Blue didn’t look back. She’d told Roe to wait for her. Believing she knew what she was doing didn’t mean nothing could go wrong, and she didn’t want Roe with her if it did. She left her pack, too, and the guitar case, slinging the guitar by its strap across her back.
The city was all lights, sound, and traffic, even at three minutes to midnight. The hot air smelled of exhaust. The buildings were lower than she’d expected, and less dense, though spires rose in the distance. She could see “Hollywood” on the street sign across the road. A few drivers yelled at her as she strode out to the middle of the intersection. There was no island to stand on, just the pavement and lanes, with her in the middle.
Then the lights changed and Blue stood there, frozen, as the traffic rushed past. Somewhere she heard a clock begin to chime, or maybe it was only in her head. It didn’t matter. She closed her eyes and thought, Now.
Nothing changed for a moment. Then the noise of the traffic lessened, smoothing away like paint gliding over a dirty wall. She opened her eyes.
Around her, the world zoomed by. Lights, cars, people, lives—she saw them as brilliant streaks flashing past. Slow down, she wanted to say, but they couldn’t. In that space, she understood they couldn’t, that everything passed by faster than you ever thought it would.
She wasn’t alone. She could feel it in the electric spark that raced up her spine. She only took in pieces at first: the red dress blowing a little in the breeze, the tips of the long black hair rippling as well. Next came the smell, the sweet scent of meltwater and wood smoke as spring brought an end to winter.
“Interesting choice,” the woman said. “You used to be able to hear the dreams whispering from the hopeful come to pay homage here. Now?” She shrugged. “One more set of streets.”
Roe had told her this intersection used to be famous, still was in a kitschy way. The road names had meant nothing to her.
“Bluebird.”
She’d left her notebook behind, as well. She thought, instead, of leaving Maine, of the librarian and her photos, of Steve and his courage, of Andrea and her daughter, of Tish, of music and faces and cruelty and kindness. Of herself.
It’s time. It’s mine. You have to give it back.
“Are you commanding me, Blue Riley?” The woman watched, intently.
I am.
The woman stepped forward. “Close your eyes.”
Blue did. She could feel the woman come closer still, could feel the heat of her and the movement of the air. Even closer, her hand brushing against Blue’s forehead, carrying with it the smell of diesel and dirt, of Mama, her skin, her soap. For a moment, Blue wavered, but she kept her eyes closed.
She felt lips touch her forehead as hands held her head. A rush-and-tumble traveled through her, like the filling of a cup beneath the spill of a waterfall. She heard bits of songs—so many, so different—their notes like the battering of butterfly wings against her.
“Open your eyes.”
Still everything streaked past fast as starlight, only the woman in the red dress motionless before her.
“Do you know what you will do? He is stronger than you think, but so are you.”
As if there was a question. The world may have been tipped toward the place where someone could die in a ditch without help. That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to do everything in her power to right the balance, starting with her own sister.
She nodded. The woman smiled. “You’ll not share it with me, will you?”
Blue shook her head. Her voice. She’d given it away once; she never would again. Life took things from you: mothers, friends, sometimes even choices. But that wasn’t the same as giving parts of yourself away. It was her voice to use: to say no and yes and “I love you” with, to sing with, even to hold silent. That night at the crossroads, her voice had meant little to her. Not just her voice. She’d ignored so many parts of herself, the ones that could be brave or loving, that could hurt and survive and become something more. The woman in the red dress had taken from her at the crossroads, but she’d given her the chance to become . . . herself.
The woman was gone. Around her the traffic stilled as the light changed. She ran across the road and back to Roe, who sat on her pack, drumming on her knees.
“That was one of the weirder things I’ve ever watched anyone do. Tell me we didn’t come here just so you could play in traffic.”
Blue looked up into the sky, the sooty gray sky, all the stars hidden from view.
“Hell no,” she said. “It’s time to find my sister.”
