Dirty Little Secret

by Jennifer Echols

  “Fiddlers Anonymous.”

  “Exactly. At meetings we’ll go around the room sharing how we’ve disappointed people. When it’s my turn, I’ll admit I started by playing with Elvis at the mall, and I thought I could handle it, but it led to harder stuff.”

  Sam wasn’t laughing anymore. I was afraid he thought I was making fun of his dad, and I’d offended him. It was weird that he seemed so friendly and open, yet I kept feeling I had to tiptoe around him. I’d never had a friend with real problems, life problems, an addict for a dad. My so-called friends for the past year had problems of their own devising.

  But that didn’t seem to be what he’d been thinking about after all when he said, “You know what my dream is. To make it big with this band.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I think you should try it with us. Then you wouldn’t need to go to Vandy. You wouldn’t have time. Your parents’ opinion wouldn’t matter anymore.”

  Not true. Caring about their opinion was a part of me, like an ID chip implanted in a pet dog.

  “But I don’t think that’s your dream,” he said. “What is it?”

  The lighthearted feeling had left me. Wishing I could have it back, I rolled my head against the window. “This isn’t going to happen. But for the past year, I’ve had a fantasy that my parents and the record company crawl back to me and tell me Julie can’t go on without me. They made a mistake. Julie and I should get the development deal together after all. They need me, desperately. And then they beg.”

  “That’s why you felt so awful when your family got all over you about your wreck,” Sam said. “Julie told you she’d lost respect for you, and you were as far away as you’ve ever been from that fantasy coming true.”

  I closed my eyes, but through my eyelids I could still see the lights of the interstate passing overhead, closer and closer together. And I felt like Julie was watching me, judging me. In that fantasy I’d had for the past year, I’d wanted my parents and the record company to beg me to come back to them. Julie was always standing to one side, though, because my downfall had never been her fault.

  Now I realized Sam was right about my trip to the bottom nearly a week and a half ago. I’d told myself I still didn’t blame Julie—but ever since then, in my fantasy, she had begged me, too.

  Slowly I opened my eyes, which stung with tears. My vision was blurry but . . . Julie was watching me. Looming ahead, placed near the interstate so several hundred thousand cars a day could see it, was an enormous billboard with Julie’s picture on it. Ten-foot-tall letters proclaimed “Julie Mayfield” with the date of her Grand Ole Opry debut tomorrow.

  I’d known this was coming, more or less, for an entire year. It had seemed a lot more real by last Christmas, when the dates for her first single and her album were set in stone, and more real still when she was scheduled for the Grand Ole Opry tomorrow and a huge single release party on Wednesday and the CMA Festival on Thursday and Friday, four of the biggest gigs she could have gotten short of her own sold-out stadium tour.

  But I hadn’t actually seen ads for her appearances or her single or her album, either in magazines or online. For the past month I’d purposefully stayed away from the media because I’d known what was coming. Now, for the first time, she was so big I couldn’t avoid her. As I looked up at her sweet grin, her blue eyes enhanced by professional makeup, and her blond hair arranged by her own personal version of Ms. Lottie, my first thought was how pretty she was. Her looks wouldn’t have substituted for talent, though. In L.A., maybe. Not in Nashville. Luckily she had both.

  My second thought was amazement that my first thought was pride in Julie, not jealousy of her, for the first time in a year.

  My third thought was that if Sam had seen the sign, too, after I’d just told him what had happened between my family and me, he might have realized how much this huge monster girl would have looked like me if I’d still had long blond hair. In that case, I was in trouble.

  Yesterday at my house, I’d half wished Sam would notice one of Julie’s star-studded photos, realize what was up, and put me out of my misery. Now that he’d helped me past some kind of barrier in my life, and I was free on the other side, this was the worst thing that could happen.

  I didn’t dare glance over at him. If he hadn’t seen the billboard, he would want to know why I was looking at him funny and what was wrong.

