Track 1: Pictures Came and Broke Your Heart

I heard you on the wireless back in ’52,
Lying awake, intently tuning in on you,
If I was young, it didn’t stop you coming through.

They took the credit for your second symphony,
Rewritten by machine, a new technology,
And now I understand the problems you could see.

I met your children.
What did you tell them?

Video killed the radio star,
Video killed the radio star,
Pictures came and broke your heart.

And now we meet in an abandoned studio,
We hear the playback and it seems so long ago,
And you remember how the jingles used to go.

You were the first one.
You are the last one.

Video killed the radio star,
Video killed the radio star,
In my mind and in my car,
We can’t rewind, we’ve gone too far.

Video killed the radio star,
Video killed the radio star,

In my mind and in my car,
We can’t rewind, we’ve gone too far,
Pictures came and broke your heart,
Put the blame on VCR.

You are a radio star.

— The Buggles, Video Killed the Radio Star”

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We don’t hear music.

We use our ears, of course. But saying you hear music is the same as saying you look at a movie. It’s the base level of what you’re doing. Nobody says, “Let’s get some calories” unless they’re being ironic. They say, “Let’s go to dinner.” It’s an experience. You don’t hear music. You feel music.

Astronomers sit at giant radio telescopes and listen to the stars sing. They call it “acoustic astronomy.” Apparently, a lot of the universe hums B flat and D Minor. There are people who dedicate their whole lives to figuring out why.

I understand those people. This is the story of why I understand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Track 1

Pictures Came and Broke Your Heart

Begin the day with a friendly voice,

A companion, unobtrusive,

Plays that song that’s so elusive,

And the magic music makes your morning mood.

— Rush, “The Spirit of Radio”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

 

I’m just a small town girl living in her lonely world. I wish I could tell you I’m not going to be this corny going forward, but I’ve come to accept that about myself and you will, too. I also wish I could say that the aforementioned “small town,” Painter’s Brush, is as cute as its name but it’s really just a glorified four-way stop about half an hour from Atlanta, Georgia that wishes it was a real town. Seriously, there’s less than 300 people here. The owner of our one gas station (at the famous four-way stop) is the Mayor, even though a town of under 300 people doesn’t need a Mayor. I can’t even remember their name. There’s one token diner here that’s been here forever because the only other places with non-homemade food are miles away, but everyone just eats in silence or gets takeout because nobody in Painter’s Brush actually knows each other. I’m telling you all this so that you understand that the woman who rang my doorbell one day at the beginning of summer was not the sort of person that drove through Painter’s Brush, much less stopped here on purpose.

She was nearly six feet tall and had a short haircut so professional that she could write it off as a business expense on her taxes. Her shoulders were so broad that at first I thought her perfectly pressed black pantsuit had shoulder pads in the jacket. She was wearing Ray-Bans with dark, round lenses and metal frames that caught the light when she moved her head. She had sharp cheekbones and a strong, almost square jaw, like a lady Batman. And, I don’t mean Batgirl, I mean Batman. But, a lady.

She was accompanied by an shorter, balding man who was sweaty from the late May sun, which was offering a preview of the oven that Painter’s Brush, Georgia would become over the next few months. His sweat matted the few hairs he had combed over the top of his head. The rest of his whispy brown-and-gray hair was tucked behind his ears. Despite the balding, he had a youthful, big kid energy about him. His face was round and clean-shaven, and his eyes twinkled with cheer. His suit was a little too big in some places and a little too small in others. He had a button nose and little butt chin. The comparison to a baby-faced Santa Claus was unavoidable.

When my Dad greeted the pair with a nervous “…Hello?” the woman smoothly flipped open a badge holder and introduced herself as “Agent Jessica Emerson from the FCC Enforcement Bureau Regional and Field Office.” She put a lot of mustard on the word “Agent.” She had an excellent voice for radio, and I told her that. She turned her neck ever-so-slightly so that her sunglassed eyes were now turned toward me, but weren’t quite looking at me. The rims of her Ray-Bans caught the light.

“Thank you,” she said, her tone polite, but unflinchingly authoritative. I wanted her to teach me her ways. She gestured toward the man behind her.

“This is my partner, Jay Boscoe.”

Boscoe gave a shy, awkward wave and a little grin. He was adorable. Emerson returned the badge to her inside jacket pocket. Dad hadn’t said a word; he was just standing with the door in his right hand and his mouth hanging a little open. I feel bad saying it, but he looked a little silly next to Agent “The Boss” Emerson.

“We are investigating a possible violation of Section 301 of the Communications Act,” Emerson said.

My father managed a drawn-out “uuuh” in reply.

But here came Good Cop Boscoe right on cue. He smiled and waved his hand through the air as if fanning the tension away before saying “That just means we’re looking for an unlicensed radio station.”

My father’s Angry Dad Face whipped toward me. My heart dropped into my stomach. Not because I was afraid of my Dad, but because I was very sure that the violation of Section 301 of the Communications Act was happening in our garage one hallway turn and a door away from us.

“I didn’t realize radio stations had to have a license,” Dad said. Then, turning to glare at me: “Did you?”

I shrugged, even though I did know that. But I didn’t want to admit it. I think he expected me to say something, but when I didn’t he turned back to Good Cop and Cool Cop and invited them in. Dad did not look like he wanted them in his home.

