The electricity tingly in our fingertips

Mark

Steve was staring at Missy with a mischievous look on his face, like he was imagining something and was happy about whatever it was he was imagining. It most likely had to do with Missy's whole body slathered in mud or something. Antonia reached over and whacked the side of his head.

"Ouch! What?!" Steve exclaimed. The rest of us couldn't help but giggle again. Antonia inhaled deeply through her nose and ignored us.

"The song with the synths please."

Steve frowned at her. "Again, that doesn't narrow it down."

"It goes like this..." Antonia starts humming. It sounded like a cascade of triple notes repeating in sequence, but none of us found it familiar, not even Steve. He stared at her blankly, his face looking more confused as she went on.

"Ugh!" Antonia started to laugh, because Steve was purposely making faces at her already. "It's an electronica beat. Drum n' bass!"

"I haven't done drum n' bass yet," Steve shook his head, looking into his computer for his electronica songs.

"Dubstep!" Antonia corrected herself.

"Are you sure you know what you're talking about, Tone," Steve gave her the side eye.

"Jungle!" LJ tried to make it a game. Antonia whacked the side of _his_ head. I stared at Antonia's hands and suddenly realized how big they were.

"You put this atmospheric thing in the intro!" Then she started to mimic that atmospheric thing, whatever it was, it sounded like a cat meowing underwater. It set off LJ to giggle again and suddenly we were all giggling again. "Guys," Antonia snapped at us, but we couldn't help ourselves.

But it was enough of a clue, apparently, because Steve played a new track, muttering, "This is not dubstep. There is no way this is dubstep."

The song seemed to be an EDM experiment, with layers of synthesizer sounds on top of each other and percussive things that didn't sound like drums. The cat meowing under water wasn't that, but I wouldn't be able to describe it otherwise. When he got to the refrain, the percussive sounds disappeared and the beat sounded like they were produced by... bongos?

"Are those bongos?" Burt asked.

"Synthesizer bongos," Steve shrugged. Burt, who was straddling his chair so that he could prop his arms on its back, suddenly started to slap the chair like he was playing bongos, jerking his shoulders exaggeratedly. LJ and I immediately started copying him and we were all dancing in our seats like monkeys having so much fun, to Antonia's further annoyance. Then the drums started pounding faster as the refrain rose to its peak to transition into the chorus, and dropped for Steve to sing, "I want to be the only one you need..."

"This is Jamie's," Missy suddenly said.

"Yes," Antonia agreed, and we all stopped clowning around to pay attention. "This is actually as slow as Jamie will go. I see Jamie's album as a straight up dance album. Like when he has a solo showcase, he's going to dance all his songs except for this one."

"I didn't mean..." Missy started to say, but she changed her mind and shut up.

"You get the dance album?" LJ was incredulous. He looked at Jamie as if he had been betrayed by his best friend.

"I've always thought that Jamie's secret weapon was his dancing," Antonia smiled indulgently at Jamie. Which Jamie didn't see because he wasn't looking at her.

I looked closely at Jamie, who was staring pointedly at... nothing. The direction of his gaze landed on one of the speakers on the floor. I raised my head to look at Steve, who was also studying Jamie closely. Oh man. I've seen this look before.

I listened to the lyrics and that look on Steve's face suddenly made all the sense in the world.

In the way our fingers brushed each other

I could feel your fear, your anxiety

But I understand

Because it's you...

I snapped my head around and shot Missy a look. She was staring at Jamie, too. Wow, did she know about Jamie too?

"Aren't I dancing at all, then?" LJ continued to complain this development of his solo album.

"Of course you are," Antonia replied. "You're going to invent new body rolls while you're at it, too."

"So, you're giving me the eunuch dance album," Jamie suddenly, finally spoke. And we couldn't help it again, we had to laugh.

"You guys, it's not a contest," Antonia rolled her eyes. "So you don't want the dance album?"

"If it pisses LJ off, I want it," Jamie smiled at LJ, who was looking at each of us, trying to figure out whom best to complain. "And if it pisses Mark off to give me a rap album, I want that too."

A tiny atomic bomb exploded in my brain. "I'm doing a rap album?!" Whoa, guys, this is awesome! Nobody from any boyband has ever done a straight up solo rap album before, this is beyond cool.

"No, Marky, sorry," Antonia said, touching my elbow as if to console me.