Breakout Read Online Free Page A

case down on the floor. It’s one of those tweed ones and it’s beat up because I bought it used, so I covered it with cool stickers. I flip open the latches and inside there she is:
    Merle.
    An Epiphone SG, used. It looks like a real Gibson, but Gibsons cost too much and besides the Epiphone is close enough. For now. I’m totally going to get a real Gibson someday. Maybe in high school if I keep saving my allowance, which is no easy thing but I try.
    Merle is dark sparkle blue. I wanted the classic crimson blood color but we couldn’t find one for the right price, and that’s okay too. Merle is dented and scratched, but my dad had Colin over at Trading Musician fix her up. He says the intonation is a little weird as you go up the neck and sometimes I notice it but not really.
    “What’s up, Merle?” Keenan says.
    I hold Merle out and shake it and make a deep, rumbling sinister voice: “All hail Sataaaannn …” (Don’t worry, it’s just a running joke between me and Keenan about old-school metal bands and how funny they were. Nobody needs to contact child services and no, we won’t be coming to bite the heads off your hamsters anytime soon.)
    And I know that Merle is the kind of name for a guitar that makes you go,
Um, Merle?
but here’s the thing, it wasn’t my choice. The original owner of this guitar etched the name into the body. The letters curve right around the volume knob. Nobody knows who that guy was, and I guess I could paint over them, or I could just call it Merle, so that’s what I do.
    Plus when I showed it to Keenan, after he was like, “Merle?” he said, “That’s so cool!”
    Keenan usually thinks weird stuff is cool. He cares a little more about image than I do. He works on his shaggy mess of hair and shops for clothes at vintage places like Red Light. Today he’s wearing a navy blue bowling shirt with the name SAL stitched into it. I usually try not to stand out as much.
    Merle is my one exception. Otherwise, it’s okay with me if the only place anyone notices me is onstage, preferably after I just melted their brains out their ears and they are like,
Who is that?
and I’m just nodding and playing like,
Yup
.
    Mr. Darren has cables out for us. I plug Merle into the Marshall amp that we’ve been dialing in to a perfect watery crunch. Keenan’s bass is going through the Ampeg. We make a triangle, me standing on the curved level above Mr. Darren and Keenan.
    Mr. Darren hits a low E and then taps a couple different octaves so we can get in tune. He never lets us use a tuner pedal unless it’s performance time, because he says you have to develop your ear. “You need to be able to hear E and A everywhere in the world,” he said once. I think that idea is cool, like how music is in the environment and if you can hear it, that’s like having a superpower or knowing a secret code.
    I slip a clear blue pick from my pocket. It’s engraved with the two intertwined snake
S
’s of Sister’s Secret, our favorite underage band in town. I got the pick at a Vera Project show last summer. Their guitar player, Ty, threw it into the crowd.
    Ty and the rest of Sister’s Secret are sophomores at Ballard High. Ty was in the eighth grade band when we were in sixth grade. His band back then was called Beeblebrox! They werekind of mathy, but now Sister’s Secret just rocks. They play at Vera all the time, and also High Point Community Center, and Ground Zero over in Bellevue.
    Keenan and I talk about having our own real band when we are in high school. We imagine playing those all-ages shows, but it doesn’t stop there, because we get so big that we tour the country, and then after high school we move to New York and keep getting bigger. Sometimes it feels like it could totally happen. Other times it just sounds like a crazy dream. But we still talk about it all the time.
    We finish tuning and look to Mr. Darren. He always plays along with us. “One, two, three …,” he counts, and we