Emerson and Boscoe followed Dad and me into our den just a few steps away from the front door. We sat on the sofa and the agents pulled two comfy chairs around so that they were facing the sofa instead of the TV. Boscoe sat back in his chair, gripping the armrests and letting his gut poke out. He and Dad probably were about the same height and weight, but Boscoe wore it so poorly that it was hard not to pity him. It didn’t seem to bother him, though, sweatiness aside. Emerson sat up straight with her hands folded in her lap. She was still wearing her sunglasses. Everyone was quiet. Boscoe kept glancing at Emerson, like he was waiting for her to start something.

“Andy, was it? Andy Lake?” Emerson finally said in my direction, because that is my name.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I was perfectly professional.

“Ms. Lake, do you have a radio station in your garage?” Emerson asked.

My Dad scooted forward in his chair and pointed an angry finger at Emerson. He wasn’t happy with me, but I knew he had no patience for attacks on his daughter.

“You can’t just waltz in and…” Dad fumbled before finding more words. “This is my house and that is my garage and this girl is fourteen years old, which makes her a minor,” he said, his volume rising with each item on his list. “Now, I’m happy to cooperate, but you are going to address your questions to me.”

Boscoe chimed in. “Hey, hey, nobody is in trouble, yet, Mr. Lake. We’re just trying to gather some information.”

Dad took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The wrinkles around his eyes appeared as he squinted. He looked tired. He looked like that a lot. I had suspected for a long time that he rarely slept.

“I know you are not cops, no matter how badly you want to be, and you can’t charge us with a crime,” he said without taking his hand off his nose. Dad doesn’t know much about radio, but he works in television so he does know a thing or two about the FCC.

“That is technically true,” Boscoe squeaked and sweated. “But we do assist the Department of Justice in an official capacity, and they take our recommendations seriously. The best thing is for both of you to be honest with us.”

Dad fumed silently. I was quiet, too, because I knew anything I said would just unravel the situation faster and point them to my Garage Crime.

“I am happy to answer your questions,” Dad said flatly after an awkward silence.

Emerson shifted in her chair, then settled in the exact same position as before. “Mr. Lake, do you know what a pirate radio station is?”

“Is it, like, a radio station that…” Dad said, trailing off. He seemed to resist the urge to look at me for help.

“…steals stuff from other radio stations, or…”

Emerson interrupted him. “It is a radio station that operates with no intention of obtaining a license. The United States government also usually profiles a pirate radio station as being a clandestine operation whose goals are anarchic.”

The blood drained from Dad’s face. Good Cop noticed.

“We are not accusing anyone of anything right now. We are just asking questions,” Boscoe said.

“We have reason to believe that there is an unlicensed radio station operating from this home, but—“ Emerson said, stopping in the middle of her sentence to share a look with Boscoe before continuing. “We don’t think we would characterize it as pirate radio.”

“Why not?” I asked, then cursed under my breath. I had been momentarily flattered by A-N-D-Y being labeled as “pirate radio” like it was some kind of big deal and had forgotten that I did not want to deal with the repercussions of owning and running a pirate radio station.

Dad grabbed the steering wheel again. “No, the real question is, why do you have ‘reason to believe’ there is a radio station here?” he asked. Poor Dad. He had no idea what I’d been doing. He had always been a little too trusting of everyone, including me.

Emerson leaned back in her chair and made a single, thoughtful clucking sound. She reached into her infinitely deep inner coat pocket and pulled out a small Philips radio. She switched it on and gently rolled her thumb over the side until the static turned into my voice.

“—ning to A-N—D-Y. This is Girl on the Moon, announcing I’m taking a break, but I’ll be back with more music later. It’s just me in my Dad’s garage, and I gotta do other stuff sometimes!”

The radio was silent for a moment before my looping station ID started up again. Emerson clicked the radio off dramatically and returned it to her coat.

“You have to admit, that certainly sounds like you, Miss Lake,” said Boscoe.

“Look,” Dad said, adopting a new, friendlier tone and opening his arms widely and warmly to signal that he was ready to cooperate. “We just didn’t know about the regulations. I’d be happy to purchase a license. Can we just get it online? Or is this more of a federal thing that has to be handled in Atlanta?”

“Mr. Lake, a station license is not like a fishing license,” Emerson said. “The licensing process is extraordinarily selective and, even if a station is selected, the licensing fees are not something that can be afforded by an average household income.”

“Well…” my Dad faltered. His head dipped and he stared at a spot of carpet for a moment before raising his head again sharply and snapping his fingers. “What about college radio stations? There’s a ton of those. There’s no way they all have licenses.”

“You are correct, Mr. Lake,” Emerson replied almost immediately. They had expected this rebuttal. “College radio stations are classified as low-power radio stations, and getting licenses for those is difficult since the FCC eliminated class D licenses. But we don’t pay much attention to those since they’re usually only running at about 100 watts. I would be surprised if there were ten watts moving through the wires in the walls of this room. But the station in your garage—“

Allegedly in your garage,” Boscoe cut in.

Emerson scoffed, but it didn’t seem like the derision was directed at Boscoe. “Yes, thank you, Agent Boscoe. The station allegedly in your garage is by no definition ‘low power,’ is it? How many watts hypothetically power your alleged radio station?”

