It also makes me feel hopelessly small. For as much as I like to believe that I can do it on my own, that I can get Dangerheart out there one email, tweet, or hashtag at a time . . . maybe this is what it really takes. Except then a band like Postcards is struggling to get anyone to their shows on tour.

Which makes me wonder: Do these people really see their bands for who they are? Or is Postcards just a commodity? Would Candy Shell love “On My Sleeve” because it’s brilliant or because it could lead to brilliant sales? And what happens if you get hooked on all this big label stuff? What if you start to think of your art in terms of sales too? Can you still be true to yourself?

But then I think of Carlson Squared sitting here in this expensive waiting area, as I walk down the hall in a pro suit to meet them for an expensive lunch. That’s okay, Dad, I’d say, waving off his wallet. It’s on the company. And I can see their opinions changing. There is no doubt they would be impressed by this.

Maya shows me her desk. It’s tucked in a puzzle of cubicles. “Kinda sterile, I know,” she says.

“Yeah, but, kinda fun too,” I say. The cubicle feels almost private, a safe space to get work done where you wouldn’t have to fake doing homework. She has a big hand-drawn logo of Supreme Commander beside a spreadsheet of what seem to be email contacts.

She introduces me to her cubicle neighbor, Bev, a large older woman who’s been at Candy Shell since its start.

“Bev knows all the dirt.”

“A coffin’s worth of it,” Bev says. “You stick around bands long enough, it tends to pile up.”

“I’m starting to learn that,” I say.

Maya brings me back to the waiting area. “Good luck,” she says, leaving me in a square of modern white couches and glass tables.

Two guys sit nearby in ripped jeans and T-shirts, their hair professionally messy. The first people I’ve seen who look like they actually play music. I’m guessing they do brat pop, the kind that’s too whiny but always has really catchy melodies, even if they’re always name-dropping corporate beverages and jeans. The kind of songs that are about rebelling but not against anyone specific. Twelve-year-olds can listen to them and parents can turn them up at barbecues in the Fronds while drinking pink margaritas. They probably sell a ton of records.

I wonder what it feels like to sell, say, a million copies of an album. Would it get to your head? Would it feel like pressure to sell more? At Postcards shows, we would sell ten copies and feel like royalty, and then be hopelessly depressed if at the next show we only sold six. Like we’d already peaked and failed.

An impossibly tall assistant strides up to me, heels clacking. She doesn’t make eye contact, and delivers her greeting in a single exhale: “Hi I’m Royce right this way.” She turns and starts walking like . . . she has no idea who I am. And I know exactly who she is. The one who got it on with Ethan last summer. I aim hate beams at the back of her head, but the sad truth is she probably never even knew about me.

Royce leads me down branching hallways, and we leave the shimmery entry spaces and enter grid after grid of cubicles similar to Maya’s. Charts, graphs, a drab kitchenette with a stained coffee machine, a stark conference room.

We pass through a graphic design department and briefly everything looks like I had imagined and I am in love: everyone’s workspace is cluttered with posters, sketches, album covers, and they’re dressed in jeans and T-shirts and sundresses, with stubbly chins and barrettes and thick glasses. After that it’s back to crisp shirts and graphs and charts.

Finally we reach a closed office door. Royce knocks. “One sec!” the voice calls from inside.

Royce checks her watch. She has astonishing eyelash extensions and a body like a comic book, all straining against a tweed skirt and blouse. Her face seems to have no pores, no hairs. Is she even a mammal? Also: this is what Ethan was into when I wasn’t around? Gross.

She has yet to look at me and she pops open the door in spite of Jason’s request and ushers me in wordlessly.

I’m expecting to find Jason kicked back at his desk, feet up, but he’s hunched over a chaos of papers, his neck kinked to hold his phone. “I know, right just . . . um—one sec.” He glances up. “Thanks, Royce,” he says sarcastically. “Stick around to bring her back out, ’kay?”

“Mmm.” She nods icily and closes the door. I hear her heels clicking away.

Jason gestures to the single chair in front of his desk. It’s a hurried motion, not the cocky guy from the party. I don’t sit right away.

The office is barely wider than his desk. There’s a skinny window behind him that looks out on another wing of the building, a small couch behind me, and a bookcase to my left that houses a mishmash of CDs and books. I notice some rock biographies, and also some business-y books, with titles like Spotting the Talent Within and Predict the Next Big Thing!

