Chapter 2

Friday I was getting a late start again, but this time on purpose. We had our first meeting with our studio rep, who wanted to come out and see us before we met him at the studio next week.

Although we’d been working out of Mr. French’s garage, this kind of meeting needed something more formal as a setting, which is why we were doing it at the Blue Ridge. While not formal, it was several steps above a high school teacher’s garage, especially in summer in the south, when we all felt like we might melt even with the garage door wide open.

Since he’d scheduled it for the middle of the afternoon, so we could use the dining room without bothering, or being bothered, by the normal lunch crowd, and take the morning off because none of us felt like setting up our equipment for practice just to break it all down a few hours later to make it to the meeting.

I will admit, it was nice to get to sleep in for the first time since just after school got out, and we signed the contract. I didn’t get up until lunchtime, and only then because the phone was ringing. Mom had already left for work, and we’d given the label our home number, since anything official had to go through Mom, because I was a minor. With the meeting coming up, there was always a chance that it was something about that, so I couldn’t just roll over and ignore it.

“Hello?” I said after stumbling into the way too bright front room to answer the phone.

“Did I wake you up? It’s practically lunchtime?”

“Victor?” I asked, recognizing his voice.

“Yes. Everything okay? You’re not sick or anything, are you?”

“I’m fine. I just had a chance to sleep in for the first time since school got out, or at least I did until I was rudely woken up by the phone.”

“My heart bleeds for you,” he said, his voice sounding anything but sorry. “I heard through the grapevine that you were going to be out here next week.”

“This grapevine wouldn’t own a restaurant and practice martial arts, would it?”

“It does. It also said you shouldn’t slack-up on your training just because you’re going to be out of town all summer.”

I don’t know why I didn’t suspect this sooner. Chef had been really supportive of my success, to the point that I didn’t question it when he didn’t even bring up the fact that I was going to miss training all summer. He’d been teaching me self-defense, mixed martial arts, and kung fu since the end of last summer and, except for a few days off here or there for injuries or something school or family related, I hadn’t missed any training. Even when I did have to miss for something unavoidable, he’d made sure I did double the next time we worked out. Why I somehow thought he’d just let me go for three months with no training after all of that, was beyond me; but I hadn’t even questioned it.

“I’m going to be really busy,” I said.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to train. I mean, I enjoyed it when I was doing it and it had saved my butt multiple times over the last year. But I also had my literal dreams on the line, and I didn’t want anything to get in the way of making this work.

“I know, and I’m not asking for a major commitment. Chef put me in contact with one of your teachers, whose garage I think you’ve been practicing in, so I could get an idea of how much free time you’ll have. Apparently, while you will all be working very hard, you’re only allotted so much studio time each day, since there are other people also needing the space. Yesterday, he said he should be able to give me your producers’ number and would let him know to expect a call about working with your schedule.”

All I could do was shake my head. Victor was the hatchet man, but I could feel Chef’s fingers in this. If I had to bet, he’d be the one actually making the calls and working things out. Chef had a way of dealing with people that always ended up with him getting what he wanted.

“I’m not getting out of this, am I?” I asked.

I’d put enough surrender in my voice to try and make him feel guilty. Although it would have never worked on either Mom or Chef, Victor was in his twenties without a long track record of dealing with teenagers. From the long pause after my question, my ploy at teen angst seemed to be working.

“Look, we both know who’s the driving force behind this. When I get off the phone with you, I have to call Chef and report in. If you honestly tell me you don’t have time, I’ll cover for you, but stop and think about it first. You’ve made some serious progress and worked really hard at this all year. You’re going to be really surprised what almost three months off is going to do to your conditioning and form. Your dedication to this so far is why you’ve done so well.”

“I get that, and while I love it, I’m not sure this is something I want to dedicate my life to. Chef talked me into going to a competition a few months ago, and honestly, it was a huge mistake. Looking back on it, I could have been seriously hurt; or worse, seriously hurt my hand. I’m on the edge of something really amazing here, and I don’t want to jeopardize it following someone else’s dream.”

“Then don’t spar or compete. Chef will push you as far as he can because he wants you to be the best you can be, but he understands this isn’t going to be everyone’s life. Hell, he’s heard you play, so he knows it’s not going to be yours. Long run, though, even if you only train and do some light sparring just in training, it’ll still be worth it. I don’t mean for actual fighting, although with your track record I wouldn’t put that off as unimportant, but in just your mental and physical health. Honestly, how do you feel now, compared to how you felt a year ago?”

“Good,” I said.

That was an understatement. I felt the best I’d ever felt in my life, at least physically. It had been the most evident when I was playing baseball last semester. I’d always enjoyed playing ball, but I hadn’t been nearly as good as I was last semester. Part of that was having real coaching instead of just playing pickup games, but a big part of it was being in much better physical shape than I’d been in, before.

