From Chapter 1

I lay on my bed reading an article in Country Weekly about Crystal Gayle’s favorite meatball recipe when the phone rings. My bedroom is covered in posters of Reba McEntire, from her various magazine covers to her tour posters. I’m eighteen and have already seen her in concert at least six times and have a poster from each. They’re all classy, colorful pictures of Reba in yellow jackets, brown boots with her jeans tucked in, and I even have the unlicensed Reba wall clock that my Dad bought from in front of the Long’s Drugs store two summers ago. She’s wearing a red dress in that one. As I look across toward my closet at the record cover from the “Greatest Hits Volume Two” LP that I’ve scotch taped to the mirrored doors, I’m sure of it. The voice I am speaking to on the other end of this phone is that of the real life Miss Reba Nell McEntire. This is surreal.

“Hi,” she pauses, and then probably looks down at a piece of paper or to her assistant reminding her of my name. “Is Sean there, please?” I know its Reba because “please” sounds like “plays”. I feel my heart beating fast and a warm internal wave slides across my back, a similar feeling to one of my grandmothers many wooden back massagers shaped like a turtle, crab, and/or Koala Bear Head.

“This is Sean.” I answer, about to burst into the kind of bright gleeful balls of sparks in those flower fireworks that Red Devil makes. I can’t believe it. My lungs and heart are beating my chest as hard as my feet beat the ground begging her for an encore during her visit to Sacramento when she played at the Arco Arena. She could hear the smile in my voice whether she knew me or not, which she doesn’t. She can also hear my deep, heavy breaths in between sentences, and that’s embarrassing, but I’m rolling with it, and so is she. I’m glad she’s on the phone with and not sitting with me in person, though.

***

Since the last time I was at her concert, I’ve gained about twenty pounds, and I never think about gaining weight until twenty pounds creeps up around these sorts of milestone moments.

The last time I had contact with Reba, I was in the sixth row of her concert appearance in Reno, just two hours away from my hometown, Folsom, California with my best friend Nate Affleck. I was still seventeen years old and had just graduated high school. I was 230 pounds then and around a forty inch waist or so, depending on the brand, Lee Jeans or Levis, but I turned eighteen last fall and my community college is next door to an El Pollo Loco which is where I go between classes. I feel bad going in just to study, so I usually get a quesadilla and a chicken bowl with extra guacamole. But, sometimes I forget to study. They have a credit card reader here, and it’s only $1.29 for rice and guacamole, and I now have my very own student Mastercard. One day, after a particularly aggressive eating binge at El Pollo Loco I came home to enter a Reba McEntire trivia contest on the very first version of America Online.

The winning entry with correct answers to 10 questions about Reba would get a phone call and an autographed tour jacket from her 1996 concert.

Question 1. Where was Reba Born?

“Duh.” I thought and wrote:
Chockie, Oklahoma.

Question 2. What is Reba’s husband and manager’s name?
“Hello? So easy.”

Narvel Blackstock.

Question 3. What was Reba’s first number one hit?
Can’t Even Get the Blues No More.

“Who doesn’t know this? It was in Ladies Home Journal!”

Question 4. Who discovered Reba and where?

Red Stegall, National Finals Rodeo.

“I’d write 1976 but there’s no room left.”

These questions were too easy, I had thought in between bites of chocolate pop tarts I’d smeared with peanut butter and jelly. Why don’t they ask hard questions, like, “What is Reba’s preferred hair color accent dye?” which I’d read online and verified in Vogue magazine later. “Copper Penny.”

A month later, in an email from Starstruck Entertainment I was congratulated for beating many thousands of Reba fans and winning the grand prize.