On the right wall is a collage frame: photos of Jason with various celebrities. I see Jeff Tweedy and Katy Perry. In the one of him and Michael Stipe from R.E.M. he must be, like, thirteen. And in that shot and many others, Daddy Jerrod is never far away.

“I understand that, Mel,” Jason is saying back into the phone. “Pre-sales aren’t my problem.” He taps his pencil rapid-fire against the clutter of papers on his desk. “I get that the promoter is unhappy, but honestly, it’s freakin’ Memphis. Where does he think he—no, I . . . yeah. Of course distributors matter. Listen, I gotta go. Okay—no, I will. Definitely.”

He hangs up and for just a moment, I see what is maybe stress on his face . . . but then he looks up at me with a jackal’s smile. “Hey, intern.”

“I thought someone as successful as you would have a bigger office.” It doesn’t feel like the best barb, but I can’t think of another.

“My office is in here,” Jason says, tapping his eraser against his temple. “Besides, when you’re the boss’s son, everyone expects you to take a big office upstairs. But I have no intention of just following in Daddy’s footsteps.”

It’s the first thing he’s ever said that I can relate to. I nod to the phone. “Sounds like trouble in Memphis. That’s where Postcards’s next show is, right?” I’ve been tracking their tour online.

Jason shrugs. “The record’s not hitting there. What can you do.”

“Why did you send them there before you built a fan base?”

Jason wags his pencil at me. “See? This is why you’d make such a good intern. My job is talent, seeing it, knowing it, and bringing it in. You could play the role of the plucky whiz kid, and we could own this label in a year.”

The vision of me, professionally dressed buyer-of-lunch-for-impressed-parentals, flashes across my mind again. I do my best not to show it. “Am I supposed to swoon?”

“Summer,” he says, “look, you can’t take it personally that you got cut out of Postcards from Ariel’s contract. You’re a kid. This is a grown-up’s game. Nobody is going to take you seriously as a band’s manager, because you don’t know how the game is played. You can’t. You’re too busy being this little idealist, which is totally fine—hell, necessary. This place could use more of it. But you’re not a shark. You’re more like an adorable parrot fish. You’re not meant for the big open sea—”

“Okay, I get the analogy already.” I know I should know this. That it shouldn’t hurt. But it does anyway. And yet also, I’ve spent so much time loathing Jason that it’s surprising to me to hear that, of all the people, he sounds like he’s taking what I do seriously.

This internship might be enough to reschedule a college trip, too . . .

But I still have this deep, whirring feeling inside that somehow this would be wrong, that it would be putting Caleb and his music, the whole band, and my soul, at risk. Last year we read Animal Farm, and isn’t this it? The pigs become the men, the parrot fish becomes the shark, or whatever other unappealing metaphor you want to use. Maybe I could resist it. Or maybe I’m being horribly naive to think I could, or that I even should.

There’s a knock at the door and Jason stands. “Ah, good.” A gruff-looking girl in goth makeup, a tank top, and jeans comes in and hands him a printout. “Thaaank you, Carla,” says Jason, then to me, “Had my graphics girl whip this up for you.”

I hear her sigh as she walks back out the door. So far it seems like nobody working here likes Jason. This makes me laugh to myself.

“What?” Jason asks.

“Nothing. Just . . . I don’t think Carla liked you calling her your graphics gal.”

Jason glances at the door as if this hasn’t occurred to him. I wonder if his biggest problem is that he just isn’t that aware of how he comes across. “See how valuable you are?” Like that, does he mean it to sound as slippery as it does? “Anyway, check this out:”

He hands me what I now see is a poster. It’s got a cool, spacey design, and reads:

THE AUDIO FACTORY

presents

SUNDAYS ON MARS

October 27, 10 p.m.

with special guest opener

DANGERHEART

featuring Caleb Daniels,

son of Allegiance to North’s Eli White

I read that last line and my breath catches in my throat. Jason steps back and leans against the window, arms crossed, and he grins and I realize:

The trap has been sprung.

Think fast. Sound casual. “Oh,” I say, “so, you know about Caleb’s dad.”

“Surprised?” says Jason. “You shouldn’t be. Everybody knows. Well, I mean, everybody connected to Allegiance.”