Soundtrack

Set in New York City around 2011, the novel opens with a framing scene in which five members of a band called Soundtrack debate how each would begin a movie about their life. The narrator, 18-year-old drummer Stuyvesant Grey (Stuy), describes a memory from age six: his Uncle Lucky playing Russian roulette in their kitchen while babysitting him and telling Stuy to call 911 if anything goes wrong. Thirteen-year-old announcer Frankie says his movie would begin the day he met the crew, then adds that they don't make movies: "Matter fact, we make magic" (4). The conversation's true setting, a hospital room, is withheld until the final chapter.

Stuy recounts the events that brought him here. When his mother, Gloria Grey, came home to find Lucky holding the gun, she kicked her brother out for good. Gloria had once drummed for a Black punk band called the Bed-Stuy Magic Dusters alongside Stuy's father, a bassist nicknamed Bottom, who vanished upon learning she was pregnant. After Lucky's departure, Gloria immersed Stuy in music, teaching him to drum with colored tape Xs on the floor for his feet and coins in her hands for his arms, training each limb independently. By high school, Stuy was playing a full drum set and had become popular for his talent.

Everything shifted during Stuy's senior year when Gloria began dating Dom, a coworker from the 911 Emergency Call Center. Dom moved in and pressured Stuy to attend college, warning he would end up like his father. When Dom disassembled Stuy's drum set and replaced it with a television, Stuy gave his mother an ultimatum: him or Dom. She hesitated, so Stuy left for Uncle Lucky's apartment on Essex Street in the Lower East Side. Lucky, once reckless himself, had become an elementary school teacher after his best friend Spit died playing Russian roulette.

That first night, Stuy meets Duncan Randall (Dunks), an 18-year-old neighbor across the hall. Dunks's father won the lottery, bought half the buildings on the block in Dunks's name, then abandoned the family, leaving him as landlord to about 50 tenants. Dunks plays a pink five-string Fender Stratocaster and calls his idiosyncratic, alien-inspired sound "Pluto Music." The day after Stuy arrives, Dunks plugs in for a blistering solo; Stuy grabs drumsticks and starts banging on the floor and a milk crate. After jamming together, both know without discussion that they are a band.

Dunks tells Stuy about a bass player at Union Square. They find Alexis Brown, an enormous 18-year-old who plays thunderous slap bass amplified through a car battery, alongside his best friend Keith, a bald-headed trumpet player. Stuy offends Alexis by telling the duo they need a drummer. Dunks devises an "alien coup": They set up at Alexis and Keith's usual spot before the duo arrives and play so well that Alexis and Keith join in. Over pizza, Alexis explains he chose bass because his deaf parents can feel its vibrations through the walls. They also meet Frankie, a 13-year-old from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, whom Keith befriended during community service in a hospital cancer ward. Frankie has mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive cancer, and is in partial remission after chemotherapy. Keith shaved her head in solidarity when Frankie lost his hair during treatment.

The band practices daily at Dunks's apartment and plays Union Square every other night, saving earnings in a shoebox for studio recording. When rain drives them underground into the subway station, the acoustics prove extraordinary, and the subway becomes their permanent venue. One night Stuy comes home to find Gloria on Uncle Lucky's couch with a severely blackened eye from Dom. After Gloria begs him to let it go, Stuy channels his rage into a tap rhythm inspired by dancer Savion Glover. At practice, Keith tells him to play whatever matches how he feels, "like a soundtrack for it all" (104). Stuy plays the furious beat, then says, "This is the soundtrack" (104), and the band name clicks into place. Frankie grabs a megaphone and delivers what becomes the group's signature cry: "Everybody gather round! Come grab hold of a brand-new sound! We . . . are . . . Soundtrack!" (105).

Alexis privately asks for Dom's address and goes to confront him. Dom swings first, and Alexis hits back hard enough to close Dom's eye. When Gloria texts that Dom is filing a police report, Frankie suggests they "go on tour," moving from station to station along the A train to evade police. They recruit Dylan, a loyal fan, to whisper their next location to audience members. A newspaper features them under the headline "THE SOUND FROM UNDERGROUND, NYC'S SECRET SOUNDTRACK" (162). Meanwhile, Stuy searches YouTube for the Bed-Stuy Magic Dusters and discovers a clip posted by Ashley, Bottom's daughter and Stuy's 16-year-old half-sister, who has lived in the Bronx her whole life. Ashley tells him their father built a recording studio in the basement and taught her to run it before dying of a heart attack.

At the 125th Street station in Harlem, the band plays their biggest show before police move through the crowd. The band forms a wall in front of Alexis, and the crowd films with their phones, but the standoff escalates. Alexis, recognizing the danger he faces as a large Black man, surrenders and is arrested. That night, Stuy goes alone to Gloria's apartment in Bed-Stuy and offers Dom the band's entire savings, roughly $3,000, in exchange for dropping the charges. Gloria watches silently. Dom gives no firm answer.

While Alexis is in jail, Stuy meets Ashley in person; she offers free recording time at her father's studio. Dunks reveals a hidden pain: His mother lives in the same building and never leaves her apartment, devastated by his father's abandonment. She promises to come see him play but never does. On Thursday, she finally walks upstairs to watch the band practice, and Dunks plays with an intensity none of them have seen before. On Monday, Alexis is released. Keith confronts Stuy about the missing savings; when he confesses he gave them to Dom, she charges at him before Dunks restrains her. The band prepares for Friday at Times Square.

A massive crowd gathers in the Times Square tunnel, including Uncle Lucky, Ashley, Alexis's deaf parents with shoes off to feel the vibrations, and Frankie's mother. Uncle Lucky starts a chant of "Soundtrack!" that drowns out the trains. Frankie instructs the audience to clap and stomp, turning them into the percussion section, and the band launches into the performance. Then Frankie dances into the crowd with his megaphone and does not come back out. Screams replace the music. The band pushes through to find Frankie on the ground, seizing violently. Stuy sprints for cell service and dials 911. The operator who answers is Gloria.

The final chapter repeats the Prologue's dialogue nearly verbatim, revealing the setting: The band is gathered around Frankie's hospital bed. His cancer has returned and spread to his brain. Keith sings "What a Wonderful World" in a raspy Louis Armstrong impression while the others provide the beat. Frankie dies one week later. The band uses the Times Square earnings to help pay for the funeral, accepting Ashley's studio for recording. At the service in a small Bay Ridge church, Frankie's mother thanks them for giving her son the happiest summer of his life and asks them to play. Stuy spots Gloria sitting in the back pew, having come without being asked. The four remaining members set up beside Frankie's casket, instruments in hand, and look at one another with faces both sad and proud, hoping Frankie was right: that the music is magic.