Rules to Rock By by Josh Farrar Read Free Book Online

would be on a three-hour sugar high, as usual. While Jake ruled in many ways, he was no Abuela. He couldn’t hold our family together while my parents lived in their fantasy world.
    Was I homesick? I felt like I didn’t have a home anymore. Home was something we had left in Sunset Park. Now I was living in a recording studio, which is the exact opposite of a home.
    I looked at what I had written, pulled out a rhyming dictionary, and started to screw around:
    Everything’s better in Brooklyn
    Fried salami, goopy cheese
    Egg Mountain shows and the East River
breeze
    Take me back to Brooklyn, please
    Man, I miss my old hometown
    Milk shakes at Uncle Louie G’s
    What’s for dinner tonight, pizza or
Chinese?
    Take me back to Brooklyn, please
    What are you going to make of my masterpiece, Mr. V?

    “What’s up, Cabrera?” Jonny said on the following Monday. He was waiting for me at the empty classroom at lunchtime, right where he said he’d be.
    “Not much, Jonny …” I waited for him to fill in the blank. But he didn’t.
    “Just Jonny.”
    “Okay, Jonny No Last Name. Jonny Mysterious.”
    “Ha, it’s Jonny Mack.”
    “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Mack.”
    “Likewise.”
    We were both brown-bagging it, so we skipped the caff and walked through the halls. I hadn’t been this near him standing upright before, so it was like I was looking at him for the first time. Dyed black hair with bangs long enough to cover a slightly patchy forehead. A small white scar above his lip. Black T-shirt, black jeans, black Chuck high-tops. Next to him, I looked like Little Miss Sunshine. He was way more goth than I remembered, like the doofus big brother to that David Copperfield –obsessed pixie I’d seen in Loner Land.
    “I can’t believe your parents are Benny and Joon,” he said. “ Entranced is a great record.”
    “You Googled me?”
    “Yup.” He pushed up his glasses.
    “All righty, then.”
    “So are they crazy? Why would you guys leave Brooklyn? Brooklyn is like the international center of indie rock.”
    “Tell me about it. Shows every night of the week.”
    “All my favorite bands are from Brooklyn. Animal Collective, Liars, Interpol, they’re all there.”
    “I know.”
    “You must be bummed. There’s maybe ten bands in all of Providence, and half of them are metal tribute bands.”
    “Yeah.”
    “So … why’d you move here, then?”
    “My parents wanted a place where they could live and record, and they couldn’t afford it in Brooklyn.”
    “Really? But they’re totally successful.”
    “Well, if by ‘successful’ you mean that a lot of people like them, sure. But they don’t exactly rake cash in, doing what they do. They’re not competing with Beyoncé for a spot on the top ten.”
    “Well, yeah, they’re indie. But they could play to at least five hundred people in almost every major city in the country. Not Providence, maybe, but every major city.”
    “Yeah, I guess. But you’d be surprised how little they make, after you count up the hotel bills, the gas, the blah, blah, blah. They don’t make much on records, either.”
    “Oh man, that sucks. I guess I should listen to my dad and become a lawyer, then?”
    “Ha. Totally, you traitor.”
    We walked by my poster, and Jonny stopped.
    “This is you, right?”
    I nodded.
    “ ‘For those about to rock’?” he read.
    “Umm, yeah. You think that was cheesy?”
    “Nah, don’t worry about it. Everybody needs a little cheese in their diet. So what do you think, are you gonna form the biggest band in the world, or what?”
    “Well, you’ve gotta start somewhere, right?”
    “What’s more important? Is it about being incredibly popular, or just sounding really amazing?”
    I had to think about it. “When I imagine this band,” I said, “we’re playing in front of thousands of people. But for thousands of people to like us, we’d have to sound really great, right?”
    “Yeah, but there are some really, really popular bands