“Oh, I just plug the stuff into the wall. Am I using too much electricity?” I said. It was a lie. A big fat whopper of a lie. I  didn’t know exactly how many watts I was sucking up, but it was a lot. Waaaaay more than a hundred. Certainly more than would be expected from an amateur harmlessly fiddling with second-hand broadcast equipment in their garage. I was drawing power from all over our corner of Painter’s Brush, directly from several power poles and some other nearby homes, and the setup was neither legal nor safe.

Dad looked at me, then at the agents. His face was pitiful.

“Do I need a lawyer?” Dad squeaked. It was a plea for mercy.

Emerson raised her eyebrows and gave a performative, thoughtful frown. “I suppose that’s your right. But again, nobody is being charged with a crime. If you really want to spend the money on a lawyer and make it a matter of the courts, though, then suit yourself. This is America, after all.”

“This is a very unusual case,” Boscoe continued for Emerson. “Neither Agent Emerson, nor I, nor any of our colleagues at the field office have ever dealt with anything quite like it. We’ve dealt with the odd college radio station interfering with licensed broadcasts and actual pirate radio stations, but we’ve never quite handled the in-between.

“Miss Lake, I think you want to be cooperative, and we have no interest in seeking criminal charges against someone who is cooperating. Let us ask you again, directly: Do you have a radio station in your garage?”

All eyes were on me.

“I do,” I said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2

“All the best things start in garages.”

Dad threw this line around whenever he’d walk into our garage and see five-year-old me in my pretend cardboard radio station, complete with over-sized headphones and a set of turntables that hadn’t worked since the garage flooded two years after I was born. It was another couple of years before I figured out that radio station call letters begin with “K” or “W” depending on what coast they were closest to, and that the letters “A-N-D-Y” written in thick, black, smelly marker on the cardboard couldn’t possibly be the call letters of a real radio station, nor was it common practice to choose call letters based on your own name. It was three more years before I got my first real signal out of the garage. It didn’t reach more than a mile at first and the only listeners I had were my parents sitting quietly in our living room, whittling or reading trashy romance novels bought from Good Reeds, Franklin Reeds’ funny little thrift store (that began life as a second-hand bookstore) two miles down the road.

A-N-D-Y had become like a shrine to Mom. After picking it back up two years ago, I had started unpacking Mom’s old stuff, her favorite things we couldn’t bear to throw away, and they slowly made its way into my makeshift control room, creating a beautiful mess of ‘80s-and-‘90s kitsch that looked more like a yard sale than a radio station. Her Power Rangers and Legos and other childhood toys she’d held onto were on a shelf above my chair. The top of a set of cheap bookshelves served as part of my desk, and I’d filled it with the books we read together: Bunnicula, the Ramona Quimby series, Choose Your Own Adventure books; every fun read that made me think of her. And, of course, crate after crate of vinyl record albums. A-N-D-Y was made of Mom’s sound. She loved music as much as she loved me and Dad. She loved the old cheesy radio love songs from the ‘50s and ‘60s, stuff like “The Great Pretender” and “On Blueberry Hill.” She loved the rock of the ‘70s, the pop of the ‘80s, the grunge of the ‘90s, the ballads and rap of the ‘oughts. She loved it all.

Dad decided his life would be unaffected by MY radio station being stolen by FCC spooks as long as nobody had to go to jail or worse (in his opinion): Pay a fine. So, he led them right to the garage. It didn’t take Emerson and Boscoe long to find the monster power cables that ran through little drilled holes in the garage wall, under the begonias, and up to the transformers at the top of several nearby power poles. Emerson lay a hand on a stack of records as she yanked a jack out of a transmitter. I flinched. It was time to beg my conquerers for mercy.

“Are you going to let me keep my music?” I asked, trying to sound like I was on the verge of tears. I wasn’t far from real tears, anyway.

“I suppose so,” Emerson said. “It seems needlessly cruel to take anything that’s not explicitly used for broadcasting.”

Boscoe grabbed the turntables with his surprisingly strong hands and hefted them up, ready to load them into the van.

“Please let me keep those, too,” I almost whispered. I was prepared to explain why, but I didn’t need to. Boscoe stopped and looked at Emerson. She nodded slightly, and he put it back down.

When the last of the stuff was loaded onto the FCC van, Emerson produced two small, white rectangles from the bottomless black hole inside her jacket and handed one to Dad and me. It was a small card with her name, Jessica Emerson, written on the right side along with contact info. The left side was emblazoned with the FCC seal, which I had never seen: The central design element was a bird with a shield on its torso, like most American government agencies. The shield was flanked by two pylons with wires crossing between them. Inside the shield were three images of a radio tower, a satellite dish, and a satellite. If I was anybody else, the design would have seemed ridiculous. Personally, I thought it was the coolest thing.


“In case you have any complaints or comments. Not that I’m expecting your call,” she said. She spoke like someone who was thinly veiling an attempt to rub salt in a defeated foe’s wounds, but it couldn’t overcome the immense amount of gratitude I felt. She had handed me her card. Not just my Dad. She had seen me as part of this and not just the little rascal that had made trouble for everyone. Even if it had been unintentional, she had shown me respect. My own father had not even done that.

