EPIC (Book 1 of the Soundcrush series)

PANIC BONUS CHAPTER!

Author's Note

In celebration of Amazon Prime Video's newest series Panic, I am thrilled to be teaming up with Amazon Prime Video and Wattpad to write this exclusive chapter that puts my characters from this story into the world of Panic!

I hope this chapter intrigues and inspires you to learn more about Panic. Visit the #PanicWritingContest on Wattpad for the chance to put your creative writing chops to the test and learn more about the show!

To find out more about the contest, prizes, and how to enter, check out the #PanicWritingContest here: wattpad.com/AmazonPrimeVideo

Don't forget to watch the series premiere on May 28th, only on Amazon Prime Video, here: http://primevideo.com/

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Trace

Now usually, I don't do this.

Dwell on the past, I mean.

But I can't stop thinking about the night my band got stranded in Carp, Texas—the place where kids play a game that no one talks about.

Over the years, Soundcrush has been through some crazy shit. Dramatic shit. But the five of us have never seen anything like what went down that blistering July night in a cornfield on the outskirts of that dying town.

We weren't famous then. We were just kids ourselves. I guess that's why we didn't walk away. Why we didn't call the cops. Why we didn't even try to talk the other players out of it. I think we all saw something of our former selves in those kids. Like me and Bodie, a lot of them had seen bad things happen in their young lives, and they wanted out of that town as fast as they could get out. Like Leed and Mac, some of them were flat broke and desperate for the means to make something of themselves. Some, like Adam, didn't fit into the lives their parents planned for them and were looking to break out.

For Soundcrush, our music has always been our way out. But these kids? All they had was their courage. And the game.

And that night? We played it with them.

My bandmates and I haven't talked about that game since the morning we stumbled away from it. We're all a little ashamed that we got caught up in it.

We'd put it behind us. Until yesterday, when our manager got an anonymous email. Tell the band not to worry, the email said. I kept them out of it. Out of the book, and out of the show. It was our story, anyway. Not theirs.

There was a link attached to the email-a special invitation to preview a new tv show debuting on Amazon Prime, later this summer. It's based on a book of the same name. I wouldn't have thought anything of it, except for the name.

I felt a sweat break out, staring down at the five letter word.

Panic.

The name of the show was the name of the game that nearly got us killed.

I called all the guys right away. The consensus?

What.The.Fuck.

They came over to binge the show. Then we looked up the book and its author. The author's identity is probably a false front. I don't remember her from the cornfield that night, and only those kids we met and my four bandmates know what really happened out there. Whoever wrote that book and consulted on that show—they left us out of the story, but there was enough truth in the fiction for us to recognize the night we tried to forget.

We were four weeks into Soundcrush's first tour—by tour I mean a series of bar gigs I'd rustled up across Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas. Four of us had done our part to scrounge together the cash for the beat-up utility van that became our "tour bus."