“What about your parents?” he insisted.
“I’m staying with my granddad this summer. Look, I can’t go. I’m sorry, Sam.” I clicked the phone off.
At some point while I’d talked to him, I’d sunk to the floor with my back against the bed. Now I looked around the room that wasn’t mine, used as a bedroom so long ago and piled with so much impersonal junk that I honestly wasn’t sure whether it had once been my mother’s room or one of my uncles’. The time was almost seven and the room had grown dusky, but by comparison the windows looked bright with daylight. The twilight seemed infinite in Nashville this time of year, like summer in Alaska, one day merging into another in an endless wash.
An hour must have passed—now it was the fireflies I noticed out the window rather than the sunlight—when a knock sounded on the door.
I didn’t feel comfortable enough with my grandfather to have a talk with him. I didn’t want to see him right now or discuss how I deserved this. I’d already done that once with my family. But I was living in his house, and he’d gotten me the job. After a resigned sigh, I called, “Come in.”
I heard the door open, but I kept my eyes on the old wooden floor, feeling hungry and sick to my stomach at the same time. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t be ironic and therefore pathetic. I saw myself as he must see me, a punk sitting on the floor, a defiant girl utterly beaten by an old man and a “no.”
When the seconds stretched and he didn’t say anything either, I looked up. It wasn’t my granddad in the doorway. It was Sam.
He squinted into the dark room, unable to locate me. But I saw him perfectly, his dark hair shining and his face bathed in the softest light from the windows. Maybe he thought he’d come to rescue me, but I knew from the way my heart pounded at the sight of him that I’d never been in more trouble.
4
He flicked the light switch on and saw me. “Oh, I’m sorry, I—” Embarrassed, I backed against the bed like a mouse in a cage with nowhere to go. He’d already seen the mascara stains under my eyes. I hadn’t been crying. My granddad refusing to let me play a gig was nothing to cry about. But I’d been rubbing my eyes pretty hard, something I tended to do when my looks didn’t matter. And I hadn’t thought anybody but my granddad would see me until next Tuesday at the mall.
Instead of retreating out the door, stammering in embarrassment, Sam stood still with one hand on the knob and the other gripping his guitar case. His face was open with concern. “What’s the matter?”
I ran my middle fingers under both eyes at once, assuredly emphasizing my beaten-up look, which is what I got for wearing heavy eye makeup in the first place. It didn’t matter what Sam thought of me anyway. I deserved what I got. All I wanted now was to release him with as little further mortification on both our parts as possible. I mumbled, “I told you, my granddad won’t let me go tonight. It’s not even that. It’s just been a long . . .” Week. Month. Year. “. . . day.”
Sam looked over his shoulder, as if he could see down the stairs and around the walls to my granddad. Then he walked into the room and slid his guitar case onto my bed.
He’d changed again from his T-shirt into a different color of the same plaid shirt he’d worn as Johnny Cash’s son, tight across his chest, with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows like a 1940s farmhand. He’d traded his Chucks for a pair of cowboy boots that looked like they’d seen a few seasons herding cattle. I was pretty sure they hadn’t, though. Sam didn’t strike me as the cattle-herding type. Sam herded people.
He walked back around the bed and stood right in front of me, gazing way down at me, his boots toe to toe with my sneakers. “You can’t wear that,” he said. “You’re cute, but I need you to pull out some stops for me.” He held his hand down to help me up.
The ceiling light behind his head made the edges of his hair seem to glow. I blinked up at him as I put my hand in his. When he pulled me to my feet, I realized how sore my butt had gotten from sitting on the bare floor for an hour.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered. “I can’t go.”
“This isn’t about the gig,” he whispered back. “This is about a date. I told your granddad I met you today and found out you were living with him, so I happened by, wondering if you wanted to go see a band with me tonight.” He reached over to the bed again, opened his case, and looped his guitar around his neck. He placed my fiddle case in the empty space and buckled the guitar case shut. “I said it was a band I know really well.” He beamed at me, pleased with his half-truth.
“And he said yes?” I asked incredulously. It seemed impossible that after I’d agonized for an hour over my death sentence, Sam had fixed everything with a simple lie.
“All he told me was to bring you back in one piece,” Sam said, “which sounded to me like he’s letting you go. He likes me.”
“Really?” I squeaked. I wanted to go—more than anything. But maybe Sam was making this up. He was lying to me about my granddad giving me permission, and he was planning to sneak me out of the house somehow. My granddad wouldn’t believe me when I tried to explain later. He would tell my parents, and there went Vandy. There went the hope I’d been clinging to for the past year that I would find myself again when I got out from under this family.
But Sam sounded absolutely sincere as he said, “I’ve been coming here since I was little, you know.”
“Oh,” I said, remembering that Sam had guessed who my granddad was as soon as I mentioned my fake last name. “So as long as I’m with you, I can do what I want? That’s some power you have over people.”
“Isn’t it? I’ve fooled them all! They have no idea their trust is way misplaced.” He winked at me.
“Wow! You are one talented guy.”
“I don’t know. What does it say about me that girls’ grandfathers reverse their punishment when I step in the room? That’s kind of disturbing.”
“He must think you won’t lay a hand on me.”
Sam’s eyes brightened. With a small smile playing across his mouth, he said quietly, “We’ll see.” He nodded toward my closet. “I’ll go back downstairs while you change. Do you have any other charges you want me to get you out of while I’m down there? Parking tickets? Bank robberies?”