Page 62 of Don't Go Faking My Heart

I stop on the side of the road before we reach the intersection.

"What are you doing?" Lou asks.

"Check out Chick Hanks," I say. "He was shirtless and shoving a hose in gopher holes last time I saw him." I roll down the window. "How's it going, Chick?" I ask.

He looks at me with wicked glee on his face. "I'm gonna get the little buggers."

"Oh, great!"

"Heard about you and Rusty," he says, fiddling with a little black remote in his hand. "You tell him to watch the harvest times on that okra. I bought some on Saturday, and it was almost woody."

"I'll pass it on along, sir," I say. "I hope you get the gophers!"

"Oh, I'll get 'em, all right." He laughs at the small remote control.

"D'you ever try Juicy Fruit?" Lou asks. "My papaw swears up and down that if you open a few packs of Juicy Fruit, they'll eat it and get all gummed up and won't return."

"Juicy Fruit?" Chick laughs coldly. "We're miles past Juicy Fruit, girl. I've tried gum, moth balls, traps. Dumped jars of cayenne pepper. Planted all these doggone castor oil plants. I flooded them out. Now we're trying sonic vibrations."

Chick aims the remote control in his hand at a control panel, and I sit up high enough to notice DJ speakers all around his yard.

"Chick, I don't think those are sonic—" I start, but then he presses play, and Lou and I slam our hands over our ears as a deafening noise explodes from the speakers.

There’s a huge popping sound, and then the music goes quiet.

A handful of gophers rush out of a hole and scatter through the fence, but Chick is clutching his ears too hard to celebrate.

"What in tarnation?" a neighbor runs out of his house, yelling. "My dang fuse blew out!"

Chick’s wife comes out next. “Chick, why’d the power go out?”

And now more and more neighbors are coming out from farther down the street. And they're all descending on Chick Hanks, who's grabbing his ears.

"What's wrong with you? Why aren't you answering me?" his wife yells.

"I forgot to turn off my hearing aids! But I got 'em! Did you see their little legs running?" he cackles. "I got 'em!"

I laugh while Lou holds her hand to her heart, chuckling as Chick rolls around, moaning and celebrating. "Poor Chick," she says. "I really love small towns."

"Speaking of which, how's your family doing?"

"Oh, fine. Same as always. Momma's teaching singing lessons, and one of her students?—"

"That brat Olivia, I bet," I say.

"That's the one. Olivia tried to get into one of those American Idol knockoff shows and didn't make it past the second round, and her mom said it was because my mom isn't connected enough to the judges like she 'should be.' Momma explained that she dated the lead judge, and if that's not 'connected' enough for her, she's welcome to find a voice coach in the state who did. And she pointed out that fewer than a hundred people in the country made it into the second round and Olivia exceeded expectations for a sixteen-year-old. But Olivia's mom thought she should have made it further and called my mom a has-been and said all this stuff about how Olivia is the best student she ever taught, and Momma said she just stood there and smiled."

"Oh man. I wish your mom could name drop you so hard."

"She's Winona Williams. She doesn't need to name drop me. I wish I could name drop her."

Lou's mom was a huge deal in the country world once upon a time, though she retired from music years ago. In my middle school P.E. class, we even learned the line dance to Heartbreak Hustle, one of her biggest songs. Lou didn't tell us who her mom was until junior year, after she'd already uploaded her first few viral hits. She's always been afraid of people thinking she got to where she is because of her mom.

The crazy thing is that Lou's already a bigger deal than her mom ever was, thanks to social media. But it's hard to break out of the mindset that a big recording contract means legitimacy. The old school mentality of indie equaling amateur has yet to die on any platform, let alone music.

"You know," Lou says, "Connor told me my mom was his first crush. He had posters of her all over his room as a kid."

"Connor?"

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