Chapter 12: The Proofs

The studio door was heavier than I’d expected. Not physically—more like it carried some invisible weight you only feel when entering a place where “serious stuff” is supposed to happen. The doorknob was cold under my palm, but my heart pounded so loudly it felt as if it wanted to echo off the walls.

Inside, half-light greeted us. Cables dangled from the ceiling; faded posters and old acoustic panels patched the walls, looking more like makeshift fixes than professional solutions. The floor creaked as we stepped in. Roxy headed straight for the drums—but without the confident swagger she had on stage. Instead she moved cautiously, as if a wrong move might awaken some sleeping monster.

“Is this… really it?” she whispered.

Eli stood in the corner, arms crossed.

“This is a studio. Not Abbey Road. But they’ve recorded radio-played songs here.”

Nova slowly lifted the bass from its case; the strings gave a dull thud when she touched them.

“Then it’s our turn now.”

Cayde laughed nervously.

“Or we embarrass ourselves for life.”

The engineer rocked in a swivel chair, huge headphones perched over his ears.

“Guys, relax. We’re recording punk. If it’s too perfect, it’s suspicious.”

We laughed, but only briefly. We all felt it: this was different. This wasn’t a club where mistakes get swallowed by crowd noise. Here, every mistake sticks around—recorded, forever proof.

Our first test take fell apart completely. Roxy blasted off at breakneck speed; Nova was a beat behind; Cayde’s amp crackled; and I started singing in the wrong key.

“Stop!” the engineer called. “This isn’t a sprint. Breathe.”

We sat down on the floor. The silence wasn’t scary now, just awkward—like knowing what to do but suddenly not remembering how. Nova finally spoke:

“Look… we don’t need to be better than we are. We just have to be the same ones we are on stage.”

Roxy nodded slowly.

“We never overthink it there.”

“Then we won’t now,” I said.

The second take was livelier. By the third, we were breathing together. On the fourth, the room vanished—no walls, no mic, no red recording light. Only the song, and that strange, freeing feeling that we were finally playing to leave a mark.

At the chorus, Cayde closed his eyes and ripped the strings as if tearing himself out of time. Roxy’s hits grew confident; Nova’s bass held us together like a backbone we didn’t know we had. When the song ended, none of us moved.

The engineer looked up slowly:

“Okay… that was something.”

No cheering. No hugging. Just panting, sweat-drenched looks of half-disbelief. By dawn we’d recorded the last song. Pale light seeped through dirty windows. The engineer pulled a CD from his drive, wrote on it with a marker—“TDE demo – February 2002”—slipped it into its case, and handed it to me.

The van door thudded shut. Inside was colder than outside; night’s remnants surrendered slowly to morning’s gray light. The engine was off; nobody rushed. Eli had already left in his car and gave a short honk farewell, as if he knew we needed this moment among ourselves.

The disc spun in my hand—a plain writable CD, black-inked name and date—but I turned it like a fragile, sacred relic. Nova leaned in, her hair brushing my face:

“Let me hold that for a sec.”

She held it up to the dim light, as if checking we really existed on it. Dawn filtered through the van window, reflecting on the disc. The rainbow sheen on its back proved we were on it.

“Now we actually have something,” she whispered.

Roxy leaned forward from the drum stool, running her finger over the plastic case.

“Now we’re not just talking about it… we can show it.”

Cayde lay half-crosswise on the back seat, head on his guitar case. He stared at the disc, then smiled.

“So this is… the first proof that we’re not just loud.”

We laughed—tired, honest laughter. Outside the city slowly woke: a bus rumbled by, a garbage truck clanged in the distance. The world carried on as if nothing happened. But for us, everything had changed. We passed the disc hand to hand, each holding it a moment, as if to prove it real—not just another night’s memory to be drowned out by the next gig’s noise. There we sat in the rusty van, empty-pocketed, sleep-deprived, yet strangely peaceful—because for the first time we didn’t just believe we could do it. We held proof in our palms.

We weren’t sure if the next gig was a big break or just another night in a rundown club. From outside it looked like a closed shop; someone had half-torn the poster on the door, as if bored before the show began. Yet inside we felt a quiet, buzzing expectancy—few people, but no longer the scattershot curiosity of old. While we set up, Eli came over:

“You don’t have to save the world tonight,” he said. “Just play so anyone here wants to stay.”

I nodded. It felt like a strangely concrete goal. The show’s start was rough: the mix was off, the mic stand crooked, the stage so narrow every step had to be calculated. I choked on the dry, dusty air and had to cough, turning away from the mic. When I looked back, Nova had joined the vocals—didn’t just support the chorus, she carried it. Her bass still slung over her shoulder, her voice cut through the room like it belonged there. The audience, surprised at first, settled into her sound, and suddenly the whole song felt lighter.

Seeing that, Cayde stepped aside and on the next bar launched a short, unexpected guitar solo. Not virtuosic—more instinctive—but perfect because it didn’t try to be more than itself. For a moment all eyes were on him; he just smiled, as if he couldn’t believe he’d done it. I choked up for a few seconds, then grabbed the mic and we carried on like that was always the plan.

At the end, Roxy looked at me from behind the drums with a quick, conspiratorial grin.

“See? We did it,” she laughed softly.

“We did,” I replied, grinning.

The show didn’t explode. It wasn’t a legendary night. But it stayed intact from start to finish. People didn’t drift to the bar or check their watches. They stayed. That was the real difference.

After packing up, the club owner sized us up like deciding if he’d remember us tomorrow, then reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope.

“Good gig,” he said. “Keep this. You can come back in two weeks.”

He handed it to me. We didn’t count the cash—moments still too intimate. In the parking lot, leaning against the van, we opened it: $120. Not much for living expenses, but a fortune from playing music. Nova chuckled softly:

“So… this is official?”

Cayde shrugged.

“I guess it is now.”

The next day we visited Eli and shoved twenty dollars into an envelope. He deserved it—he got us every gig and only ever asked for a few cases of soda. Plus, we liked his little hyperactive bubble of energy.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Keep this. This is your wage.”

Roxy stepped forward, looking him dead serious.

“Listen. If you don’t take it, I swear I’ll get a truckload of canned soda and dump it in front of your house. Then we’ll wake each one by hand.”

Eli tried to resist, then burst out laughing.

“Alright. Alright. I’ll share the rock ’n’ roll.”

Back at the band house, Nova pulled a strip of double-sided tape from a drawer. On the living-room wall hung a crooked copy of the demo—like some strange family heirloom.

We taped the envelope next to it, containing the $100—our first $25 share each.