It was also a big help on the stage every Friday and Saturday night, since it could get pretty grueling playing guitar and singing at full energy for multiple hours. If these same opportunities had come up a year ago, I might not have been able to keep it up and perform at the same level the whole time.

“So don’t lose what you’ve built up. Let’s just try it and see how it goes, okay?”

He was right, but I still didn’t love that I was being manipulated. Chef was almost like a father, or at least a father figure, to me and one of the reasons I’d managed to get the opportunities I had right now, but I hated the way he’d sometimes manipulate people. I know a lot of that is from working with teens and young adults who had bad home lives or were resistant to doing things they should, but he knew me well enough to know he could have just sat me down and talked to me about this like Victor was.

Someday soon, we were going to have to sit down and have a discussion about his little games.

“Okay, fine. Let’s schedule times for me to come work out with you. If it starts getting in the way, though, I’m going to shut it down.”

“Which you should. I’m glad you’re giving it a chance. I know music is your thing, but you’ve got a natural talent for martial arts. It would be a shame to waste it.”

We said our goodbyes and hung up. I didn’t say anything to him, partly because his ego was already big enough and partly because I didn’t want Victor to think I approved in any way of his playing a part in Chef’s game, but I was looking forward to seeing him. Training with Chef was great, but I really enjoyed getting a different perspective on things. For one, Chef mostly sat on the sides and instructed, while Victor would get in and actually show me what I was doing wrong, which usually made it a whole lot easier to figure out what a given move should look like.

They also both had very different outlooks on life that made their training feel so much different. Besides, Victor was a lot closer to my age. Even if he was a decade older, I enjoyed hanging out with him.

I decided to go ahead and get my day started since I was already up. Now that I wasn’t groggy and was over my dealing with Chef and Victor, I was starting to get excited about today. We had the contract and had been practicing, but meeting the studio rep and going over the plan for next week was the first real step towards us recording our first album, which was still blowing my mind.

Kat had swim practice, so it was only Hanna and I riding over to the Blue Ridge. She must have been pretty excited too, because she was standing in her back yard, waiting for me as I came across the creek and small wooded area that separate the trailer park from her subdivision.

We were the first ones there, but the rest of the band arrived shortly after, although they were driving the hour back and forth between Wellsville and Ashville every day.

The studio rep, however, was almost an hour late, to the point I started wondering if I should call Rowan to find out what we should do. I couldn’t really call the label since we didn’t have a contact yet. We wouldn’t meet the manager they were assigning us until the tour and the guy who’d come here last month to negotiate my contract had just been a lawyer with the label and wasn’t involved in the day-to-day activities. The guy we were meeting today would be our actual point of contact if we needed something that our manager, when we finally met him, couldn’t take care of.

Right about the time I was starting to decide I really did need to call Rowan, a guy walked through the doors of the Blue Ridge looking enough out of place that he had to be from the label.

While I would have thought a music label out of Nashville would have been country-focused, or at least southern, everyone I had met so far seemed straight out of central casting in New York Cityor Los Angeles, and none seemed particularly comfortable with the way things were done in the south.

Here, even most of the rich people dressed mostly casual and it wasn’t uncommon to see boots with a suit. Guys wearing highly polished shoes and light blue, pin-striped suits with hair that looked to have a gallon of some kind of gel in it looked wildly out of place.

“Which one of you kids is Charlie,” He asked, coming up to us.

I did not love being called kids. Admittedly, Chef was in the kitchen so the oldest person in the empty dining area was twenty-four, but this guy couldn’t have been a year or two more than thirty and had a condescending tone that instantly set me the wrong way.

“I’m Charlie,” I said, trying, and failing, to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

Hanna, who knew me well enough to recognize my tone, made an expression at me from behind the guy’s back basically telling me to be on my best behavior.

“Hey, man, it’s good to meet you,” he said, grabbing my hand, which had been down by my side, and shaking it. “I’m Kent Graham and I’ll be your contact with the studio, which I know you’ve probably already figured out, but hey, better to say these things aloud. Am I right? I listened to some of the stuff Tony had recorded when he was out here, and I have to say, I loved it. I’ve listened to a lot of new groups, and you guys have some serious potential.”

Although I hadn’t really gotten a chance to meet him, I knew he was referring to the music scout who’d come to hear one of the regular shows we played here at the Blue Ridge. His recommendation was one of the big reasons we’d ended up getting signed for a contract.

“Thanks,” I said, thrown a little off balance.

He’d gone from condescending to genuine sounding praise and enthusiasm so fast that it was hard to get a handle on him. I’d been prepared to hate him as soon as he called us kids, but the attitude had dropped almost instantly.

“So,” he said, sitting down at the table we’d all been around and pulling a laptop out of the, I assume expensive, backpack he’d been carrying. “Are you guys excited for next week?”