Chapter 1Three knocks on the door were all it took to demolish my carefully reconstructed world. Three raps, seemingly as innocent as rapid beats to a snare drum, but that turned out to be more like explosions.
It was Friday night and I lay sprawled on my couch after six long weeks of teaching the Rock Band Summer Program. I reveled in the blissful silence after forty-two days of constant noise. Enjoying a glass of red wine, I read a well-loved paperback about punk music one of my kids at summer school had given me. He’d promised it would change my aversion to the genre. I’d found it in my guitar case after classes were over and the kids had left. Tucked between the pages was a hand-written, nearly illegible note.
Thank you for everything, Mr. Kinney. I’ve had the best summer of my life.