Roe knew a person who knew a person who could tell them all the ins and outs of filming Major Chord. Before she’d talk to that person, though, she wanted to hear how Blue had walked into the intersection and come back with a voice.
“Were you pretending all along?”
“No way.” It felt funny to talk. She missed the writing a little. No room remained in the notebook, though. It was full of magic.
“So what was going on?”
Blue told her everything. They sat on the curb at a bus stop; Roe drummed on the soles of her sneakers with the drumsticks she’d brought along, while Blue explained it all.
“So why then? Your sister had been gone for two years.”
“We had a promise that we’d always be together on Mama’s birthday. The first year, she called. The second, she didn’t.” The rest—Teena and Beck and all the things that had felt so important in Eliotville—mattered so little now.
“Why’d she go?”
“I thought it was because I’d found these letters to my mom from Cass’s father. Cass got mad because she thought they meant one thing, only they didn’t. Anyway, I thought she left because she was mad at me. Now I think she was looking for her father because she thought he could fix things. She thought our lives would have been better if our mother had been famous.”
Roe nodded. “So why Major Chord?”
Blue explained the rest, about the man in the blue shirt and Amy’s soul and the contracts the others had signed. “The man in the blue shirt is using fame to get them to give up the truest part of them. ’Cause that’s what a soul is, right? Like, Jed broke his promise to Bet, left her behind after she gave up her scholarship for him. I can stop it still, if I can get to them.”
They spent the night on the living room floor of a crowded apartment. It belonged to Fray’s nephew, who picked them up looking half asleep and vanished as soon as they reached the place.
Roe had answers for them by breakfast the next morning. “The deal is that tickets to the filming tonight are totally gone; but my friend has an idea. This story you have, the whole teenage-girl-travels-across-country-to-see-missing-sister thing? People watching would eat it up. So he has a friend who has a friend who works for Entertainment Express, and she can get you in to see a producer. They can probably get you to the show tonight.”
The office building Roe’s friend sent them to was deep in the city. Blue shivered as she looked up at the towers. It wasn’t Chicago, and she wasn’t who she’d been then. She touched her throat and hummed, just to hear the sound. The feeling passed, replaced by a sense of conspicuousness as she walked into the building, her jeans loose around her waist, her T-shirt faded. The thud of her boots sounded nothing like the clip of the receptionist’s shoes; she felt like an elephant following a bird at a watering hole.
The producer listened as she told her story again, a version tailored to her goal. He went from bored to calculating as she watched. By the end, he was all but rubbing his hands together.
“So C. R. has no idea you’ve come to see her?”
“None.”
“And do you have any musical talent yourself? Anything?”
She smiled. “I play guitar and sing.”
“Spectacular. Let me make a few phone calls.”
She and Roe waited under the receptionist’s curious eye for ten minutes or so before the phone buzzed and the woman sent them back in.
“Well,” said the man
. “What do you think about joining your sister onstage tonight?”
“I’d love to.” She rode the adrenaline wave like a surfer. “I have a question first, just so I don’t mess up. Can you tell me about the rules of the contract for Major Chord contestants?”
They tried to convince Blue to wear a dress, but when she stepped out of the black SUV that evening, she was in jeans. They were clean, fitted jeans, and the producers’ stylist had paired them with a green T-shirt that was crisp from its first wash. The boots she’d offered no compromise on. They no longer made her feet ache. She missed it a little—not the feeling as much as the sense of purpose they’d given her. That was the point, though. She understood it now. They never were telling her how to find Cass, just reminding her to keep moving until she found herself.
She had Roe with her. Roe had her drumsticks. Blue had told everyone that she was coming with her own band, but the truth was that she had only the two of them, along with the song she’d written out on sheets torn from the unicorn journal. It would have to be enough.
A woman with a clipboard directed them through the back door of the theater and on down a dimly lit hall to a small room. Another woman bustled in behind them and approached Blue with a makeup brush in hand. Blue shook her head.
“You’ll look washed out. You want to look good onscreen.”
