Chapter 1

I was running late, as usual.

Ever since I signed my music contract, my life seemed to be speeding up to the point where I couldn’t really control it anymore. There were times I almost missed being just a high school student who played music on the weekends.

Here it was, the beginning of summer, and I had spent the last two weeks either on phone calls with my new manager or someone from the label, working on new songs and practicing the ones we already had with the band, or sleeping.

It wasn’t all bad. I did get to spend every day working on music, which was my favorite thing in the world. Plus, my two best friends, Hanna Phillips and Kathrine Moore, were there with me every day, so it wasn’t like my life was on hold or anything. I just think I’d like to have a little time to sit on a porch with my friends and bullshit, instead of always having to constantly prepare for the next thing.

“Bye Mom,” I said as I rushed through the kitchen of our small trailer on my way out the door.

“Not so fast,” she said, her tone pulling me up sharp.

“I’m running late. I’m supposed to be at Mr. French’s in fifteen-minutes for rehearsals. You know we have to be in Raleigh to start recording in like ten days, and we’re not even close to being ready.”

“You still have time to eat breakfast. I called to check in yesterday and Hanna told me you had the band play through lunch yesterday and the day before, and she’s just as worried about you as I am. You need to eat something if you’re going to have the energy to keep up with this pace. Besides, we’ve barely said two words to each other all week, and I want to hear how things are going.”

I looked at the table, back to the door, then went and sat down. I was running late, but that’s because I liked to be there the whole time the band was setting up. Partly because I liked everyone and enjoyed spending time with them, but mostly because I felt it was my responsibility. Although I’d made sure we all got paid the same, the actual contract had been made in my name alone, with the stipulation that I could include them in any project. I didn’t want them to think just because my name was the one on the contract that I somehow thought I was above doing the work of setting things up or taking stuff down. I knew they didn’t think that, or at least I think they didn’t, but that didn’t keep my inner paranoia from worrying that I might give them any indication that I thought I was somehow better than the rest of them.

I could eat quickly and still make it there before they’d gotten very far in setting up. During the year we’d set up in the Blue Ridge, a restaurant and bar we’d been playing at since the beginning of spring, to practice in the afternoon between the lunch and dinner rushes, but we’d had to move once we decided to get more intensive. Chef, my mentor and the reason I’d been able to get my start in music in the first place, still had to serve lunch, which meant we’d had to find a new place to practice. The whole band had agreed that we needed as much time as we could get before we headed to Raleigh to record our first record. Thankfully, my high school choir teacher, Mr. French, who was also one of my other mentors, had a garage he didn’t mind us using as long as we took our instruments with us when we were done, so he could park his car in it again.

“It’s going okay. We’ve got enough songs to fill an album plus a few extras, just in case the studio says there are some they want to cut, but we’re not ready to do them for real yet. Mr. French keeps saying that’s what a producer will help us do, tighten up the songs and get them radio-ready, but I want them as tight as we can make them before we show up.”

“Just be careful you aren’t trying to overdo it. Your father used to say being a perfectionist was the main reason he never made it big.”

“Was this before or after he stabbed someone in a bar,” I said, my tone going flat the way it did anytime he came up in conversation.

“Don’t be like that Charlie. I know you’re mad at him, and you know I feel the same, but when it came to the music business, he did know what he was talking about. He was the one who taught you how to play the guitar.”

“In between bouts of drinking, sure. And then he went and stabbed a guy, went to jail, and left us drifting in the wind, with you having to hold down two full-time jobs just to keep our bills paid.”

“All of which is beside the point. I think he was right about trying to do too much or trying make the music too perfect. There’s a point you take the energy out of it. One of the things people love about your music is the way it makes them feel. You have to make sure you don’t lose that. Has Mr. French had anything to say about it?”

“Uhhh ... no,” I said, lying.

She gave me a look and I said, “Okay, yes. He said something very similar. He thought we might be fine-tuning Country Roads a little too much.

“See. If you don’t want to listen to your dear old mother, listen to him. I know you’re excited. I just want to make sure you keep your head on straight and make good decisions.”

“I will,” I said, and saw an opportunity for something I’d been putting off for several days. “Thinking of making good decisions, I actually have something to ask you.”

Mom gave me one of her patented stares, clearly seeing through my charade. I was, however, already too far in to back out now.

“You remember how well spring break went? Where we got through the week meeting all of our obligations and made it back home, safe and sound with no one ending up in jail?”

“Yes, although I’d suggest that’s a pretty low bar for success.”

