by Piper Lawson
“The universe is change. Our life is what our thoughts make of it.”
Serena’s voice brings me back and I blink at the side of the bus. “Did you just quote Marcus Aurelius?”
“You think I don’t remember anything from that first-year philosophy course we took together?”
“You’re kind of awesome. So, how’s Declan? Or Nolan?”
“Oh, I’m so past that. But there’s this guy, Tristan…”
I grin as she tells me all about him.
“How’s your man quest?”
“No quest. And no men.” I hesitate. “But I have seen more of Jax than I expected. He…tolerates me.”
“Sounds hot,” she says dryly.
I chew my lip, looking around to make sure I’m alone in the parking lot. “More like we’re… friendly.” I realize as I say it that it’s true. “He talks to me about all kinds of things, and I think he trusts me.” I don’t want to admit that we text each other, because that feels personal. Serena making up crazy sex ideas is one thing, but this is too close to real and I hate that she’d try to read something into this.
I glance up as the crew starts to file out of the restaurant. “I gotta go. Thanks for calling.”
“What?! You can’t leave.”
“Serena, I have to—”
“Ugh, fine. And Haley? Don’t worry about where you came from. Think about where you are right now. Which is the Riot Act tour.”
We hang up, and an hour later I’m sitting on our bus, heading to the next town. Most of the crew is playing cards in the back when Jerry drops onto the seat, and I realize there’s a photo album in his hands.
“Oh, here we go,” Lita comments from the opposite couch, where she’s reviewing what I’ve learned are stats on her iPad.
“Shush,” Jerry scorns.
I look between them, mystified.
“It’s a rite of passage,” she clarifies. “Tour rule number seventy-two: thou shalt be subjected to the History of Music According to Jerry.”
But as the old man flips through the pages, it’s not boring.
It’s fascinating.
There are more famous faces than I can count. Moments captured on film, painstakingly tucked into sheets.
“You made all this yourself?”
“Sure did.” His leathered fingers turn the pages.
We stop on a picture of Jerry drinking beer next to… God, is that Prince?
“You were badass.”
“Started out as a stagehand. But I always loved sound. Took me five years before they’d let me near it.”
He turns some more pages.
“That’s…”
“CEO himself.” Cross is way younger in the picture. “First few years after he founded Wicked. Didn’t own a suit yet.”
“It looks like a party.” My gaze scans the other people in the picture. Rests on one.
“See? That haircut is worth blackmailing over.”
“It’s not the haircut. Do you know that woman?”
“No. Can’t say’s I do. Do you?”
I frown. “Can I grab a copy of this?”
“Don’t show anyone.” He winks. “He doesn’t go anywhere without a suit anymore.”
I lift my phone and snap a picture.
When I close out of the photo app, I see a message from Carter. I bite my cheek and reach for my laptop.
“What’s that?” Jerry asks.
“Just working on an app I built for this competition.”
His eyes light up. “A what?”
I get out of the terminal mode and switch into the graphics-laden interface that’s more user-friendly. “So you import a track, then choose from one of these settings…”
His hand points to one of the three buttons on the screen.
“Yeah. Exactly.”
The app’s not perfect yet, but what strikes me is that Jerry immediately grasps how to use it.
Probably because the interface is clean and straightforward. I even modeled part of it after an analog soundboard, though it was more for whimsy than any legit reason.
Which gives me an idea.
Lita and her bassist are on the couch up front with me when I close my computer two hours later. “What are you guys working on?”
“New song. After this tour wraps, we’re going out on our own. I have a friend who’s set up some gigs in Nashville for us. Small venues. Different than playing arenas, but it’ll be our show. Our way.”
I shift back into the seat. It’s my day off, and I’m determined to think about something that’s not Jax for ten seconds. “So, what are you guys doing in KC?”
She fires off a message on her phone, then holds up a finger and grins at the response. “Kyle’s in.”
My brows shoot up. “Kyle’s in on what?”
Lita explains, and I shift in my seat, playing with my phone. Serena’s words echo in my head.
“Can I come with you?”
That’s how five hours later, I’m no longer a college-student-turned-sound-tech-assistant. I’m watching Lita’s band in a little bar in Kansas City, drinking bourbon she bought for me that she swears will change my life.
I don’t know about life-changing, but it’s sweet and spicy and has all my internal organs on notice.
Kyle’s on drums, looking as happy as when he plays a stadium. Lita’s swinging her hips as she sings, crooning into the mic.
The crowd’s barely thirty people, but they’re into it. It’s thrilling—or maybe that’s the bourbon again—until she steps off stage between songs and motions me up. “Come on. I know you can sing. I’ve heard you on the bus.”
I stumble after her, a little slow thanks to the spirits. “I don’t know your songs well enough.”
We stop in front of Kyle, and she says, “What do you know well enough?”
I look around the stage. Whether it’s the drinks or Serena’s voice in my head, an idea takes over my mind.
I bite my lip before I say the word.
