Second Life: Dumping the Scum novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: Graduation Eve
The poster went up all over town that week.
On Broadway, on Music Row, on the bulletin board outside the dining hall.
Somebody drew a mustache on the one by the college library.
Emmylou swore it wasn't her, with drumstick ink on her fingers.
Graduation night was May 16, the senior send-off on the lawn.
Graduation week came after it, and there was no recital in it for me.
Wynona had us all to supper.
Her house was a little stone cottage off Belmont with a screened back porch and a long table under a ceiling fan.
The woman in the Titans cap brought deviled eggs.
The heavy man who chewed pencils brought a pound cake and a fresh pencil to chew.
Hudson carved a ham.
"Thinner," Wynona said.
"It's ham, Gran."
"It's my ham."
Emmylou sat next to me with her elbows on the table.
She told the story of the bachelorette who bit the last waitress, with sound effects.
The woman in the Titans cap laughed so hard she had to take her cap off.
I looked down the table at all of them in the yellow porch light.
In my first life I spent this night at Breckin's parents' house in Knoxville, listening to his mother explain my posture to me.
Nobody here had asked me to sit up straight.
"Before the pie," Emmylou said, and stood up. "I have an announcement."
"Lord," said Wynona.
"I've got a new gig."
"Where?" I said.
She took a breath.
"Breckin's backing band. The Ryman. Tomorrow night."
The table went dead quiet.
The fan ticked over our heads.
"You what?" I said.
"His drummer quit last week," she said. "Turns out the kid with the buzz cut has a conscience."
"So the label needed somebody who already knew the songs. And I know your songs better than anybody alive."
"Em."
"I went in there and told Breckin I'd been humbled," she said. "I told him I was broke and sorry and I missed the money."
"He believed you?"
"He's never met me, Kenz. Not once in three years."
"Why?" Hudson asked quietly.
Emmylou looked at me.
"Because whoever's behind the kit decides when a song stops," she said. "And I want to be the one sitting there."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Second Life: Dumping the Scum are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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