by Vivian Lux
From Phoenix, it was seven hours to Albuquerque, where we played for a standing-room-only crowd. They said there were fights breaking out amongst ticket scalpers that lurked at the side entrances, but inside everything was magical. From Albuquerque, we took I-40, a straight shot east to Oklahoma City before swinging south to Dallas. One night in a hotel room in Dallas, just to wash the road grime from our skin, and then we readied ourselves for the long haul to Atlanta. I finished three paperbacks on that leg alone.
It was in Atlanta that we first started hearing the weather reports. "I'm not canceling anything yet," Keith, our manager, shouted over the garbled din of the speakerphone. The five of us looked at each other. Twitch shrugged. "If you guys cancel and the hurricane changes course, you'll look like a bunch of pussies."
"And if it doesn't change course?" Rane asked.
"It's slow-moving," Keith blustered. "We have plenty of time to decide."
Balzac grunted as I stabbed the off button. "Meh, whatever. These weather guys always blow this shit out of proportion anyway."
Pepper made a noise that could have been a snort of amusement or a snort of derision. I never could quite tell.
Scarlett scribbled something in her notebook.
By then, we had been on the road for a little over a week, coexisting, if not peacefully, at least without any more major incidents.
But that didn't stop my heart from faltering when, after a piss break, I boarded the bus to see Rane and Scarlett hunched in the back corner, talking earnestly.
Fuck. I wandered away at a pit stop for just one second, and all hell was poised to break loose.
I gripped the top of the front seat, surprised at the intensity of what I was feeling. Was it curiosity? Confusion? Protectiveness?
A mixture of all three?
"What's going on?" I asked, a little more belligerently than I would have liked.
They both looked up. Rane was facing me, and he gave me a big old innocent smile. "Scarlett's interviewing me," he said primly. "You're not the only person in this band, you know."
I looked from him over to Scarlett. I could always read her facial expressions. And what I saw there was sheepish panic. She was an open book.
"I'm supposed to be getting a story about the whole band," she said, her hands fluttering. "I guess I've been kind of slacking off in that regard."
I nodded. That was true. They did need to talk. I should really leave them alone.
I plopped myself down at the table instead. There was a heavy silence.
"Scarlett was just telling me about her job," Rane offered.
I looked at her. Why hadn't I thought to ask her about that? I had been so caught up in our past that I completely ignored her present.
Rane, damn him, knew that. He knew exactly which button to press. "But I'm sure you probably heard all about that already, Keir," he said, his tongue planted firmly in his cheek.
"Not much to tell," Scarlett said, waving her hand, desperate to get the attention off of her.
"Of course there is!" Rane chuckled. "How you managed to get from Buffalo to LA and land a job with a music magazine right out of college? That's pretty incredible."
Scarlett flushed. The set of her mouth told me something was up. "It's nothing... Really..."
"I mean, I guess it helps when you have an in..."
Her head jerked just a little bit. I was pissed at Rane for needling her when she was clearly uncomfortable, but I wanted to see where this was going.
"Yes, I suppose so," she half whispered.
Rane settled back in his chair, lacing his fingers casually over his head. "You know? I just remembered that I've actually heard of Kevin Cunningham! Can't say much about his character, but his work is solid. I think I remember him assisting for a photo call of ours back in the day, so you've met him too, Keir. He's one of the good ones."
Scarlett's eyes glistened and her fists clenched.
"Who the fuck is Kevin Cunningham?" I asked. I felt like a fish rising to bait against my will.
Scarlett sat up suddenly, her notebook tumbling to the floor. "I should call my editor," she said tightly, coldly.
Rane sat back in his chair,looking from Scarlett, to me, back to Scarlett. As if his work here was done.
"Who's Kevin Cunningham?" I asked again. Rane had hooked me, and now I was struggling against the line as he reeled me in.
He stood up, stretching his arms over his head. The noise of the bus starting up again nearly drowned out what he had to say, forcing me to lean in to catch it. "Ask Scarlett about Kevin," Rane said. "Maybe you should have had some fun these past five years, little brother. It's gotta smart, thinking how you waited all this time, and she just moved right on."
Something thick and hard settled into my chest. I could taste the bitterness at the back of my throat. I looked towards the front of the bus where Scarlett sat hunched over her notebook, scrawling in that strange shorthand of hers. Her whole face was flushed, and even from back here I could see that her eyes glowed unnaturally bright.
But I was too fucking angry to leave it for better timing.
I stood up, hating how easily Rane had baited me, even as I silently thanked him for finally getting the answers I couldn't. "Kevin, huh?" I called up to the front of the bus. "That's his name?" The motion of the bus matched the slip-sliding sensation in my stomach. I stormed up the aisle towards her. "Was that who you left to go meet? Was that why you weren't waiting for me?"
Scarlett set down her pen. I waited, fist clenched at my side. I waited for her icy response, her cold words reminding me that she didn't owe me an explanation, that it was her life and I didn't control her. I waited for her to point out the obvious, that what was done was done and I should really fucking let it go by now.
Instead, she screamed and punched the panel in front of her.
