Chapter 20: Allegheny Arena

Fifteen thousand people can make a sound like a building falling down.

I stood in the wings of the Allegheny Arena and listened to it fall.

The label's stream had gone dark at eight o'clock.

Hank had come to tell me, with his jaw set, and then gone back to the board to make sure nothing else did.

The band played five songs, and the crowd screamed along with all of them.

Then Jude said my name into the mic, and the room changed its mind.

The boos came from the floor first, ugly and sure of themselves.

"Fake!"

"Liar!"

The label's counter-story had run all day, and I'd read it on Stevie's phone with a sandwich in my other hand.

The voicemail was edited.

The voicemail was fake.

The size 22 stalker had a recording studio and a grudge.

Some of them had listened to my four minutes and decided it was an actor.

I walked out anyway.

My boots were loud on the boards.

I wore the green skirt and a black top with sleeves to the elbow.

My hair was up in a bun, and the gold pick hung around my neck.

Nobody had helped me with any of it.

The lights hit me.

The roar went up into the rafters, the same roar from Raleigh, with some new noises in it.

There were cheers mixed in, a lot more than before, but they were drowning.

I saw signs.

I saw WE LOVE YOU MAGGIE in purple glitter.

I saw GO HOME, and a bedsheet with the word LIAR spray painted across it.

In the third row, in a church coat and her good boots, stood my mother.