  I stopped wondering when I heard the blinker switch on. He raced down the exit ramp. After our long conversation and two hours of high winds, the SUV settled into an uncomfortable silence as he stopped at the light, then pulled into the parking lot of the nearest gas station, which glowed weakly, closed for the night. He parked the SUV directly under Julie’s sign, killed the engine, and bailed out, slamming the door behind him.

  Ace started awake at the same time Charlotte yelled, “Oh!” In the rearview mirror, I watched them glare at each other warily as they backed away to opposite ends of the seat. Judging from their expressions, I wasn’t sure who’d been the first to touch the other, and who blamed whom.

  “What’s happening?” Charlotte asked. At first I thought she was caught up in her tangle with Ace only, but she was looking at me in the rearview mirror. She wanted to know why we’d stopped.

  “Well, I’m not sure, but I’m guessing Sam found out my sister is going to play at the Grand Ole Opry tomorrow night, and he’s upset that I haven’t told him.” I pointed through the ceiling of the SUV.

  Charlotte and Ace exchanged a quizzical look, then opened their doors and got out.

  The noise of the interstate rushed in, like the noise of the wind before, but more distant, just a dim rush in the background. My heart raced so fast that it hurt. My relationship with Sam was probably over. But I didn’t feel anything. I was back to that place where I’d spent the past year, with no emotion at all. Just panic.

  Sam startled me by jerking open my door. He scowled at me for a moment with his fists on his hips. Behind him, Charlotte and Ace gazed up at the sign and whispered together. The sign was directly above the SUV, so close I couldn’t see it myself, but I knew it was there.

  “I think this goes without saying, Bailey,” Sam barked. “You’ve got to get us an in with your sister’s record company.”

  I responded without hesitation. I’d known for three days this was bound to happen sooner or later, and how Sam would react when it did. “I think this goes without saying, because I’ve already told you. I’m not allowed to be in a band. Julie’s company doesn’t want me to. They’re afraid it will ruin her PR. They’re not going to give a contract to someone defying a direct order. That’s not the way to make a good first impression.”

  “Then, a different company,” he said. “Surely your sister and your parents have other connections, after a year preparing for her freaking album and Grand Ole Opry debut!” He balled both fists like he wanted to hit the side of the SUV, but that would injure his guitar-playing hands. With a groan he backed away from the SUV and walked across the clearing under the sign, past Charlotte and Ace, with his hands on his head.

  I got out and called after him, “I can’t ask them to do that. They’ll take my college tuition away.”

  Ace and Charlotte turned to stare at me with resentment and no understanding whatsoever. Over their heads, Sam yelled, “Your parents threatened you with that when they thought you were going to end up in a tabloid magazine for crashing into a lake with your cokehead boyfriend. If you disobey them by playing with a kick-ass band, your punishment won’t be the same. That just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “We’ll never find out, because I’m not going to ask them.”

  Charlotte stepped close to me, wearing a sour look. “You’d give up a chance at a recording contract, for all of us, just to get your parents to pay for your college? My mom isn’t paying for my college.”

  “Maybe if she was, you wouldn’t be so desperate to get a recording contract.” I felt ugly saying that, but I just wanted them all off my back now
, because I wasn’t going to do what they were asking me to do.

  “Wow,” Ace said flatly. That’s when I knew I was beyond hope. I’d expected Charlotte to get emotional, and Sam. But Ace had more sense than both of them put together. If he was disgusted with me, I deserved it.

  “Even if my parents weren’t threatening me,” I spat, “I would never ask them for anything else again.”

  “That’s really the problem, isn’t it?” Sam yelled. “You’re just too stubborn to ask for help, or forgiveness, or anything.”

  “Oh!” I cried. “You were just asking me what is wrong with my parents. You understood perfectly well then where I was coming from. It’s only now that you want something from them that you suddenly can’t fathom why I wouldn’t apologize to them.”