 As the van drove away, I steeled myself for the conversation with Dad I had been dreading. I stood in the middle of our driveway, fists clenched and eyes shut. I was buckling my knees and elbows, bracing for the Guilt Storm that was surely about to rain down on me. Dad cleared his throat a few times and paced back and forth, scuffing his shoes on the driveway’s concrete as he gathered his thoughts. His hair had begun to gray around the temples, and I feared this episode would make it grayer. He looked thinner these days, and not in a nice “hey, did you lose weight?” kind of way. It was like his life force was slowly draining out of him, and I think it was because of the lack of sleep.

“Andy,” he said in his Stern Dad voice. “Andy, the government was at my house.”

I nodded vigorously, but did not open my eyes.

“Andy, I thought the radio signal barely made it a mile out! Where did you get the stuff to— I mean, how were you able to rig that up? There is no way the stuff you and your Mom bought at swap meets and the Internet could do all that. Did Omar help you do this?”

Omar is my best friend and has been since kindergarten. We have the same birthday (the EXACT same, down to the year), and he’s going to rule the world one day. He helped me upgrade A-N-D-Y, mostly with his uncanny nose for discarded-but-useful electronics. He was my rock when Mom died. I needed a friend, and he was there. We didn’t really talk about it, but he’d play board games with me and watch TV shows I know he didn’t really want to watch. He carried a joke book with him whenever we were together and was ready to tell me one whenever I asked for them. I asked for them a lot.

Omar has a finely-tuned sense of organization and an aura of “I know what’s best” that works for him. He’s not a pushover and doesn’t take guff from anybody. Except me. He’s a pushover for me. It’s my superpower.

There was no way I was going to drag Omar down with me, so I said, “No. It was all me.”

“This was dangerous, Andy. This was illegal,” Dad said, pointing at where my setup used to be. “And not jaywalking illegal. It was illegal because it was dangerous. You were stealing electricity!”

He had me there. “I know. That part was bad. I’m sorry, Dad.”

Dad’s eyebrows went all the way up. He put his hands on his hips. The last of the Spring breezes ruffled his blue polo.

That part was bad? Not the whole thing?”

“No,” I said.

Dad straightened up. He took his hands off his hips and folded them on his chest, waiting for an explanation.

“The electricity thing was bad,” I said. “But I’m not sorry about having a real radio station that broadcast all over town. Can’t you be just a little proud of me?”

Dad was quiet. He was patiently fishing for another line from me. His patience paid off.

“And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I said, half-mumbling and shifting my eyes away from his.

Dad’s brow relaxed. He sighed and put a hand on my shoulder while I stared at the ground. “This isn’t just a hobby for you, is it?” he asked, his tone significantly softer. I shook my head. No. It was much more than that. Dad re-crossed his arms, this time in thought instead of anger. He drummed the fingers of his right hand on his left arm. His mouth and mustache twisted. Finally, he spoke.

“First off, I am proud of you. Okay? You really did something. Raising a lazy kid is the worst, and any dumb old fart who accuses you of that can go fall off a cliff.”

I beamed. He continued.

“I am also very proud of you for having a passion and taking risks to achieve that passion. Do you understand the reasons I am proud of you?”

I nodded with enthusiasm. He uncrossed his arms and put his hands on my shoulders, leaning down so that his face was level with mine.

“Good. Because I am not proud of the kind of risk you took. You do not do things that are justifiably illegal or put yourself and others –especially others! —in danger.”

I nodded. I was going to come out of this smelling like the begonias the FCC dug up.

“Have you considered how you could use this to your advantage?” Dad said.

“What?”

“I dunno, seems like you could call that lady’s phone number on the card she gave you and she might let you have a copy of her report or something. It’s probably public record.”

“Why?”

“Well, maybe this is a sign that it’s time to move onto a new chapter. You’re young, but you’re also sharp. If you take that report to a real radio station—“

“They might give me a job!” I shouted, cutting him off. It really was a great idea. “It’s proof that I did so much… radio that the FCC had to do something about it!”

Dad spread his arms out and smirked, like he was saying “how smart am I?”

“Go find a real radio station, put your foot in the door and bug them until they give you a job or an internship or something,” he said. I nodded, grinning.

A chill moved through the air. The world seemed to dim around me. I want to repeat that I am not afraid of my Dad, I promise, because he never gives me a reason to be afraid of him. But, I knew a dark judgment was coming, heralded by the hot puff of dragon’s breath that bristled through his mustache hairs. He spoke softly, but with a shivering grimness:

“You are obviously also extremely grounded.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3

On the Sunday evening of my last weekend of grounding, I informed my father of my plan for the next week: Go to all the radio stations I could find on the dial, introduce myself, and tell them I’m looking to get some experience.

“That sounds great, Andy!” Dad said exactly like every Dad would. ”I’ll even take Tuesday off and be your chaffer,” he added, intentionally butchering the word “chauffeur.” It worked; I laughed until I snorted.

The FCC also let me keep my expensive, powerful, and vintage Grundig Satellit 2400 SL radio and Gerald, my favorite pair of headphones. This was mostly because Grundig and Gerald were luckily in my bedroom and the agents were uninterested in searching the house beyond the garage. I spent the next week clicking through the FM band, listening to each station on Grundig and Gerald, taking notes on each. Painter’s Brush is about 30 minutes from Atlanta and all the FM radio stations are somewhere in the city. I made a list of all the frequencies that had a station broadcasting on it. I’m not going to act like radio in its current form isn’t a dying breed, but it’s alive and well in Atlanta for some reason.

