“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.”