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It turned out that my mom wasn’t as hard to convince as I’d thought.

She’d pretty much just told me I was eighteen now and she was glad I had a vision for my future.

For the first time ever, she seemed to finally feel fulfilled in her own working life, and I’m sure that had a lot to do with it.

Not that my mom had ever lived vicariously through me, but she no longer had to worry about me.

That was the first summer I didn’t stay with my grandparents, and it was kind of weird.

I missed a couple of practices here and there, because I spent some of my days off from work with them—even driving there myself.

I’d managed to parlay my experience bagging groceries the summer before into a job doing the same at a supermarket in Dalton.

I didn’t let my employers know I didn’t plan to be there come September.

Zack continued washing dishes and Braden got a job working for a local farm.

Cy found work as a loader in a warehouse.

As a group, we set a monetary goal and Labor Day weekend as the date we’d leave Dalton County—and we compared bank accounts every two weeks, watching our collective balance grow as that date loomed closer .

And when we left our home towns, a few days earlier than planned but a few bucks richer, we set out with the optimism and innocence that can only come from young adults who’ve led a sheltered small-town existence they had no idea they were leaving.

If Braden, Cy, and I were important parts of a car, like tires, transmission, and the gas tank, Zack himself was the engine.

I say that because after four weeks of our new life, I was already ready to go home.

I’d never experienced homesickness before, because any previous time away from home had always been with my grandparents, even when they took us on small vacations to various other places in Colorado or out of state.

The newness of our situation wore off quickly, leaving me feeling alone and wiped out.

The first problem was that, even though we managed to find a three-bedroom apartment, it was quite a distance from the scene we wanted to be close to—and it wasn’t anything to write home about, with old appliances and bathroom fixtures, dingy walls that had been white at one time, and threadbare rust-colored carpeting.

Add to that we had a cockroach problem which reminded the men I lived with that I was most certainly a girl—and I insisted upon buying any product that promised to rid us of the infestation.

Even though the landlord sprayed some heavy-duty stuff all over the apartment, I still saw the little black almonds skittering across the floor late at night when I’d walk into the kitchen.

The bugs actually made me excited about going to my shitty job.

Yes, there was that, too.

My only experience bagging groceries didn’t help much where we were living, because there were no supermarkets nearby—and, after driving through Denver my first time in rush-hour traffic, I knew I wanted to avoid the adventure as much as possible from here on out.

So I had to find work in food service nearby.

Although I found a restaurant where I wanted to wait tables, they were only hiring servers over the age of twenty-one so they could serve alcohol.

After checking a couple of other places that didn’t serve hard drinks, I discovered they wanted someone with experience, which meant that fast food was about the only option I had.

Fortunately, there was a local fast-food place two and a half blocks from our apartment, so I could walk instead of taking the bus.

But our problems with adulting were only beginning, particularly in terms of playing to audiences, the reason we’d come here in the first place.

One night, we were all sitting huddled around Zack’s computer eating TV dinners. Braden was in charge of finding something funny to watch but Zack wanted to make one last phone call first. “All right. Thanks for your time.” After he hung up, he said, “Motherfucker.”

That outburst was a sure sign that Zack was feeling pressured, too, because things never used to get to him—his supreme confidence in our band had been unwavering.

He always believed we just had to get seen and the fans would find us.

And while he still believed it, he was getting tired of rejection—and he said so.

“I’m getting goddamned sick and tired of hearing no . ”

The rest of us were starting to think variations of the same thing, that perhaps we’d had beginner’s luck before. Cy voiced those thoughts out loud. “I hate to say it, Zack, but maybe we got our first two gigs because we were local kids and maybe they didn’t have their choice of bands.”

“I don’t accept that. They just need to hear us. ”

“Yeah, but if they don’t know us, they’ll never get to that stage.” Cy was right, but Zack wasn’t hearing it.

I said, “What if…?” Pausing, I tried to think of how to say what was on my mind.

“Spit it out,” Zack urged.

“You hear stories sometimes about how famous people got their start by pretending to be managers or agents or stuff like that just to get people to listen because they were so fed up.”

Zack’s green eyes widened. “Son of a bitch. That’s just crazy enough to work.” He got up and went into the bedroom he shared with Braden.

Meanwhile, I peeled the plastic off the top of my Salisbury steak meal. “I didn’t mean for him to try it. I was just saying.”

Braden scooped up some mashed potatoes. “Then you shouldn’t have said anything.”

He was right, of course. Zack was willing to try anything once—and, if it worked, he’d do it over and over.

Frowning, I took a bite of the spongey meat covered with gelatinous gravy, trying to remind myself that I’d wanted this.

Never before had mom’s slow cooker roast beef sounded so tasty.

Because we were probably all three thinking the same damn thing as we choked down our tasteless meals, we weren’t talking, so Zack’s voice boomed into the living room loud and clear.

Braden had long ago found something to watch, but we were waiting for Zack.

Meanwhile, his laptop sat on the TV tray, the screen filled with a comedian on a dark stage holding a mic on pause so that his eyes looked half closed, his mouth half open.

“Yeah, can I speak to Van, please?” While listening to Zack, I stared at my tray, deciding to take a fork full of corn to see if it tasted any better than anything else I’d eaten from the meal thus far. “This is…Corey Anselmo. I manage the hard rock band Once Upon a Riot. ”

When I looked up, Braden was grinning and Cy’s eyebrows nearly hit the ceiling.

Braden whispered, “As in Phil Anselmo ? And what happens when they ask if he represents Down, too?”

I asked, “Why? Is Anselmo a rare name?”

Zack was talking again. “Yes, I’d like to book them for any time over the next three months.”

Cy nodded at me. “And I guess Corey from Corey Taylor, yeah?”

We all grinned to the point of bursting with laughter, but we knew it was important to be quiet so as not to ruin Zack’s phone call. But they guessed right—I was certain of it, based on Zack’s favorite bands.

“No, they don’t have a demo CD yet, but they’re planning on putting one together before Christmas. Right now, they’re working on building up a solid repertoire of songs as well as getting their name out more.”

I didn’t realize that I was holding my breath when Braden whispered what all of us had been thinking: “He seems to be getting farther with these guys.”

“Yeah, sure. I can have them record a couple of songs and send that over to you. What’s the email address?

” Zack rushed in the living room without looking at us, turning the laptop toward him as he sat down.

Soon, he was typing away. “I’ll get that to you by the beginning of next week.

Thanks.” We knew before he’d even ended the call that he’d made headway—and that we had an offer of sorts.

“You guys caught that shit, right?” Before we’d even nodded, he continued.

“So we have to strike while the iron is hot. We can’t afford a professional studio right now, but we’ve got to get something together. ”

“You have software to record, right?”

“Yeah, and I can mix it too. And I can transfer the files to a thumb drive, but a CD would probably be better. ”

Cy, of course, had to try to burst our bubble. “What will the venue think when they find out we’re on the metal side of rock and roll?”

Scowling, Zack clicked away on his laptop, his TV dinner growing colder by the second—not that the temperature could affect the taste.

“We don’t have to record our heaviest stuff but even if we did, how can we know till we try?

Right now, we don’t have a fucking chance.

If we put together a CD that I start sharing with clubs and stuff, we can get our foot in the door. That’s all I want.”

Indeed. That was all any of us wanted—because I was already tired of collecting money all day for a constant stream of people ordering burgers and fries, and being challenged to learn the drive-through wasn’t my idea of moving up the ladder.

All that money went into rent, food, and utilities with nothing left over.

This had to work.