The Way Back Home

by Alecia Whitaker

  “Tammy, can you please stop jerking at my hair?” I complain in my dressing room later. My hairstylist looks at me with surprise and nods crisply. “And Sam, seriously, my eyes are really sensitive, and you’re practically gouging them out with that shadow brush.”

  “Mm, mm, mmm,” he murmurs. “Somebody’s in a bad mood today.”

  “Sorry,” I say, reaching for the aspirin bottle Marco just brought me. My tour manager is cool. I think my parents were hoping he’d step in as a sort of chaperone, but he rides with the band and lets me be. He didn’t even ask questions about last night—just brought me the pills and got back to his job. “My head is pounding.”

  I take two aspirin, drink some more Gatorade, and check my cell phone again. Anita is trying to squash a story about me “partying hard with playboy Colton Holley,” and her constant judgmental texts aren’t helping my headache. Luckily, he was spotted with a tall, redheaded model in a skimpy bikini this morning at the pool, and the images they do have from last night are too grainy to confirm anything. Anita is threatening libel if the rag mag links him to me. I think I dodged a bullet, both with the story and a fling with Colton.

  But I still feel stupid.

  There is a knock at the door, and I look up. “Come in!” I shout, but then I wince from the effort.

  “Hey, it’s me,” Dylan says, stepping inside. “When you have time, can we talk a minute? In private?”

  “Sure,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Can y’all give us a minute?”

  My styling team exits the dressing room, and I swivel around in my chair to face my brother. He doesn’t look as angry as he did before, but he doesn’t look apologetic, either.

  “Bird, I know you’re eighteen, and you can make your own decisions,” he starts. “And I know that this is your tour. Believe me, I’m aware. It’s awfully hard to forget when your face is plastered on billboards across the country.” He points at me. “But you have to remember that, too. This is your tour. You’re the boss.” He steps back and opens the door, and the sounds of equipment rolling by and crew conversations fill the dressing room. “Look around. All those people out there? They depend on you for a job. For some, like Stella and me, who are just starting out, our careers could be based on the success of this tour. Don’t you feel some responsibility for us? For everybody?”

  “Yes, Dylan, gah!” I swivel back around and lay my head down on the vanity. “I had a bad night. I made poor decisions. But I swore off drinking, and you can trust that I’m paying for it enough without you coming down on me, okay?”

  “Okay,” he says simply. And leaves.

  My styling team files back in quietly, but it’s pretty apparent that they heard everything we said after Dylan opened the door. Stella is the last back in, and when I see her, I say, “Can you believe him?”

  She surprises me when she picks up a handheld steamer and shrugs noncommittally. “Well, you are the boss now.”

  I gape at her, but she doesn’t meet my gaze. She sided with Dylan. They’ve been hanging out for, like, three or four weeks, and she sided with Dylan. I thought they were just friends—I was hoping they were just becoming better friends—but she has always had my back until now. She likes my brother, and she sold me out.

  “Unbelievable,” I mutter. I pull out my earbuds and iPhone and blast my Now Is Not a Good Time playlist, determined to block out everybody else.

  Okay, yeah, I am the boss. Except I’m not. I still have to answer to my parents, my label, and my fans. Oh, and I’m the bad guy, but they were both there partying with their boss last night. Unbe-freaking-lievable.

  I close my eyes and quietly fume. Dylan and Stella may be right, but they don’t have any idea what it’s like to be me.

  6

  “BIRD?” STELLA CALLS outside my door. The bus is making its way over to Salt Lake City, and I’m trying to hold tree pose without toppling.

  “Come in,” I call.

  She slides open the divider and holds up a DVD. “Want to watch Pitch Perfect?” she asks. I can see from her expression that she’s trying to smooth things over.

  I give in to the rhythm of the bus and let my foot fall to the floor. “You sure you want to mix business with pleasure?” I ask a little snidely. “Hanging out with the boss can get pretty tricky.”

  “Don’t be like that, Bird,” Dylan says, squeezing past Stella to sit on my bed. “Listen, we were all hungover and we all acted dumb. Can we just agree to that and move on?”