There were only a few times I had seen Scarlett fall apart. She didn't do it unless she had a good reason. I stood at the front of the bus, bracing my hand on the back of the seat across from her, and waited to hear the reason.
She took a deep breath. "I didn't cheat on you," she said calmly. Only the single tear tracking down her cheek betrayed her. She stared straight ahead, her eyes fixed on a point in front of her that was both far away and close at hand. "I didn't do that. I met Kevin in college."
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. This was what I needed to hear. "So you have a boyfriend?"
She shook her head vehemently. "No. No, I don't."
"You broke up?"
She gave one small, stiff nod.
I felt like I was running as hard as I could just to catch up with wherever she was. "Is that why you're upset?" I demanded. "Because the breakup and all?"
She let out a slow hissing sound, like air leaking out of a balloon. "I am not upset about breaking up with him, no."
Her fists were clenched, and she still stared at that fixed point ahead of her. And inside of my chest, my heart divided into two warring camps. One of them, the one that was loudly cheering and turning somersaults, was thrilled that Scarlett was actually, unquestionably single. The other part, hurt and wary, wondered why she was so damned delighted about being single.
"Things ended badly?" I ventured. It seemed imperative to keep her talking. This might be the only chance I had before she clammed up again.
She nodded stiffly. "Yes."
It was just a small motion, and if I didn't know her as well as I did, I probably would have missed it. But I was watching her, a student of her face with years of study under my belt, so I saw it. That little wobble in her lush lower lip.
Scarlett was trying to be brave.
Scarlett wanted to cry instead.
That same awkward rush of protective feelings that gripped me when I saw her talking to my shithead older brother grabbed ahold of me now and wouldn't let me go.
I sat down in the seat next to her. "Scarlett, did he hurt you?" I asked, slowly, steadily.
She opened her mouth soundlessl
y then shut it. "I don't want to talk about it." Then she looked at me, finally tearing her eyes from that vacant space to look me full in the face. "He wasn't a good person, Keir. I finally figured that out, even though it took me a really long time. He didn't treat me right."
She swallowed. "Not like you."
Chapter 20
Scarlett
The miles rolled out beside me, flat and featureless. The gray sky was still somehow glarey, casting weird shadows on the array of writing tools in front of me, notebooks, voice recorder, laptop....
I squinted at the screen of my laptop and adjusted it for, like, the fifty billionth time. It didn't help.
Two weeks in and I still had a fat wad of nothing.
As if on cue, a shadow fell over my lap. "How is the story coming?" Keir asked, looming above me.
I set down my notebook, squinted at him and sighed.
He slid into the seat next to me, throwing his arm over the back in a way that could have been casual, could have been intentional. It was all in the way I chose to interpret it.
I had no idea how I chose to interpret it.
But I didn't want him to move it, either.
"I'm not exactly sure," I said, staring down at my notes and chewing on the inside of my lip. I felt like I was at the edge of coherence. There was something there, in those scribbled pages. A germ of the best piece I had ever written in my life.
I just needed to find it.
Keir leaned forward, studying my indecipherable scrawl with pursed lips. "How are you not sure?" he asked.
I interlaced my fingers and stretched my arms over my head. My shoulder accidentally brushed the bare skin of his bicep.
He was very, very warm.
I set my arms back down in my lap and cleared my throat. "You know how it is," I exhaled. He was already listening intently. Had his eyes always been this color? Halfway between gray and blue, the color of the dark clouds that rolled in from Lake Erie ahead of a winter storm. I looked away. "For a while, you're just sort of...gathering." That was the right word. "Gathering, yeah. Getting it all down. All of the thoughts and impressions, even if they're complete shit, you still write them down. Then you sit down and see what you have. It's not until you sit down and look at all that you've gathered that the story really begins to form. Before that, it's just pulling everything together."
He blinked once, slow and sleepy, like a cat, then nodded. "I get that."
His arm was warm, and somehow, his voice was even warmer. Sitting next to him was like stretching out in front of a cozy fireplace with a mug of hot cocoa in your hands.
I smiled over at him. "I thought you would understand. Is it the same for you guys? When you're writing an album?"
He chuckled. "Oh yeah. We are the kings of throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks."
I had to laugh. "I never would have thought to describe it like that, but you're absolutely right." I nodded, staring down at the scrawled on scraps on my lap, on the seat, on the floor... "I have to write down all the shit first. Then I have to figure out what's going to stick."
He leaned in even closer so that I could only take him in in pieces. A forearm, strong and corded from playing the guitar. A cheekbone, heavily shadowed with dark stubble. The corner of his mouth, raised in a little nostalgic smile... "You should know all about our 'process,' Scar." He put the word process in very firm air quotes. "You were there. You saw it." I was nodding without meaning to. "You were there when everything we did was shit. You saw us just starting to throw it at the wall."
I shook my head. "It never really sounded like shit to me," I said.
Keir leaned back, laughing. "Now you're just making fun of me."
"I am not!" I protested. "I always knew you guys were going to amount to something." This time, I moved a little closer to him, greedy for his warmth again. "Wasn't I always telling you that?"
He smiled, and just like that, I felt myself pulled back helplessly into the memories. But there was something else there, too, something besides memory.
