Chapter 40

The next morning I was feeling every hit I took at the competition. As much as I wanted to make Chef proud, trying to roll out of bed without touching any of the parts that hurt made me definitely sure it wasn’t worth it to go again. The whole point of learning from Chef to defend myself had been to keep from getting hurt like I had at the beginning of the year.

I made my way to the bathroom and was a little horrified at what I saw in the mirror. I hadn’t taken any serious shots to my face, so it was okay, but my body had a whole series of deep purple bruises. It looked like I’d been in a car wreck. I poked at a few of them and winced. This was going to be inconvenient. We had an extra-long practice that afternoon to get the set we would play for the music scout completely ironed out. Now, every time I moved my arm, I felt a jolt of pain go up my shoulder and down my side. It was going to be hell to play guitar.

Luckily, we were still a week out from the audition, so it should be mostly healed up by then. It was just going to make practice a special kind of hell for a while. And by a while, I meant all week. Since I’d finished with the competition and Chef knew what this meant for us, he’d put off any training for the rest of the week and talked some of the guys in Willie’s band into putting up Seth and Marco for the week, so we could practice every day. Lyla, ever the schemer, had convinced Hanna to let her stay with them.

I wasn’t sure she had thought this through. Hanna’s mom being pissed about Hanna changing her major to work with us might not go well with one of those band members staying with them. I’d suggested that she just say she was a friend, and not that she was in the band, but Lyla had very poor impulse control and tended to run off at the mouth sometimes, so the odds of that working were pretty slim.

Still, the setup would let us practice every day and really get ready, so it was worth it. Or at least it had been until I’d made myself a walking punching bag.

I got dressed and double-checked that none of the bruises were showing. I knew Mom would freak if she saw them and I didn’t want to send her after Chef for getting her kid hurt, so it was best she just never knew how badly I was bruised up. It had started to warm up a bit, so the long sleeve shirt I’d have to wear until they started to heal would be noticeable, but I was planning on playing the teenager card. Parents expected us to go through weird fashion phases, so this could be one of mine, for a bit.

“Mrs. Phillips asked if you’d go over there and have breakfast with them,” she said when I came out of the back of the trailer towards the kitchen.

“Really? Why?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing. I noticed you’ve been here a lot earlier every night this week, instead of going over there after your practices. Is everything between you and Hanna alright?”

“Yes, but she’s mad at Hanna about something, and I got caught in the middle of it.”

“You and she didn’t...” she started to say and then paused.

It wasn’t hard to work out what she would have said next.

“God. No. We aren’t like that. Hanna changed her major to things she might want to do in ‘talent management,’ and Mrs. Phillips thinks she’s making a mistake. She wanted me to stay away while she tried to convince Hanna to go back to some kind of regular business management degree program instead.”

“You didn’t try to talk her into it, did you?”

“No. I actually tried to talk her out of it. I know how bad my chances are of ever making it in the business after watching Dad. Hell, I’ve already decided that, even if I do something with music, I’ll have a plan that doesn’t rely on my making it. I don’t want to also have her future career choice rely on me. That’s too much pressure.”

“But she decided to switch her major anyway?”

“She said she found the whole business end of it interesting, and that she wasn’t putting all her hopes on us making it big. If we did, she’d love to work with us, but she’s going to go in looking to end up working at one of the big talent agencies. Her mom isn’t convinced and thinks that’s just an excuse.”

“I see. Well, hopefully, you’ll figure it out. I am glad to hear you’ve given some thought about what you want to go to college for.”

“I do listen to you sometimes, and a promise is a promise. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to take my shot, but since I already promised you I’d go to college, I figure I could get a degree in music theory, or education or something. It gives me band or choir director as a fallback and still lets me do something music-related that could be a steady career. I won’t get rich, but I’ll enjoy it at least.”

“Good. You know that I’m always rooting for you to achieve your dreams. I just want you to be smart about it. I don’t want to see you having to travel from dive bar to dive bar to make enough to stay barely fed.”

“Trust me, I don’t want that either. Okay, I better head over and see what Mrs. Phillips wants. We have practice in a few hours.”

Mom hopped up and gave me a big hug on the way out, and it was all I could do to keep from screaming. I ended up biting my lip so hard I could taste blood.

“Everything okay?” she asked, probably seeing the expression I couldn’t suppress on my face.

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, grabbing my guitar, and hurrying out the door.

The first thing I noticed when I made my way across the creek and up to Hanna’s house was that her car was missing from its normal spot. It seemed unlikely that she’d suddenly start parking it in the garage, and added another question as to what exactly was going on.

Mrs. Phillips must have been waiting on me, because she opened the door as soon as I knocked.

“Charlie, come on in,” she said, giving a small wave to follow her.

“Where’s Hanna?” I asked, mostly making small talk as I followed her into their kitchen.

