Chapter 39

I kept my eye on Linda, Eli, and Ronnie’s social media accounts, but nothing was posted by the time I had to go to school the next day. I know it was a little absurd to expect something overnight, but I was anxious, since I couldn’t think of anything else to do to keep us afloat until I got free of my parents. It was late when I called Rowan and there was every chance he hadn’t even talked to them yet. I’d pressed him as hard as I could about how important this was, and I trusted him to do it quickly, thinking that this had the best chance of success.

Besides, any of them could have stuff going on right now that would make contacting them difficult. Eli, for one, probably still had his own problems. I saw an article online the other day that their guitarist was out of the hospital and back home recuperating, but it would still be a long road for him.

Tuesday afternoon rolled around, and still nothing. I couldn’t call Rowan and prod him again, but I’d hoped to see something by the end of the day. It was only two-hundred characters, which shouldn’t take long to write. It really wasn’t a fair expectation for them to act quickly, of course, but I really needed this to happen.

I was once again in my head, and for the second time, Cameron managed to sneak up on me in the parking lot. This time, he called out my name from well outside of arm’s distance, which was kind of funny.

“I swear I wasn’t going to try to hit you this time,” I said.

“Better safe than sorry. So, I took your advice and started following up on this stuff. I called the school district, and they had no idea what I was talking about, but they sounded really concerned that I found photocopies of the answers with student IDs on them. I asked them if that was against policy, and they wouldn’t answer, but I could hear it in their voices that this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“That much is obvious.”

“Yeah, but I mean, I don’t think they knew about it. They were very surprised. I think this is something that our school administration did themselves.”

“You know your call is going to cause an uproar, right? They’re going to call the principal and ask what the hell is going on. Did you give them your name?”

“Yes, and I told them it was for a story for the school newspaper. How was I supposed to know? I was just asking questions.”

“Yeah, I know, but that means they’re going to know exactly who to come after. My experience, so far, is that they are much more interested in covering their own asses than actually doing things for the betterment of the students.”

“Yeah, I know. I also found out who some of the students are?”

“You did?”

“Yeah. I didn’t take pictures of the Scantrons, or whatever they’re called, cause then I’d have copies of the confidential information and they could use that against me, but I wrote down a bunch of the student IDs. Every ID is connected to someone who’s had some kind of run-in with the admin. Kids caught with drugs on them, kids caught drunk, kids who cheated or were in fights. I seriously doubt that’s just a coincidence. I think they did this to get information on the ‘bad kids’.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t see my ID.”

“I only wrote down ten, since I’d already been in there too long and didn’t want to get caught. Yours could have been there.”

“Probably was. And yeah, if they’re all kids who’ve been in trouble, then this is more than just record keeping or whatever.”

“If I write about this, it’s going to cause problems though. I mean, there’s no way the administration won’t go through the roof if I make this public. They are definitely ‘kill the messenger’ kind of people.”

“I know, but I think you need to write about it. People need to know they’re singling us out and that we can’t trust them when they tell us something is safe or anonymous. Right now, it’s just what do you drink and who do you sleep with, but next time it could be something really important.”

“I could get in trouble.”

“I know. If you’re really worried about that, then don’t do it. I wouldn’t want something bad to happen to you, but I think this is important and people should know about it. Could you pass it off to someone else?”

“No. I mean, yeah, I could, but I don’t want to put anyone else in this position.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I think you’re right, I have a responsibility to do the right thing here, even if I get in trouble. I’m going to write about it.”

“Will it even get in the school newspaper? It seems pretty unlikely your faculty advisor would let something like that go through.”

“Probably not, but I’m going to try. If it doesn’t, I’ll put it up on the web or something, and get the word out about where to find it.”

“Okay. Just be careful. Try and be as neutral as possible, so they can’t accuse you of having some kind of vendetta against the administration.”

“You and I both know they don’t care how neutral I am, they’ll still say that.”

