by SR Silcox
“I didn’t say she was her. I said she looks like her. Kind of.”
“You have no idea,” Lizzie said. “But speaking of Maddie, you know she was snuggling up pretty close with Tess before?”
Tess almost choked on her chips.
“Really?” Will said. He sat up on the beanbag and said, “Anything you want to tell us?”
“No,” Tess said.
“Oh come on,” Lizzie said. “Anyone could see you two are together.”
“We’re not together,” Tess said, though she wasn’t exactly sure what they were.
“Ooh, Tess and Maddie sitting in a tree,” Will sang.
Tess threw a cushion at him and he laughed. “It’s cool,” he said. “And Maddie’s cool too so, you know…”
“It’s cool?” Tess said.
Will nodded. “It’s cool, right Lizzie?”
“It’s cool,” Lizzie said.
“Just play the movie,” Tess said.
Lizzie pressed play on the movie and Tess was relieved that the conversation was over. Lizzie would kill her if she found out what Tess knew about Maddie, but she didn’t want to think about it. She was glad though that Will and Lizzie were happy for her and Maddie, whatever it was they were.
TWENTY-TWO
Tess was woken early on Friday morning by Lizzie shaking her, yelling at her to wake up. She rolled over onto her back and stretched.
“What’s going on?” Tess asked.
Lizzie shoved her and said, “I can’t believe you.”
“Can’t believe me what?” Tess yawned and opened her eyes.
Lizzie threw a newspaper at her, crossed her arms and said, “I thought we were friends, Tess.”
Tess picked up the paper and opened it. She had to blink the sleep out of her eyes, and when she saw the front page, her heart dropped into her stomach. There, taking up most of the page, was a grainy picture of Tess and Maddie sitting in the grandstand at the show grounds, kissing. The headline said ‘Starlet Shuns Concerts for Small Town Fling.’
“Oh my God.” Tess kicked off the sheets and jumped up. She searched for her phone, found it under her shorts on the floor and cycled through to Maddie’s number and dialled. It rang out, and she tried again. No answer. Maddie didn’t even have a voice mail so Tess could leave a message. Tess dialled her own voice mail but Maddie hadn’t left a message.
“Here I am telling you she reminds me of someone, and you knew all along who she was,” Lizzie said, pacing across the room. “And Will. Will actually picked it. He knew she looked like Indiana Rose and you pretended like you didn’t know what he was talking about.”
Tess checked the time on her phone. 7.30am. Pop wouldn’t be in town for another hour at least, and Tess had to get back to the farm. Now. She text Will to ask if he could take her out earlier, and was elated when he said he could.
“And my Twitter feed,” Lizzie continued. “You have no idea. It’s just gone nuts! How do you think I feel being the last to know that Indiana-freaking-Rose is in my home town?”
“Lizzie, I didn’t know,” Tess said, pulling on her shorts.
“How could you not?” Lizzie said. “Look at her!” She shook the paper in front of Tess’s face.
Tess snatched it from her and said, “She told me yesterday, okay? I had no idea until she told me yesterday.”
“And you still didn’t say anything. Tess, you know she’s practically my favourite band.”
“She made me promise not to tell anyone.”
“I’m not just anyone. I’m your best friend. How could you not tell me?” Lizzie’s voice was getting shrill. “If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.”
“Betrayal? Don’t you think whoever took those pictures is the one who’s guilty of betrayal?”
“Are you accusing me?” Lizzie asked.
Tess scoffed. “Of course not, but someone had to know who she was. And your dad was the one who put it on the front page.”
“So it’s his fault now?”
Tess rolled her eyes.
Lizzie continued. “He didn’t have to do anything for your stupid festival you know. He loses money because he can’t sell advertising on the same page as the feature because no-one wants to be associated with it.”
“What are you talking about?” Tess looked around to make sure she had everything.
