The Rules Read Free Page B

the fun, girls.”
    A wind chose that moment to blow strands of fog across the two-lane blacktop county road. Thea leaned back in her seat, looking out over the grape fields to the scattered houses with their glowing porch lights.
You are sixteen and free. And you are going to find the fun,
the little voice in her head promised her.
Especially if you-know-who is in the mood.
    She quirked a half smile, feeling both guilty and sad at the same time.
MICK’S RULE #1: Practice makes perfect.
    Mick, Stacy, Drew, and Hiro were Maximum Volume and had been for almost three years. All their blood, sweat, and song stealing were finally going to pay off: they had one more gig in Callabrese, and then they were moving to Los Angeles to record their first album with a major label. August DeYoung had told Drew that only Maximum Volume would do for his hush-hush party, and he had backed up that statement with some serious cash. Now they had arrived at the cannery right on schedule. But where was their audience? And why the heck was the party going to be held
here
?
    “Whoa,” Stacy murmured from the backseat. “Look at
that.
”
    Mick braked too hard, and Drew dropped his dark blue Bic lighter into his lap. The van reeked of Drew’s weed and Stacy’s clove cigarettes. If there was any justice in this world, Drew’s nads would catch on fire.
    Maximum Volume had played some crazy venues on their way to the top. They’d chased their sound, hopping around from grunge to power metal to operatic metal and finally to their own indie vibe, which they called “metal rhapsody.” When you changed your identity as many times as they had, you learned to be flexible. One week you banged out box chords in a scummy bar in Fresno and the next week you were the darling of a fringe festival in Old Sacramento. But
this…
    They’d driven for two hours and had just reached their final destination. About twenty steep feet below the van sprawled the hulking remains of an abandoned cannery. What appeared to be party central—as it was the only building with lights—was a large brick factory or warehouse covered with graffiti, sliced by dozens of rows of thin, rectangular, blasted-out windows. A pitted roof featuring a drooping smokestack and a listing black metal bell tower completed the view. The building looked as unstable as Drew, the bassist and their founder. Drew had once been awesome, his dreams fueled by talent and lots of hard work. But drugs were taking him down, and fast. Their new manager, Pascha Haimes, had even hinted to Mick, the lead guitarist, that Samurai Records might be open to developing Maximum Volume as a trio: Mick on lead guitar, Stacy on vocals, Hiro on drums. They could get a studio musician to take the bass line until they found Drew’s permanent replacement. That sounded great to Mick. Except that he didn’t know how they could pull it off.
    Beside the warehouse, a wicked Porsche was parked at an angle in a huge lot of crushed shells, as if the driver had roared in and skidded to a halt so he could get his orders from MI6 or seek shelter from the zombie apocalypse. To the right of the Porsche, midway into the lot, stood a lumpy wall made out of cement, rocks, and abalone shells that wound on down to what appeared to be a lower lot, the details lost in the thick fog. Above that turnoff, darkness poured like black paint across the landscape to a very steep cliff dotted with ice plant and weeds. Well behind the warehouse and beyond the slope to the lower parking lot, a long, low half-demolished building stood below a faded billboard that said AZUL CANNERY—HOME OF THE FINEST SALMON AND SARDINES. ASK FOR AZUL! To the left of the warehouse, the fog thinned, revealing a falling-down wooden dock stretching out over another cliff, tumbling at a forty-five-degree angle into the ocean of inky blackness. On the other side of the dock, pine trees and woody California manzanita shrubs formed a barrier that trailed on down toward the