Interview Location: Bedroom -- Jason Pritchett
He's sitting sideways on his desk chair with one leg hanging off the arm. Pretty comfortable for someone about to introduce himself to a camera.
"Oh, I'm last? Yeah that tracks. My name's Jason. I'm sixteen. Jay Pritchett's youngest kid." He pauses. "They don't love when I say it like that. Whatever."
"So today is Sunday. School starts tomorrow. And I just want everyone to know that last year I was six feet tall and three hundred and ten pounds. Right now I'm two hundred and five." He lets that sit. "I look good. I'm not gonna act like I don't. I put in the work, I'm gonna say it."
He glances off to the side for a second.
"I just moved here over the summer. New house, new city, new school. Lost the last forty pounds here actually, which I feel like means something. And I make music. Guitar since I was five, picked up drums in eighth grade because of a movie, still figuring out piano. My best friend Tommy does production. We're gonna be great." He nods once. "That's me."
The room still didn't feel completely like his yet.
The guitars were up on the wall, the keyboard was on the desk, but everything else was kind of just sitting wherever it landed when he moved in. He kept meaning to actually set things up. He hadn't gotten there.
He was at the desk with his notebook open and a pen in his mouth, which was a bad habit, and he knew that, and he did it anyway.
He had a thing going. Not a full song yet but the start of one. He'd been circling the same idea for two weeks. It was about wanting to get closer to somebody but not knowing how to just say that without making it a whole weird thing. He didn't have a specific girl in mind right now. The feeling was real though, so the song could be real.
He wrote: send me your location.
He stared at it.
That was actually good. It sounded simple but it meant more than it looked like.
He wrote underneath it: let's focus on communicating. Then: cause I just need the time and place to come through.
He sang it quiet, just to hear where the melody wanted to go. His voice was still kind of asleep. He'd been up for maybe an hour.
He put a box around the whole thing. That was his system for parts that were staying.
His phone went off.
Tommy: bro are you nervous for tomorrow
Tommy: be honest
Jason: a little
Tommy: same lol. I threw up once on the first day of sixth grade
Jason: why are you telling me that
Tommy: moral support?? we'll be fine bro
Jason put the phone down. He looked back at the notebook and underlined the location line twice.
Interview Location: Bedroom -- Jason Pritchett
He's turned the chair around and is sitting on it backwards now.
"People think you need some huge thing happening to write a song. You don't. You just need a feeling you can't shake. I don't even have anyone specific in mind right now. I just know what it feels like to want to be somewhere with somebody and not know how to ask for that without being weird about it." He shrugs. "So. Song."
* * *
"Jason!"
Gloria. From downstairs. The woman's voice went through floors like they weren't there.
He grabbed the notebook and headed down.
The kitchen smelled really good. Like she'd been cooking for a while. Gloria was still moving things around on the stove even though everything was clearly already done. That was just how she was.
Jay was at the table watching football. Beer in hand. He looked like a man who had finished his Sunday and was just coasting the rest of it.
Manny was reading. Obviously.
Jason sat down and looked at the food. Rice, beans, some kind of meat that smelled incredible. He was hungry. He was always hungry now. That was the thing about actually working out, your body starts expecting things from you.
"Sit, eat," Gloria said. That was basically her hello.
He sat. He ate.
Under the table he had the notebook open. He was trying to figure out the verse. It needed to go somewhere about being uncertain, like why do I even like you, this is new, I wasn't planning on this. He wrote in the margin without looking down: at times I wonder why I fool with you.
"How'd you sleep?" Jay asked. Eyes still on the game.
"Fine."
"You nervous about tomorrow?"
"Little bit."
Jay nodded at the TV like that confirmed something.
"I was nervous my first day at a new school too," Manny said, turning a page. "I wrote a poem about it. You want to hear it?"
"No," Jason and Jay said at the same time.
Manny shrugged and kept reading.
Gloria looked at Jason the way she did sometimes, like she was reading him real quick. "You look strong," she said. "You should be proud of yourself."
"Thanks Gloria."
She said it like it was just a fact and went back to eating. Jason looked down at his plate. He wrote in the margin: initially I didn't wanna fall for you. Then he crossed it out. Then he uncrossed it.
Interview Location: Dining Room Doorway -- Jason Pritchett
Arms crossed. Talks a little quieter than before.
"Okay the girlfriend thing. Last year I would've been happy if anyone talked to me. That's just honest. Now it's different. I want somebody confident. Somebody who looks like herself. Somebody who's not gonna think the music thing is weird." He pauses. "And she should be cute. I'm allowed to want that. I lost a hundred and five pounds, I'm allowed to want that."
* * *
He helped clear the table after dinner. He just did that now. Nobody asked him to start, he just started.
He was stacking plates by the sink when Gloria came and stood next to him. She turned on the faucet and started rinsing stuff without saying anything for a second.
"You excited?" she asked.
"Kind of. Yeah."
"Excited is better than scared."
"I'm both."
"That's also fine." She handed him a plate to dry. "Tommy goes to the same school?"
"Yeah same district. It worked out perfectly."
"He's a good friend?"
Jason thought about the throwing-up text. "Yeah. He's the best."
Gloria nodded like that was the right answer. "Then you'll be okay."
He dried the plate and put it in the cabinet. He knew where everything went now. He'd figured that out like two weeks in.
* * *
Upstairs, he called Tommy.
"Okay," Jason said when he picked up. "I have a verse. Don't say anything until I'm done."
"You always do this—"
"Tommy."
"Fine. Go."
Jason looked at the notebook. He read it through, not performing it, just testing it. The location line, the communicating line, the time and place. Then the chorus idea he'd been sketching out. Ride the vibrations. I don't need nothing else but you. He sang that last part soft because reading lyrics out loud without the melody behind them felt dumb.
Quiet on the other end.
"Tommy."
"I'm thinking."
"Is it bad?"
"No. Bro it's not bad at all. The location thing is the hook right? Like that's the part that keeps coming back?"
"Yeah that's what I'm thinking."
He could hear Tommy moving around. That meant he was going to his keyboard. That was how Tommy thought, with his hands.
"Okay so I've got this beat," Tommy said. "It's slow but it moves. You feel it. I think it fits this perfectly."
"For real?"
"Come over after school tomorrow and we'll put something together. Bring the notebook."
"First day of school and you're already scheduling—"
"Jason. Bring the notebook."
Jason laughed a little. "Alright."
"We're gonna make something real," Tommy said. He wasn't being hype about it, he just sounded sure. "I know I've said that before but this time the pieces are actually there."
Jason looked at the notebook. At the boxed line at the top of the page.
Send me your location.
"Yeah," he said. "Me too."
Interview Location: Bedroom -- Jason Pritchett
Lying on his bed, one arm behind his head. Lamp on. Guitar on the wall. Late.
"Six-thirty alarm. New school. First day of junior year." He stares at the ceiling. "I've thought about this a lot actually. Walking into a place where nobody knows who I was before. No one who remembers." He's quiet for a second. "That's kind of the whole point of moving, right. You just get to be who you are now."
He looks at the camera.
"Also I look good and I want people to see that. I'm not gonna lie, that's part of it too." He turns back to the ceiling. "Both things can be true."