Something...now.
"Well, you know, you did say that, now that I remember," Keir drawled. "But I guess I kind of always thought that was just sweet talking me to get to my magical dick."
"Your dick isn't all that magical," I huffed.
"Really now? There would be a few who disagree."
I looked at him sharply. His red tongue poked tantalizingly out from between his lips. Then he was laughing. "She won't even let me lie! Cold as ice."
He said it so casually. I was stunned.
"A...few?" I ventured.
His smile faded. "No. Not a few."
I hesitated. "It would be okay with me, you know," I said after a moment. "If other girls...you know..."
"Enjoyed the magical power of my dick?"
I snorted. "Yes. Exactly."
The smile was completely gone. "No," he said, standing up suddenly. "Actually,no, it wouldn't."
I was about to ask why, but he suddenly stood up and strode to the back of the bus, mumbling loudly about not drinking so much pop.
He still says pop instead of soda. Why did that hold my heart so tightly? It seemed like everything he did, everything he said, left a mark on me that lasted much longer than the moment itself.
I opened my laptop and began to write.
A tour bus is its own world. A self-contained ecosystem with its own histories; past, present and future. A show only lasts for a moment in the grand scheme of the tour, but tying those moments together is the blurry world of the bus.
Some things are true, even if they aren't real. All great artists have understood this. There is no lie in fiction, in the worlds they create, but neither is there fact. It exists in the gray, in the blurry space between reality and fantasy, the distorted reflection of your own face in the bus window staring back at you
In that reflection, everything looks a little warped, and it's hard to know if what you're seeing is truly you.
And if it is, could you really have changed that much?
Chapter 21
Keir
I wobbled unsteadily to the back of the bus. On my right, I passed the snoring lump that was Balzac, on the left, the drawn curtain of Pepper's bunk. From his perch near the ceiling, Twitch grinned down at me from his handheld game, then went back to swearing and killing zombies.
Rane's bunk was at the very back of the bus. My brother spotted me and gave me a look of blank disinterest before looking back at his phone. His thumbs were flying over keypad of his phone. If I had to guess, I would venture to say he was distracting the hell out of Maddie as she was on set.
I plopped down at the edge of his bunk, jostling him.
"What?" he grunted, still staring at his phone screen.
"Always so quick with a kind word," I said.
A little chime sounded, and he smiled at his screen. Whatever she had written seemed to please him immensely. I did not want to know.
He set the phone aside with a sigh. "I wasn't sure if you even remembered I was on tour with you."
I rolled my eyes. "Oh, save me the butthurt. I came all the way back here to talk to you."
Rane leaned back against the wall and regarded me skeptically. "Oh yeah?"
I sighed heavily. "So," I started. This was going to be painful. "You know how you like to play benevolent big brother?"
His mouth worked. "I like to think I do more than just play, asshole."
Flattery will get you everywhere, I reminded myself. "Well, I'm here looking for some brotherly advice."
The curl of his smile straightened back out again. "Fuck."
"Why, 'fuck'?"
"You're falling for her again, aren't you?" Rane darted a look towards the front of the bus where Scarlett sat buried in her notes. Was I imagining the shaft of sunlight that seemed to light her from within? I had to be. It was rainy as fuck outside.
I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. "That's the shit I'm here to ask about." As soon as I
said that, the words seem to fly out of my reach. I fumbled, stuttering, feeling Rane's eyes boring into the back of my skull. "I feel like there's all this...stuff...in the way. Past stuff." I looked out the window, watching the whizzing cars, the passing trucks. "I feel like I can't see what's happening past that stuff, and when I get one little glimpse through it all, when it shifts for a second to let me look past it, it's out there on the other side of this sort of...grimy window." I shook my head. I wasn't making a damn bit of sense and I knew it, but I was still trying to make him understand, even though I was pretty sure I didn't. "I see something. But I can't get a clear view of what's really there."
When I looked back at my brother,his eyebrows were raised in surprise. "Shit," he finally said. Then he reached for the notebook at the side of his bunk. "I dare say that was some fucking poetry, right there."
I had to laugh. "Yeah? Maybe you shouldn't be hogging all the songwriting duties after all."
Rane scribbled something on the notepad, then handed it to me. "Here. Write it down."
"Write what down?"
He sighed in exasperation. "You're not a fucking Neanderthal. And you're not illiterate; I've seen you with all your books, your fucking suitcase full of them." He spoke slowly and carefully, like I was a brain-damaged child. "You've got some words in your head. Writing them down will get them out of your head, see?"
"You're pretty obnoxious; anyone ever tell you that?"
He ignored me. "Get the words out of your head, where you can't see them, and onto the page where you can."
This time, it was my turn to raise my eyebrows. "You're obnoxious as fuck, but maybe you're smarter than you look."
Rane chuckled. "Shut up. You'll ruin my reputation."
I looked down at the notepad. It was covered with Rane's terrible penmanship, scratchy and illegible. I could make out a few lines that I recognized from the song he'd written about Maddie, Raining Fire. This journal was clearly something pretty private. I felt oddly touched that he was letting me use it. "Hey."
He had already picked his phone back up again. "What?"