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“Hell, yes!” Zack’s enthusiasm made me eager to hear what he had to say next. “They’re from Colorado. But that’s not the important part. They’re really good. They’re now in my top ten favorite bands of all time. They might even be number one.”

“Wow.”

“I’ll send you some YouTube links to check out. What about Slash?”

“ What? ”

“Slash. He’s a fuckin’ awesome guitarist.”

I adjusted the volume on my grandparents’ computer, because I was fairly certain that if they heard cussing coming from the speakers, they might change their minds about unlimited computer access.

“Just listen to the videos I send you later and tell me what you think.”

I did it gladly. When my grandparents and I went shopping later that week, I picked up a pair of earbuds because a couple of guitar squeals from Shock Treatment had caused my grandpa to ask what noise I was listening to. My grandma had said, “Christine did it, too. It’s just a phase.”

Little did they know, it was not a phase—not by a long shot.

Zack and I didn’t chat live much after that, but we sent each other links every single day.

It didn’t take me long to realize that I loved the music.

It seemed to have more depth than the stuff Ava listened to on a regular basis.

While I couldn’t understand all the words without Googling the lyrics, the music itself spoke to me on a level no other sounds ever had.

I could feel emotions coming from the guitar that spoke to me: those melodies told tales of pain, anger, frustration, sadness.

Sometimes, I could feel lighter feelings as well, but I could sense a battery of emotions that I’d never identified before inside myself, and those stemmed from things I hadn’t understood until that point.

The frustrations at having been bullied as a kid, of being controlled as a preteen, the anger and humiliation of poverty.

As I learned the songs Zack and I shared back and forth, I would walk around my grandparents’ town singing lyrics low enough to not be heard by people sitting on their front porches but loud enough for my own ears.

I found love and therapy that summer—and discovered more about myself than years of counseling ever could have uncovered.

But the best part about the music was that I didn’t have to relive anything, didn’t have to actually pinpoint the causes of my inner turmoil, and it still managed to cleanse my soul.

I’d never listen to Top Forty again.

I couldn’t articulate these feelings to Zack, but he sensed them nonetheless—and I suspected he was going through a similar awakening of his own.

We’d never talked about it much, but he and I both came from single-parent families with no father in the picture.

And even though it appeared that his mom made good money working for the Department of Corrections, there were other problems stemming from that, things I didn’t realize at the time.

Even though he and I were separated by miles and miles, we grew as close as two long-distance friends could, and it was through a shared love of discovering a music that spoke to us.

I would ask him if he’d ever heard AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” (of course, he had), and he’d counter with Motley Crüe’s “Shout at the Devil.” I’d suggest that he listen to Avenged Sevenfold’s “Hail to the King” and he’d tell me I wasn’t complete without Slipknot’s “Sarcastrophe.” It wasn’t until that summer that we realized how much we’d missed by having only one country music station available on the radio and no exposure to sounds our family and friends didn’t like.

But, once we’d made the discovery, there was no going back.

In fact, at one point, Zack sent me a text message late one night: I swear to God I’ve never had this much fun talking music with anyone.

I wasn’t asleep yet. Same here. Thank you.

Don’t thank me yet. You’ll get sick of me.

Where was that coming from? I could never get sick of you.

Yeah, well…I somehow seem to ruin the best moments. Just warning you it’s coming.

I assured him he was nuts and that I could never grow tired of him—and it was true.

The rest of the summer, we swapped music suggestions and, by the time I came home to Nopal a week before school started, I was just shy of being a full-blown metalhead. And even though I’d enjoyed my time away from Ava, I was even ready to see her again.

When I called her, though, she seemed hesitant in a way I’d never experienced before.

“I’ll see you next week, Dani. Sorry, but I’ve got a lot of obligations with the cheer team.

We have a pep assembly the very first day of school, and we’re doing a huge routine that we need to get down. I promise you’ll love it.”

I wasn’t even going to ask what song they would be performing to.

“Okay, well, I’ll see you then.” I didn’t even know if we’d have any classes together, but I hadn’t compared my final schedule to Zack’s, either. We’d gotten the official ones via email a few days earlier, and I’d wondered just how pissed Ava would be at my choices.

Now, though, I thought maybe she might not even care.

The first day of school, I once more spent time putting on makeup and carefully choosing my clothes.

My grandma had taken me shopping at thrift stores and I’d made out like a bandit.

Most of the items I’d chosen looked brand new and I was able to better express myself now that I was older and had an idea of what I really liked.

Mom got home from work just as I was leaving for the bus, and she gave me a couple of bucks for lunch. I kissed her on the cheek before walking toward the bus stop and rode to Dalton alone, no Ava in sight.

It was all just as well, because I was about to ride one hell of an emotional roller coaster, one Ava couldn’t have possibly helped me with.