“Well, most of that trip Hanna was the only person over eighteen years old. I was thinking...”

“No. I told you someone would have to be there to chaperone everything, and I meant it.”

“I get it, and I understand why you’d insist on that, but we’ve tried everyone. You have to work and can’t disappear for two months, Mr. French has summer school, Chef has the restaurant, and Mrs. Phillips has to work ... I could keep going, but you get the point. Two months is a long time and there’s no one that can take that much time off. This is my one big chance, and I don’t want to blow it. We can’t tell them ‘ohh, we need to postpone till we can find a chaperone.’ We agreed to all of this when we signed the contract, and it’s not like I will be constantly unsupervised. While we’re in the studio, I’ll be staying at Hanna’s aunt’s house with Hanna and Kat and once we’re on the road, we’re going to be so busy I won’t have time to get into trouble. Besides, we’ll have the manager the label is assigning to us, so there will be another adult present. I just need someone we trust to sign documents for me and check us into hotels and stuff. We don’t know this manager, but we do know Hanna and I trust her.”

“I don’t want it to sound like I don’t trust you, but you’re sixteen. I know what these clubs are like and what kind of things goes on backstage. You know your father...”

“Is nothing like me. Do I drink? No. Do I do drugs? No. I saw what that sh ... uhh, stuff did to him, and I’m not going to become a drunk like him. I’m there for the music, and it’s all I want. You let us go to Raleigh and the beach for a week, and everything was fine. You didn’t get one call that something bad had happened. Sure, I sometimes make bad decisions, but not about this kind of thing. I need you to trust me.”

Mom looked at me hard, weighing the decision.

For a second, I thought she was going to still say no, which would basically end my chances to get my fledgling music career off the ground, until she finally sighed and said, “Okay.”

“Really?”

“Yes. But ... I expect a check-in call every single day. I am trusting you here. Remember you still have two more years of being a minor and needing my permission to go off and do these things. School comes first, and anything you do that will get in the way of finishing school will get this all shut down. I know this is your dream, but you’re still very young and I won’t let you sacrifice your future. You can always make another go of it when you’re older.”

I put down my fork and hugged her hard, “Thank you. Thank you. I promise, I won’t let you down.”

She kissed me on the forehead and then held me out at arm’s length, a much less stern expression on her face.

“You’re a good kid, Charlie. Don’t let all of this stuff go to your head. Remember who you are and where you came from, and you’ll be okay.”

“I will. I also really have to go,” I said, looking at the door to the trailer.

Mom looked over at my plate, which apparently met with her approval, because she let go of me and said, “Go.”

I hugged her again and was out the door.

“Look who decided to join us,” Marco said as I walked into Mr. French’s garage.

I flipped him off, causing him to laugh. Although we’d been practicing nearly every weekend for months, this last week we’d spent almost every waking hour together practicing and writing music, and it had really started to bring us together.

“Sorry, my mom wanted to talk to me,” I said, putting my guitar on its stand and plugging it up to the amps they’d already set up.

“Did you ask her?” Hanna said, stopping her work setting up Seth’s drum kit.

“Yep. She said okay, although I have to check in with her every day.”

“Yes,” Hanna said, pumping her fist.

“Sweet,” Kat added. “This summer is going to be so great.”

“Just remember we’re there to work. I want this album to be really good and the number of shows we have scheduled is pretty intense.”

“We can play a little though, right?” Lyla asked.

Lyla was our bass player and a notorious hound dog. In the four months I’d known her, I’d counted six women who’d reached the level of girlfriend, plus mentions of numerous other one-night stands. She liked to party hard.

“Sure, as long as we keep our eye on the prize. If we’re going out until late every night, we won’t be able to do what we need to do in the studio. This is our one chance, guys.”

“She’s joking,” Marco said, and then paused, giving Lyla a side-eye. “Probably.”

Lyla followed my lead and flipped him off.

“Okay, so where were we,” Seth asked, sitting down behind his now assembled drum kit.

“I was thinking about what Mr. French said last night when we were packing up. I think we’ve made too many changes to Country Roads. Can we go through it a few times like it was, dropping the harder sound we tried to add?”

No one objected, so we went back to the way we’d been playing it on weekends at the Blue Ridge, the restaurant and bar where I got my start. Hearing the song as we had originally played it, I realized that Mr. French was right. I wasn’t sure how we’d actually ended up with the higher intensity, more poppy version of the song by the end of the day yesterday. Maybe it had been the incremental changes that made it hard to notice, but hearing it now versus what we were playing the night before, the difference was stark.