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September 2002, Costa Mesa, California It was Thursday, and the tickets were still on the table. They had been there a week. Nobody had put them away and nobody had picked them up; only the fan moved the top one, as it had a week ago. Vex sat down next to them twice and got up twice. Cayde counted them once, as if there might be fewer by now. Roxy didn't touch them. Nobody said yes. Nova opened the notebook. She didn't turn the page; it was on the right one, at the six hundre

August 2002, Costa Mesa, California By the beginning of August all four of them had jobs. They didn't decide it. They didn't sit down at the coffee table, nobody took out a sheet of paper, there was no fourth column that somebody finally wrote down. It happened in a week, separately, and by the time they noticed, it had already happened, the way you wake up one morning and find you've caught a cold. Vex started at the record store, the one where they'd greeted him by name in

July 2002, Costa Mesa, California They packed up in ten minutes. That was the new thing. Until now, packing up had meant the instruments going down the stairs and the drums fitting into the trunk on the umpteenth try, with Roxy sitting on a couple of cases. Now there was a cardboard box as well, forty-one shirts inside, neatly folded, the name on the front, and a shoebox with forty-three CDs, and on top of the two boxes, Nova's notebook. Roxy went in the bleach shirt. Nova re

June 2002, Costa Mesa, California There were posters. There was no pay. The shows stayed what they were: two or three a week, backyards to clubs, for beer or for the privilege of playing. More people came, that much was true. The kids from the rail stood in the front row and knew by the second song when the tap was coming. But the owners didn't count the crowd, they counted the bar, and the bar hadn't changed. In the end they begged the rent together. Vex's mom brought the en

May 2002, Costa Mesa, California Cayde got fired on Wednesday. Nova on Friday. Roxy was already looking for work. Vex had been getting through the months on his mom's help for two months now, and every time she showed up with the envelope, he swore that had been the last one. They had one week until rent was due. Their reserves were gone. They needed real solutions, because next month they'd be short of more than food. They'd be short a place to live. It was Saturday night, a

April 2002, Costa Mesa, California "Okay. That was pretty damn cool." There was something in Eli's voice you could hear — a kind of respect that had been hiding in there all along, but this time it came out as a straight compliment. The living room was the biggest space in the apartment. Roxy's kit in the corner, the two combos against the wall, cables running across the floor — everyone knew by heart where to step over what. The mic stand loitered alone in one corner like it

April 2002, Costa Mesa, California Success was still a long way off. Endless club shows, rehearsals, drives, and always the same question: how do they make it to next week. Somehow the money always came together. They tried to hold on to their regular jobs too, but during a touring stretch that was more or less impossible. What was left were the odd jobs. It nearly broke them, but it always brought in enough to eat, to put gas in the van, and now and then to cover a night the

March 2002, Costa Mesa, California The air in the club was still ringing after the show. The ceiling ran low across the whole room, so the sound had nowhere to go — it came off the walls, off the metal lip of the bar, off the glasses, and finally off them. The air was thick with sweat, beer, and some old noise that had dried into the place. Vex leaned against the wall and watched the crowd thin out. The faces that stayed until the end weren't the same ones as a few weeks ago.