CHAPTER
ONE
The practice roomsmells like stale coffee, dust, and a thousand hours of ambition that went nowhere. It’s the kind of room where dreams either get sharpened or die. Half the fluorescent lights overhead buzz like they’re short-circuiting, but the acoustics are decent, and it’s ours for another hour if we keep the door locked and pretend we don’t hear anyone banging on it.
I sit on the amp, bass across my lap, pick balanced between my fingers. My voice is rough from the last run-through, and my throat still carries the burn of it. We’ve been chasing the same song all afternoon, but it keeps slipping sideways—like a shadow that disappears when you look at it straight.
“Again,” I say.
Eli groans but twirls his sticks, already tapping out the count. He’s all restless energy, blond curls damp with sweat, T-shirt dark at the chest. He lives for speed, loves it when the tempo gets away from us. “Fuck, Rafe. Okay. One, two, three, four?—”
Drew slams into the riff, his sunburst Strat snarling through the cheap amp. He’s lanky, with hair too long in his eyes, the kind of guy who’ll play until his fingertips split and then keep going. Miles follows, steady as stone, dropping in the lead like he’s planting a flag. He doesn’t talk much, but his solos do.
We hit it hard, the sound bouncing off cinder block walls. It’s tinny as fuck, but still alive. Eli drives the beat like he’s trying to outrun something, Drew’s rhythm thick and grinding, Miles’s line cutting sharp above it. I push my voice into the cracks.
“I won’t wear your weather, I’ll outrun your rain…”
But halfway through the chorus, it falls apart. Drew misses the change, Miles winces, and Eli throws a stick that bounces off the wall.
“Fuck!” Eli yells. “That’s the third time.”
“No shit,” I mutter, scrubbing a hand over my face. My notebook sits open on the floor beside me, page half filled with scrawled lyrics. Black ink, jagged lines, angry smudges. None of it feels right.
“We need new material,” Drew says, dropping onto the floor, guitar balanced on his knees. “We’ve been hammering this one for weeks, and it still sounds like shit.”
“It doesn’t sound like shit,” Miles says quietly, adjusting a knob on his amp. “It sounds unfinished.”
“Which is the same thing when we’ve got a gig Saturday,” Eli says. “Nobody wants to hear half a song.”
I lean back against the wall, the bass heavy in my hands. They’re right. We’ve been circling the same track, and it still doesn’t land. The words aren’t there, not the way they should be. And that’s on me.
“I’ll figure out the lyrics,” I say, trying not to sound defensive.
Eli arches a brow. “You’ve been saying that for a month.”
“Yeah? You want to write them?”
He grins, sharky. “I’d just putfuckin every other line.”
“Could be a hit,” Drew says, deadpan.
I flip them both off, but there’s no heat in it. These are my guys. We’re four broke students with borrowed gear and duct-taped dreams, and somehow it feels like enough. Steel Saints—that’s what we call ourselves, because it sounds like the kind ofband you’d pay to see in a shitty dive bar at midnight. It’s not nothing.
My family thinks it’s more than that. My mamá, especially—she swears we’re headed somewhere. She and my papá came here from Mexico with nothing but a suitcase and two kids, and somehow they built a life out of stubbornness and late nights. They don’t understand the music business, but they understand hustle. My scholarship pays tuition, my parents cover the scraps I can’t, and I cover the rest with gigs and shifts at a coffee shop.
I think about them sometimes when I’m sitting here, sweating under dull lights, trying to force lyrics out of my skull. About how much faith they’ve put in me. About how easy it would be to let that faith slip through my fingers.
“Let’s take five,” I say finally. My voice scrapes low. “I need air.”
Eli collapses on the drum throne like he’s been shot. Drew lies flat on his back on the carpet, guitar still across his chest. Miles just nods, eyes closed, hands resting on the fretboard like it’s an extension of him.
I slide the bass back into its case, then stand and stretch. My shirt clings with sweat as I do so.
The hall outside the practice rooms hums with end-of-day noise. Students drag their bags, laughter bounces off the walls, somebody’s blasting EDM from a Bluetooth speaker. It’s December, which in LA means palm trees against a cold sky and students bundled in hoodies pretending it’s winter. The air smells like orange blossoms from the quad, sharp and sweet under the chill.
I’m halfway to the exit when I hear them.
Loud voices. Easy swagger. A cluster of guys in letterman jackets, moving as a pack. Basketball players. You can spot them a mile away: tall, broad, dripping confidence like sweat. Everyone knows who they are—the Panthers.
