My publicist goes on and on with tips on how to “control the story,” but all I’m thinking about now is the “sexual tension” Dylan supposedly senses between Adam and me. It’s messing with my head. Now that Stella spends so much time with Dylan, I’ve been hanging out a lot with Adam. When he first joined the tour a few weeks ago, I was worried about two things: personally, that my heart would be broken again, and professionally, that I could possibly lose a fantastic tour opener. But now the stakes are even higher. Adam has become one of the closest friends I’ve ever had. I don’t want to lose that.
“We’re here, y’all,” Dylan announces as the bus slows and we pull into Philips Arena parking lot.
“Okay, good luck, gang,” Anita says with a tight-lipped smile. “I know you’ll be terrific. Call me if you need absolutely anything at all.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Dylan says sarcastically. We all wave and I shut down the iPad, feeling like we just went through PR boot camp. “Anita is great at her job, don’t get me wrong,” Dylan says, rubbing his ear, “but that woman can talk!”
Stella gets up and peers out the window as we roll through the parking lot. “I think that’s the reporter. Black skinny jeans and a denim button-down trimmed with plaid.” She shrugs. “Total hipster. Cute but cliché.” Stella turns toward Dylan and grabs his face. “One final kiss, or are we ready for the world to know about us?”
“I don’t know, Stel. The paparazzi will hound us for weeks,” he jokes.
“‘Stylan spotted at the movies!’” I say, playing along as I run my hand through the air like I’m reading an imaginary headline. Then they kiss and I look away, my standard knee-jerk reaction even though it was just a quick peck. I stand up, stretch, and check my hair and makeup in the bathroom mirror. I’m ready to meet this woman and get on with the interview. A feature in Rolling Stone magazine is intimidating, sure, but it’s also really exciting. “Let’s do this,” I say, my adrenaline pumping as I race down the stairs and open the bus door.
I’ve got my guard up, as Anita instructed, but as Adam’s bus pulls in next to mine, I can’t help but wonder what would happen if I just let go.
13
“SO THESE ARE the digs, huh?” the reporter remarks as she follows me back onto the bus a few minutes later.
“Home sweet home,” I reply. “This is my brother Dylan. He plays guitar in the band.”
“Hi, Dylan,” she says, reaching a tattooed arm out for a handshake. “I’m Jase.”
“Nice to meet you,” he says with a bright smile, and I remember that my brother can be quite charming when he turns it on.
“And this is Stella, my best friend and more important, Master of the Quick Change,” I say. “She’s working on the tour as a wardrobe assistant.”
“Hi,” Jase says. “I love your bangs. They never looked good on me.”
Stella reaches out her hand for a shake, scrutinizing the reporter intensely. Jase is probably in her late twenties, a petite woman, skinny as a rail, wearing heavy black eyeliner and fresh Converse sneakers. Her jet-black hair is shaved on one side, the rest falling over one eye in an asymmetrical bob, but while her look may be severe, her smile is warm.
“You can put your stuff over here,” I say, leading her toward the back of the bus. “The bottom bunk is yours for the next few days.”
“Good thing I’m little,” she says, tossing her stuff down onto her bed.
“Yeah, try being six foot and squeezing in there,” I say. “When my folks are on tour with us, I’m the low man on the totem pole.”
Jase grins. “The perks of being a star.”
I laugh. “Exactly. So, what do you want to do first? Need a little time to unpack?”
“No, I’m good,” she says. “I napped on the plane from New York, and I’m ready to roar. Want to give me the MTV Cribs tour?”
“Sure.” I turn around in the tight space. “Ought to be a quick tour, but okay… Actually, this is pretty cool. I never know when I’m going to be inspired, so I keep my instruments on board rather than locked under the bus. So, like, if Dylan or I want to play or write a new song or something, our instruments are right here in this hidden pop-out closet.”
“You wrote ‘Before Music’ together, right?” Jase asks Dylan. “About your brother who passed away?”
