Chapter 1: Blast Beats and Broken Knuckles
The garage door shuddered with every kick of the bass drum. Inside, the air was a solid, hot thing, thick with the smell of sweat, stale pizza, and the ozone crackle of overdriven amplifiers. Fred Lawrence’s world had shrunk to the space between his sticks and the heads, his body a piston, his legs a frantic, blurring engine. The double-bass pattern for “Be All That You Can Be” was a technical beast, a relentless grid of thirty-second notes, and tonight it felt like trying to outrun a train.
His knuckles, perpetually scabbed, had split open again. A few dark flecks dotted the white batter head of his snare. He didn’t stop.
“Speed up, you’re dragging!” Christian Vance’s voice cut through the wall of sound, not from the vocal mic but from across the room, dripping with that articulate, surgical condescension he’d perfected. His fingers were a spider’s dance over his guitar’s fretboard, flawless and infuriating.
Fred grunted, teeth clenched, and pushed. The pedals groaned. He wasn’t dragging; Christian was rushing. They both knew it.
Maya Lin, anchored to Fred’s right, didn’t look up. Her head dipped slightly with the downbeat, her right hand a meaty blur plucking thick, distorted tones from her bass that vibrated up through the concrete floor and into your bones. She was the bedrock. The unshakeable foundation.
Jaxson leaned into the microphone, his voice shifting from a clean, gritty melody into a raw-throated bark for the breakdown. “SURRENDER THE PRETENSE!” He windmilled a chord, hair flying, the very image of controlled chaos. Offstage, he was the calmest person Fred knew. Up here, he was a conduit.
The song crashed to its abrupt, brutal stop. The sudden silence was louder than the music, ringing with feedback and heavy breathing.
“See? Right there.” Christian pointed a ringed finger at Fred, his guitar still humming. “The fill before the stop. It was sloppy. The left foot was late.”
Fred wiped his forehead with the back of his arm, smearing sweat and a little blood. “The click track in my head is fine. Maybe your click track’s on coke.”
“My timing is pristine. Your feel is muddy.”
“My feel is what makes it sound like a song and not a goddamn metronome audition.”
James Cowel’s laugh broke the tension. He’d been circling the room with his camera, a lanky shadow catching angles. “That was the take, guys. That was the one. The energy was insane. Look.” He turned the screen towards them, replaying the last thirty seconds. Even Fred had to admit it looked powerful—a sweaty, desperate, living thing.
“It’s not about how it looks, James,” Christian sighed, as if explaining color to a blind person. “It’s about how it is.”
“People feel what they see, man,” James said, undeterred. He beamed his easy, magnetic smile. “And they’re gonna feel this.”
Outside, cast in the sickly neon glow of the minimart sign across the alley, two figures stood by a rusted Honda. Alani Houston pretended to study a notepad, the lyrics to a Half Man Half Biscuit song scrawled in the margin. She was listening, though. The physical force of the music pushed against the garage door in waves.
Zali Bedo leaned against the car, arms crossed, combat boots planted wide. Her eyes weren’t on the notepad. They were fixed, with a terrifying intensity, on James as he moved inside, laughing and framing another shot. “He’s like a golden retriever with a film degree,” she muttered, the affection in the insult so carefully buried it was almost invisible.
“They sound good,” Alani said softly. “Fierce.”
“They sound loud. Fred’s going to detach a retina if he hits those cymbals any harder.” Zali finally glanced at her friend. “You’re not actually here to schedule the quad picnic, are you?”
Alani shrugged, a gesture swallowed by her oversized knit sweater. “Supporting campus arts.”
“Right.”
Inside, the argument had cooled into a tense, post-rehearsal exhaustion. Jax was coiling cables. Maya took a long drink from a water bottle, expressionless. Christian was meticulously wiping down his guitar.
Fred finally stood up from the kit, his thighs screaming. He walked to the mini-fridge in the corner, past the drumstick embedded in the drywall—a monument to Zali’s lethal aim and his own stubbornness. He pulled out two beers, popped the tabs, and carried one over to Christian.
