Chapter Eight
The red light over the studio door is off, so I let myself in.
Since agreeing to write the Final Revelations piece, I’ve been working nonstop.
First, their manager sent over the NDAs—so many NDAs.
Then, John lost his mind that we had secured the exclusive of the year.
He texted me three times in a row, called before I could reply, and by the time we got off the phone, I had a calendar invite in my work inbox titled “Let’s Fucking GOOOOOOO!
” (It was later changed to the much more appropriate—but much less fun—“‘Final’ Discussion,” which I can only assume means HR saw the original title on his calendar.)
John wants to rush the piece to make the November issue, so I’m on the tightest deadline of my life—a little more than one week to pull off the biggest article of my career.
After a brainstorming meeting with John and Robb, Robb wished me good luck in a way that still haunts me.
She left that meeting drawing the same conclusion I did: John and Final were going to want entirely different articles.
John wants the scoop on all the rumored Final Revelations gossip—and the guys want to set the record straight, to reclaim their legacy and integrity as artists.
And I have to figure out who I want to make happy—my boss or my friends.
I’ve spent the past week trying to figure out how to do both. At night, I interview one of the guys after they finish up at the studio, and the next day, I transcribe the interview, hoping a magical solution will come to me. Thus far, no such luck.
I only have Dax left to interview, and I’m running out of time.
Originally, I had Dax slated first, but he had “a thing” and canceled.
Losing one day wouldn’t be a big deal if I had any idea what I was writing, but every outline I’ve submitted to Robb has been massacred with notes, pushing me to dig deeper, to spice it up.
I know what they want from me: the kind of article Mike Song would write, the kind readers love and artists hate.
My deadline is in three days, and I have nothing to show for the past few days of work but a handful of transcripts and a recycling bin full of discarded drafts.
The only thing between me and a full-on ugly panic cry is the willful delusion that interviewing Dax will unlock the article, and it’ll flow out of me perfectly on the first draft.
I’ve arrived at the studio fifteen minutes early every single day, hoping to catch a glimpse of their upcoming sixth album, which I’ve yet to hear more than a few fragments of.
Today, however, when I walk in, they’re not even holding instruments, and Paul, their sound tech, is scrolling through his phone. Jonah’s and Cain’s guitars hang limply at their sides as they chat with Barrett in the drum booth.
Marcus and Dax are standing on the other side of the window that divides the control room from the booth. They have dry-erase markers and are scribbling on the glass what I can only assume is the album’s track list—and the source of their argument.
There are so many chicken-scratch song titles crossed out, then stubbornly recircled, arrows, numbers—I can’t make sense of it.
“Donavan,” Paul greets me.
“Getting a lot of good takes today, I see.” I gesture to the scribbles. Dax spares me half a glance in greeting before jumping in to stop Marcus from making a change.
Paul snorts.
Dropping my backpack at my feet, I attempt to block out Marcus and Dax’s muted bickering and decipher the board, but it’s hard when it’s backward from this side of the glass. “Jesus. Do they really have that many tracks?”
Paul glances up from his phone. “Nah, half of it’s the sixth album. Marcus keeps trying to bring it back.”
I blink, riddling through his words, which refuse to compute beyond a faint buzzing of my journalistic instinct for a juicy secret. “Oh?” I prompt vaguely.
“Great fucking album,” Paul says, dropping his phone into his lap.
“Can’t believe they never released it. But if Marcus gets his way”—he gestures to the glass, to Marcus beyond it, the soft waves of his dark hair growing steadily more unkempt with each frustrated run of his hands through it—“maybe some of it will make a comeback.”
Bing-fucking-o.
I check that the switch to talk into the booth is off.
“You worked with them on it?” I ask, feigning a totally normal amount of intrigue in this massive revelation of an unreleased album. I’ve interviewed four members of the band this week, and not a single one of them mentioned it, which I know must’ve been by design.
Paul nods, stretching. “Yeah.”
Damn it, don’t clam up on me now, Paul. I switch tactics. “Are they always like this?” I gesture to Dax and Marcus practically writing over each other.
