Sing (3 page)

90 Days Until Tour

June 14th

“WHERE ARE WE?”

I open my eyes and stare blurrily through the backseat window. I fell asleep somewhere around Portland, Maine, when Ray and the guys in the car ahead insisted on stopping for snacks. Now Tess is turning into a long, narrow parking lot and steering us toward the ocean. It feels like we could keep driving onto the rickety dock, over the water, and straight into the pale blue horizon.
Wait until I tell Jed about this
, I think, and then instantly feel the pain of losing him again. I wish I could erase him—his name, his face, his existence—from my memory.

“We're here!” Tess announces, turning off the engine of her beloved Prius—or “the Pree” as she affectionately
calls it. Tess is the only one of us who drives regularly, which is ironic given that she's also the only one who has lived in the city her entire life. The Pree was the first big purchase Tess ever made and I'm pretty sure she's more attached to it than she's ever been to an actual human being.

“We are?” Sammy looks up from her phone distractedly, taking in the sleepy dock and the deserted parking lot around us. A car door slams and I see Ray loping across the pavement, looking very fish-out-of-water in his reflective Ray-Bans, black polo, and pleated khakis. He grips the inside of the passenger-side window and peers in to see me sprawled out across the backseat. “You good?”

“Just woke up.” I yawn. After years of shuttling from hotel rooms to buses to planes, I can pretty much sleep anywhere. It was hard at first, but I got the hang of it: contorting my body into compact positions, tossing a sweatshirt or hat over my face, and dozing off within seconds. I stretch and sit up, noticing a smudge of orangey powder on the collar of Ray's shirt. “Cheese puffs?” I guess.

“Crap.” He sighs, patting the crumbs away with one enormous thumb.

I smile. “I'm telling Lori.” Ray's wife is a nutritionist and runs a tight ship. Cheese puffs are not on the meal plan.

Ray rolls his eyes before squinting into the sun. “Where's the boat?” The island is a forty-five minute ferry ride off the coast, which at first made me anxious. What will it feel like to be stranded in the middle of the ocean, with no team of stylists, no schedule, no events?

Now it doesn't feel far enough.

“Guess it's late,” Tess says, fiddling with the radio. She leaves the battery running but pushes the door open with one foot. “Gives us time to get lunch,” she says and climbs out. “This place has the best chicken salad on the planet.”

Sammy pockets her phone and gets out of the car, pulling her hair into a messy bun at the top of her head.

Tess nods toward a quiet café at the top of a small hill. “What do you think, Ray? Gluten-free bun? Hold the mayo?”

Ray crosses his arms over his broad chest and leans against the bumper, which dips perceptibly beneath his weight. “Coffee,” he grunts. “Black.”

I press my forehead against the window and look out across the water. A cluster of gulls hovers above the ocean, squawking and diving in a sort of dance. I can't remember the last time I was this close to the sea. The beach was just a short drive from my house in LA, but the only time I ever spent there was the week we shot the “California Christmas” special for MTV. Otherwise,
it was just the scenic blur of my daily commute to and from my house.

Choppy DJ chatter bursts from the car speakers and suddenly “You Are Here” comes on. It's a song I wrote about getting lost while driving around LA with Caleb. I still feel a little jolt every time I hear the opening bars of one of my tracks on the radio. Usually, it's a happy, heart-pumping thrill. But today it's more of a guilty pang, like I've been caught doing something I shouldn't.

Aside from my parents, I didn't tell anyone I was leaving the city. I thought about texting Terry, but I knew he'd try to talk me out of it. I've decided to call him when I get to the island, explain that getting away is the only option right now. There are three months until tour, and I have to relax before then. I can't risk another scene like yesterday. Terry won't be thrilled to hear that I've temporarily relocated to an isolated island hours and a boat ride away from any trappings of civilization, but he'll come around . . . eventually.

Out of habit, I pull my phone from the front pocket of my bag and scroll through old texts with Jed. I see my usual gushy, long-winded messages, full of kissy-face emojis and exclamation points, and his quick replies:
Yup
;
You too
;
Night
. I guess if I'd really been looking for it I would have noticed that he was distracted and curt. But why would I be looking for it? Just last week we'd done
an all-day event together in Central Park. He was by my side through the whole thing, his arm hooked easily around my waist. I'd never felt so supported.

I stare off across the still water, willing the boat to appear and magically transport me to someplace where I can pretend to be somebody else.

“Welcome home!”

