Chapter 2
two
CASS
The final chord rips through the practice space like a wrecking ball—thick, warm, and beautifully dirty.
My guitar sings through my vintage Fender Bassman amp, the tone I’ve spent three years chasing, and for one perfect second, everything is right. The sound is alive, pushed just to the edge of breakup, that sweet spot where the tubes start to growl.
It’s the sound of every punk record I worship, the sonic middle finger that makes Pinebox sound like us and not some polished, neutered version of a band. But as fast as it arrives, it disappears. The chord dies, and in its place, instead of silence, there it is.
That goddamn hum.
Low. Persistent. Ugly. A sixty-cycle drone that sits in the room like a dirty secret I can’t hide. It’s always there, lurking beneath every song, arriving when I least expect it. But this time, when we stop playing, it’s the only thing left, like a malevolent ghost in the machine.
I don’t move. My hand stays frozen on the fretboard, my other palm muting the strings, willing the hum to just disappear through sheer force of denial. My eyes drift to the amp’s worn control panel, confirming everything’s exactly where it should be.
Except for the hum.
“Nice,” Milo says from behind his drum kit, amused.
I glare at him as he pulls off his glasses and polishes them with the hem of his Black Flag shirt, like this is entertaining to him. Usually, I find his default state of detached irony charming—the world is a joke, and he’s the only one in on it—but right now I just find it annoying.
Joel, on the other hand, is not amused.
He sets his bass down with the kind of careful precision that means he’s about two seconds from losing his shit, and when he looks at me, his expression is tight. It’s the look of a man who’s been holding back a rant for weeks and has finally decided it’s time to let it loose.
“OK, Cass,” he says, his voice calm, which is somehow worse than if he were yelling. “I think we should probably address the elephant in the room.”
I sigh, because I know exactly what he’s going to say. “The amp is fine, Joel, so just drop it.”
“The amp,” Joel says, like I haven’t spoken, “has a hum that’s loud, annoying, and getting worse.”
“It’s not that bad—”
“It is that bad.” He crosses his arms, his tone shifting into full let-me-walk-you-through-your-own-failure mode. “Picture this: we finally get someone from some indie label to one of our shows, the room’s packed, the energy’s perfect, and then we start the set.”
When he pauses, I sigh again, because I know that, with Joel, the only thing worse than one of his sermons is cutting one of them off. “Go on…”
“We open with ‘Broadcast’ as usual,” he says. “The quiet intro that’s all you, clean tone, that arpeggiated riff, and what’s the only thing they hear?”
I sigh. “I’m guessing you’re going to tell me…”
He points at my amp. “That fucking hum.”
The scenario plays out in my head. The silent intro that melts everyone who hears it, then the hum filling the space like a neon sign flashing AMATEUR over and over. The label guy’s expression shifting. The polite “we’ll be in touch” that never comes. The dream, over.
And it’ll be my fault.
My hand moves to rest on the Bassman’s battered chassis, fingers settling into the groove worn smooth by decades of other hands. The metal is warm, still radiating the heat of the tubes inside—tubes that are probably original to the amp, sixty years of shows and basements and bars.
For a second, I’m sixteen again, in the Newark pawn shop where I first plugged this thing in. I still remember the way the sound had struck me in the chest. It had felt like learning a secret handshake into a club I’d been desperate to join my whole life.
I pull my hand back.
Milo snorts from his drum kit. “He’s got a point. That thing is fucked.”
I whip my head toward him. “You’re not helping.”
“Wasn’t trying to.” Milo grins, spinning a drumstick between his fingers. “But seriously, it’s been making that noise since, what, April?”
“Fuck off, Milo,” I snap. “I’m working on it.”
Milo’s grin widens. “This is why I love band practice. It’s like therapy, but with amps.”
I turn back to Joel. “It’s not about the hum,” I say. “It’s about the tone. The warmth. That’s the sound, Joel. That’s what makes us sound like us. Do you want me to go buy some sterile, solid-state piece of shit that’ll make us sound like every other indie band?”
It’s a good argument. I almost believe it myself.
Joel exhales slowly through his nose, the way he does when he’s trying not to call me an idiot. “I’m not asking you to buy a solid-state amp. I’m asking you to get this one fixed or replace it. Because, right now, it’s making us sound like amateurs.”
The word opens a trapdoor beneath my feet.
Amateurs.
It cuts deep. It’s the word I’ve heard from guys my whole life, making me feel like a girl playing dress-up, pretending to be a musician while the real professionals—the guys—who actually know what they’re doing just look on and shake their heads.