I have one (1) set of nice clothes. I mean, I have clothes that I think are nice, but I only have one set of Adult Clothes. You know, something I could wear on a job interview and hopefully distract from the fact that I am barely not a child. They don’t really make job interview clothes for 14-year-old girls, so my ensemble was more of a “smart casual” thing: Flats, a button-down paisley shirt and my nicest pair of jeans. I look weird in slacks and all my skirts and dresses were selected because they were cute, not because they looked professional. I completed it with a dark blazer that was actually for boys, but it fit me pretty well and was a steal at Good Reeds.

The first station on my list was The Buzz, a top 40 station which was actually located in Painter’s Brush. It barely had an audience, but it seemed silly not to at least put it on my list even though I was gunning for much bigger markets. I could have biked there, but Dad didn’t want me to get sweaty in my nice clothes (which would have happened quickly in a blazer) and took the day off from work to drive me around.

The room immediately inside the Buzz is a lobby/waiting room for dealing with the public and keeping them from just walking into the guts of the station. I’d been here many times, just hanging around and bugging Mrs. Blankenship, the old lady at the receptionist desk, hoping that my mere presence would eventually turn into time in the studio. It had never worked, but today I had a secret weapon provided by the FCC.

I walked up to Mrs. Blankenship’s desk with my usual winning smile. She looked up just long enough to give me a once-over and realize who I was, then returned to whatever work she had in her hands (which may well have been a crossword puzzle).

“How can I help you, Andy?” she said. She didn’t really ask it like a question she wanted an answer to. She was never quite rude to me, but she always gave off a strong vibe that I was bothering her.

“Hi, Mrs. Blankenship,” I said, determined to be bright in the face of grumpiness. “I’ll start as a freshman in high school this Fall and, as you know, I’m interested in radio. I’m hoping to get some real experience so I can get a head start on my career, or maybe put it on a college application. Is there a station manager or somebody in charge of hiring that I can talk to?”

She didn’t look up. Instead, she just gave me the same answer she always did: “We’re not looking for somebody inexperienced from right off the street.”

Experience in exchange for experience. I’d hear the same bunko deal at every station I went to.

“I am not asking to be paid. I’m looking for an internship or something.”

“Are you sure you really want to do this?” she said. “Do you know that this is top 40 radio? It’s not bubblegum or video game radio.”

Her saggy-faced frown stretched into a snicker, but she didn’t look up. It was time to play my ace.

“I ran a 10,000-watt radio station out of my garage for two years,” I said, pulling out a Xeroxed copy of the FCC takedown report. Mrs. Blankenship took it from me and scanned it. Her eyes bugged, then her brow furrowed and her mouth hardened into an incredulous frown. The face was so funny that it took everything I had to stifle a giggle.

“Hm,” she said. It seemed like she was impressed, but was trying to act like she wasn’t. She flipped the letter over, but there was nothing on the back.

“I wanna help you, I really do,” she said, sounding more like she didn’t want to help me, she really didn’t. “And I like that you’re out here, hitting the pavement. Kids these days don’t want to put in the work to get a job. Maybe come back in a couple years and they can find something for you.”

She thrust my FCC letter back at me with more energy than she had mustered during most of the conversation.

“Do you not want to keep it?” I asked, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted her to keep it at this point. Mrs. Blankenship didn’t say anything else. She just flapped the paper at me until I took it and left.

I slumped back to Dad, who was reading a book in the Tacoma with the air conditioning on. I was wearing my disappointment on my face.

“That was quick,” Dad said as I buckled my seat belt as sadly as someone can buckle a seat belt.

“They said I was too young,” I said. Dad put his phone onto the little phone holder clipped to the dashboard and opened a navigation app.

“Well, where’s the next one? Maybe they won’t say that,” he said. It was a simple thing to say, but very uplifting coming from a Dad that wanted me to succeed. I fished the list out of my inner jacket pocket (oh, to be a boy with pockets in his clothes) and found the next station. It was a sports radio station that was way smaller than the top 40 station. I didn’t know much about sports, but I was banking on my knowledge of the technical side of things being impressive enough.

This station was bigger than the Buzz, but nearly falling apart. A third of the ceiling tiles were saggy and brown from water damage, which gave the 85-degree one-room bullpen-layout office a sort of swampy feeling. Like the whole building was sweating. A guy in his mid-forties (they were all guys except for one, maybe two people) acted like he was interested, but I figured out after a minute that he was just a miserable ex-jock who assumed I didn’t know anything about sports because I’m a girl and not because spectator sports are boring, and he was going to enjoy torturing me by asking me sports questions. I thought I was going to do well at first because he was just grilling me on how to play sports, and of course I played Little Kid Basketball when I was younger, like everyone in the U.S., but then he started in with the celebrities and stats questions and I had no clue. I just left. It wasn’t professional, but I didn’t care.

This went on. And on. Dad, bless him, spent the whole day driving me around. Eight hours of paid time off down the drain. He could have slept in, or gone fishing, or carved a wooden duck, or built a 1966 Ford CoolCar from scratch, or whatever else Dads do on their days off. I gave up at 5 o’clock, when the front desk staff of these places were going home and the front doors were locking, leaving only the DJs and on-air talent in the building for their evening shows. The last place I went to was another sports station that specialized in Braves baseball.

“Struck out?” Dad said, reading my face and trying to fix my feelings with humor. It didn’t always work, and it wasn’t working now.

