Reluctantly, she’d take her breaks but then be back at it, working her ass off.
Around seven, I gathered my stuff from the office and headed to check in on Hazel one more time. “How many more?” I asked.
“Three.” She sounded exasperated. “Just three more.”
I nodded once. “I’m off to the barn house for band practice. Stop in there once you’re finished, and get me to come check your work.”
She didn’t reply, but I knew she’d heard me. At least she better have, because I wasn’t in the business of repeating myself, and if I didn’t check her work by the end of the night, she’d be SOL on the job front.
I didn’t even know why she was working for the ranch. I didn’t understand why she’d put herself in the position that she was in. She could’ve simply gone to her piece-of-shit stepfather and joined the family business of drug dealing.
After a silent reply from her, I headed toward the barn house to meet up with the other guys. For the past five years, I’d been in the band the Wreckage, which consisted of me and my three best friends. We’d grown close many summers ago when we were all sixteen—except Eric, who was only thirteen—and forced to work on the ranch. I was forced by Big Paw, because he didn’t want me out causing trouble during the summer, and the rest of the guys were forced by their parents to help their families with income.
If you lived in Eres and were sixteen, then there was probably a good chance you had a small job to help bring money into your family’s home. A parent’s salary wasn’t enough to put food on the table most of the time.
The guys and I spent that summer shooting shit and forming a band to help pass time. In a small town, you did whatever you could to make time go faster. The summer days dragged, and the nights were boring. Music changed that for us. It didn’t take long for us to actually give a damn about what we were creating, and over the years, we’d somehow found a touch of success. Not enough to quit our day jobs, but enough to dream of a life outside of Eres.
Plus, we all had enough talent to make our band stand out.
First, there was James, the people person. If there was a soul in need of love, James was right there to give it to them. He played the bass guitar and had such a warm personality that he could make a sworn enemy swoon at his feet. Not only was he a badass on the bass, but he was the smiling face on our social media accounts who brought in the fans.
Marcus was the drummer from the gods and the band’s clown. He was the comedic relief whenever tensions began to build between us all—which happened when you had a group of artists who sometimes had differing views on creativity.
Eric, our keyboard player, was the wizard behind our social media. I swore his brain worked in code. He was the mastermind behind building a following for the Wreckage on all platforms. Even though he was the youngest out of us—he was Marcus’s brother—he was such a key part of the band. It was very much due to him that we’d built up the fan base we had. Over five hundred thousand followers on Instagram, sixty-five hundred on YouTube, and a TikTok number I couldn’t even say. Eric was always looking for a way to expand our reach, and that meant a lot of livestreaming of us in band rehearsals and working our small-town lives on the ranch.
It turned out people liked to watch rock musicians live really country lifestyles. I didn’t get the appeal, but Eric was a professional at giving fans what they wanted to see. If there wasn’t a camera in his hand or set up somewhere nearby, I would’ve been convinced he was terminally ill. Even when you didn’t think he was recording, you should’ve known he probably was.
Then there was me. The lead singer who created the lyrics and carried the vocals. I was the one with the weakest personality, and I knew if it weren’t for my band, I wouldn’t have found the sliver of success that I had. I was kind of an asshole, overall. Not good with people, and even worse with social media. But I did love the music. Music understood parts of me that humans never got close enough to discover. Music saved me from some of the crappiest days of my life. I didn’t know what I would’ve been without the Wreckage. Our daily rehearsals were what kept me grounded.
As I walked into the barn house, the guys were already debating about the next steps for the music.
“We have to put on a local show and livestream it on Instagram Stories,” Eric clamored as he raked his hands through his red hair. “If we don’t give the fan base a taste of the new music, we’ll get trampled by people who are driving hard-hard-hard on social media. If we want to be the next Shawn Mendes to be discovered online, we have to push like we want it,” he said.
“Christ, take a chill pill, E. I don’t want you giving yourself a heart attack over this Instagram bullshit,” Marcus grumbled, grabbing a beer from his six-pack. “How about we ease up on the social media aspect for a minute and create some good-ass shit?” Marcus had always been that way—more into the music, less into the fame.
“Ease up . . .” Eric began huffing and puffing as he paced the barn house. “What do you mean, ease up on social media? Social media is our one shot at this thing taking off, and you want to go back to just dicking around in the barn house? Our video views dropped by five percent over the past few weeks, and you all are acting like it’s not Armageddon out there!”
I smiled at my extremely nerdy yet passionate bandmate.
If there was one way to ruffle Eric’s feathers, it was by having Marcus tell him the social media aspect wasn’t of importance. The two argued like the brothers they were.
“Maybe because it isn’t Armageddon,” Marcus said with a shrug.
Eric took off his glasses, popped out his hip like my grandmother after a hard day of cleaning, and pinched his nose. “Thirty-seven percent,” he said.
“Oh, great. Here he goes with the statistics again.” Marcus groaned.
“Yes, here I go with the statistics again, because they really fucking matter. Thirty-seven percent of United States citizens are on Instagram. Our biggest followers are in the United States, and do you know their age bracket?”
I joined the group and sat down on the edge of the wooden stage Big Paw built years back, listening, knowing Eric was about to take Marcus to school with the lesson.
“Please, do share,” James said, obviously interested.
“Ninety percent is younger than thirty-five years old. That means we are dealing with a world of millennials and Gen Z, who have the focus of a puppy chasing its tail. If we don’t capture their attention and give them a reason to give a damn about our sound and our brand, then they will be on to the next faster than a Kardashian moving through a basketball team. We need to focus. We need to think bigger. Otherwise, we’ll lose the footing we’ve gained over the years.”
Everyone shut up after Eric’s words, because it was clear he knew what he was talking about. Plus, I agreed 100 percent. Lately, I felt stale. As if the music wasn’t going the places I’d hoped it would go. I had massive dreams and goals, the same way the other guys had, but it felt as if we were stuck. I hadn’t figured out how to break through to the next big thing. I knew Eric was right about the social media side of things, but if we didn’t have the music, no amount of pushing was going to make us a success.