Free Catch My Breath by M. J. O’Shea

a grin. “Sure.”
     
     
    T HE volleyball game was lame. Fun, Danny guessed, but as far as he was concerned a waste of time. Danny used the camera the best he could. He joked loudly for the camera, jumped around doing dumb tricks, leap-frogged over his bandmates’ shoulders, and acted like the biggest fool he knew how to be. They had to fight The Pixies for that extra video time; it turned out that one of the girls had played volleyball in college. But win they did, and the way Danny saw it, Static was more noticeable during the game anyway because of their dorky antics. So as much as he’d have rather been in the studio, it was a double win as far as he was concerned.
    The cameras followed them to the studio that afternoon, but they were guaranteed some alone time to actually work on things for real. They passed the folksinger—Chris, Elliot had reminded him—as he was coming back to the house from wherever he’d been that morning. Danny had a momentary twinge of jealousy that Elliot had clearly gotten to know the other guy. He pushed it down, though. Elliot was allowed to be friends with whomever he wanted. It was dumb to be possessive.
    It was a relief to be back at the studio, where they’d all gotten to know one another so well, where they’d gotten to be good friends. They settled into a sound booth with Keller and a bunch of new people Danny couldn’t keep track of and started laying down the vocals for “Fool for Love.” He loved it every time all five of them were singing. How everyone’s different tones blended together to make something that sounded uniquely like them. Like Static. Danny left the studio feeling great, joking with his boys, excited for whatever came next.
    The next few days were more of the same, recording clips for the show, getting to know people in the house, going back to the studio to work on more tracks for the album. It all kind of blended into a surreal sort of blur. Until the night the show aired for the first time. Then things started to feel an awful lot less surreal and a whole lot more immediate.
    “Hey, Danny a bunch of people are going to watch the show in the living room. You want to come down?” Elliot asked from the door where he’d just stuck his head into the room.
    Danny cringed. As much as he didn’t mind acting like a dork in front of the camera, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to watch himself acting like a dork. He supposed he should though. Wouldn’t want to be the only one cowering upstairs.
    He shrugged. “I guess so.”
    Elliot laughed. “Yeah, me neither, but I think we kind of have to watch. So at least we’ll know what everyone else is seeing.”
    Danny felt the secondhand embarrassment crawling up his neck. It wasn’t even secondhand, since it was his dumb butt on the screen. Maybe they cut a lot of his parts. He hoped. If not, there was going to be a whole bunch of him acting like… himself. Danny supposed there was no help for that.
    Their whole group was settled in the living room area, ready to watch. Tate, Reece, and Webb were in their own corner of the couch, squished in by Chelsea and Savannah, two of the girls from The Pixies. Elliot flopped down on the floor between Webb’s feet, and Danny sat next to him, ready for the worst.
    All in all, it wasn’t bad. Typical reality television fare with lots of music in the background and as much drama as they could drum up.
    “Wait a second, we weren’t arguing there!” Chelsea burst out at one point, when it looked like she and another girl from The Pixies were getting into it.
    “Creative editing,” Reece mumbled.
    “No kidding,” Chelsea said. She turned to Andrea. “I’ll let you know if I’m ever actually that pissed at you, okay?”
    Andrea chuckled. “Sure thing.”
    Danny hid his face a few times during the volleyball game. He really had been acting like a full-on derp. It got laughs from the other housemates though, so hopefully whoever was watching in their houses felt the