“Not worried about that.” Makeup wouldn’t make a bit of difference to what she was about to do.
Everyone left but Roe, and Blue settled down to wait, her stomach tying itself in knots. She’d escaped Rat. She’d figured out the puzzle. She had lost people and survived. Why was the thought of stepping onto the Major Chord stage so hard?
Because this time she was playing for more than pocket change. This time she was playing for Cass, and she was doing it in front of an audience big enough to give almost anyone stage fright.
She sat hunched over the wastepaper basket, her stomach roiling. A knock at the door brought on dry heaves, and Roe left her spot rubbing Blue’s back to answer it.
“Holy shit” was the first thing Blue heard. She raised her head.
Tish. Spiky hair, leather jacket, dark-rimmed eyes. Fiddle case under her arm. Battle gear.
“How did you know?” Blue’s stomach lurched, then quieted for a moment.
“Hey, she speaks! Sharlene has a thing for these reality shows, and we were watching the other night together and I saw Cass. I knew who she was, and I knew you’d come for her. I figured you might need help. I thought I should be here.” The look she gave Blue was full of so many things that were hard to say. “Anyway, I pulled a few very old strings. Rick and I were never on good terms, but this got his attention.”
“He knows?”
“Now he does.”
Her heart gave a lurch of its own. “Have you seen her? Does she know?”
“Not yet.” Tish laid her fiddle case down on the table, opened it. “I assume you’ve got something of your own to play. You planning on sharing it with me?”
Blue raised her guitar, then lowered it again. Something else needed answering first. “Did you know who the woman in the red dress was?”
Tish studied her before speaking. “Blue, there’s always a muse waiting. There’s always a journey required. You can’t play—can’t sing or write for real—until you start finding your way.”
“But she hurt people.” Blue could still hear Andrea’s scream as the police entered Beyond.
“The world hurts people. We hurt people. She just made you open your eyes. And now that you see, it’s up to you to start making things better. Come on, kid, time to teach me your song.”
She had only one chance, and it hinged on holding the audience long enough to bring Cass in. Cass had been told by the producers that they’d done some digging to find out more about her background and that they loved the angle of Mama and Dry Gully and a tragic death so much that they’d done a special arrangement of “Avenue A” to showcase her voice. Cass wouldn’t like it, but she’d do it, because those were the rules of her contract. She had to sing what they told her to sing, had to dress how they told her to dress, had to be the person they decided she should be. In exchange, they’d fabricate fame for her.
To break the contract—to free Cass from the man in the blue shirt—Blue had to get her to be true onstage. She needed her to be the real Cass, not a doll with Cass’s voice and Cass’s hands and nothing of her own. And to do that, she needed her secret weapon.
Tish looked it over first. “Good work, kid,” she said, and suggested a few minor changes, only one of which Blue used. When they played it through—Roe providing a beat on the table, Tish coming in on fiddle like a swallow soaring effortlessly above—Blue nearly couldn’t sing. And when Tish joined her on the chorus, she missed a line as her throat closed around the words.
How had Mama given it up? How had she walked away from Tish who loved her, from the music that loved her even more, to return to Eliotville? Because she’d been scared. Because she’d seen what was coming, and she’d run back to the one place that had felt like safety, even though it didn’t fit.
“It wasn’t all her.” Tish looked at Blue as if her secrets were paraded on her face.
“What do you mean?”
Roe coughed and knelt to examine her shoelace.
“I was stupid, Blue. I forgot that fame is something other people hand you, while success is what you define for yourself. I was chasing the wrong thing, and it made me angry at the world. I started drinking more than I should. I started to believe what people said about me, started acting like it. It was her; but it was me, too, and it was complicated. We were stuck with her regret and my anger, and then we just ran out of time and there was no way to make it right anymore.”
A light gloss of sweat shone on Tish’s neck, her arms. The lines around her eyes, her mouth, were deeper in the harsh light. They were lines shaped by laughter and tears, by mistakes and triumphs. By Mama, by all of them.
