Page 1 of Dirty Rock

Prologue

RHETT RYAN

Aged 15

“Rhett, wait up!”

I turned to see my best mate, Ollie, running towards me. His short blonde hair was spiked up, with each strand individually gelled in place, and his rucksack bounced on his back as he came to a stop in front of me, gasping for breath.

Green Day was blasting in my ears, with Billie Joe Armstrong singing to me about when he comes around. I tugged an earphone out and eyed Ollie as I gripped the strap of my own bag and readjusted it on my shoulder.

“Hey,” Ollie panted.

“S’up?”

“You left before I got to tell you what happened at lunch today.”

“Sorry.” Reaching up, I scratched an eyebrow before I pushed my hands through my chin-length, jet-black emo haircut.

Nineties music was my jam, and I wasn’t ashamed to show it.

I wanted to be Billie Joe Armstrong. I wanted his voice, his life, his money, his ability to escape anything that was ordinary—like everything around here happened to be. I wanted what Green Day had, but with a big, black bow on top. My home village of Cookham in Berkshire sucked, and I couldn’t wait for the day when I took my guitar off to another part of the world that wasn’t England, and I found where I belonged.

“I have to get home. Mum wants to talk to me,” I told Ollie, noticing the way my voice broke on certain words—damn puberty making me sound like a choir boy one minute, only to turn me into a drugged-up sex pest the next.

“You in trouble?”

My life was in trouble, sure, and I was pretty sure Ma wanted to see me so she could deliver some bad news. But was I in trouble? I hoped not.

“I don’t think so. What did you have to tell me?”

Ollie’s eyes brightened. “Someone has a crush on you.”

“Who?”

“Charlotte King.”

“The hell are you talking about?” I frowned.

Charlotte King was one of the most popular girls in our school. Her auburn hair was always perfectly straight without a strand out of place, and even though it was against school policy, Charlotte wore pink lipstick every day to make sure every boy in school noticed her pouty lips. The first time I saw her, almost a decade ago, I’d thought I’d loved her on sight. But then she’d opened her mouth, and I’d quickly realised that, behind the obvious beauty her face carried, there was a girl with an ugly heart and a vicious mouth.

Since refusing to give her any of the attention she so obviously craved, I’d had a target on my back, and Charlotte was determined to hit it. Since it was frowned upon to retaliate against women, I’d kept my mouth shut during years of her taunting.

Then, to make matters even worse, she’d partnered up with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Liam Montgomery.

Liam Montgomery, along with his idiotic, rugby-playing, brutish friends, happened to be my worst enemy now. He’d hated everything about me since the first day we met. He’d hated the way I dressed, the way I styled my hair, the way I spoke, the music I listened to, and more than anything… Liam hated the way I sang and played the guitar because he was fucking useless at both those things.

“Dude, she told Andrew Crawley that she’d watched you play during fifth-period music lesson last week. She went home and had a dream about you, and she’s not been able to stop thinking about you since. She thinks that all this hate she’s been harbouring has actually been some kind of love.”

“Did you fall and hit your head?”

“It makes sense. Why else would she be so obsessed with you?”

I stared at my stupid best friend with narrowed eyes before I picked up my earbud and pushed it back into place. Not giving him a chance to go on, I turned and walked away. Green Day had been replaced with The Cranberries,Zombie,reminding me of what I felt like most days in this shitty little village surrounded by insignificant wannabes like Charlotte and Liam. I didn’t belong here with this high school crap. I deserved a life with meaning, where lyrics were my oxygen, and the strum of a guitar was the only thing to make my heart beat faster.

“Rhett. Rhett! Come on, bro. Dude. Listen!”

Ollie followed, and while I walked like a normal person, he side-skipped along with me, gesticulating with his hands as he told his story. And itwasa story, filled with nothing but fiction.I tuned him out, instead drifting off to wonder how some of my musical heroes had spent their teen years. Had they, too, been uninterested in what others found worthy of their time. Had Kurt Cobain struggled to fake his smiles among friends? Had Chris Cornell always known he was somehow different to those around him? Had my other idol, Corey Taylor, learnt how to scream his frustrations in the quiet of his own mind?

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