Kyle shifts back on his stool.
But Lita’s beaming. “It’s a song, Kyle, not a cursed monkey paw. Take the mic, Haley.”
I step up to it. The chords start, and I lose myself in the song.
My favorite song.
It starts somewhere deep in me, uncurling like a flower.
The song that’s always gotten me through the moments I don’t feel independent, ready, or capable.
The times I wish my mom were still here.
The times I wonder who my father is.
The times I feel like something’s wrong with me.
My eyes fall shut, and I sing.
I lose track of time.
I don’t care about the crowd, about anything.
When my eyes open, they find one person in particular.
A guy wearing a long-sleeve black T-shirt and an Astros cap.
My heart is in my throat as he spins and stalks out the door.
10
“The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures,” Mace reads off his iPad.
“You want to spend our first day off in weeks looking at Barbies?” Kyle snorts.
“Says the asshole who shaved his head last year to support the preservation of finger monkey habitat.”
“They’re called pygmy marmosets,” Kyle tosses back.
“You coming, Jax?” Mace asks, a look of neediness on his face.
My criteria are usually where can I get time outside and where won’t I be recognized. I’m guessing the toy museum is as good a place as any to go incognito.
So I trail Mace around the museum as he pops his gum and points stuff out.
“What’s eating you? Is it Grace and Annie?” Mace asks as we stop next to a glass case of wooden Disney toys from the 1930s. The paint on Mickey’s face is curling.
He’s the most perceptive person I know. Maybe that’s why he struggled so much with drugs. Because he sees things, feels things. Needs to numb out the world.
I shrug. “They used to come a
t least three times on a tour. In between, we’d talk almost every day. Now, I’ve been trying to get Grace to come for three months. Nothing.”
I brush past him, and we make our way through the last hall.
We go out for dinner, finding a patio to enjoy the summer weather. My ball cap is jammed down, sunglasses on, and even though our waitress looks a little too long, if she knows something, she doesn’t say.
“Once this tour’s done, we got another studio album to record.”
I bite into my hamburger, then wash it down with beer. “I know.”
“You really have nothing?”
I pull a sheet of paper from my pocket and hold it out to him.
“You need to get a phone from this century so you can write in Notes like a grownup,” he mumbles, spilling ketchup in his lap.
“Says the guy who puts ketchup on his calamari.”
“You can put ketchup on anything.”
But I wait as he reads the notes I’ve been making. Some are lyrics. Some are chords, which will get translated into vibrations, sounds, in his mind as easily as they do in mine.
“What do you think?” I ask.
“I think everything you’ve written since ‘Midnight Mass’ gets a little further from who you are.”
“I’m not that kid anymore.”
“This”—he holds up the paper—“isn’t who you are either. At least ‘Midnight Mass’ was the most honest shit you ever wrote.”
I take back the sheet. “You ever write?”
He shrugs. “Sure. Back before you picked me up. In the dark ages.” He grins.
“You ever think about whether you’re writing to affect people or just get it out? And when you do, where do you start? The music or the words.”
“Never thought about it.”
“It used to come to me like a storm. The riff. Then when it got too much, it’d rip through me. By the time I finished, the words were there.” I turn it over in my head. “Maybe that’s the problem.”
He studies me, a look of realization dawning. “Or the problem is you’re overthinking it. This is about Haley, isn’t it? I should’ve known there was something going on when I walked in on you. She was wearing your hoodie, man.”
It’s such a high school thing to say, but I don’t have a good explanation except she pulled me in by being genuinely interested in my ideas. The questions she ask challenge me in a real way, unlike the ones I’ve been fielding for years.
“She’s twenty.”
“It’s legal.”
“It’s not like that.”
“She’s pretty.”
I swallow the laugh. “So are a lot of women.”
“And I can’t remember the last time you looked at any of ‘em.” He shifts back in his chair. “Jax. You signed up to be a musician, not a monk. You can’t hold one mistake against yourself for a lifetime.”
“Haley’s not that kind of girl.”
“Not the kind you fuck or the kind you walk away from?”
I turn it over. “Either.”
For starters, Cross has rules about fraternization on tour, and they’re my rules too.
Plus, she’s too young for me. For anyone here. Haley’s off-limits on that basis alone.
Even if she wasn’t, there’s no way I could tug her down the hall and into my room.
She’d barely let me touch her hand.
Not to mention pin her up against the wall with my hips to fit her slow curves to my body.
If I lowered my mouth to hers, those big brown eyes would be as big as satellites.
If I kissed her, pressed the seam of her full lips with my tongue until she opened…
She’d probably bite me.
“You okay?”
I blink up at Mace, shaking off the daydream. “Yeah.”
Mace pops the last of his fried octopus into his mouth, making a noise low in his throat. “You remember that first tour?” he asks.
I push Haley from my mind. “We were fucking idiots.”
He grunts his agreement, draining the rest of his beer. “Best time of my life.”
I don’t remind him that what followed was him falling down the rabbit hole.