“Yeah, probably. Good luck, man.”

“Thanks. I just needed to tell someone, and I guess hear them say I should still write about it. I know it’s important, but I haven’t really gotten in trouble before, so I’m a little scared.”

“It’s okay. Being scared about something like this is smart. I think you’re doing the right thing though, and I support you.”

“Thanks, Charlie. That means a lot.”

Friday, the first social media post came out. Surprisingly, it wasn’t Linda, but Eli, who posted the same message across all of his group’s platforms.

Check out Country Road, the new release from Charlie Nelson and the Wild Cats. Charlie did us a huge favor and sat in for Brad recently at the Nashville Food & Wine Festival, and absolutely killed it. This kid can seriously play and he’s a good dude. Show him some love.

That was a lot more than what I was expecting. I knew it would take a week to see any kind of bump from that, but I really appreciated the fact that he took the time to do it. If I ever saw him again, I’d need to seriously thank him. I did all the stuff Megan had shown me to boost his post and hoped for the best. With their two million followers, if only one percent bought our record or went out to stream it, it would be a huge boost to our sales.

I know people saw it, because all weekend it got mentioned to me. The comments doubled after Linda posted something to her social media accounts on Saturday afternoon.

If you haven’t checked out Charlie Nelson and the Wild Cat’s new album, go stream it today. You won’t regret it. He opened for us this summer and absolutely slayed it. Since I’ve been taking credit for discovering him, Gracies need to get out there and make me look good. Blow his songs up.

I guess ‘Gracies’ was what they called their fans. I’d always found the idea of giving your fans a nickname a little weird, but hey, if they did go out and stream our record, who was I to criticize. And she was right; she did discover us, more or less. I sent out a response that evening, hoping her fans would see it and maybe follow us as well.

You’re not wrong. You and Rowan Hughes are the only reason we were able to make this record. But do you have to point it out every time I talk to you? LOL!!!

I won’t lie, even though I’d asked for their help, I still got a huge charge out of seeing people with that big of a following say nice things about us. My life may have been falling apart, but for a few days at least, I felt really good. Especially since everyone I knew, and a lot of people I didn’t, saw it and stopped me after our shows to tell me how cool it was.

It had been a week since I actually felt good, so I was enjoying it while it lasted. Not even Marco’s negativity could bring me down. He was pissed because both of the messages focused on me specifically, instead of the band. Marco felt that just mentioning the band but then talking about me made them all seem less important than me. I didn’t care, and neither did Seth or Lyla. It wasn’t like this was a random reviewer talking about us. I’d been more or less the only one to deal with both Linda and Eli and was the one who had any kind of relationship with them, even if it was only as an acquaintance. It made sense they’d single me out. Marco just liked to find things to bitch about.

On top of all that, we had a great weekend at the Blue Ridge. Maybe because of the buzz around the social media messages, the place was packed all three days. Chef normally paid us Monday after he finished going through all the receipts from the weekend, since we got a cut of the door and didn’t want to stay around and wait late at night to get it. Considering how often we played there, we all trusted him to pay us, so no one had a problem with this arrangement. Between paying us for the entire weekend and the fact that most people seemed to pay with cards these days, he would cut us a check every Monday after we played. I’d swing by after school, get the check, deposit it and pull out the cash to pay the band, and head back to the Blue Ridge for practice. Finally, I’d drop off everyone else’s shares at their house before going back to Hanna’s house, where I’d spend the rest of the night doing homework.

Today was going basically as usual, except the check was larger than normal, because of the large crowds. I filled doubt the normal amount on the deposit slip and the withdrawal slip and waited in line, handing them to the teller when it was my turn. I could have probably done it through the ATM, but I really didn’t trust putting a check into the machine, since I could just imagine it eating it up and losing any record of it. Things were progressing normally until the teller suddenly walked off to talk to someone that looked like a manager, which had never happened to me before.