  Face dark with anger, Sam stalked toward me. As he passed Ace and Charlotte, Ace reached out and put one hand on Sam’s chest to keep him back. Sam brushed Ace off and kept coming for me, holding two fingers an inch apart. “We’re that close, Bailey.”

  “If you can’t get any farther without me groveling to my parents, it looks like you’re going to stay that close.” I measured an inch with my own fingers.

  “You—” Sam started, taking another step toward me.

  Ace shoved him backward. “Man, come on. We’re arguing under a billboard at two o’clock in the morning, and you don’t have a shirt on.”

  Sam turned on Ace. “What the fuck do—”

  “Stop,” Ace said. He glanced toward the service road, where a cop car cruised slowly by.

  Sam looked, too. “Fine,” he said, stomping toward the SUV.

  “Let me drive,” Ace called after him.

  We heard a door slam on the far side of the SUV.

  “So, Bailey, things might have been better if you’d never showed up,” Charlotte said smugly.

  “Can you stop? I swear to God.” Ace encircled the back of her neck with one hand and gave her a gentle shove toward the SUV. He seemed to be steering her toward the backseat with Sam. Her heart must be all aflutter, I thought bitterly.

  I waited until everyone was inside the SUV. That way, any individual person would be slightly less likely to take a shot at me. I slipped into the front passenger seat again. As an afterthought—though that’s not what it seemed like to me—Sam half stood and jerked his wadded-up T-shirt out of the console beside me and put it on.

  Ace drove the rest of the way to his father’s car lot. Nobody turned to me to say, “You’d better let Ace drive you home because Sam is done with you,” but that was the message, and I got it loud and clear. Sam pulled his guitar case out of the back of the SUV and drove off in his truck without a word.

  Ace asked me for my address and plugged it into the GPS. As the robot lady commanded him to drive down the boulevard and turn at Music Row, he commented, “So. Not Bailey Wright. Bailey Mayfield.”

  I said defensively, “Bailey Wright Mayfield.”

  “It must really hurt to have your sister playing at the Grand Ole Opry,” Charlotte said.

  I let that insult lie there, like an egg frying on the hood of a car on a summer day in the desert. She didn’t care what I thought of her, but she cared what Ace thought, and he wasn’t going to like that stab at me.

  He didn’t defend me, though, just kept driving past the record company offices.

  Charlotte tried again. “It’s a shame that your sister got the blond hair, and you got the jet-black hair. After seeing her, I’d almost say your hair color wasn’t natural.”

  If she’d known how close we were to my granddad’s house, she might have started insulting me earlier. Now she’d run out of time. Ace pulled up at the bottom of my granddad’s cement stairs.

  “Thanks, Ace,” I said genuinely. “It’s been a pleasure knowing you.”

  “Oh,” he exclaimed like I was the one who’d insulted him. “We’re not done with you. You said you were in the band for four more days. This was day one.”

  “What?” I protested. “No! Sam doesn’t want me playing with you now.”

  “Sam does not cancel a gig,” Ace reminded me in a warning tone.

  “There are no gigs.” I opened my hands. “I told him I couldn’t play tomorrow.”

  “I know for a fact he’s scheduled us at Boot Ilicious on Wednesday,” Ace said.

  “Oh, come on!” I cried. Toby had no idea I was playing in a band, I hoped. But he’d discovered a place to snag booze, and he wasn’t going to give it up anytime soon. I’d likely see him there, and now I would be doing exactly what he’d always made fun of me for.

  “No,” I said. “Sam didn’t say anything to me about another gig.”

  “He was probably waiting for the right time,” Ace said, “because you freak out every time he tries to get you to play with us again.”

  Charlotte burst into laughter. I let her laugh. I felt stunned. It was the first time Ace had raised his voice at me.

  He turned around. I didn’t see the look he gave Charlotte, but she stopped laughing.

  “And Sam sent in our video to audition for a Broadway gig on Thursday,” Ace said. “Since it looks like you and Sam might not be speaking, I’ll call you both days to make sure you’re coming. If you don’t answer, I will come find you.”