  I chew my lip and consider.

  “Bird?”

  “Yeah, fine,” I finally say. “But Dylan, we can’t fight like that in front of everybody.”

  “I know. I should’ve kept my cool.”

  I sigh heavily. “And I shouldn’t have been acting so ridiculous. I do take this seriously, and now everybody probably thinks I’m losing it.”

  “Nah,” he says. “You just have to have boundaries.”

  “Oh, like you?” I retort. “One minute you want me to be the boss of the tour and keep it all together, and then the next minute you want to be my overprotective big brother who doesn’t let me make out with hot, rich guys.”

  Stella laughs and sits by Dylan. “That’s true.”

  He just shrugs.

  “Hey, Colton was there last night in the front row,” Stella says to me now. “Did you see him?”

  “Yes, I saw him and his two dates.”

  “See?” Dylan says. “It’s sleazebags like that dude that make me act all ‘overprotective’ or whatever. And I’m not sorry for playing the big brother card at the casino the other night.” He stands up and holds out his hand. “But I do promise to dial it back otherwise, okay?”

  “And I’ll do better at treating you like a respected member of my band instead of the annoying nerd that you are,” I say, shaking on it. “Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Dylan leads us out to the living room area and crashes on the couch as Stella loads the movie. I grab some snacks from the kitchenette, relieved that we’re putting the stupid spat behind us. With three of us cramped on the same bus all the time and working together, too, we are bound to have a few tiffs, but I’m glad we could work it out and get back to normal. When I head toward the couch, Stella slips down next to Dylan before I can sit, her expression that of attempted nonchalance although she clearly cut me off. Then Dylan oh-so-casually drapes his arm around the sofa, not necessarily across her shoulders, but the two of them look quite cozy as they stare past me at the television, apparently super absorbed in the opening scene, as if we haven’t seen it a million times before.

  I turn around slowly and drop into the recliner with the unsettling feeling that it may be too late for normal.

  It was a madhouse in my dressing room tonight. Troy was prepping me on a few talk show appearances he wants me to make, and Stella was frantically trying to get a lipstick stain out of my opening costume. Sam and Tammy were talking nonstop about a Real Housewives scandal, and Amanda was in a mood about us being five minutes late. All that to say that by the time I took the stage, there still hadn’t been a private moment to talk to Stella about what is going on between her and Dylan, because clearly something is happening there and clearly she wants me in the dark.

  And it hurts my feelings. Yeah, okay, the likelihood of a “Stylan” relationship is a little, um, yuck, but I’m her best friend. During the last couple of costume changes, I’ve just wanted to shout, Hello! I’m not an idiot. Talk to me.

  “Let’s bring it down, one time,” I say near the end of “Notice Me.” The band softens and the instrumentals play as I talk, totally off script. “Is there somebody out there you’ve been friends with for a long time? Maybe you’re thinking about being more than friends. Maybe you want to take things to the next level, but you have absolutely no idea if that person feels the same way.” I glance back at Dylan and raise my eyebrows. He looks away. I knew it. “In fact,” I go on, stronger now, “maybe you think they like you back, but there’s another factor
, another person maybe, that’s in your way. Or that you assume might be in your way. Anybody out there want somebody to see you as more than what you’ve always been?”

  The crowd cheers.

  “Salt Lake City, let ’em know!” I shout out. I cue the band, and they play louder at my lead, nearly fifteen thousand voices filling the arena as we sing: “Is it real? Do you see? Say you notice me. Come on! Notice me. Oh, say you notice… me.”

  As the crowd goes wild, we cut the song and I race backstage. A short video plays on the giant screens onstage, a roadie hands me a bottle of water, and Stella rips off my fire-engine-red sequined dress. We’re going fifties-mod for the next song, the one I wrote with Adam last year called “Worth Being in Love.” I know now is not the right time to bring this up, but I can’t stop myself, blurting out, “Do you like my brother?”

  Stella has a vintage black-and-white polka-dot dress halfway up my body, and she stops cold. “What?”

