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I couldn’t wait to see Zack and Once Upon a Riot.

The last time I’d seen the gang was at Parker’s graduation party.

The band had played a few of their favorite covers, and Zack had told me he was still working on some original stuff.

We’d kept in touch over the summer and I knew he’d written three new songs.

He wanted me to hear the band play them, because now, he said, they were finally sounding good.

I could hardly wait.

Somehow, I felt much older. I was ready for school to be over. After working for three months straight and having to be an adult about it, the last thing I wanted was to deal with high school rules.

Just one more year. I could do it.

I looked over my schedule that morning before jumping in my car with all my supplies at hand.

What the hell had I been thinking last spring when I’d signed up for classes?

I had probably my heaviest load yet, but I didn’t have complete say in what I took.

Government was a requirement for all seniors, as was a fourth year of English.

A few of the classes, though, I was looking forward to, like art, psychology, and astronomy.

And I didn’t yet know what classes I shared with my friends, although we’d tried to arrange it.

I saw Zack’s “Green Machine” in the parking lot and pulled in beside it. I didn’t know until then that he’d just arrived, too. As I got out of my car, backpack full of spiral notebooks, pens, and pencils, he said, “Nice wheels, Dani!”

“Thanks, Zack. Hey, Braden! I missed you guys.”

“Back at ya.” Together, we started walking toward the hulking building in front of us, and I felt a sense of freedom, knowing that real independence was just around the corner.

“So when do I get to hear your new songs? After school?” I looked over and up at Zack as we continued trekking across the lawn. He seemed even taller than he had at the end of the last school year.

Suddenly, he looked pissed. “Yeah, about that… ”

Braden didn’t seem too happy, either. The brief moment of excitement we’d felt at starting the first day of our senior year had evaporated rather quickly.

I stopped walking. “So tell me.”

Zack looked up, sighing, as if keeping his cool was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. “Parker bailed.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he left the band. As in just left two days ago.” And I was just now hearing about it? “He’s going to Dalton Community College and said he needed to focus on homework. At first, I wondered why he’d just had that fucking epiphany now . But I was like fine, whatever .”

“Yeah,” Braden said.

“But then last night on Facebook, he announced that he’d joined a band at the college. Apparently, he’s too good to be in a band with townies and he didn’t have the balls to just say it.”

“Fuck him,” Braden said. “When we get famous, he’ll regret it.”

Zack’s face softened a little with the promise of the future. As we continued walking, his shoulders dropped a bit. “But Cy’s still in, and we’ll be able to give you an idea of what we’re doing with my old drum machine…if it still works.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“It was an old, used piece of shit when I bought it. I didn’t think it would last as long as it did.”

The first bell rang and we were off. Zack and Braden went to band class, the only thing that seemed to be keeping Zack in school, and I found my way to art class.

I’d never considered myself to be good enough to sketch a stick figure, but there was something creative inside me that needed a way to express itself.

Over the past few years in secret, I’d composed poetry and painted wispy designs on typing paper with an old watercolor set, but nothing had quite grabbed me .

I hoped something in art class would speak to me, tell me the best way to express myself.

I felt like everything inside me was restrained behind a dam, and as soon as I figured out the magical way to let it go, it would break the dam.

As I matured, I realized I had pent up all sorts of emotions, from Ava’s rejection and betrayal to my growing love for Zack and everything in between, and I’d never known how to get all that shit out.

Maybe art held the answers.

I knew from the first day that I would love that class.

The rest of my day was a mixed bag, though, but at least I had Zack in three of my classes and Braden in three.

But Government, the one class the three of us were in together, also had Ava.

She sat near the front of the room, but I realized from that first day of our senior year that I really didn’t like who she’d become.

We had truly grown apart. I didn’t like that class too much, and Ava was only part of the reason why.

I was bored out of my skull.

The material had the potential to be interesting, but our ancient teacher had been talking about American government since before we were born.

Maybe he’d actually enjoyed teaching it back when he started, but now it just felt like he was putting in time till he could retire.

So Zack, Braden, and I whispered and passed notes a lot, and Mr. Henry didn’t seem to object.

But all that had yet to happen.

Soon enough, the first day of school was over and I was driving to Zack’s house, right behind him. It was shit like that that was making me feel adult. After working all summer and doing grown-up things like opening a bank account, I felt like nothing in the world could stop me.

Unfortunately, I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. But there was one thing I knew—I wanted Zack in it for now and all time.

“Parker didn’t take his drum kit with him?” I asked, surveying the back room in Zack’s house.

“That’s not Parker’s drum kit. And it’s a good thing, because I’d be tempted to break that shit.”

Braden said, “It’s cool, Zack. We don’t need him.”

“A stupid drum machine is no substitute for a real live drummer.”

“Maybe not, but Parker was a douchebag. Good riddance.”

I giggled. “He was a douchebag.”

“How was I the only one who didn’t see that?”

“So are you gonna play me stuff? Do we have to wait on Cyrus to get here?”

“Nah. We recorded it. Good thing, too.” Zack sat at the computer desk he’d moved into a corner of the room since I’d been there, making it even more cramped.

While we waited for the computer to boot up, I had a brilliant idea—but I needed his input. “Hey, Zack, what would you say your band symbolizes?”

He cocked his head, and I could tell he’d never given it much thought. “Metal. Hell, everything metal is : chicks, sex, drugs, rebellion, dissatisfaction, rage.”

“ Chicks? ”

Braden snickered while Zack offered a simple “Yeah” with raised eyebrows.

