DEATH ROW.

1 - DEATH ROW.

DEATH ROW.

March, 1982.

Tex.

"Would you get down from there, you stupid kid?" The voice from the ground screamed up into the blinding sunlight from the roof of the Rainbow, where I was utterly stranded. Would fuckin' love to, I thought in a haze, drumsticks clutched in one hand and the other tearing into the tile on the side of the roof.

"Just throw 'em down here, Texas!" Yelled another voice, one I could recognize as Tommy Lee. Oh, fuck you! I wanted to shout back, as he was the one who put me up here in the first place. "Come on, Tex! You're gonna make me fuckin' late!" Wouldn't be a first. I let out a shaky breath and shuffled a little closer to the edge of the roof, feeling a curl of nausea in the pit of my stomach.

From the edge of the roof, I could see Tommy squinting through the sunlight, and a grin split across his face as his eyes landed on me. He threw his head back with laughter, reaching over to smack the shoulder of the manager next to him, who didn't seem even half as amused.

"Here, Tex!" Tommy held out his arms, and for a moment, I almost thought he wanted me to jump into them. "Throw em down, before you drop em!" Oh, of course. I huff out a sigh, then shuffle my feet to plant my weight a bit better into the slanted roof-side, feeling myself teeter a little too far over the edge.

"Fuck!" My terrified gasp made Tommy explode into another peal of laughter. Swallowing hard, I pitch forward a bit to toss the drumsticks down to him. But my calculations were off, and these fucking platform shoes Nikki convinced me to buy betrayed me, and the tile slid out from under my legs. I went, screaming in terror, head over heels (quite literally) straight to the ground. Tommy and the poor manager both took a wide step back just in time for me to collapse onto the concrete below, a groaning tangle of denim and blood.

"Oh my god, Tex!" Tommy gaped, slack jawed from where I lay on the ground, to the rooftop I'd just face-planted off of; "That was fuckin' AWESOME!" Reaching down with a laugh, he smacks his palm across my aching back, then wags his drumsticks in my bloodied, aching face: "And I got my drumsticks! Thanks, buddy!"

The curled up heap on the ground with the freshly broken nose and the dyed black hair? That's me, Texas. The grinning idiot with the drumsticks is Tommy Lee, he's in a band called Motley Crue– a bunch of dickheads. We met in high school, where against my will, we became best friends. He was the best drummer in the marching band, beating out even the drum captain (who resented him forever for it), and I was the one who always dragged his kit back and forth from football games. Now, I drag his kit back and forth from club to club. Not much has changed on that front.

Despite his tenure as California's biggest headcase, he's good for one thing– keeping a secret. Through thick and thin, we've been blood for blood since sophomore year. I've trusted him with basically my whole livelihood since senior year, now where he goes, I follow, even if it sends me careening face first into hot concrete on the Sunset Strip.

After peeling myself off the concrete and apologizing profusely to the Rainbow Bar and Grill's manager, I set off to find a way to get to the Whisky A GoGo; Tommy had skipped out on me and gotten a ride with his new squeeze, Candice.

As I was turning to go, the manager called out to me: "You ought to get that nose checked out, kid. It looks pretty broken to me." I wave my hand dismissively over my shoulder. I didn't have time to worry about that, right now. A broken nose could wait til the show was over– It didn't stop for anybody.

Nikki.