“What do you think sells more papers? A story about a stupid festival no-one cares about? Or Indiana Rose on the front page kissing her girlfriend?”
“I’m not her girlfriend,” Tess said. At least, she didn’t think she was.
“Well at least I know who my true friends are,” Lizzie said. “Or in this case, aren’t. True friends don’t keep secrets like that.”
Lizzie turned to walk away but Tess had heard enough. She grabbed Lizzie’s arm, spun her around and yelled at her. “Why do you think she was here?”
“I don’t know,” Lizzie yelled back.
“She was trying to have a break from this,” Tess said, shaking the paper in front of Lizzie. “From all this crap. She hates it and she was trying to just…” Tess paused. “To feel normal,” she said. “She just wanted to feel normal.”
Lizzie pulled her arm away and shrunk back. Tess felt bad about the way she’d spoken to Lizzie but she didn’t know what else to do.
“I didn’t realise,” Lizzie mumbled.
“No,” Tess said. “You never do.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth and she saw how offended Lizzie was, she regretted them. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Lizzie turned away in a huff.
Tess sighed. “Look, I wanted to tell you, but Maddie asked me not to.”
Lizzie crossed her arms but still didn’t turn around.
Tess tried a different tack. “Lizzie, I really like Maddie. I mean, really, really like her. Like you really liked Will once.”
Lizzie turned around, her eyes wide. “Really?”
Tess nodded.
Lizzie sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make fun of you about it last night.”
Tess smiled. “It’s okay.” She put her bag on the bed and sighed. “Look. I have to get back to the farm and see how Maddie is and whether she’s seen this yet. We’ll talk about it later, okay?”
Lizzie nodded. “Okay.”
Tess gathered up the rest of her stuff and shoved it into her bag. “I’ll see you later?”
Lizzie nodded. “I’ll see if I can find out who took the photos,” she said.
“Thank you.” Tess pulled Lizzie into a hug. When she let her go, Lizzie said, “I can’t believe she sang so badly yesterday.” It made Tess laugh. She raked her hair into a pony tail, picked up her bag and headed outside to wait for Will.
∞
Will took Tess straight to the McGregor house where Tess was gutted to discover that Jo and Maddie had already left. As far as Tess was concerned, that could only mean one thing. That Maddie had seen the paper and had left town to get away from the lime light again. Tess tried calling her but again, Maddie didn’t answer. Will steered Tess back to the car and said, “Come on. Let’s get to the farm and we’ll work out what to do from there.”
Will drove into the main driveway but didn’t get out. “I have to get back to the band,” he said. “Sorry I can’t stay.”
“The band? For what?”
“We, er, might have a gig tomorrow night since the festival’s been cancelled. So we’re just, you know, practicing some new stuff.”
“Right,” Tess said.
As she climbed out of the car Will said, “Tess, you know this will all blow over? You’ll see. No-one will remember the girl from Chesterfield who kissed the superstar singer.”
Tess punched him on the arm. He laughed. “I’m serious though. Everything will be fine.”
Tess wasn’t so sure. “Thanks for the ride,” she said.
“No worries. I might catch you later.”
Tess stood in the driveway and watched Will drive away. Ther
e were trucks and Utes still being unpacked in the Big Yard. Some people obviously hadn’t heard the news about the festival being cancelled yet. She considered going across and telling them to pack up and go home, but the last thing she wanted to think about right now was the festival. When she got inside, she went straight to her room and shut the door.
She lay on her bed and thumbed through the texts on her phone, lingering on the photo Will had taken at the pool on Monday night. She opened a new message and typed
I saw the paper I’m sorry Please call me
She pressed send. Then she opened another text and typed
I miss u xx
She put her phone on her bedside table and pulled the pillow over her head.
∞
A few hours of playing games on her phone in her room hadn’t improved Tess’s mood. Neither had the fact that she still hadn’?t heard from Maddie, and her texts to both Will and Lizzie had gone unanswered. Tess had gone in search of food around lunchtime but had come back to her bedroom to sulk some more. A soft knock on Tess’s door pulled her from her funk. “I’m awake,” she called.