  I tug at the dress. “Keep going. I’ve only got another minute until this video is over, but it seems like you guys have been flirting lately and, I don’t know, maybe I’m crazy, but do you like Dylan? Like that?”

  She looks away, pulls the dress all the way up, and steps behind me to zip me in and tie the halter. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “I do.”

  I shake my head.

  “See, I knew you’d be mad,” she says, walking around and fluffing the full skirt with its tulle peeking from the hemline. “That’s why I didn’t say anything. Well, that and I don’t think he likes me back.”

  “Are you serious?” I ask. “First of all, I’m not mad that you like him, although I do question your taste in men. But why didn’t you tell me? I asked you about him before, and you said he wasn’t your type.”

  “That was, what, almost two years ago?” she asks, pulling my boots off. “I didn’t even really know him then. And this just sort of happened over the past couple of weeks, where I realized, ‘Oh, for real, I think I like this guy. And he’s my best friend’s brother, and it’s weird.’ I’ve wanted to tell you, but I’ve been like, ‘Ah! What do I do?’”

  I slip my feet into a pair of retro-style pumps and sigh. “Honestly? I can sort of see it,” I admit.

  She clutches my forearms as I balance. “Seriously?”

  I look down at her face, at the excitement there and the childlike hope that I’ve never seen in her before. Suddenly it feels like there’s some sort of distance between us even though she’s right in front of me. I shake it off. “But Stel, it sucks that you didn’t tell me, ’cause you’re the only person in my whole life that I can be one hundred percent totally real with twenty-four-seven. And I want you to feel the same way with me.”

  She nods. “I do!”

  “Then why—”

  Jordan hands me my microphone. “You need to get out there,” she says, looking at her wristwatch. The video onstage ends and the audience cheers, meaning that even though Stella and I should probably have a real talk, we can’t. Not right now.

  “Okay, we’ll talk later,” I say as I back toward the stage. “But I’m pretty sure he likes you, too.”

  “Really?” she squeals from the wings. “How do you know? Bird Barrett, don’t you dare leave me hanging like that!” she calls. “I want details! Come back!”

  I smile as she pantomimes fishing for me, but I feel anxious inside as I rush to my mark. If Dylan and Stella get together, I’ll definitely be a third wheel. And then if it doesn’t work out, life on my bus will be miserable. Will I have to fire one of them?

  I stand between two male dancers behind a door in the big screen, and as the music starts, they lift me onto their shoulders. When the spotlight hits and the crowd swells, I plaster on a big smile and focus on the show, on the moment, on being a professional musician instead of a worried teenager. This is who I need to be now, so I sing with all I’ve got, even as I chew on the quickie backstage convo.

  I obviously want them both to be happy, but as I belt out the chorus of “Worth Being in Love,” I can’t help but think that, in this case, it may not be worth it at all.

  “So, basically, after the Salt Lake show, when you jetted off for LA again, it was just me and Dylan on the bus,” Stella says a few days later. Troy had a town car waiting for me at the back door of the arena the other night, but I had called Stella on my way to the airport and we talked about every single nuance of her crush on Dylan. I felt thoroughly filled in on Stella’s feelings for him, but now that I’m back on the bus and she’s sitting across from me on my bed with a ginormous smile, I have the feeling that something happened—with my brother—and I’m not sure I want to hear every juicy detail.

  “So you know how the other night in the wings you were saying that you think Dylan might like me back?” she asks. I nod. “Well, I think I found out while you were gone that he does!”

  “Oh, wow.”

  Stella throws herself back against the pillows beside me and rushes into the whole story. “Okay, so that night it was just Dylan and me—alone on the bus—and I was charged from telling you I like him and admitting it out loud and everything. Like, that made it real, you know?”

  She rolls her head toward mine, and I face her and nod. “Totally.”

  “And every time he squeezed past me on the bus, I swear I thought he could hear my pulse, it was beating so loud. Or he could read my mind or something. But he acted totally normal. Just regular ol’ Dylan zoning out after the show on his Beats, staring up at the bottom of my bunk, so I just got ready for bed like usual except, with you not here, I was, like, ‘Um, what do I do now?’”