“I sent her and Kat out to get lunch. I wanted to speak with you alone.”

“Okay,” I said, nervously.

“Before we talk, I’d like for you to read this,” she said, handing Charlie what looked like an essay.

“What is it?”

“It’s Hanna’s admissions essay. She sent in her allocation late last year, mostly because I pressured her, and I didn’t have time to look at it then because she was doing it so ‘last moment.’ She left a copy of it on the table when she left for school on Friday, and I’ve kind of been digesting it ever since. I wanted you to read it before we talked.”

“Okay,” I said, sitting down at the table across from her and starting to read.

One of the prompts we were told to write our essay about was why I wanted to go to UNC. My answer is probably going to be surprising, since I didn’t. At least not at first.

When I started to apply to colleges, I was just doing it to get away. I wanted to find a place where no one knew me and no one knew about what had happened to me. When I was a sophomore, I was the victim of a sexual assault. I know, it’s also not something that people usually write about in their college essay, but please bear with me, I promise it applies.

I blamed myself for what happened, and I blamed everyone else for it. It was a really bad time in my life. And then I met a guy. Not in a ‘and we fell in love’ kind of way, but in the ‘he saved my life’ kind of way. He’s my best friend and closer than any brother I could ever imagine, and I love him with all my heart. He helped bring me back out of the place I’d been in and showed me I could be me again.

Now to the part of how this applies to going to UNC. He’s a musician and I think he’s going to be big one day. I’ve heard him talk about his father, who was also a musician, and all the problems he had with the music business, and I’m worried my friend will have the same problems. He’s a great musician, but he’s too kind-hearted for his own good. He always tries to see the best in people and assumes they will do what they promise to do. He needs someone to look after the business side of things, and that’s where I fit in. I want to learn business, so I can help run his and make sure he’s as successful as he can be.

What that means for me, as a prospective student is that I have both an end goal and a powerful motive to see me through. Not unlike students who go into finance because they want to work at the biggest bank in the world or students in engineering whose entire goal is to work at NASA, I will succeed because I know what I want to do, and I can’t imagine not succeeding. I’m going to get a degree in business management at UNC or somewhere else, and I am going to play my part in making sure my friend, and maybe others, succeed along the way.

So why do I want to go to UNC? Because I think they are the best option I have at reaching my goals. UNC has a great business program and some of the best people in the industry are among its graduates. When I graduate and find my place at the top of my field, UNC will be proud to have me as one of their alumni.

I wasn’t an expert on what was or wasn’t a good college essay, since I hadn’t had to learn how to write a good one yet, but this didn’t seem like it. I guess in general terms it was, since they’d want to know why you’d want to do whatever career you’d be studying for. This just seemed both more personal and less professional than I’d imagined a college admissions person would want.

She’d gotten accepted with it, though, so what did I know? I did wonder why Mrs. Phillips had wanted me to read it, though. It basically showed everything she’d said about not wanting to do this specifically because of me was a lie. She’d laid out, pretty clearly, that I was the reason she’d wanted to go into business. True, this was written before she learned about the talent management program, but I’m not sure that really mattered.

I braced myself for Mrs. Philips to yell at me and was surprised when she reached across the table after I set down the essay and held my hands.

“First, I want to apologize for how abruptly I threw you out of here the other day and for keeping the girls from socializing with you. Both of them have made it clear multiple times that you at no time pressured her into any kind of decision and even argued against her decision several times. I was upset at the choices she was making and took it out on you instead of the person I was actually upset with. For that, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I understand why you’re worried and I can’t blame you for targeting me, especially since this proves you were right,” I said, gesturing at the essay. “Even if I didn’t push it.”

“No, it’s not okay. You didn’t do anything to deserve it. As for the essay; I know you’ve heard us mention it, but I don’t think you realize how bad of a place Hanna was in last year. I was really worried she might end up hurting herself there for a while. She’d started getting better over the summer, and Sam being here had been a big help. Hanna’s always been crazy about him ever since he was born, which is why he stayed with us until basically the last possible day before he had to head home. Even then, she was a lot ... meaner than the Hanna I used to know. Then she met you and after even a couple of days, everything seemed to change. She’s smiling again. She’s excited about college. Heck, she even started dating again, which I wasn’t sure would even be possible. You’ve been a great friend to this family and I’m ashamed I repaid that by throwing you out. So please accept my apology.”

“Okay, I accept it.”

“She has also told me that she isn’t putting all of her options on you. She’s actually done a lot of research into this and she’s been corresponding with some professor you kids met when you visited the school. She gave me a really impressive presentation on the career options this degree path had and the things she’d be looking at. She did explain that, while she thinks knowing you will give her a potential leg up in her career, she is positive she can make it even if you decide to have nothing to do with the business.”