Page 53 of You Spin Me

After a lovely dinner with my parents and a few rounds of gin rummy with my dad, I head back to my little grotto. On the way home, Cal’s voice is like a warm arm curled over my shoulder. I really,reallywant to call him to tell him all my good news. But I made my position clear, and I need to stick to my guns.

CAL

This time around, I’m not only prepared for the interview, I’m amped. Reading up on the part of this band’s story that’s already been told has me wanting the world to know more. I’m not a writer, but if I can be a music journalist in my own way, I’ll at the very least broadcast something better than the spiteful, lowbrow humor peddled by the jerks at the station across town. Proving that my listeners want more—deserve more—has consumed me for the past twenty-four hours. So much so that there’s no space left in my brain for nerves.

Plus, if I forget everything, I’ve got notes. It’s chicken scratch, but I can read it.

I’m at the station early, I’m wearing my favorite hoodie, and we’ve got beverages and snacks set out. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be when Talia ushers the four band members into the large studio we use to record acoustic sets. I swear she’s more nervous than me. Her hands are flapping around like birds, so I step in to introduce myself to the band’s leader.

“Gray? I’m Cal Alonso. Thanks for coming in.”

“Hey, thanks for having us.” As the baby-faced rocker shakes my hand, his gaze flickers from the left side of my face down to the tats on my forearm and then back to my eyes, but all he says is, “Good to be here.”

The engineer gets him settled in front of a mic as I introduce myself to the rest of the band. Only bass player Kate Dale seems to even notice my scars. Something about the way she peruses them—more curious than pitying—makes me want to explain.

“I was in a house fire when I was four. Had to go through a lot of surgeries to repair the damage.” Sliding the hoodie zipper halfway down, I let the hood fall so she can see my neck. “Some were more successful than others.

She nods. “That sucks.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

We both nod in tandem for a couple beats before Talia calls Kate over. Feeling lighter than I have in months, maybe years, I grab my notes and sit down in front of my own mic. After we get the go ahead from Talia, I jump right in.

“So, first question. When you guys left Boston a year ago, you’d established a name locally. Were you expecting to have such enthusiastic crowds on your European tour?”

Gray shakes his head. “Not at all. I mean, I’m kind of an idiot, so I didn’t even know that people over in Germany and Holland and France speak English better than we do.”

“Speak for yourself,” Kate cuts in.

“Anyway, I knew our songs were getting play over there. I mean, that’s why we could do the tour in the first place. But to have all these people in other countries across the fucking ocean—Oh shit.”

Talia’s voice crackles over the speakers from the booth. “Don’t worry, we’re not live; we can bleep you.”

“Oh, good. Anyway, these fuckers knew all the words to our songs.”

“Better than I did, sometimes,” Kate says with a throaty laugh. Then she leans toward me. “Hey, can I smoke in here? I mean, will it bother you?”

I shrug. “You can light up if you want. My fire wasn’t a cigarette incident, it was a popcorn incident.”

She starts to laugh but covers her mouth. “I’m sorry, I swear I’m not laughing at you. It’s just, I don’t know which would be worse to have to live without—cigarettes or popcorn.”

Suddenly, I’m laughing, too, because this is what I’ve always wanted—to be able to hang out with the cool kids. Not the stuck-up bullies from junior high, but the kids who rocked out in their garages. Which brings me to my next question.

“So, you guys literally started as a garage band, right? For all our listeners who are plugging away in their parents’ garages, what’s the secret to getting from there to where you are now?”

“Well, first of all,” Gray says, puffing up his chest, “it was our own garage. We had moved out of our parents’ houses.”

“I hadn’t,” the drummer chimes in.

“You still haven’t,” Kate clarifies.

He shrugs. “We’re on the road. Why pay rent when I’m barely here?”

Gray goes on to talk about how they still don’t feel like they’ve “made it” and how all they really want is to make noise that’s interesting. I’m so at ease, when the drummer asks to see the rest of my tats, I take off my hoodie altogether. By the time the promoter lets us know that the band has to get going, we’ve been talking for an hour, but I feel like I could do this forever.

After they leave, Talia swoops in from the booth to give me a hug. “You did awesome! You didn’t seem nervous at all.”

My smile is as wide as it gets when I ask, “When can I do the next one?”

---