“Har har har,” I said, leaning forward resting my forehead against the dashboard of the car, partially so I could hide my face while I tried not to cry.

“We can try again. I can take another day off. Or maybe some of them have front desk staff on Saturdays,” Dad said.

“No. I give up. They’re all going to say the same thing: ‘We’re impressed, but you’re too young. Come back in a couple of years.’ Apparently they’re not so impressed that they’ll take up my offer of free labor.”

“I think you’re impressive,” Dad said a few moments after cranking up the Tacoma’s engine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4

I spent the next few days moping around the house. This usually manifested as me being a puddle of self-pity on the living room love seat. On Thursday, Dad was watching a show on TV called The Plastic Age. It’s a real brainy show, kinda like one long Black Mirror episode. It’s about a guy in the future that works as a CEO or something, and he has all these robots for butlers so that he can 100 percent focus on work. But he still gets tired and one day he just decides he wants to take a day off, and then these police come and give him an artificial heart attack so they can sedate him and take him to some kind of prison because he failed at being CEO, but the heart attack doesn’t work and he escapes and the show goes from there, blah blah blah.

I don’t think I’d watch it if Dad didn’t. Dad kinda works where it’s made, in Water Broadcasting Services headquarters; it’s a crazy-tall building on the Atlanta skyline everyone calls the “Water Tower,” named after WBS owner, founder, and CEO Brunson Water. Dad had worked there in some office job for a long time (HR? I think?), and was hired by Water herself because the company wasn’t as gargantuan as it is today.  I had asked Dad if he could get me an internship at WBS and he poked around a little at work, but came back with the bad news that they required all interns to be at least 17 years old and that he did not have the clout necessary to convince someone to break that rule.

After the first commercial break, I decided the TV was not going to be enough to satisfy my boredom. I retrieved one of the crates of Mom’s albums from the garage. Lots of Mom’s stuff like this that I hadn’t thought about in a long time had been uncovered when the FCC suits ransacked my garage radio setup. I had been going through these crates as a way to process my grief over the death of A-N-D-Y. It had been fun, actually, finding things of Mom’s that I hadn’t seen in years. There had been so much stuff crammed into the shrine that I’d forgotten a lot of it even existed. I thumbed through the albums, opening the ones that had good stuff on the inside covers. One box had Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, a concept album with a crazy story about a guy from New York looking for his brother in a subterranean world full of monsters. The music has this creepy sound and the lyrics are super weird. The inside cover had that story written out, like prose, along with surreal photos for illustration. The story didn’t make a lick of sense, but I don’t think it was meant to.

Behind Styx’s Cornerstone album (one of their under-appreciated ones) was a large, green hardcover book. It was much heavier than I was expecting and I let out a bear-ish grunt while hefting it out of the crate. Dust flew into my face and I sneezed. Dad blessed me. The book’s cover was worn and had a few dark, greasy spots soaked into it. It was missing its dust jacket, but it had never had it as long as I could remember, and I didn’t need it to recognize it, anyway. It was the book of Irish fairy tales Mom read to me at bedtime when I was a kid.

“Oh, wow, I haven’t seen that in forever,” Dad said.

“Yeah, right? I guess one of us meant to put it with the other books, but it got shuffled into this crate by mistake.”

I slowly lifted the book, feeling the heft and thickness of it. The spine popped when I opened the cover, warming up after years of disuse. The paper had that old feeling to it, that feeling you don’t get from the wispy paper in school notebooks or loaded into laser jet printers. It was thick and crisp and it made satisfying rattling and crackling sounds as I flipped the pages.

I found an illustration of the Dagda, my favorite Gaelic folklore hero. He was a muscular, bearded, pot-bellied man wearing simple, earthy-colored clothes. He had a big “come at me, bro” grin on his face. In his left hand he held what looked like a wizard’s scepter from a Dungeons & Dragons game, which the book called a “club.” It was emerald green with swirling, intricate gold patterns engraved into it. It was taller than the Dagda himself. In his other hand he held a harp, made of beautiful polished chestnut painted green with gold filigree decorating its body. It had only three strings. It wasn’t as tall as the club, but it still was pretty big. The Dagda hefted it in his hand like it was nothing. A huge black cauldron with gold detail work that matched the Dagda’s other treasures was strapped to his back.

“Hang onto that. Take good care of it,” Dad said seriously.

“I will. I promise,” I said, also seriously.

I took the book to bed with me and opened to the opening page (or, at least, the one after that first weird blank page in every book), where the title and author names lived:

Irish, Gaelic, and Celtic Folk Tales: An Anthology

Collected by Kieran Dunne

Illustrated by Connor Renholm

I leafed one more page over to reveal the table of contents, then flipped two more pages, then three. I grabbed bigger pinches of pages between my fingers, moving through the book until I reached the starting page for Children of Lir, a folk tale my mother said any Irish school child could recite. It’s a short read, and I read it like it was a meal and I hadn’t eaten in a week. I blew through story after story. Billy Duff and his deal with the Devil. Prince Conn-eda and his quest for the three golden apples of Lough Erne. I was saving the best for last, and when my eyes started getting heavy, I turned to the page with the Dagda on it.