I knew his using had gotten out of hand before our second tour. But that was when we had our moment, when I told him he had to get clean or I’d cut him out. He begged me to reconsider. But I held firm in the face of my best friend, needle marks in his arm and his heart rate exploding.
We spend the next hour drinking beer and reminiscing about the good times. It’s dark when Mace glances at his phone, snorting. He holds it up.
“What the hell is that?” I ask.
“The bar Kyle’s at.”
“Wanna go see if he’s chained himself to the bar in defense of single-origin rye?”
“Nah, man.” He sticks the phone away. “I’m going back to the hotel.”
I consider it, then I decide I’m not ready to go back just yet.
Our car drops him off first, and my eyes fall closed as my head drops back against the seat. Instead of thinking about Annie or Grace or the next seven tour stops, I think about Haley.
Maybe she is in my head.
Yeah, she’s young. But she acts more mature than Mace most of the time.
When a smart woman tells you she wants to know you, she wants to keep your secrets and hear your problems?
It's damn hard to resist.
I know Jerry relies on her help, and she’s like a sponge. Some interns have this sense of entitlement. They try to avoid the shit jobs.
Haley’ll take on anything, so long as you tell her what it’s about.
I respect the hell out of that. Especially since I know what her life’s been like the last year.
I’ve been through it too.
The car pulls up at the bar, and I shake off the thoughts as I step out and start toward the open door.
The chords drifting from inside clamp down on my heart.
The closer I get to the entrance, the more my steps slow.
I can’t go in, but neither can I stop. The bouncer glances at my face just long enough to see I’m of age, then he holds the door for me.
The words reach my ears as I step inside.
“All the primary colors
Burn my eyes
I’m black and white
Encased in lies
And everything blurs in between
I'm lighter fluid and gasoline
Inside”
She’s there, on the stage with Lita and Kyle. Her jeans are ripped at the knees. Her tank top leaves miles of skin on display under the blue stage lights.
Not that she notices, because her eyes are closed as she sings my song in a voice as clear as a bell.
My fucking song.
As if she can feel me, her eyes open.
Long-buried hopelessness clashes with new betrayal, like waves from opposing tides.
I’m jerked back to a time when I was all helplessness, no control. I hate that she can make me feel this way.
Without a word, I spin and shove out the doors.
I need a car. But I can't wait that long to stab a number on my phone.
It’s my turn to get voicemail.
“Cross. Take her back. I don’t know why you sent her, but you’re going to take her the fuck back.”
11
Haley
“My name is Jax Jamieson. I’m eighteen years old.”
The camera jerks like he knocked it as he picks up his guitar.
I notice, but like the people responsible for the last eighty million online video views, I don’t care.
I watch the boy in the dark, his fingers plucking the guitar, picking up speed. Hear his voice that begins over the top, playing between the notes of the strings. Soaking into them like rain into the hungry ground.
Which version hits me harder? The one almost my age, desperate and raw, or the one ten years later? The one who’s seen everything, built the armor—and cynicism—that comes with being
in the spotlight?
“Mace orders lobster at every diner. It’s going to bite him in the ass one day.”
I snap the laptop closed as Lita shifts into the booth next to me. I pop out my earbuds and wrap the cord before setting them on my computer.
I glance a few booths down at where Jax, Kyle, Brick, and Mace are going over details for tonight with Nina. Kyle’s half listening, simultaneously engaged in a discussion with the waitress about what looks like the plastic straws. Mace enthusiastically devours whatever’s on his plate. Brick throws a french fry at Nina as if he’s ten years old and learning to flirt. She turns her head, the picture of the equanimity preached in the books she reads in the stolen moments between tour stops. The potato bounces off her blue ponytail and falls into the booth.
Jax stares out the window, one arm slung over the back of the booth, as though he’s contemplating the universe.
“You’re in the doghouse.” Lita’s grin fades as she looks between Jax and me.
I snap out of it, shaking my head. “It’s a misunderstanding.”
Texas is the kind of hot that makes you wonder what you did to deserve it. I swipe at a chunk of hair that’s fallen out of my ponytail and stuck to my forehead.
Jax hasn’t texted me since he walked out of the bar. My two messages to him have gone unanswered.
He’s acting as though I betrayed him by playing his song. I spent the entire night staring at the ceiling of my hotel room and feeling as though I’d violated some code.
“Well, you were great. Really. Check this out.” She pops up a video of my performance and hands me earbuds. “To be safe.”
It’s weird to see myself on stage, but it’s pretty good. I pick at my salad as I watch and listen.
“It’s okay,” I say, pulling out the headphones.
“You’re good, new girl. I see you working on that program. I’ve watched a lot of new people on tour. You’re like the lifers. You keep going back for more. What’re you doing after?”
“Back to Philly. Finish up my project. Then senior year starts in September.”
“Until then?”
I shrug.
“We’re going to Nashville. Playing honky-tonks for a few months. You should come with. We’d have fun together.”