Why doesn’t he get it?
If I replace it, the tone changes.
And if the tone changes, what makes us different?
What makes me necessary?
It’d be surrendering to every asshole who ever doubted me.
Suddenly, I’m back in that coffee shop with the guy I got serious with junior year. You’re just a three-chord hack with a good face, he’d said, his expression shifting from mild interest to bored contempt in the span of a single confession from me.
And my crime?
I’d made the mistake of being honest with him, of thinking he was interested in the girl beneath the makeup and torn clothes and fishnets.
I’d admitted I didn’t really understand harmonic minor scales, and that I played by ear and feel and instinct, and he’d stared at me like I’d sprouted a second head.
Strike three on the “Cassidy Vance Lets Guys Close and They Don’t Like What’s Underneath the Wrapper” scorecard.
Joel is still looking at me. “How long until it’s fixed?”
“A couple of weeks.”
“You know,” Milo adds, his grin audible in his voice, “there’s no shame in just admitting you’re out of your depth.”
“I know things,” I mutter.
“You know some things,” Milo says generously. “Guitar things. Riffs and vocals. But amp repair is like rocket surgery, Cass.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Doesn’t have to. I’m a drummer.”
Joel sighs, and this time, there’s something almost gentle in it. Like he’s trying to be patient with a stubborn child. “Cass, I’m not trying to shit on your amp or your sound. I know you love that thing, but we’ve got shows coming up...”
I sigh. “I’ll fix it.”
“Cass—”
“I said I’ll fix it.”
He’s not buying it. I can see the doubt in his eyes, the quiet calculation of a guy trying to decide whether to push or let it go. And I see the exact moment he decides to let it go, which I’m grateful for, even if he thinks I’m wrong.
I mean, I have tried to fix it. I spent two weeks watching YouTube videos and reading Reddit posts. I replaced the power cable, I rewired the input jack, and I even cracked open the back panel and stared at the rat’s nest of ancient wiring inside, hoping the problem would just reveal itself.
It didn’t.
Desperate to get off this topic, I grab my guitar cable and yank it out of the amp with more force than necessary, the connector scraping against the metal jack plate. The hum cuts off abruptly, and the silence that follows feels heavier than before.
Accusatory.
“Let’s run ‘Landmine’ again,” I mutter, not looking at either of them.
I plug the cable back in. The hum returns, low and patient.
Waiting.
The walk back to my dorm after band practice should clear my head.
It doesn’t.
Instead, Joel’s voice loops in my skull like a broken record stuck on the worst part of the song, all the while I construct the argument I should have made in defense of my amp and my sound. In my head, I’m a courtroom lawyer, and Joel looks chastened, maybe even apologetic.
In reality, I just got defensive and stubborn, which is almost my default setting whenever someone gets too close to the parts of myself I’ve labeled “Do Not Touch.”
The campus is quiet this time of night, the quad mostly empty except for a few stragglers. Streetlights carve long shadows across the brick paths, and somewhere in the distance, bass thumps from an off-campus party—normal college sounds on a normal college night.
Ahead of me, a couple stumbles out of a dorm, the girl’s hand tucked into the guy’s back pocket as if it’s found a permanent home. They’re so wrapped up in each other they don’t even see me. For a second, I want to stop them.
“How do you do that?” I’d ask. “How do you let someone that close without them eventually realizing you’re a disaster and leaving?”
Instead, I keep walking.
My squat, brick dorm building rises ahead. When I get to the door, I yank it open and take the stairs two at a time, my boots echoing like gunshots in the concrete stairwell. Thankfully, nobody tries to make small talk with me, and I’m soon at my door.
The door is plastered with band stickers and punk slogans, my declaration of exactly who I am. Usually, seeing it gives me a little rush of defiant pride, but tonight it looks like something a freshman does when they’re trying too hard.
Fantastic. Add “existential crisis about door décor” to tonight’s breakdown.
I unlock it and kick it shut behind me.
My room is chaos—clothes draped everywhere, bed unmade, guitar cables snaking across the floor—but it’s my chaos. Except tonight, the mess feels like evidence. Like if someone walked in here, they’d take one look and think, of course she’s failing at everything…
I drop my guitar case and backpack, then collapse into my desk chair, knowing grades just got posted for my music theory midterm. I should check my grade in the morning, because nothing would make this day worse than bombing another assessment, but I decide to embrace the pain.
Nothing more punk than that, right?