  “O-kay!” So much for my sweet parting with my understated friend. I opened the door and jerked my beach bag and fiddle case off the floorboard.

  Just before I slammed the door, Charlotte chirped from the backseat, “Good night, Bailey Mayfield!”

  I took a step back and opened her door. “Shut up,” I said to her face before closing the door again. I jogged up the steps.

  Upset as I was, I had the wherewithal to stuff my fiddle case into my beach bag before opening the front door. If I had been harboring some inkling of an idea that Sam was right and I could make it big with his band, thereby breaking away from my parents completely, those hopes were dashed now. I needed more than ever to keep my moonlighting a secret from my granddad.

  But as I entered the dark house and peeked out the front window to watch Ace drive away, I knew my Wednesday and Thursday nights with the band wouldn’t be all I saw of Sam. I had a mall performance to get through tomorrow afternoon, and then I was making a date.

  12

  After I got off work the next evening and changed from Dolly Parton’s helper back into my bad-ass self, I found Sam’s dad’s address online, then parked in front of his house. It looked a lot like my granddad’s house, actually, but in a neighborhood that hadn’t been kept up as nicely: a house people bought when they weren’t a hundred percent sure what they would get paid from month to month. I called Sam.

  “Hey, Bailey,” he said sleepily.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” I said, then waited for him to deny he’d been asleep. When he didn’t, my heart twisted. All day I’d thought how unreasonable and selfish he was, if he would throw away our relationship just because I wouldn’t give him a shortcut to success. But he must have gone home last night, then stayed up so late that he was still asleep at six the next evening. That made me want to comfort him, run my fingers through his hair with his head in my lap as he’d done for me last night, even though I was the one who’d caused the trouble.

  “My granddad wouldn’t let me sleep that late,” I said by way of conversation.

  Sam yawned. “My folks aren’t home. My mom had an early meeting before night shift. My dad’s on a bender.”

  “He’s not driving around, is he?” I hoped I didn’t sound as alarmed as I felt. Sam’s real problems surprised me every time, even now that our whole relationship had turned dark.

  He laughed, a pale echo of his musical laughter from the rest of the days I’d known him. “No, he stays put. My mom makes him go to a motel.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m parked in front of your house, I think. Or I’m about to get arrested for staking out the wrong guy.”

  I watched his house—or the house I was sitting in front of, anyway. The blinds open
ed in a second-story window.

  “I see you,” he said somberly.

  “Well.” Maybe I should have given up on the night and driven away. Instead I said, “I was hoping you might come out with me. I have something I want to show you.”

  “Give me ten.” He hung up.

  In seven, he was locking the side door and running past his truck, down the driveway. When he was still several paces away, I noticed he was wearing his T-shirt from two nights before, the one I’d cartooned on with Charlotte’s marker. I wasn’t sure whether the marker was especially permanent or he’d washed the shirt carefully, but his heart was still on his sleeve.

  He got into my car with his usual bluster, smelling of toothpaste and soap and shampoo, his hair hanging in damp waves as on the first day I’d met him, when he’d played an old Scottish tune in the sun. But nothing else about him was as usual. He didn’t ask where I was taking him. He didn’t make small talk. He sank down in the seat like he wasn’t quite awake and stared stonily in front of him.

  Until I drove down the exit ramp to the Grand Ole Opry. Then he sat up.

  I found a spot in the crowded parking lot. “Do you have an umbrella?” was the first thing he said the whole trip. As we slammed the car doors and followed the crowd toward the theater, the sky rumbled overhead, and violently pink clouds raced across the twilit sky.

  “No,” I said, not that I cared. “Five Feet High and Rising” started playing in my head.

  When it was my turn at the box office, I asked for two tickets, half hoping they would be sold out and I wouldn’t be able to go through with my plan. I was dying to see Julie on the Grand Ole Opry stage, and then again, I dreaded it. And when Sam saw her, I wasn’t sure how he would react.