tenney talks, the more she means it—their music is better when he’s part of it. Logan bristles at being called her backup, but Tenney presses on, that the concert matters more than their egos, and turning down a chance to help people is something he’d regret. Logan asks if she’s really asking him to join, and when she confirms it, he agrees on two conditions. First, she has to stop treating him like backup. Second, once the benefit is over, they go back to working separately, no strings attached. They’ll each be free to write their own songs and book their own shows. Relieved, Tenney shakes his hand and agrees, certain nothing would make her happier.