Dirty Little Secret (33 page)

That’s when I started to cry.

14

I
sobbed all the way down the alley,
worried about what could have happened to change Julie’s mind about wanting to be a star. Wondering what was wrong with Sam that he wanted to be a star more than anything. Sad for myself.

In that short walk, I cried for everything I’d stopped myself from crying for over the past year: how unreasonable and unkind Toby had been. How cold everyone had been at school. How unfeeling my parents had been. How far I had fallen for Sam so quickly, with no rope or handhold to climb back out of that hole.

But by the time I reached the bottom of the alley and needed to cross the street and wind my way through the throngs of tourists to the Riverwalk, I was pulling Sam’s handkerchief from my pocket and dabbing the tears from under my eyes. I might not be the front chick in a rockabilly band anymore, but I still had a style to uphold. I wasn’t going to ruin Ms. Lottie’s hard work.

And I wanted to look like a million bucks when I saw my parents and Julie.

Near the stage, I shouted over the music for a guard to tell me where to find my family. They must have called ahead to him that
I was coming, or I looked enough like hot new country sensation Julie Mayfield that he recognized I was related. He pointed me toward a line of country stars’ trailers lined up at one end of the parking lot. I walked along them until I found my parents’ RV. I stood at the door for a few seconds, wondering whether to just go on in, and then I knocked.

My granddad let me in. I passed right through the living area. My parents sat around the kitchen table where they’d told me Julie was going to be a star and my career was dead. My mother started yelling at me that Julie had come this far, and now she was going to throw it all away out of immaturity and stubbornness. Ignoring my mother, I climbed the ladder into the upper sleeping area.

Julie was watching for me. When she saw my head appear, she spread her arms wide.

“Bay!” she squealed.

I smiled. “Hey, Julie.”

We hugged for a long minute, sitting on the mattress, and then we lay down, staring at the ceiling only a few feet above our heads, and talked just like we used to when we dreamed of making it big. All the photos of stars that I’d taped to the ceiling on my side of the mattress were still there. I hadn’t crawled into this space in a year, but Julie hadn’t taken any of my stuff down.

“Even though the single’s only been out a day,” she said, “they can tell it’s selling well, and the album is racking up presales. They want to go back to contract with me right now for another album. I told Mom and Dad that I want something in exchange this time. I want some of your songs on the second album. They say that’s ridiculous and they won’t even approach the record company about something so childish. Therefore, I am not going onstage. My God, you look beautiful.”

I was flattered for about half a second, first about my songs,
then about the hair and makeup Ms. Lottie had done for me so I looked as put together as Julie, but that quickly turned to annoyance. “You can’t just not go onstage, Julie.” I had walked away from a gig myself, for Julie. And that made me angry. “You don’t get it. My songs are something I wrote as a child. You have an adult job. You signed an adult contract to get on that stage and entertain the thousands of people who bought tickets.”

“No,
you
don’t get it,” she insisted. “You wrote those songs only a year or two ago. You were my age when you wrote them. If you were a child then, I’m a child now. And you know what that means? I can’t sign a contract. My parents can sign it for me, but nobody can make me perform. Not unless I get what I want.”

I was astounded that she seemed so sure of herself, so defiant. She scared me. All of a sudden, she was reminding me of me. “Why are you doing this?”

“It’s the only way I could think of to get what I want. I could go on a hunger strike, but I would get so
hungry
. Mom would make her chocolate chip cookies and I’d be toast.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Why do you want any of my songs on your album? You don’t have to do this to bolster my ego and keep me from riding with coked-up drivers.”

“That’s ridiculous. If I wanted to keep you from riding with coked-up drivers, I’d just ignore your calls for another week and a half. I can tell that’s been working, because your voice mails have sounded increasingly desperate.” She grinned at me, her blue eyes looking angelic and self-satisfied.

I said slowly, “You little devil.”

“Fact,” she said. “I want to sing your songs because they’re good. They’re different. They’re real. They’re about being a teenager. Mom and Dad didn’t care I was signing away all my rights to choose what songs I perform. Now the company is picking shit for
me, and I have to put my name on it. I need you to help me get my career back on track. I wouldn’t want you if you weren’t good.”

I rolled over on the mattress—carefully, so my hair didn’t get crazy—and looked at her, as we’d gazed at each other up here a million times as children. Julie had understood me better than anybody. I thought I’d lost that in my life, and maybe I would never completely regain it. But as she grinned at me, I felt like I was getting a little piece of it back.

“Are you sure that’s the only reason you don’t want to go onstage?”

Her pretty face fell. “I screwed up at the Opry, Bay.”

I poked her. “Of course you didn’t. You looked a little nervous, but it was your first time at the Opry, for God’s sake! You’ll do better tonight, and even better when the Opry asks you back.”

She shook her head, and now her eyes were welling up with tears. “You don’t know how bad I sucked. You weren’t there.”

“I
was
there.”

She stared at me and sobbed once. “You
were
?”

“Yes.”

“Even after we didn’t invite you?” she wailed. “Even after I wouldn’t talk to you on the
phone
?”

“Yes,” I said firmly. I felt around on the mattress and took her hand. “Listen to me. Whatever happens between us, I will always come to your Opry.”

She squeezed my hand and kissed my cheek. “Thank you.”

I slid off the mattress and climbed down the ladder. I hadn’t even reached the bottom when my mother asked, “Did you tell her to get onstage?”

