The song was born on a Tuesday, in the quiet space between a half-finished history essay and the fading sweetness of an afternoon popsicle.

Ryan sat cross-legged on his bedroom floor, acoustic guitar resting against his knee, fingers circling the same simple, melancholic progression. It wasn’t fancy. It didn’t need to be. The chords felt like breathing.

Words came easily. Too easily.

A lonely boy in a library.

A shy kid pressed against a locker.

The boy he used to be — small, quiet, trying not to take up space.

It was fragile.

It was honest.

It scared him a little.

When he finally played the rough sketch for Jude, the room changed temperature.

Jude had been sprawled on the floor, surrounded by comic books, half-listening. Somewhere between the second verse and the chorus, he sat up.

“Ash,” he said quietly.

Ryan’s fingers faltered. “What?”

“That’s… it,” Jude said. Not loud. Not dramatic. Certain. “That’s the one.”

Ryan blinked. “The one?”

“The one we submit to the Showcase.”

Ryan’s blood went cold.

The Showcase. The annual parade of confidence and polish. Bright lights. Big smiles. Safe songs that didn’t ask too much of anyone.

“You want me,” Ryan said slowly, “to sing that on a stage?”

Jude grinned, already reaching for his guitar. “Not just you. Us. “I’ll handle the arrangement,” Jude said, “enough to make it hold together.” You just sing.”

Ryan opened his mouth to say no.

Absolutely not.

Never happening.

But Jude said, gently, “We do it together.”

That word lodged somewhere dangerous.

So Ryan nodded, even though it felt like stepping off a ledge.

The weeks that followed were a creative honeymoon.

Jude took Ryan’s fragile acoustic sketch and built a world around it. A driving electric line. A bassline that anchored the sadness instead of drowning in it. Drums that pulsed like a heartbeat.

Ryan’s room became a studio. Cables everywhere. Lyric sheets taped to the walls. Doritos used as conflict resolution.

They fought over one impossible chord.

One afternoon, Ryan was singing the bridge, his voice instinctively small, tucked inward the way it always was. Halfway through the line, Jude stopped playing.

He didn’t interrupt.

He didn’t correct him.

He just waited.

Ryan frowned, confused. The silence pressed in.

He took a breath. Looked at the wall instead of Jude. Then, without fully understanding why, he pushed — not harder, just deeper. From somewhere lower. From his diaphragm, like Jude had been telling him.

The note came out louder than he expected. Not polished. Not controlled. But real.

It rattled the snare drum in the corner.

Ryan startled, then laughed, breathless.

Jude’s face split into a grin.

“There he is.”

It wasn’t stage-ready. It wasn’t perfect.

But it was the first time Ryan had heard his own voice echo back at him.

They kissed between takes.

They laughed more than Ryan thought was possible.

For the first time, Ryan wasn’t writing from pain.

He was writing through it.

They called the song “Panic in the Hallway.”

It felt untouchable.

When the email arrived, Ryan opened it without fear.

That was his first mistake.

Dear Mr. Hayes,

Thank you for your submission to the Northbridge Showcase. After careful review, the committee has decided to decline the piece at this time. While we appreciate the artistry, the panel felt the submission’s “persistent melancholic tone — particularly language centered on disappearance, withdrawal, and identity loss — is not suitable for a family-oriented program”. We encourage more uplifting or broadly accessible themes. If you wish to submit a revised piece by the updated deadline, we will reconsider.

Ryan stared at the screen.

the bottom of the email, one line sat heavier than the rest.

Revised submissions must be received within seven days.

One week.

Not enough time to write a new song.

Barely enough time to save this on.

They hadn’t said anything about lyrics.

They hadn’t mentioned appropriateness.

They hadn’t named the thing he’d been bracing for.

They just didn’t want a sad song.

The static crept in anyway.

When Jude arrived later, Ryan didn’t explain. He just handed him the phone.