The door opened and Gran peered in. “Can I come in?”
“Yeah,” Tess said. She sat up and hugged her knees to her chest.
Gran sat on the end of her bed. She put her hands in her lap and took a deep breath. The last time she’d done that, she’d told Tess about her cancer. Tess wondered what bad news she had to tell her this time.
“Everything okay?” Gran asked.
Tess shrugged.
“You’ve been in here for hours. Don’t you think it’s time you came out to face the world again?”
Tess didn’t answer.
Gran tried again. “Have you heard from Maddie?”
Tess shook her head. She played with the cuff of her shorts and willed herself not to get upset. She knew it was probably stupid to cry over a girl she’d only met a week ago. But they’d had so much fun together and Tess felt like she'd known Maddie her whole life. And not knowing whether Maddie was upset with her over the photo in the paper just killed her.
“I’m sorry she had to leave,” Gran said. She patted Tess’s foot.
“Did you see them before they left?”
“Jo returned the keys late last night.”
“So they left last night?”
Gran nodded.
“But the picture wasn’t in the paper until this morning. How did they—”
“I don’t think it was about the paper, Tess,” Gran said.
“What then?”
“A family matter was what Jo said. I don’t know any more than that.”
“Then why won’t Maddie return my calls?”
“I don’t know, Tess. Maybe she just hasn’t had time.”
Tess looked out her bedroom window. There were still way too many people out there considering the festival had been cancelled. “Has Pop told everyone the festival’s not on?” she asked.
Gran looked out the window. “I guess so. Some of those people are from up north I think, so Pop’s probably offered to let them stay overnight since they’ve driven all the way here.”
Tess nodded. It’d be hard to wake up tomorrow morning with the Big Yard empty, instead of full of stallholders and people.
As if Gran had read Tess’s thoughts, she said, “You know the festival isn’t about the cane or the crushing?”
Tess looked at Gran, confused.
“It was at first, but when you were born, it all changed.”
“What do you mean?”
Gran smiled. “I remember the day you were born. Your dad called us at three in the morning to tell us your mum was in labour. I wanted to wait until visiting hours to go and see you, but your Pop, he was having none of it.” Gran looked up to the ceiling, as if her memories were up there, playing out like a movie. “He jumped out of bed and ordered me into the car and we drove straight to the hospital. We made it just in time. It was his proudest moment, you know. Holding you for the first time when you were only an hour or so old.”
“I have that photo,” Tess said. It was in a silver frame on her bedside table at home, and it was one of her favourites.
Gran looked back at Tess and smiled. “I must have gone through three rolls of film taking photos of you and your Pop that first week.” She laughed and shook her head. “Every chance he got, he’d bring you out here. He had you on the tractors and the haul out trucks before you could walk, showing you the farm. You were six months old when he sat with you in the back of his Ute to watch your first cane fire. You were obsessed with them for ages after that. Couldn’t get enough of them. Every time you came out here you wanted him to burn the cane for you.”
“I’m not sure what that’s got to do with the festival,” Tess said.
Gran squeezed Tess’s knee. “He reinstated the festival for you, Tess.”
Tess sat up straighter. “What do you mean? We’ve always had the festival.”
“Not really. It just started off as a bit of a party for the neighbours and workers. We didn’t always have the last cane fire. We just sort of fell into it after we did it a few years in a row. People around here just started turning up to see the last block burned every year, and we thought we should probably feed them since they were coming out to watch us.” She sighed. “And then one year, a few years before you were born actually, cane fires were banned because of the fire danger and we just never had another one after that.”
“Wow. I thought we only missed a year because of too much rain.”
Gran laughed. “That’s a porky your Pop tells you. I think he likes the legend of the festival more than the truth of it.”
