Glory
Days - PROMO Blitz
By
Patrick Szabo
Young Adult / Coming of Age
Date Published: March 3, 2014
Matt is heading into his senior
year of high school and has the world at his feet.
School comes easy for him. He’s
the lead guitar player in a hard rock band, about to embark on their first gig.
He has a job he likes, a car he doesn’t, a best friend he hopes to be
friendlier with, and a pretty good set of parents. He has it all.
Until he doesn’t.
His dad suddenly begins acting
strange and keeping odd hours. Matt has his own life to live, though, and
doesn’t pay it much attention. Until he wakes up one morning to find his dad
gone, leaving behind only a short note to his mother, setting into motion a
chain of events that sends Matt down a dangerous path that could jeopardize his
present as well as his future. Forced to quit a job he likes, he must take on a
new job to help his mother out financially, but one that also eats into his ever
important social life as well as school. Adding to his troubles, his best
friend, Dawn, has a new boyfriend.
Matt can’t wait to become a
member of the Class of 1989, but first he must get out of 1988 alive.
* NOTE
*Contains adult language
EXCERPT
Chapter
1
I was seventeen years old when
I played my first gig.
Thinking back, it really wasn’t
that big a deal in the grand, macro scheme of things. It didn’t change my life
nor did it lead to a record deal, followed quickly by fortune and glory. Women
didn’t throw themselves at me or scream and cry when they saw me, like the
girls in the old footage of The Beatles early shows. I played lead guitar in an
80’s hard rock band. We did get a fairly decent sized following around
Columbia, SC, but a few years into our music career the bottom fell out of that
type of music. Thanks in equal parts to fluffy ‘metal’ bands all over the
airwaves and a few groups from Seattle that took the nation by storm. So, yeah,
that first gig wasn’t that big a deal.
But at the time? It was the
greatest moment of my young life.
The night before the show I
didn’t sleep that well. I was way too excited to be bothered by any of those
little slices of death, to paraphrase Poe. Don’t get me wrong, I tried to
sleep, I really did. But each time sleep started to overtake me, my overactive
mind kicked slumber to the curb and whirled with a thousand possibilities, all
of them bad.
I only had one guitar, so what
if I broke a string during a song? What if my voice went out? What if I forgot
how to play the songs or messed up during the guitar solos? What if my dream
girl didn’t show up? What if, what if, what if?
Then I would nod off for a few
minutes and then wake up again and the cycle would continue.
Frustrated, I kicked the covers
off and slipped out of bed. I thought about going for a swim—nothing quite like
a middle of the night dip in the pool—and then decided against it. There would
be dead bugs in the pool, possibly big ass palmetto bugs (my current Biggest
Fear for some reason), and we didn’t have enough light in the backyard to
properly scoop out all the detritus. So that was out. I decided to get a pop
out of the refrigerator and think about my predicament.
I stepped quietly out of my
room into the darkened hallway and tripped over my dog, who was asleep on his
side outside my parents’s bedroom door. The big dog yelped and tried to jump up
as I stumbled across his previously prone form. I cussed, regained my balance,
and then he got his legs tangled in mine, and we both went down with a crash, a
jumble of arms and legs and fur.
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
“Bo, shut up,” Dad’s groggy
voice bellowed from behind the door.
I started to push myself up but
Bo threw himself on top of me and shoved me back to the floor. He licked me.
“Get off me, you big moose,” I
said and pushed his head away. He lurched forward and got in one more slobbery
dog kiss—his impeccabley aimed tongue lapping my mouth—and then he was gone. I
wiped his slobber from my face and swiped my hand on the carpet. “Gross, dog.”
He chuffed at me and then lay
back down in front of Mom and Dad’s closed door. I shook my head, got up, and
went to the kitchen. I squinted my eyes against the glare of the refrigerator
light, grabbed a can of pop, and plopped down at the kitchen table. I popped
the top as quietly as I could and took a big gulp. Then another. And one more
for good measure.
I sat in the dark and drank and
did my best to quiet my mind.
It didn’t really work all that
well. I was nervous as hell, but at the same time I was as excited as a kid on
Christmas Eve. I finished my drink, got up, and tossed the can in the trash. I
thought about that swim again and immediately put it out of my mind. The last
thing in the world I needed was a dead palmetto bug bumping up against me in
the water. I shivered in disgust at the thought.
I went back to my room and,
after closing the door behind me, flipped the light on. I took my guitar off
its stand and sat down on my bed. If I couldn’t sleep, I might as well get a
little extra practice in. Just a quick run through of the songs we would be
playing the next night. I took a deep breath, played a few scales to limber up
my fingers, and stopped. I couldn’t remember how to play the song we’d be
opening with. Hell, I couldn’t even remember the name.
“Shit,” I muttered. I sat there
with my guitar resting across one leg and stared at my closet door, but the set
list didn’t magically appear on the wood in blazing letters from the heavens.
“Come on, dumb ass,” I said. I
thought about calling the singer but I didn’t think his parents would
appreciate a phone call at three in the morning from some dipshit kid panicking
over a song title. Why didn’t I write the damned songs down and toss the paper
in my guitar case? Why was I such an idiot?
And then it came to me.
“Stagefright,” I said and felt
relief flood through me. I shook my head and noticed for the first time that I
was sweating. I chuckled. “Flop sweat.”
I did a speed run through the
first few songs of the set and figured that was enough. If I didn’t get some
sleep I would be pretty useless the next night. I put my guitar away and
stretched out on my back and stared at the ceiling.
I ran the set list over and
over again in my head and finally fell asleep.
I dreamed of a swimming pool
full of palmetto bugs and not being able to scoop them all out. Weird and
disgusting.
I woke the next morning just
before noon and had some leftover pizza for breakfast. I went outside into the
bright heat of the day and glanced at the pool. Nope. Not full of those
damnable little insects. Not even one.
I kicked around the house the
rest of the day, not really paying any attention to what I was doing. It just
wasn’t that important. Finally it was time to get ready for the gig, so I
showered, blew dry my hair, and got dressed.
I grabbed my guitar case, told
my parents goodbye, and went out to my car. I put the case in the back seat,
climbed behind the steering wheel, and prayed it would start. I turned the key
and prayed again. It would be just my luck that on the most important day of my
life the piece of- - -
It started on the first try.
Hallelujah.
I checked my hair in the
rearview mirror—I wore it more Iron Maiden, than Poison—and, satisfied, backed
out of the driveway.
I popped a tape into the tape
deck and drove to the gig, a big dopey grin plastered to my face.
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