  “What did you do?”

  “I climbed up into my bed and started watching 10 Things I Hate About You.”

  “Oh man.”

  “I was feeling romantic!”

  “Okay, so did something actually happen between you guys, or what?”

  “Wait for it!” she says, grabbing my arm. “So I was all into Heath Ledger and his bad-boy charm, but at the same time, I was thinking about being on the bus alone with Dylan. So finally I kind of flung my arm off the side of the bed, like, so casual, and I was waiting and hoping he’d just, like, touch it or hold it or something.”

  “You thought he was going to hold a hand that was just hanging out there in the wide open?” I ask, teasing her.

  “I just—I don’t know! It was stupid. But I fell asleep with my hand like that. And I guess Dylan had to get up later, and when he did, he closed my computer and set it to the side and tucked my arm back in my bed—obviously I woke up but pretended I was still totally asleep—and his face literally lowered toward mine, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is a freaking Snow White moment.’ But he didn’t kiss me or anything. He just whispered, ‘Good night, pretty girl.’” She pauses, looking at me expectantly.

  “Whoa,” I say, a beat or two later than a best friend probably should in a moment like this.

  And then she screams and kicks her feet. “It was amazing!”

  Okay, he’s not your brother, he’s not your brother, he’s not your brother. Act like he’s not your brother.

  “Stella, I would die,” I say honestly.

  She turns toward me on the pillow and keeps going. “It gets better.”

  “There’s more?” I ask.

  “Bird, you were gone for a few days.”

  “Still.”

  “This is too big for text!” she squeals. “I wanted to see your face.”

  I purposefully arrange said face into an expression that mirrors her excitement and try not to be bummed that I missed so much while I was working in LA. “Okay, what else?” I ask.

  “So the next day, I was emboldened. I asked him if he wanted to watch a movie and he did, but instead of watching something we already have on the bus, he suggested we go see something in town.”

  She looks at me again. I can tell this is really big for her, but I can’t connect the dots. “Cool,” I say vaguely.

  “Bird!” she cries. “
He clearly wanted to take me on a real, thought-out date.”

  “Did he call it that?”

  She considers, and I see her deflate slightly in front of me. Guilt twists my gut.

  “I mean, it probably was,” I amend. “Sounds like it was.”

  “Anyway,” she goes on. “When Grantuam finally fought for Janelle’s freedom—” She stops abruptly and covers her mouth. “Oh, sorry.”

  “Stella, I promise you that is not a spoiler. There is no way I’m watching an alien black belt save the world, not in a million years.”

  She grins. “Okay, so he saved her, and it was a semi-romantic part but actually also really funny ’cause, you know, aliens and karate. Well, Dylan and I looked at each other and laughed, and then, like it was the most natural thing in the world, he grabbed my hand. And he held it until the end. And it was just”—she sighs and closes her eyes—“the most perfect day.”

  “I did not realize how much you liked my brother.”

  She nods. “I’ve got it bad.”

  I look up at the ceiling and think about it all. I do want them to be happy. I just don’t want to deal with the fallout if things go badly. I’ve lived on an RV with Dylan after a breakup, and it is not a pretty sight.

  I face her. “So, should we make some ground rules?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if you guys do start dating, how’s that going to work?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I exhale loudly. “Like, I don’t want to be in the middle if there’s any drama, you know? And I don’t want to be the third wheel on all your dates. And I definitely don’t want to hear you guys making out at night.”

  Stella starts laughing. “Bird! It’s not like he’s my boyfriend. I don’t know what we are or if we’ll even be anything.”

  I look over at her. “My brother is a lot of things, but he’s not stupid. You’re a catch. Any guy would be a fool not to date you.”

  She beams at me and squeezes my hand. “What if we make a code name?” Stella suggests. “What if I can still have your feedback as my best friend without compromising your situation as his sister? Like, I can still tell you everything, and you can imagine that it’s… Channing Tatum, a hot, tall, delicious guy with amazing eyes who makes me melt every time I hear him play the guitar.”