“Yes, Caleb,” he answers.
“I don’t know how you put that much emotion into a record and then replicate it for thousands of people every night.”
“Well, I don’t think you can let yourself go that deep every time,” Dylan answers truthfully. “When we wrote it, the emotion was pretty raw. But now, well, I don’t want to speak for you, Bird, but I sing it more as a tribute than as the therapy it was for me at the time.”
“Definitely,” I concur.
Jase pulls out a small Moleskine notebook and smiles, almost apologetically. “Nerd alert,” she says, eyes twinkling. “Hope you don’t mind if I take notes.” She starts scribbling as I give her a tour of the bus: living room, kitchenette, bathroom, triple bunks.
“Stella up top, Dylan in the middle, and the bottom is our storage-closet-slash-guest-bed-slash-my-bed when my parents are on board,” I say.
“Pretty intimate quarters,” she comments, and I see Dylan and Stella exchange a look behind her.
“That’s life on the road,” I say with a shrug. Then I gesture to my room. “And this is the master.”
“You do yoga on the road?” Jase asks when she sees a yoga mat that I’d forgotten to roll up earlier. “Impressive. I’m awkward when I’m on solid ground, so you must be good.”
“If I lose my balance, I fall on the bed, and if that happens, the session is usually over,” I admit. “I’m always tired.”
“I bet. What’s more exhausting?” she asks earnestly. “The touring or the show itself?”
“Hmmm, I’d say the show itself. It’s a workout, and we go hard every night. I want to give my fans the best show I can, so by the time I take my final bow, I’m just spent. The touring part I’m kind of used to.” I walk back up to the living room and crash next to Dylan and Stella on the couch. “This is the way Dylan and I grew up, so it’s comforting being out on the road. And it’s a lot less crowded these days.”
“Where are your parents?” she asks. “I was under the impression one of them always toured with you.”
I shrug. “They meet us a lot, for a few days at a time, but they also stay busy back home. I’m eighteen now so—”
“So you got this,” Jase says with spunk, holding out a fist for me to bump.
We pound it out, and I smile. “I got this.”
We talk more about the tour and the show, about Dylan and Stella putting school off for a while, and about how well my second album is doing. It doesn’t feel like an interview at all, especially since Jase is hardly writing anything down. It’s more like a bunch of friends hanging out.
When Stella asks Jase what her story is, the reporter’s candor surprises me. She tells us what it was like leaving Iowa for New York, how she never really fit in back home and always had big dreams and big ideas, like dressing according to Vogue when everybody else swore by Seventeen. Stella nods in solidarity when Jase opens up about dropping out of state university to move to New York for an unpaid editorial internship.
“Nobody’s journey is the same,” Jase says, “but I feel sorry for the people who always take the straight and narrow and never venture out. I could’ve stayed in Iowa and married my high school boyfriend, made my parents happy, probably be a mom of three by now. But I never felt like that was my path. I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to hear live music every night, I wanted to follow fashion trends and date a person I connect with regardless of their gender. I wanted something different. Moving away from my family so young was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I feel like I can be me now, without apology. And that’s freeing.”
We all sit in stillness after that, not really knowing what to say. Jase’s words strike a deep chord wi
thin all three of us: I can see it in Stella’s thoughtful frown and Dylan’s unfocused gaze. None of us has taken a traditional path to get where we are or where we’re going.
When a production assistant knocks on the door and says catering is set up, we snap out of it and grab our stuff, each of us contemplating the depths of our own bravery as we file off the bus and follow our artistic dreams.
“So, Jase is pretty cool,” Stella says backstage. We are in the wings, changing into the “Tennessee Girl” shorts and boots, and this has been the first reporter-free minute we’ve had for the past six hours. “At first, I thought she was trying too hard—I mean, I still think that blue streak in her hair is a clip-on—but it’s cool that she’s passionate about her work. That’s something everybody on this tour has in common.”
“So true,” I say. Who would do this otherwise?