Paul snorts. “Always. I just wait until they finish and need me to push buttons. One time, me and the guys made them a GET ALONG shirt and threatened to put them in it if they didn’t stop squabbling like an old married couple.” Paul grins. “They didn’t think it was as funny as we did.”
I smile and nod, the image of Dax and Marcus shoved into a giant T-shirt together pushed aside as a headline swims before my vision.
“All the Rumors Are True”
It practically writes itself, the way I’d approach this article if I were still working under Mike Song at The Offbeat.
While I was his intern, he’d let me “take a stab” at whatever he was working on.
Then, he’d turn around and eviscerate my draft with his red pen.
I was young and dumb and didn’t know yet how to advocate for myself in the workplace.
I endured it with a smile, all my hopes and dreams hanging on the promise of a referral to Rolling Stone that never came.
The death of a mentor happens like this: You think your turns of phrase appearing in their articles is just coincidence, subconscious—a compliment, even.
You think it’s a sign that you’re not a completely terrible writer.
If you can just present your work through a lens they approve of—their voice—they’ll finally let you write something for real.
It works. Sort of. The slashes of their red pen become less frequent, your drafts no longer resembling a bloodbath.
Your drafts no longer resemble you, either, but you’re gaining their respect.
Your words are peppered into their work in a way that can no longer be ascribed to coincidence.
You should be mad, you would be mad, but they keep telling you how proud they are, how much you’ve grown.
You think if you write something so good—their version of good—they won’t be able to slap their name on it anymore.
They do it anyway. When you quit, you’re not surprised when they say you’ll be back.
After all, their voice is yours now. You don’t even know what yours sounds like anymore.
You leave California with nothing to your name.
The scar on your ring finger burns. You chose your dream, and your dream didn’t choose you back.
Dax and Marcus continue writing over each other like crabby toddlers. This is the juicy article John wants.
I couldn’t want to write it less.
I don’t know what I do want to write, either, but this unreleased album—and the way they hid it from me—has my fingers itching.
When did they record it? Why didn’t they release it?
Who made that call? I suspect the answer is right in front of me, and for the first time since I started amassing my research, I have a spark, an angle I want to chase. I have to get my hands on this album.
A grin stretches across my face as I feel a sense of direction for the first time in months. I press the intercom button.
“Hi boys,” I say, cutting across Dax and Marcus’s terse discussion of the track list. Their eyes meet mine through the glass. “Who’s gonna tell me about this secret unreleased album?”
From the drum booth, Barrett drops his stick onto a cymbal with a ting and a muffled, “Oh, fuck.”
As one, every member of the band’s attention drifts from me to Dax, who’s watching me intently.
Oh, fuck indeed.
My spark turns into lead in my stomach. I’m not the betting type, but if I were, I’d wager this secret album was written in the past few years. The odds that there are unreleased songs about me? I’m all in.
“Don’t all offer at once,” I joke, swallowing the lump in my throat at the very real possibility of being the subject of Dax’s lyrics.
Do I want there to be songs about me? Is it worse if there aren’t? What would he write? Good things? Bad things? With his proclivity for metaphor, would I know either way?
Marcus leans one shoulder against the glass to put himself in Dax’s line of sight, heavy brows raised in question.
Dax cuts his eyes to his bandmate, and I watch as they have a silent argument.
I press my lips together to keep from smirking.
I know exactly who made the call to keep this album a secret—and who will slip me a copy.
“Ready?” I ask Dax, with a pointed glance at the clock on the wall.
He glances up at the clock on their side before meeting my gaze. “For?”
“Don’t play, Nakamura.”
Cain chuckles from inside the booth. “Last name. Boston’s pissed pissed.”
Dax smiles uncertainly. “No, our interview is tomorrow, on the nineteenth.”
My eyes flutter shut, praying for patience. Dax told me he would need to go slow, but this isn’t going slow. This is a standstill. If he’s sabotaging this out of fear, if he bails on me again… My chest tightens, my deadline pressing in forebodingly.
Jonah answers for me. “Today is the nineteenth, dude.”
Reopening my eyes, I catch Marcus clapping Dax on the back. “It’s a good thing you’re pretty.”
Dax shoves him playfully, and Marcus jogs away laughing.