🎧' Babe I’m Gonna Leave You – Led Zeppelin

MAY 30, 1975 – LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

Life had always been easy for you. You were that typical sixteen-year-old good girl, raised right in a middle-class, church-going family. All-girls private school, never missed a Sunday service, dresses that fell well below the knee, those shiny little Mary Janes, and your hair always perfect and glossy — exactly the way your mom said it should be.

Your room? Full of floral pillows, copies of Emily Dickinson, family photo albums, and a few harmless posters — The Carpenters, John Denver… totally safe.

Your routine was as predictable as clockwork: helping your mom in the kitchen, studying to get into a respectable college, singing in the church choir… and sneaking in romance novels when no one was watching.

But everything changed when — you found out something your mother would say was ugly, very ugly. But the thing was, this discovery was about your father.

You don’t exactly remember how it happened. Maybe it was something your dad’s friends said, or the photos you accidentally found while rummaging through the drawers in his office. All you know is that, suddenly, the world that had always felt so stable, so safe, so protected… cracked right down the middle.

Your father had another family. Another woman. Other children.

You ran out of the house without even realizing it, leaving your half-eaten food behind, not even noticing when the tears started falling. You just wanted to get away, to go anywhere the air wasn’t so suffocating, where your mom’s perfume and the sound of the TV in the living room didn’t crush you.

That’s when you found yourself sitting on the playground swing, your legs crossed awkwardly, your knees scraped, your face buried in your hands, sobbing, not even caring if anyone saw you.

And someone did.

“Hey… you alright?” The voice came from across the street, low and rough, kind of dragged out — like the sound of a match being struck in the dark.

You lifted your face, wiping the tears quickly, half embarrassed, half scared… and there she was.

Joan Jett.

You’d heard your parents whispering about the “new tenant” at dinner last night. A girl, barely sixteen, moving out on her own — well, with her band, apparently. The kind of girl your mom would cross the street to avoid. The kind your dad warned you about without ever having to say a word.

And there she was, leaning against the garage wall, cigarette between her fingers, black leather jacket standing out against the sky already streaked with purple and pink. Her messy black hair falling into her eyes, that nonchalant posture, like nothing in the world could shake her.

She walked over slowly, stopping right in front of you, exhaling smoke from the corner of her mouth.

“Want one?” She asked, offering the cigarette, with that little half-smile.