“For our Tennessee Girl,” Adam says from out of nowhere, handing me a handpicked bouquet of purple flowers.
I am stunned as I take the flowers from him, blown away, immediately thinking back to the night I was discovered at the Station Inn. Adam was there, and he left a little bouquet of wildflowers for me, the first time I ever got flowers from a boy. My heart skips a beat.
“Where did you get these?” I say with wonder as Stella ties up the front of my shirt. He looks so cute right now, with his happy lopsided smile and his hair still a little wild from his show.
“I saw them growing in this field over—”
“Thirty seconds, Bird,” Jordan interrupts as she holds out my mic.
Stella stands up and examines me, taking the flowers and passing me my microphone.
“Well, thanks,” I say, looking at them glumly in another girl’s hands.
Adam looks at them, too, a little embarrassed. “Have to work on my timing,” he says.
“You made my day,” I say honestly. I don’t want him to feel bad, so I lean over for a nice, friendly side hug, but he wraps both of his arms around me, tight like always. I get a massive shiver when my cheek presses against his neck, but then I remember that Jase is lurking around and I push away, hard.
Adam stumbles back, stunned. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“The Rolling Stone reporter’s here,” Stella explains, strategically stepping between us as she fixes my collar. “So we all have to cool it for a few days, got it?”
“Cool what?” he asks, sincerely dumbfounded.
I feel the heat rise in my chest. This is so not happening. “Ha-ha, ha-ha!” I fake laugh. “Stella, you’re so funny.”
As the first notes of my next song start to play, I rush back to the spotlight and beam at my fans, waving at the crowd as my brain tries to process everything that just happened.
Adam got me flowers.
Again!
And then I freaked out over nothing.
Again?
I start to sing this fan favorite, clapping my hands and getting the crowd on their feet, as I think about whether there really is a future for Adam and me and what I’m willing to risk if there is. I glance over at the wings and see a very confused Adam standing beside a very observant Jase. With a Miss America Pageant smile, I face forward and dive into the show. Who’d have ever thought that singing in front of twenty-one thousand people was the one place a girl could hide?
14
JASE HAS BEEN with us for a full forty-eight hours now, and Stella was right; she’s pretty cool. She has a dry wit, to the point that we have to double-check sometimes to see if she’s kidding. She hasn’t actually delved too deeply into my family’s past, which has been refreshing, and she’s left me alone about the stuff I usually see about myself in the tabloids. Actually, she just seems to be soaking up the tour, watching my interaction with the band and crew, asking about the direction of my third album and when I expect to record it. She’s been chill, professional, and somebody we all agree we could hang out with in real life sometime.
But I miss Adam.
I had gotten used to hanging out before the show, eating together, and then walking back to the bus after our postperformance Cokes. But with Jase here, I’ve been avoiding him. Anita is right. Even if we were to try dating again, I’m not sure I want it to be the headline of my first-ever Rolling Stone feature. I want that to be about my music.
“Bird, are you in here?” Stella calls from outside my door.
“Yeah,” I holler, finishing a quick text to Adam. He wants me to hear the latest version of his food fight song, but I’ve been putting him off:
Slammed today. How about Mon. or Tues.?
Stella slides my door open and walks immediately to my closet. “Jase wants to take some pictures of the handbag I made you out of my mom’s scratched-up vinyl records. That cool?”
“Awesome,” I say.
My phone beeps again:
I never thought I’d say this, but I hate Rolling Stone.
I laugh and write back:
Aw, you miss us?
Stella plops onto my bed and whispers, “I can tell from the look on your face who you’re texting.”
I sit up and look behind her to make sure Jase isn’t within earshot. “We’re just friends!” I hiss.
“Then why can’t he hang out with us?” she asks with a knowing smile. “You afraid Jase is going to pick up on your ‘friendship’?”
I know my face gives me away as she starts to laugh.