Blue understood.
When the next knock came, it was to lead them backstage. The darkness there made the stage brilliant, like the sun rested on it.
“Do you know what’s up? Something, right?” A woman’s voice, close to her ear. Jill.
Blue got as far as “um” before Jill grabbed her.
“Blue Riley? How did you end up here? You were in Massachusetts last I knew. Wild!”
But Blue wasn’t paying attention, because the woman ahead of them had turned. Shorter hair, thinner face, same sly eyes, same careless mouth. “Blue? Bluebird? Oh, my God.” Everything vanished around them, just Cass holding Blue’s shoulders, pulling her so close that she could barely breathe.
There are things you can forget about someone gone away—things you have no reason to remember: like how you’re taller by just a finger’s width, and how it sounds when they say your name, or how they bite their lower lip when they try not to cry. And then, the moment you see them again, everything is there, as if you’d covered up your hand with a towel, forgot about it for days, months, years; until suddenly you found it again, working perfectly, and unmistakably yours. Blue clung to Cass as if she might step into the light and vanish again. It was that quick, that simple, that impossible to ever be without her again.
“What are you doing here? Did they find you? Is Lynne—” She broke off as she looked past Blue, into the shadows. “Tish?”
Tish didn’t move.
“What are you doing here?” The anger that had eaten away at Cass in Eliotville twisted her face into something ugly. She stepped toward Tish, reached out, and shoved her.
“How can you be here? How can you even think of being here when you left us? You left me.” In her sister’s face, Blue could see how hurt hardens itself into armor, into fury.
Tish cleared her throat. “I’m so sorry, Cassie Bear. I let my hurt get in the way of taking care of you. I never should have done it.”
“It’s not that easy,” Cass said. “You can’t just say things and have it
be done.”
Suddenly there was a woman with a clipboard, and she collected Blue and Roe and Tish, leading them onto the stage. From beyond the curtain came a steady rumble, and Blue knew she couldn’t face what was on the other side.
“I can’t. There’s no way—”
Roe answered. “This is nothing, Interstate. Badasses like you chew up crowds this size and spit them out before breakfast. You’re not even going to see them when the curtain goes up. It’ll be black out there, so you can pretend you’re singing in the shower.”
The woman with the clipboard was motioning with her fingers: five, four, three—Blue’s mouth went dry, someone was at her elbow plugging the guitar in—two, one. She wasn’t prepared—how could she be?—for the moment the curtain rose. Don’t look, she thought, even though it’s black, don’t try to look into it and see. She glanced back for Tish and found the man in the blue shirt instead, grinning at her from the wings. Her voice retreated into her throat, wrapping itself up like a flower blooming in reverse. She couldn’t sing. Not while she could remember Amy and the snick of teeth and her endless scream.
He patted his hands together in fake applause. He’d won. He knew it, she knew it. The only person who didn’t know it was Cass, waiting in the wings to lose her soul.
Blue closed her eyes and saw the lanterns lighting the walls of the barn. She could almost feel the warmth of the woodstove. Remember that the devil is the one who tells you to play a tune that’s not your own, and you can drive him right on out into the cold by playing what’s in your soul.
She began. Together, they’d worked out an intro similar enough to “Avenue A” that no one would know the difference until she sang the first words. Then it was up to them to hold the audience, up to her to get the others to join in. It all started with the first words.
Cold starlight, dusty road . . .
She almost stumbled, but Roe was there, providing the pulse beneath. Then Tish came in, spiraling above. The music was more than just Roe and Tish, though, it was Steve, and Dill, and Andrea, and the clatter of the train. It was the woods of Maine and the earth of Minnesota. As she reached the chorus for the first time, she realized it was Amy, too, her soul taken by the man in the blue shirt; and Marcos and his drugs; and the hunger that hollowed them. This world, she sang—and it was the librarian, and her father, and her mother waiting, always waiting—This world . . . She turned toward the others offstage.
Devil and the Bluebird Page 26