I wasn’t going to push it, but, much as I loved metal music, I was beginning to hate how parts of it felt sexist. I didn’t have the language for it at the time, but it bothered me deep into my core how women were objectified and denigrated, all in the name of hard rock.

Women were either “whores” or “babes”—groupie sluts good for a blowjob or trophy girlfriends with surgical boobs and painted silent lips .

Disgusting.

There were, of course, a few exceptions.

Women who rocked helped elevate the status of metal females, but even they could sometimes be part of the problem.

I thought of Taylor Momsen of The Pretty Reckless posing with nothing but a black cross covering her naughty parts or the two women in Butcher Babies with little crosses of black electrical tape hiding their areolas.

How could the rest of us even stand a chance demanding respect?

And still I saw the irony of those thoughts as well, because they were comfortable wearing (or not, as it were) next to nothing.

Maybe they were comfortable with who they were—and that was who they were.

It was such a confusing time being in my head.

So I frowned at Zack, all these ideas and images in my head with no words to accompany them—and I returned to my original inspired notion. “Have you come up with a logo yet?”

He shrugged. “Grab my backpack,” he said as he clicked on an icon on his computer desktop. I did as he asked, fetching his bag from the floor by the door where he’d left it. But when I tried to hand it to him, he said, “Pull out the notebook.”

That was all that was in there. No books, no binders—just one spiral notebook and a lone pen in the bottom.

I wondered why he bothered with the pack.

As soon as I took out the notebook with the red cover, though, I knew exactly why he’d asked.

This was the same notebook I’d seen him with in our fourth period Statistics class, but it had been clean before.

Now, on both the front and the back were sketches of Once Upon a Riot .

Most of them were drawn in an extreme crazy yet ornate hand—a gnarled branchy type of font used by so many metal bands that was impossible to decipher.

They always looked like old sticks to me and why the bands thought their logos were awesome was beyond me.

Like Enslaved. Cool band name but you wouldn’t know that was what they were called if you were trying to read their logo.

Or Finntroll, Bloodbath, Leviathan. Their logos were impossible to read.

Zack’s was, at least, legible but I was going to use a word I’d heard in art class today.

“Derivative.”

I knew from Zack’s eyes that, even though he didn’t quite know what it meant, he was taking it as an insult. “Is that a problem?”

“No, not really, but don’t you want to be different?”

“My music will be—but if my logo looks like that, people will know what I’m playing.”

I wasn’t going to argue with him. “Then let’s hear it.”

He nodded and clicked the mouse a few times. Before I knew it, those tinny speakers were delivering a hell of a heavy sound. After half a minute, I asked, “That’s you?”

Zack’s anger turned to soft happiness again. “Yeah.”

“Me, too,” Braden said.

“You know what, though?” Zack said, clicking the mouse and stopping the playback. “I think Dani’s right.”

“I am?”

“Yeah. This sounds—what’s that word again?”

“Derivative?”

“Yeah. Derivative. Like every other death metal band out there.”

Braden didn’t seem to like where this was going—and he echoed the words Zack had said moments earlier. “Is that a problem?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is. I don’t want to sound like everybody else. Dani’s right about that.”

“So who do you want to sound like?”

“Me.” Zack jumped up, flipping on an amp before grabbing his guitar. “After playing in jazz band last year, I started exploring all kinds of shit. And this,” he said, playing an emotional riff that spoke to me somehow, “ this is what I want to play.”

“Blues?” Braden asked.

“Well, not exactly. Metal with a blues influence.”

“So what the hell are we waiting for?”

“Inspiration.”

Finally I found an opening to ask my question. “Then why don’t you let me design your logo?”

“ You? I’ve never seen you draw in your life.”

“But I’m taking an art class—and I want a real-life project to work on.”

“Shouldn’t you take graphic design for that?”

I sighed. “Do you care if I try or not?”

Zack smiled again, his white teeth gleaming under the soft lights. “Try away. But that doesn’t mean I’ll take it.”

Braden added, “We already did one using a logo generator online.”

I laughed. “How’d that work out?”

Both boys said together, “It sucked.”

Zack ripped another riff on his axe. “Which is why I was doodling a new one in class today.” He started pacing while playing more bluesy notes.

“Here’s what really sucks, though, guys.

I haven’t told anybody this.” Braden and I exchanged a glance before looking back at our friend.

“I’ve lined up two gigs. One’s in Lamar the end of October and the other’s in Rocky Ford. ”

While I was curious how he planned to lug all this stuff to these venues that were both about half an hour away, give or take, in different directions, I had a more pressing question. “How’d you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Schedule shows to play?”

“I just called and asked. I didn’t want to do anything here in Dalton—at least, not yet.

I’d rather play some place where nobody knows me.

That way, if I fuck up really bad, no one’ll know.

A good logo would be cool—if I could get it on the bass drum before the show—and I’m okay just playing covers like I promised those bars we would.

But how the fuck do I do it without a drummer? ”

“Do you know anyone else who can play?”

“Like Parker? Nah. Nobody I would want to spend hours with. Most of the band kids playing drums nowadays are rich college kid wannabes.”

“Dude, look at me .” Braden strapped his beautiful blue bass on and played a bassline that could have gone with any genre of music.

“Yeah?” Zack had half a grin on his face but I could see the impatience in his eyes. He was trying to solve the world’s problems while his friend needed attention.

“No, dude, look at me. A year ago, I couldn’t play. Now I can.”

Zack started to say something but then cocked his head again in that cute way he would when he pondered a thought that required time.

And then he and Braden both turned their heads to me.

I knew what they were thinking.

No way.