Jude read the email once. Then again. His jaw tightened.

“‘Melancholic tone,’” Jude said flatly. “‘Not family-oriented.’ Translation: they don’t want a downer killing the vibe of their opening-night party.”

“So we’re done,” Ryan said, the words spilling out bitter and fast. “I can’t write a happy song, Jude. That’s not what this is.”

Jude paced, running a hand through his hair. “We could fight it. Take it to the board.”

Ryan watched him, but the idea of fighting made his chest close in. Fighting meant explaining. Explaining meant exposure.

He looked at his guitar.

At the lyrics.

At lines about hiding, about fearing the light.

Then something clicked.

“No,” Ryan said.

Jude stopped pacing. “No?”

Jude stared at the notebook.

“We can’t change the lyrics, Ash,” he said quietly. “If we take the pain out, there’s no song left.”

Ryan didn’t argue. He looked back at the email, rereading the same line.

Melancholic tone. Loss. Self-erasure.

“We don’t take the pain out,” Ryan said slowly. “We camouflage it.”

Jude blinked. “What?”

Ryan grabbed a pencil and leaned over the lyrics.

“Look,” he said, tapping the page. “This line. ‘I want to disappear into the gray.’ That’s what they hate. That’s too honest.”

He crossed it out and scribbled above it.

I want to drive away today.

Ryan flipped back through the page, faster now.

“Here too,” he said. “‘I fold myself smaller.’ That becomes ‘I’m learning when to leave.’

And this one — ‘I vanish when they look my way’ — we make it ‘I keep moving anyway.’”

He paused, chewing the pencil.

“No disappearing. No shrinking. No erasing.”

He scanned the rest of the lyrics once more, hunting for anything that sounded like hiding, like fading out, like being less than a person — and sanded every sharp edge down just enough to pass inspection.

Jude frowned. “That sounds… generic.”

“Exactly,” Ryan said, eyes lighting up. “To them, it’s a road song. A breakup song. A coming-of-age thing you play with the windows down.”

He flipped the page, already moving.

“We don’t say hiding. We say leaving.

We don’t say panic. We say motion.

We don’t say depression. We say distance.”

Jude reread the page, tapping a faster rhythm against his knee.

“But we still know what it means,” Jude said slowly.

Ryan nodded. “We always will.”

Jude’s mouth curved into a grin.

“A Trojan Horse.”

Ryan picked up his guitar and strummed the progression again — faster this time. Brighter. The sadness didn’t disappear. It moved.

“We hide the truth inside a summer bop,” Ryan said. “They’ll be dancing too hard to notice what we’re running from.”

And we don’t submit it under the same name,” Jude added. “New tempo, new skin, new title.

Jude grabbed his guitar, laughing under his breath.

“Ryan Hayes,” he said. “That’s evil.”

Ryan smiled — not small this time.

“Let’s do it.”

They didn’t sleep much after that.

Seven days collapsed into a blur of rewrites and rewiring. Jude rebuilt the song from the inside out — tempo pushed faster, drums tightened, guitars sharpened until the sadness learned how to run instead of sink.

It still wasn’t clean. The transitions were rough. One harmony never quite landed.

Ryan rewrote until the words stopped bleeding on the page. They circled lines. Argued over syllables. Cut whole verses at 2 a.m. and stitched new ones together before sunrise.

The song stayed the same length.

The feeling didn’t.

By the fourth night, Ryan’s voice was raw. By the sixth, Jude was counting beats on the wall with his eyes closed.

On the seventh night, they listened back in silence.

It wasn’t perfect. But it was solid. And more importantly — it was honest enough to risk.

Chapter Word

Reinvention (n.) — The act of changing form without surrendering meaning. Not erasing who you were, but learning how to be heard without asking permission.

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Author’s Note:

We’re officially at the edge.

One chapter left of Blush Blue: Volume 1.

The final chapter, “The Showcase,” drops this Sunday. 🎤🎸