Free Road Rash by Mark Huntley Parsons Page A

store (maybe I could meet some other musicians and join a group) but they weren’t hiring at the moment, so I applied at every Burger King, McDonald’s, and Taco Bell in the area. But it seemed like every other guy in town had done the same thing, only they weresmart enough to apply for their summer job
before
summer started. Who woulda thought?
    So the going was slow, but I kept after it. Partly because I had to give a report to my dad every night about the efforts I’d made toward gainful employment. Other than that, I worked on music, rode my bike around town, and played b-ball.
    Kyle and I used to go shoot around. Did you ever notice that you can talk better if you’re also doing something else? So we’d shoot or play a little one-on-one, and we’d also talk about our band or whatever at the same time.
    Shooting hoops usually made me feel better, but now I ended up thinking about the whole band thing and the whole job thing. Yuck. I had to face it—Bad Habit had gone with another drummer, likely someone older and more experienced. I’d probably only gotten a chance to audition because I’d met Glenn recently. I bet he said something like
Hey, let’s give the kid a try—can’t hurt
. So they spent an hour humoring me, but that was that.
    I also had to face the fact that I’d exhausted my fast-food options and I was still unemployed. So I was going to have to scrape around and take whatever I could find.
    With that happy thought in mind, I went home to shower. As I was drying off, my phone let me know that I’d just missed a call:
G. Taylor
. Oh great …
    I went to call back, then I stopped. Yeah, I’d been telling myself that I didn’t land the gig, but I still had this little one percent hope that I might get it. And I’ll admit that it wasn’t rational, but once I actually talked to them, that one percent would be zero.
Nada
. And somehow there’s a world of difference between
one
percent and
no
percent.
    Okay, enough of that. I made myself pick up the phone and call.
    “Hey, Glenn, how’s it going? My phone says you called.”
    “Yeah. I wanted to know if you were available to come over, so we could talk about a few things.”
    “Uh, sure. When’s a good time?”
    “We’re getting together tonight, at Brad’s place. Can you make it around seven?”
    “Yeah, that’d be good. Anything I need to bring?”
    “Naw, we’re just going to talk.”
    “Okay, see you there.”
    “Thanks. See ya.”
    Wow.

    Jamie answered the door. “Hi, Zach,” she said. “Come on in. Can I get you some coffee?”
    “That’d be great. I mean, if it’s already made. I don’t want you to have to go to any.…” God, I sounded nervous.
    She smiled. “It’s no trouble. And I wanted to tell you, you sounded great when you were here the other day. Real solid.”
    “Thanks.”
    She handed me some coffee. “Come on back—the guys are already there.”
    As we headed back, it occurred to me that she seemed pretty at home here. I heard myself say, “Do you live here, too?”
    She kinda choked for a second. “Uh … no. Why do you ask?”
    Suddenly I felt stupid. I shrugged. “I don’t know … sorry.”Man, I have
got
to learn to engage my brain before my mouth.…
    We ended up in the same room I’d auditioned in, but no one had their instrument out. They were just sitting around, drinking coffee and hanging. Well, Brad had a beer going, but you get the idea.
    Everyone said hi, then Glenn grinned. “Hate to keep you in suspense, so here it is—we’d like you to play with us.”
    I tried to stay cool, but I could feel a big-ass grin break out. “That’s great.”
    I had the sense that Glenn was going to say something else when Brad leaned forward and cleared his throat. “We would have called you sooner, but we had some business we had to nail down first.”
    “What Brad means,” Jamie said, “is we’re going on the road this summer. We just finalized it with a booking