He held it out. A truce.
Christian looked at the can, then at Fred’s bloody knuckles. He took it. “The riff in the bridge needs to be tighter.”
“Tomorrow,” Fred said, and took a long swallow. It wasn’t agreement, it was a postponement.
The garage door rattled, then began to roll up with a screech. James was at the switch, ushering Alani and Zali in. “The audience has arrived!”
Alani smiled, that warm, wind-chime smile that did something funny to Fred’s sternum. “We were just passing by.”
“You were lurking,” Maya stated, not looking up from adjusting her bass strap.
“Appreciative lurking,” Alani amended. Her eyes found Fred’s. “You guys are really… going for it.”
“Trying to,” Fred said, suddenly hyper-aware of his soaked t-shirt and the beer in his hand. He felt like a cave-man holding a modern artifact. “The West Coast Underground Showcase applications close Friday.”
Zali’s eyebrows shot up. “The one at The Vanguard? That’s a real thing. Winners get the opening slot for Avenged Sevenfold next month.”
“That’s the one,” Jax said, a flicker of real ambition in his usually calm eyes.
“You’re not ready,” Christian said, to no one in particular.
“We will be by Friday,” Fred shot back. The challenge hung in the humid air, another layer of scent over the sweat and rubber.
James zoomed in on Fred’s face, then panned to Alani’s thoughtful expression. “This is good. This is the story. The drive. The obsession.” He swung the camera toward Zali, who immediately fixed him with a deadpan stare.
“Point that thing somewhere else, Cowel.”
“But your disdain is so cinematic!”
Alani drifted closer to the drum kit, her fingers gently touching the rim of the crash cymbal, setting it shivering with a faint, pretty whisper. It was utterly out of place in the metal-charged room. Fred watched her, captivated by the contrast. She looked up. “What’s the song about? The one you were playing.”
Fred’s throat went dry. He’d written the lyrics about a feeling of desperate aspiration, about clawing your way out of a fog of doubt. He’d pictured her face the whole time. “Just… trying to be better than you are,” he managed.
“It sounds like it,” she said, and her smile softened into something more genuine, more for him.
Christian snorted, a sharp, dismissive sound. “It’s about syncopation and harmonic minor scales, but sure. Betterment.”
The moment shattered. Zali rolled her eyes. “Well, this has been a nutrient-dense slice of male emotional constipation. We have actual things to do.” She hooked her arm through Alani’s. “Come on.”
James lowered his camera, his focus following them as they left. “She hates me,” he said, almost wonderingly.
“She doesn’t,” Maya said, packing her bass into its case with a solid thump.
“How do you know?”
Maya just clicked the latches shut. “I observe.”
The garage door rumbled down again, leaving the five of them back in their capsule. The energy had shifted. The fight was gone, replaced by a heavy, shared purpose.
Jax broke the quiet. “We’re doing it, right? Applying.”
Fred looked at his hands, at the blood, at the calluses. He thought of the stick in the wall, of Christian’s relentless precision, of Maya’s unshakeable groove, of Jax’s fire. He thought of Alani’s finger on his cymbal, and the silent question in her eyes.
“Yeah,” Fred said, his voice low but clear in the stale air. “We’re doing it.”
He didn’t look at Christian. He didn’t need to. The silence from the lead guitarist was its own form of agreement—a competitive, skeptical, but ultimate agreement. The challenge was set. The sound in this garage had to become something the world couldn’t ignore. They had five days.
Outside, in the passenger seat of the Honda, Alani stared out the window. Zali started the engine with a vicious twist of the key.
“He likes you,” Zali stated.
Alani didn’t deny it. “He’s a good friend.”
“He writes songs about you and bleeds on his drums. That’s not ‘friend.’ That’s a Shakespearean tragedy waiting to happen.”
“Maybe,” Alani said softly, as Zali pulled out onto the empty street. Behind them, the flickering neon sign washed over the closed garage door. From within, just audible over the car’s engine, came the sound of a single, stubborn drumbeat starting up again, relentless and searching, punching through the quiet night.