02 || The First Yes
The next morning, Tom almost convinced himself it had all been dramatic overthinking.
People got rejected from bands all the time. It wasn’t exactly headline news. The world had carried on perfectly fine after his three-minute-and-forty-two-second phone call, and apparently it planned to keep doing so.
But when he walked through the school gates, guitar case bumping awkwardly against his leg, it still felt like everyone should somehow know.
He imagined a giant invisible sign above his head.
Rejected.
The corridors of the school were already loud: lockers slamming, trainers squeaking against the floor, someone blasting music faintly from a phone speaker. Normal life.
Tom moved through it all quietly. At his locker, he spun the dial without really thinking, staring at the chipped blue paint on the metal door.
“You look tragic.”
He didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. Bonnie Barleycorn leaned against the lockers opposite him, arms folded, eyebrow raised.
“I do not,” Tom said.
“You absolutely do.”
He opened the locker and shoved a textbook inside. “Thanks for the support.”
“I’m being supportive,” she said brightly. “If I wasn’t, I’d say you look catastrophic.”
Tom rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitched.
Bonnie noticed immediately.
“Better,” she said.
“Better?”
“You smiled.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“I definitely didn’t.”
Bonnie pushed herself off the lockers. “Right, come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Music room.”
“It’s nine in the morning.”
“Yes,” she said patiently. “That’s when school happens.”
Tom hesitated.
Yesterday had felt like something breaking open. Today felt like the awkward morning after when you weren’t sure what you were supposed to do with the pieces.
Bonnie seemed to sense the hesitation.
“You said something yesterday,” she reminded him.
Tom frowned. “I say a lot of things.”
“You said you might start your own band.”
“Oh.”
He said it like he’d forgotten the idea existed and Bonnie just stared at him.
“You can’t just drop a sentence like that and then return to algebra homework like it never happened.”
“I didn’t say I would start one,” Tom said quickly. “I said what if.”
“Well,” Bonnie replied, pushing open the music room door, “what if you stopped overthinking and started trying?”
The room was empty: a drum kit sat in the corner and two amps buzzed faintly with leftover electricity.
Someone had left a battered acoustic guitar propped against a chair. It looked exactly like every school music room in Britain.
Messy. Slightly out of tune. Full of possibility.
Tom set his guitar case down. Bonnie walked straight to the whiteboard and grabbed a marker.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She wrote in large, dramatic letters:
BAND IDEAS
Then she stepped back proudly.
“There,” she said.
Tom laughed before he could stop himself.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“Thank you.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“You’re welcome.”
He shook his head, but the heaviness in his chest had loosened slightly.
Bonnie tossed the marker toward him.
“Step one,” she said.
Tom caught it automatically.
“What’s step one?”
“You’re the musician,” she said. “You tell me.”
He stared at the whiteboard.
The word BAND looked impossibly big.
But it also looked exciting.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Well… we’d need people.”
“Excellent start,” Bonnie said. “Most bands do.”
“Drummer,” Tom continued, thinking out loud now. “Another guitarist maybe. Bass.”
Bonnie nodded like this was a perfectly reasonable Tuesday morning activity.
“And a name,” she added.
Tom groaned. “Names are the worst part.”
“You’re telling me,” she said. “I’ve been called Bonnie Barleycorn for seventeen years.”
“That’s a brilliant name.”
“It sounds like a character in a medieval folk song.”
Tom scribbled a few messy ideas on the board anyway, they were terrible. Despite this, Bonnie laughed at every single one and neither of them stopped.
Outside, the school day carried on as usual, teachers calling for silence, students rushing between classes, someone shouting about football practice.
Inside the music room, something quieter was happening. A rejected seventeen-year-old was beginning again. Tom tapped the marker against the board thoughtfully.
“You really think this could work?” he asked.
Bonnie didn’t hesitate.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t even hear the ideas yet.”
“I don’t need to.”
Tom looked at her, confused.
“Why?”
She shrugged, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Because you’re Tom Fletcher,” she said. “And you don’t just stop making music because someone said no.”
For a moment, the room felt very still.
Then Tom picked up his guitar.
“Alright,” he said.
Bonnie grinned.
“Alright?”
“Let’s start a band.”
And just like that, the first yes happened.