“Bird! You are killing yourself!” she says. “Just tell him how you feel. Write him a song—something. Dylan told me Adam’s still totally into you, and I know you feel the same way, so why are you torturing yourself?”
“Because I don’t want my feelings for Adam, or whatever, to be the center of my first Rolling Stone feature.”
She nods. “I get that.”
“But it sucks.” I groan. “He brought me flowers, Stella. We text and hang out all the time and, yeah, it’s awesome. And I feel the spark. And I’m ready. But now, because of work stuff, it looks like I’m too busy to hang out with him, which is exactly what drove him away last time.”
“Is that what you told him?” she asks. “‘We can’t hang out because I like you too much’?”
I blush. “No. I told him that as bad as it sounds, Anita really wanted to make sure the article stayed about me and not my opener so we needed to keep a little distance. He was totally cool about it and said he’d never want to steal my thunder, which made me feel even worse about lying to him.”
“Eh, white lie.”
Then my phone beeps again and I whip it back out, laughing when I read Adam’s message:
You and Stella are ok, but I really miss Dylan. Can’t believe I’m grounded from the bus. #RollOnRollingStone
Stella reads over my shoulders and says, “I never knew he was so dramatic.” I laugh. “Come on, let’s go.”
I follow her up to the living room, where Dylan is playing video games and Jase is typing on her Mac. “Ready?” she asks when we sit down with her.
“Yeah,” Stella says. “Hey, Dylan, Adam wants you to come over. Or you can stay for girl talk.”
Dylan doesn’t even reply. He just turns off the TV and bounds down the stairs toward guy time and freedom.
“Okay, so here’s the bag,” Stella says, passing her my Christmas present from last year.
“Ooooh, this is unreal,” Jase says. “I can’t believe you made this by hand.”
“She has jewelry and hair accessories in her Etsy store, too. I don’t know how she has the time,” I say.
“Well, I don’t now that I’m on tour,” Stella says.
“Bird, how do you juggle it all?”
“My publicist helps a lot,” I say with a shrug. “And I would die without my manager.”
Jase shakes her head and says, “That’s not exactly what I mean. I’m not talking about juggling a busy schedule.” I frown, trying to understand.
“For example, Stella is your best friend and Dylan is your brother, but they’re also your employees. And this new opener, Ad
am Dean, he’s an old friend, too, right?”
I nod.
“You can’t exactly fire them.” She turns to Stella. “Not that she’d want to. I’m just saying it’s a serious conflict of interest if any of you flake or overstep or whatever.”
“We wouldn’t do that,” Stella says, a little defensively.
“I’m sure,” Jase goes on, “but hypothetically. I’m just asking how you draw boundaries. How do you stay Bird the Boss and Bird the Friend?”
I look out the window and think about her question. “It’s not always easy, I guess,” I say. “Like the other day when Amanda was mad because Stella takes care of most of my quick changes even though she’s not the senior stylist and has no prior experience.”
“Exactly!” Jase says. “That was uncomfortable.”
I glance at Stella, but her smile has vanished.
“I’m sure you don’t need the extra drama,” Jase plows on, “and you definitely don’t want a reputation for unfair treatment or favoritism.”
I shift in my seat awkwardly. “Honestly, it just comes down to the fact that I feel more comfortable with Stella. Knowing each other so well is a big plus. And if you think about it, Amanda actually has a lot more responsibility because she’s dressing everyone else in the show.”
“Ah, so in reality, you trust Amanda more,” Jase says, nodding as if in understanding when I didn’t say that at all.
“Speak of the devil,” Stella says as she pulls out her phone. “Amanda just texted, and she’s willing to give me the opportunity to steam a few of the band members’ shirts for tonight, so I better hop to it.”
I cringe, wishing I could stop her but knowing she’ll kill me if I make a scene. She grabs her headphones and a bottle of water out of the fridge and exits the bus, Jase and I perfectly quiet until she’s gone.
“See? Conflict of interest,” Jase says.
The Way Back Home Page 9