Return to School

"I'll call you back, okay? Honey, I'm really tired today." Ryan wrapped his arm around the woman's waist, whispering in her ear.

"You have my contact info." The black-haired woman in the orange one-piece dress pinched Ryan's chest and blew him a kiss before leaving.

Ryan made sure to grab one last handful before coaxing and seeing her off.

Joel sat in the car with a dumbfounded look. When Ryan slid into the passenger seat, he quickly asked, "I thought you weren't coming back with me tonight."

Ryan shook his head. Who knew what trouble might've brewed.

"You did the right thing." Joel nodded. "Back when I first started working part-time at that club, I was in the exact same spot as you just now. Want to guess what happened?"

"Pulled out something bigger than yours?" Ryan laughed.

Joel shrugged. Ryan's guess was probably close enough to the truth.

Ryan then brought up his next move, saying he wasn't in a hurry to submit demos to record labels. Instead, he wanted to build up some attention online first.

"If I have a choice, I'll make the labels come to me, not the other way around," Ryan said.

Joel strongly agreed and laid out the record label playbook. After signing an artist, the label promises an "advance" to cover album production and promotion costs. It looks like an investment, but it's really just another form of "loan." Once the album generates revenue, the advance gets deducted first, and only then does the artist get their cut.

"If the producer and studio are all owned by the label, they control the production costs. Sell fewer records, and the revenue won't cover the advance—your career is dead unless you can pay it back. Even if you sell enough, distribution costs eat up a huge chunk: returns, stocking, pressing—all extra costs the label decides. Then there's payment cycles, taxes. Ninety percent of artists make less than five thousand dollars a year."

"Ever since Napster showed up, the record industry has been on a downhill slide. People in the business have lost faith in the future, everyone's panicking, chaos everywhere. The Big Four labels control eighty percent of the market, and every label is scrambling to squeeze out the last drop of profit. Everyone wants to use whatever tiny bit of power they have to get a little extra kickback. It's even worse than the old Hollywood studio system—like a last-chance carnival. You'd better watch yourself. Some people love fresh meat like you." Joel warned.

Sneaking quietly back into Trey's house, Ryan went to the study again. First, he logged into the copyright office website to register his work, using Trey's credit card to pay the fifty-dollar fee.

Then he opened YouTube. He deleted all the self-recorded cover videos from his channel, "Ryan Rivers Official Channel," and thought about what to rename it. After tossing around a few names, he thought of Dr. Dre and based his stage name on his own, calling himself Dr. Ray. He changed the channel name.

Finally, Ryan opened Ableton Live again, trying to polish the original track. But just like Joel had said earlier, he didn't have the right sound effect plugins. No matter how he tweaked it, he couldn't get it to sound ideal.

Was he going to have to learn plugin development too? Ryan started uploading the music as a video to YouTube. He had no idea how to make those flashy visual effects, so the uploaded video was just a plain black background.

Next, Ryan registered on all the major social networks under the stage name Dr. Ray: Twitter, Myspace. Myspace, being the platform with the most young users, got his main focus. The other social media accounts were just mirror copies of his Myspace.

"Bang!" The door was shoved open again. Trey stood with her hands on her hips, storming in angrily.

"You'd better have a good reason... I can smell perfume on you right now. Where were you messing around?" Trey was clearly upset.

"It's a long story. Want to hear it?" Ryan made a move to hit the play button.

Trey immediately shook her head. "I don't care what you did tonight. Tomorrow morning, you're reporting to Hendersonville High School. Your enrollment application went through."

"Didn't I tell you to come early? It's ten o'clock now!"

"You told me that at three-thirty in the morning. Why didn't you wake me up tonight?"

"I... I set an alarm!"

"Do you have an alarm clock in your room?"

"It was the one in your room."

"You never planned to drive me here, did you?"

"That's not important."

Ryan and Trey tiptoed through the hallway. Being late made both of them nervous, afraid of disturbing the other classes in session. They peered through the classroom window.

The teacher spotted them anyway and invited Ryan in. Trey didn't want to stick around for a second longer—she turned and left, heading to the production company where she worked.

Ryan had no choice but to tough it out and introduce himself. But in the second-to-last row, he spotted a familiar face.

She was resting her chin on her hands like an open flower, and she looked just as surprised to see Ryan on the podium.

"Pick a seat, Rivers," the teacher said.

Without much thought, Ryan walked over and sat down next to Abigail. Instantly, the other girls in the classroom turned to look at him. Abigail looked smug, while the boys wore sour expressions. As an underwear model who had shot for Christian Audigier, Adidas, International Jock, and Hugo Boss, Ryan's looks were several tiers above what these suburban public school kids could compete with. No wonder he caught the girls' attention.

Class ended before they knew it.

"Want one?" Abigail handed Ryan a red Twizzlers stick—basically the American equivalent of spicy strips.

Ryan shook his head. "Where's the locker room?"

"I'll take you!" Abigail jumped up, ready to lead the way.

Ryan could clearly feel she was being a little too enthusiastic, but he didn't know how to turn her down. On the way, he asked about Taylor. "Is she a student here too?"

"She's already left school," Abigail explained.

Dropped out? That made sense. Career and school—you had to choose. Thinking that made Ryan feel a bit better.

"She graduated a year and a half early. GPA 4.0," Abigail added.

"Impressive." Ryan whistled.

Looking at it that way, even if she put down the guitar, with her grades and family background, getting into a top school wouldn't be hard.

"Enough about her. Which club are you joining? I recommend Hendersonville's swim team. Your height and arm span would be a real advantage, and you can show off your muscles." Abigail grinned, basically recruiting for her own team.

Little did she know, Ryan was already spoken for.

"I was part of the school football team back at Pineville High, and before I left, the team made it to the Louisiana 4A finals," Ryan explained.

He was able to return to school thanks to his football talent. Not long ago, the football coach was practically clinging to his waist in the principal's office, insisting that Ryan had to stay.

Though she was turned down, Abigail's eyes grew even brighter. "4A finals? I didn't know you were that good. Hendersonville is desperate for a football star like you right now. What position do you play?"

"Tight End."

Abigail nodded, her gaze toward Ryan filling with even more admiration.

In American schools, being on the football team automatically boosted a guy's popularity with the girls by ten points. Even Taylor wasn't immune back then.

At the same time, a Toyota Sequoia pulled into the parking lot outside the school. Taylor and her mother stepped out.

"Should be able to get my graduation paperwork this time, right?" Taylor couldn't help but say.

Then, Taylor thought of Abigail and pulled out her phone to call her best friend.

"What's the plan for the afternoon? Football practice? Don't those guys on the team already have girlfriends? Why is he there?!" Taylor's voice suddenly rose. Catching her mother's gaze, she quickly lowered it.

"He really came to Hendersonville High?"