“So why would he cancel it? And why doesn’t he want to have it again next year?”
“This year, I guess circumstances changed. The council has been giving him grief over funding for years. And as for next year, well. He thinks that once you’re off living in the city that you’ll just get too busy to come back for it. I guess he doesn’t want to be disappointed, so he just decided in his own mind that it would be easier to not have it.”
“So that’s why he’s upset about it.” It all made sense now. He'd wanted to make it memorable for Tess because he thought it would be the last one. And now that it was cancelled… “I should go and talk to him,” Tess said.
“You’ll have to wait until he gets back from in town,” Gran said. “But you know, Bessie could probably use some company since she’ll probably not be needed tomorrow. Pete won’t be back until the morning to pick her up.”
“Sure,” Tess said. She could do with the distraction.
TWENTY-THREE
It wasn’t that her father was angry with her that upset Maddie the most. It was the fact that at no point during their conversation did he acknowledge that the reasons why she’d left were valid. Jo had driven Maddie all the way back to Brisbane to talk to her father face-to-face because of what their record label was threatening, but her father hadn’t even bothered to fly up from Sydney. Maddie had wanted to go straight back to Chesterfield but Jo said she had to sort things out with her father for the sake of the band. Jo was right, as always, so she’d settled on calling him via Skype. It turned out to be just as bad as being in the same room as him. Talking via Skype hadn’t stopped him from taking over the conversation, and it hadn’t stopped him from trying to manipulate her into telling him where she’d been staying or into doing what he wanted her to do.
The last straw came for Maddie when her father informed her that he’d spoken to her agent and asked him to go ahead and pursue the solo deal. That was the point she’d hung up on him.
Jo stood in the corner frowning. She’d heard every word of the one-way conversation and would probably stand up for Maddie’s father, like she usually did. ‘Devil's advocate’ she called it. Maddie wondered when Jo would ever advocate for her.
“That’s that then,” Jo said.
Maddie shrugged. “I guess so. Can you tell Freya and Andy they can come in
now? We should probably talk about what we want to do.”
Honestly? She had no idea where to go from here. Her father insisted she could go further by herself than with Freya and Andy, but it was Maddie who’d come late to the band. She couldn’t imagine being on stage without them, and loved singing knowing they were there with her. At least, she did in the beginning. Before her father decided to become their manager and started trying to tell them what sort of music they should be singing.
Maddie had no idea until a few weeks ago that her dad had been vetting their music for them, deciding what samples they’d get to listen to when they were putting their last album together. Some of the songs were okay, sure, but most of them weren’t meant for bands like Maddie's to sing. They were meant for manufactured all-girl or all-boy bands to sing. And God forbid they should suggest trying one of Freya’s. His refusal to even hear the new stuff had been a major cause of Freya getting writer’s block.
But there was no way Maddie was going to let him destroy the relationship she had with Freya and Andy. No way.
Freya and Andy came in and sat down on the lounge chairs across from Maddie. Andy raked his hands through his long dark hair and said, “What’d he say?”
Maddie looked at them both and said, “Well, he’s not happy.”
“When is he ever happy lately?” Freya asked.
“Are we rescheduling?” Andy asked. “Just ‘cos, you know, the surf was really good on the coast.”
Freya whacked him on the arm and he laughed.
“Well, for starters, we’re not going on tour,” Maddie said. “The tour company's dropped us.”
Andy whistled. “That bad, huh?”
“And we have to make a huge decision,” Maddie said. She knew there was no way to sugar coat it so she just said it. “Dad wants me to go out on my own.”
Freya’s eyes widened. “Go solo?” she asked.
“Without us?” Andy asked.
“That’s what solo is, you idiot,” Freya said. She pulled her legs up underneath her, pulled her skirt over her feet and picked at the hem.
“That is huge,” Andy said. He leaned back into his chair and crossed his arms.
“Yeah,” Maddie said.