 

The Dagda was king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the fairy folk, but he wasn’t the tiny thing you might imagine. This was before the fairy folk hid in their mounds, when they were mighty warriors and skilled artisans who sailed the world to quench their insatiable thirst for gold. Their boats’ holds were filled to the brims with their hoard, and they rode low in the water from the weight of it. The Tuatha Dé Danann needed a place to call home, a place to keep their piles of gold. When they landed on Éire’s shores, they fell in love with the emerald isles immediately, and burned their boats so they could never leave.

 

I could almost hear Mom’s lilting, beautiful Irish accent reading the words from the foot of my bed. It was the way they were meant to be read, with a voice that sounded like singing and punching at the same time. I remember asking her in my tiny kindergarten voice, “What’s ‘Éire?’”

“It’s what Ireland used to be called. Haven’t called it that in donkey’s ears, though,” Mom said. “Donkey’s ears” was an Irish way to say something was a long time ago, but in, like, a jokey way. Like how you’d say you hadn’t seen someone in a million years.

 

 These were the days that Éire was ruled by the giant Fomorians. The Fomorians were fearsome creatures with bulging muscles, hunched backs, and yellow, glowing eyes. But the giant Fomorians lived off the land, hunting and gathering every day and sleeping under the twinkling stars at night. They did not want to share the land with the fairy folk, so they fought a terrible war. The Dagda himself led the battles, and strong as mountains though they were, the giants could not stand against the Dagda and his trio of magical boons: His mighty magical club that was twice as tall as the king, but light as a feather in his hands; his wondrous cauldron that never emptied of delicious food that kept his army fed and feeling rested, even without sleep; and, most importantly, his magical harp that could command all sorts of magical powers through its music. The giants coveted all of the Dagda’s treasures, but they were especially entranced by the allure of his Harp.

 

“If the giants were already living there, weren’t the fairies the bad guys?” Little Girl Andy had asked. I remember Mom fumbling to find an answer, but I don’t remember if she actually ever gave me one.

I turned the page, and a slip of something fell out. Mom used receipts and other garbage as bookmarks, even though Dad and I tried to give her nice ones as gifts. She always lost them. I assumed that’s what this was, but when I picked it up I saw it was a Polaroid of Mom. She was flashing a peace sign and a toothy grin. Her rose-red hair was like fire cascading down her shoulders; it matched the freckles under her bright green eyes (look, sometimes stereotypes hold up). Dad always says I took after her, but I don’t see it; I’ve got Dad’s espresso-brown hair, blue eyes, and short stature. It was a pretty picture of Mom, but the house was filled with those, in picture frames and in folders on the computer. In this one, she was sitting in the control room of a radio station. An “On Air” sign was glowing behind her right shoulder. I couldn’t tell when and where this photo had been taken. I flipped the photo over. On the other side, in Mom’s handwriting, were the words:

 

Andy, love

This is your new radio station

1705

 

I understood none of this. Mom had not worked in radio, even though it had been her dream, and she certainly hadn’t owned a station she could give to me. Maybe this was just a photo she had meant to give me when I was older, a sort of “seize the day” thing to inspire me to follow my dreams? But where was the picture taken, then? What did “1705” mean? Was it a date, like January 7, 2005? Or, more likely July 1, since she was European? Sleepiness began to make my guesses kooky, and I drifted off somewhere between “is it a dry cleaning claim ticket number?” and “Did phone numbers used to only have four digits?”

I dreamed I was the Dagda on the battlefields of Éire, striking down the giants when they came for my harp with envy and hate in their glowing yellow eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5

The rings under Dad’s eyes were darker than usual when he got home from work the next day at nearly 8 o’clock. He’d been doing a lot of overtime recently.

“Hey, what do you want for dinner?” I asked.

Dad managed a weak, fake smile. “Let’s just bake a frozen pizza,” he said, a suggestion no 14-year-old has ever turned down.

We were making our way through Full House on Pauer, WBS’s TV streaming service (which Dad had a free subscription to), and we watched an episode while we ate. Full House is so, so dumb, but there’s something magical about it. Sometimes I wonder if we liked that it was a family who’d lost their Mom, too, and they were happy, and that made us feel like we were allowed to be happy. But it was weird how they never talked about her. I can rattle off the characters on that show no problem, since we’d been bingeing it pretty hard— Joey, Jessie, Danny, D.J., Michelle, Stephanie, Becky— but, I couldn’t tell you what their Mom’s name was if you offered me a million dollars to remember. They were sad for, like, one episode in 1987, then got over it.

“What’s wrong?” Dad asked. It almost startled me.

“Nothin’,” I said. “Girl stuff.” Weak deflection, I know, but he always gives me space when I say it.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “You look exhausted.”

“Just a long day,” he said. “The Big Boss actually came around today.”

“Whoa,” I said. He was talking about Brunson Water. I didn’t know everything about Dad’s work, but I couldn’t imagine it was important enough for the Queen of TV to come off her throne in the Water Tower and make a personal visit. Even though she’d personally hired him years ago, he hadn’t talked to her or even seen her much outside of the occasional hallway sighting in about five years. He was pretty sure she didn’t remember his name.

“When’s the last time you slept?” I asked. “More than a couple of hours, I mean.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s just crunch time. I’ve got a lot going on at work. I’ll be done with it soon.”

We were working our way through season 6 of Full House (and it really was work, sometimes). The episode on the TV now was about Jessie and Joey getting offered a radio show at a local station. It was almost suspiciously serendipitous. Sometimes I still wonder if it really was coincidence. The radio station management thought Jessie and Joey made a fun pair (they didn’t) and that their chemistry would make a fun show (no).

