This is the part where you find out who you are.

And I say to myself, this is how the story ends.

I wake up in a car again, a concept Something Corporate predicted for me years ago. Nate wakes up too, in a fit of energy as everyone on this tour has become accustomed to, and before long we are driving down a long flat road sided with farms, arguing about scene boys and listening to the Maine. Yep, this is it.

I have chipped black nail polish and a faded Sharpie heart on my fingers. I have upwards of ten bracelets on my wrists and a “chrome” ring in my nose. A beater that’s a couple wears old and scene hair that looks the best when it goes a little unwashed. I wear a drummer’s watch even though he stopped texting me over a week ago. There are no boys for me but the 6 in this van and the 6 in the other, and I love them more than I could any random scene crush. Except maybe Kennedy Brock.

I think love isn’t about looking for the perfect someone. I think it’s about stumbling across someone who likes you for the dumb fuck you are. Maybe that’s just what I want to think. Maybe it doesn’t matter afterall. I’m finding a lot of things don’t matter. Nate says tour will do that to you. Material things don’t matter; yes… this includes bracelets and clothes. Showers don’t matter. Text messages and grudges don’t matter. Forever doesn’t really matter. Peanut butter filled pretzels though, they matter. Nate matters, although he’d like me to say he doesn’t. Money matters, however much I’d like it not to. I am at the end of something, I just can’t put my finger on it. Ends don’t matter anymore.

As always, I’d like to say I know exactly what to fill the last 2 pages of this Book with. Some sort of insight to tell of these times and keep all of you reading. But it’s not perfect wisdom, I realize, that I am looking for. It’s a scenario. I waited to fill these lines, and this is what I stumbled across…

There will always be a show, no matter how dead the scene becomes or how much the economy fucks over the touring bands. Enough traces will remain that there will always be a rock show. And the traces are as follows:

There will always be the local band that proves fun over sound can work in circumstance. There will always be that Minnesota band that delivers enough of both. That drummer who’s way too young to be talking to, but hits too hard to let get away. Woopsies? There will always be pretty cool girls in the front row, and girls pretty enough to sit on the sidelines. Maybe girlfriends, probably posers. There will always be that girl who wants to dance but has no rhythm whatsoever. Super scene kids that’ll grow out of it in a year or two, and newbies who are still too scrawny for even the skinniest skinnies. There will always be the touring musicians standing smug but supportive ¾’s of the way back in the crowd. I hope there will always be the kick ass parents in the back, probably wanting to fork their ears out but bringing their little punks out to the shows anyways. There will always be the epic onstage water bottle spray that slows time and speeds heartbeats, immortalizing that moment in that song eternally and selling another unsuspecting soul to the scene.

There will always be the worries. The pacing and fretting the crew does trying to come up with any gimmick to get their boys more vox in the monitors, more kids up front, more reassurance that yes, what they’re doing in worth believing in. I should pray every night that there will always be the exchange: smile to band boy, band boy to me. Obviously.

I am completely a scene junkie. Not born and self-bred. I will always love stick flips and high hats. I will always be able to see better in the dark and never be able hear you the first time you say something. I will always get embarrassed by between song banter and never by eye sex. I will never discriminate band boys by the instrument they play… I will take them all!

Score24 and This Condition will always each be one half of my heart in the summer that was 2009. We got piercings and slept in junkyards. We ate chicken salad and drooled over Kennedy Brock. Yes, we lost our merch guy on the Las Vegas strip. We hardly ever showered and never gave up. Cuz when it comes down to it, what really mattered was the 20-30 minutes every night when they battled feedback in the monitors. There will always be feedback in the monitors. And there will always, always be this.

“Is this Heaven?”
“No…it’s Iowa.”





...Terica.
"This City Is Contagious" by: the CAB