I shut the bedroom door quietly behind me.

There’s a growl-squeak from under my bed. A second later a little gray monster barrels out and runs into my ankles.

“Hey, Goblin.” I bend down and rub the cat between his raggedy ears. Goblin is old and deaf, with bony shoulders and snaggleteeth and breath so bad it could wilt a houseplant. He might be my favorite creature on earth. He doesn’t say meow anymore, I suppose because he can’t hear himself. Instead he says mirk and ackk and eeeooww, and a bunch of other cat words he’s invented to suit his cat moods. And he always waits under my bed for me to come home.

Rrrurk, says Goblin, butting his head against my foot. After I’ve rubbed him enough, he leaps heavily onto my bed and curls up in the blankets.

I throw the towel over the chair and pull on a fresh pair of boxer shorts. I don’t turn on the light. I’d rather hide in the dark for a while. Even when I’m alone in my room, I swear, sometimes I feel the pressure of eyes on me. In this little town, there’s always someone watching. There’s enough glow from the night sky for me to make my way around the room anyway. I could do it with my eyes closed: Twin bed. Scarred dresser covered with stickers and metal band logos drawn by hand with black Sharpie. Desk and chair. Sound system pieced together from garage sales and Goodwill. And, beside my bed, the guitars. My first acoustic, cheap and light as balsa wood. My new acoustic, still in its case from the show. My old ninety-dollar Epiphone Les Paul Special. And the black Ibanez electric. The most valuable, most beautiful thing I own.

Yvonne.

I sit down on the end of the bed. I’ve already played for almost five hours today: two hours of practice, warm-up, sound check, the show. But I can’t help myself. I unzip the case and pull Yvonne into my lap. I run my fingers down the strings, feeling the buzz of the wires against my fingertips.

As long as I’m playing, I can shut off the rest of my brain. I can stop thinking about what my face is doing, and about how my autograph on some girl’s arm looked like it was written by a six-year-old girl, and about all the people screaming for our set tonight, and about Dad not even looking up from the TV when I walked into the house, and about the much worse things—the things I can’t tell anyone, that I barely confess to myself. There’s nothing left but the music.

I don’t plug into the amp. I just practice the pentatonic scale, as fast as I can, up and down the fretboard. Then I practice fingerwork. First finger to second, second finger to third, third to fourth, as fast as I can. Until the tendons are screaming.

Then I lay Yvonne on the bed, climb down onto the rough dark blue carpet, and do fifty push-ups on my knuckles. The skin on the backs of my hands burns. After fifty I stretch for a minute: neck, shoulders, hands. Then I pick up the guitar again. Scales, slightly faster this time.