As I set my feet on the floor of the RV, my mother patted the seat beside her at the table. I kept standing and folded my arms. “I told Julie that she’s worked hard and she’s done everything you
asked her to do for a year. If she wants you to fight for one item in her contract, she’s within her rights to withhold something you want until you promise her what she wants.”

“I knew you would pull something like that,” my mother sneered. She turned to my dad and asked, “Why didn’t you stop me from calling her?”

My dad opened his mouth, and my granddad moved toward the table, but I didn’t need their help this time. I said, “You can’t ask for my opinion, then say my opinion isn’t worth anything when you don’t like it. I am part of this family, too. You are one of the many reasons Julie is a success, but so am I.
I
worked hard and did everything you asked me to do, too, for seventeen years. The way you raised Julie made her want a career in music. You raised me that way, too, and you can’t penalize me now for doing what you raised me to do.” My mother took a breath. Before she could speak, I went on, “Granddad got me a job playing fiddle with those tribute bands that walk around the mall.”

“You did
what?”
my mother shouted at my granddad.

I continued in a louder voice, just as she’d yelled over my protests my whole life. I quoted her line that she’d used on me so many times: “Excuse me, but I have the floor.”

She stopped talking and stared at me with wide blue eyes. I’d been shocked in the past at some of the similarities between us. She was having that reaction now.

I said, “I’m in another band, too, that has a gig on Broadway tonight. Or, I
was
in a band. And it’s not right for you to take away my college tuition because of that. Parents pay for their children’s college if they can, and you certainly can. It’s not right for you to take that away because I pursue the career you taught me to pursue. But if that’s what you’re going to do, so be it. I will join another band. I will try not to embarrass you or Julie, but I’m not going to
live my life denying this huge part of myself just because you want to keep me a secret.”

For once in her life, my mom seemed shocked into silence. It was my dad who said quietly, “We don’t have time to talk about this right now, sugar bear. We’ve got to get Julie onstage. We’re back in Nashville for the next few months. You can move back home, and we’ll have plenty of time to work it out.”

“You just made me move to Granddad’s,” I said. “I’m comfortable where I am, if he’ll let me stay.”

I felt my granddad’s hand on my shoulder.

“Well, come by tomorrow afternoon,” my mother said weakly, “and we’ll talk.”

“I can’t. I have a gig from two to six.” I looked at my parents’ forlorn faces. Standing firm had felt good, but I did want to work this out with them. I said, “I can come by your house in the morning.”

As I stepped from the RV onto the pavement, the hot sunset hit me full in the face. It was a moment before I glimpsed Sam, Ace, and Charlotte talking behind the orange tape with the security guard watching them from a few yards away. When they saw me, they waved me over.

Part of me didn’t want to go. But I couldn’t spend the rest of the night going around being firm with people. That felt good only while I was doing it, and I knew better now than to take rash action that I would regret for a year. I walked toward them. When Sam held out his arms, I ran the rest of the way in my cowgirl boots and didn’t bother crossing under the tape before I lost myself in his hug. The tape stretched between us, and we hugged around it.

“I’m sorry,” he said in my ear. “I was wrong. I didn’t mean it. What you said about cutting your hair, that you knew as you were
doing it that you would be sorry for the rest of your life, but you were so angry that you couldn’t stop . . . that’s how it was when I was saying that to you. And I don’t want to be sorry for the rest of my life. Please come back to us.” He held me at arm’s length. “Please come back to
me
.”

I looked into his dark, intense eyes, then over at Ace and Charlotte. They both gazed at me somberly, with Ace’s arms wrapped around Charlotte’s chest like they couldn’t believe they’d finally gotten together and now they had no intention of letting each other go.

Finally Julie’s voice came from behind me. “You’d better say yes, Bailey. You haven’t had a boy that cute come on to you since that blond guitar player at the bluegrass festival. The one you looked for for years? The one you had such a crush on?”

Sam stared dumbfounded over my shoulder at Julie. His eyes slid to mine.

I felt myself blushing hard. There was nothing left to do but duck under the tape and walk forward into his arms again.

“Thank God,” Ace said.

“Hi, I’m Charlotte,” I heard Charlotte say to Julie, “and this is Ace, and that’s Sam. We’re Bailey’s band.”

“You’re in a
band
?” Julie shrieked at me. “Bailey, you didn’t tell me you’re in a
band
!”

“You haven’t been speaking to me,” I murmured against Sam’s chest. I never opened my eyes, just listened to his racing heart.

Suddenly I backed away and looked up at him. “Are you missing your gig right now? For me?”

He looked stricken. He said carefully, “I am
willing
to miss my gig for you.” Gesturing to the parking lot and the distant crowd around the Riverwalk stage, he said, “I am here, potentially missing my gig, for you.” He glanced at his watch. “If we hurry, we can still
make the gig. But if you want me to miss it to prove how much I love you—”

“Bailey doesn’t need that proof, do you, Bailey?” Charlotte prompted me.

“No, I don’t,” I said. “I didn’t mean what I said before, either. Missing a gig would be completely out of character for you. I wouldn’t love you if you weren’t you.”

He eyed me a moment more. “My God, you look gorgeous. You always do, but tonight you wanted me to eat my heart out.” Suddenly he shouted, “Okay, let’s go!” and dragged me by the hand down the sidewalk, toward Broadway.

As we ran, I turned around and called to Julie, “Good luck with your gig!”

“Good luck with
your
gig!” she hollered back.

The four of us hustled around the crowds and up the hill. I didn’t think about Julie again that night. I had a show to put on.