“They’re awful,” my Dad said, laughing. “They’d never get a radio show in the real world. So cringe.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that forcing the word “cringe” was, in fact, cringe and also Millennial slang, the youngest of whom were at least a decade older than me.

“Eh, they might not get on an FM station like in the show, but they’ll put anybody on AM radio,” I said.

A neuron in a seldom-used fold of my brain fired.

“Have you considered that?” Dad asked.

“What?”

The neuron continued to fire, but it wasn’t making its point well. Was it something on the TV? Something Dad said?

“AM stations. There’s got to be a few, right?” I had assumed that AM was all but dead, but there were actually nearly as many AM stations in the Atlanta area as there were FM stations. But I wouldn’t find that out until later so that wasn’t really what the neuron was firing about. It was firing about AM radio, though.

AM. AM. AM.

1705.

I jerked out of my seat fast enough to startle Dad, although he didn’t ask why I’d done it. I suppose from his point of view I did strange things like this a lot because Teenager. I took the stairs two at a time, which is impressive for a shorty like me, and I went straight to my bedroom and pulled Grundig off my desk.

The number was there at the far right, under “108” on the FM band that had caused me so much misery. 1705 MHz. The maximum frequency on the AM band. I twisted Grundig’s tuning knob to the right until it wouldn’t twist anymore. I pushed the “AM” button. It popped into place with a satisfying click.

Sound came through the speakers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6

Static.

Static is never what anyone wants to hear, but this was the most disappointing static of all. My finger was almost on Grundig’s power button when I heard something new. At first, I thought it was a far-off station with some yakkety dude whining about politics barely crackling through. But when I put Gerald back on my ears to make sure, the voice became clearer, as if it gained confidence by having an audience.

It was singing. The crackling static noise subsided and I heard a gravelly-yet-dulcet voice break through. I could see his frilly shirt, flowing hair, and beefy frame in my mind’s eye, sweating confidence as he belted out the song.

I swear somebody said my name. And I swear it was Meatloaf.

 

Andy, you’re the only thing in this ol’ world,

That’s pure and good and right,

And wherever you are and wherever you go,

There’s always gonna be some light.

 

Look, I know. I know the lyric is “baby” and not “Andy” and that those two words kindof sound the same, but I will die on the hill that Meatloaf said my name. I remembered “Bat Out of Hell” was one of Mom’s favorites.

It wasn’t just a clear signal; it was like Meatloaf was personally serenading me. For a few seconds, it was the crispest, clearest sound I’d ever heard. Gerald was a good set of headphones, but this was above and beyond what he should have been capable of. I even whispered “What is this?” out loud.

 I couldn’t stop listening, thinking this would be the five-and-a-half minute single version, but it went for the full ten minutes. What radio station was playing full album versions of Meatloaf songs? Alannah Myles’s “Black Velvet” immediately came on after Meatloaf finished. Another of Mom’s favorites. The music summoned a memory of me at ten years old in the car with Mom; she cranked up the radio up as she crowed along with A new religion that’ll bring you to your knees, her Irish accent clashing wondrously with the folksy twang of the lyrics. Lashes of red hair whipped in the wind from the Cutlass Ciera’s rolled-down windows.

Song after song played without interruption. No commercials. No station ID. No DJ. All of them Mom’s favorites. My heart stirred with every memory each song brought back. It hurt sometimes. I listened to it all weekend. On the rare times I came out of my bedroom, I listened to it on an old Sony Walkman, another relic in my collection; no frills, but fantastic battery life. Its age didn’t seem to have an effect on the music’s fidelity. When it was time for bed, I couldn’t bring myself to turn it off, or even turn the volume down. But it didn’t keep me up. It felt right to have it on, like a kid with her night light.

This was how things were as I tucked myself in that Sunday night. I was just using two top sheets because it was too hot for a blanket. We were getting to the part of the year when the AC wouldn’t be able to keep up with the summer temperatures, but the sheets felt cool and comfortable. “Cool Night” by Paul Davis had just come on; it was a chill, smooth jam that was the perfect song to lull me to sleep. It felt like the music itself was cooling the air in my bedroom to the perfect sleeping temperature.

 

It’s gonna be a cool night

Just let me hold you by the firelight

 

Then, for the first time since Meatloaf sang my name (he did! I swear!), the Signal faltered and warped, and a gash of noisy feedback came out of Grundig’s speakers. At first, I was just gonna ride it out, thinking some temporary situation like a storm or a solar flare or something was causing momentary interference. But it didn’t stop. And then it started to change. It was no longer just a little scramble; it was like the music broke. The noise was clawing through, fighting for dominance and savagely tearing apart the notes and lyrics. It swelled and howled like a wild animal was loose in my room, ready to pounce on me and make me its prey. I drew the sheets up to my face, both afraid of my radio and feeling ridiculous for being afraid of my radio. I wanted to shut it off, but I was afraid if I’d move, this howling, monstrous thing would sense me.

And then, it was gone. Paul came back and kept singing like nothing was wrong. I turned off the radio and took deep breaths until my heart rate returned to normal and I became aware of the cold sweat on my face.

Something was up with this Signal. And I knew who could help me figure out what.

Next Chapter: Track 2: And Now We Meet in an Abandoned Studio