Tess lugs our bags out of the trunk and plops them down on the grass beside her. I peel my legs from the sticky seat and climb out of the car as Sammy bounds up to the screen door like a dopey golden retriever.

The house is small and boxy, with missing shingles and a screened-in porch that's patched with electrical tape. But the paint on the trim is new, and a cheery row of peonies lines the stone walkway to the steps.

“What do you think?” Tess asks. I follow her gaze toward the horizon. The house may be plain, but the setting is something out of a fairy tale. A thick fog snakes between clusters of giant evergreens. A low, grassy marsh opens into a web of tidal pools. And beyond all that is the ocean, flat and still and so blue it's almost black.

“It's gorgeous,” I say. The air smells sweet and salty at the same time, honeysuckle mixed with gusts of a crisp sea breeze. My grandparents live in a place like
this. Theirs is a lake house in Wisconsin, but the feeling of being lost in nature is the same.

“It's no Four Seasons.” Tess laughs, shouldering her bag and starting for the house.

Ray leans in to scoop up my luggage, but I wave him off. “I got it,” I say. “You guys go get settled. We'll call you if we make any plans.”

Part of the deal I struck with my parents was that the guys had to stay at a B and B in town. I can handle being shadowed when we're out and about, but there's no way I'm spending the summer with a security team from dawn until dusk. The whole point of this trip is for me to feel normal again, and there's nothing normal about three burly bodyguards monitoring my every move.

After a thorough inspection of the house, Ray insists on rolling my bags to the steps before climbing back into his SUV and reversing down the dusty dirt road.

I open the screen door and am immediately transported to the summers of my childhood. The windows are covered in dusty plaid curtains, and there's a wood stove in the far corner of the living room. It even smells like my grandparents' house, a combination of mothballs and lingering ash from the stove.

It's perfect.

Sam and Tess are getting settled upstairs, the old
wooden floorboards groaning beneath their feet. I leave my bags near the bottom step and walk through the kitchen, a bright, narrow room with linoleum tiles and wallpaper trim. Between the kitchen and the living room is a sliding glass door that opens up to a small porch. I leave my sandals on the steps and start down the trail toward the water.

Strains of Sammy's laughter float on the breeze. I take a deep breath and feel a sharp twinge of missing home, Madison, my grandparents, and my mom and dad. I talk to them all the time, but it's not the same. It's not the same as waking up to the sounds of Mom in the kitchen, mixing batter for pancakes, classical music playing softly from the clock radio beside the stove.

Ahead of me, the water stretches out in all directions. The trail under my feet turns from rock to tall grass, opening up to a pebbly coast. I bend down to cuff the bottoms of my jeans and burrow my toes into the dark, cool sand. The waves crash into the rocks at intervals, sending up a dramatic spray of white.

My phone buzzes in my pocket and I jump. I slip it out and stare guiltily at the screen: Terry. I exhale loudly and answer the call, pressing the phone to my ear.

“Hey,” I greet him, breezy and cheerful.

“Lil, what the hell?” Terry barks. “I've been texting all morning.”

“I know.” I sigh, backing away from the crashing surf. “I'm sorry.”

“What was
that
about yesterday?” he asks. “Are you okay? I've already pulled a bunch of stuff down but a few photos got out. Did you fall? What happened?”

“I'm fine, Terry,” I say. “It's just . . . Jed and I broke up. He ended it. We're through.”

There's a short pause. I imagine Terry pacing the stretch of carpet in front of his desk, staring through the window of his corner office and tugging at the roots of his slicked-back hair. “I'm sorry to hear that,” he says, his voice measured. “I thought you guys were—never mind, not important. What's important now is that you stay calm. Do the work, right? Nobody processes this stuff better than you do, Lil. You're the queen of bouncing back.”

I slump into the sand and pick up a handful of pebbles, sifting them through my fingertips. “That's the thing,” I say softly. “I don't know if I can do it this time.”

“What do you mean?” Terry asks. “Of course you can. We'll put you right out there. Radio. Events. Whatever it takes to keep you busy and get ready for the fall.”

I take a deep breath. “Terry. I left,” I say. “I'm taking some time off.”

Terry laughs. “What are you talking about? Left where?” he asks, panic creeping into his voice. “What about the tour?”

“The tour is still on,” I assure him. “But I need time away. I can't . . . I need . . . I need new songs.”

There's another pause, this one longer. “Terry?” I ask.

“Lily,” he says, carefully, like I'm a horse he's afraid of spooking. “I understand how hard this is. Really, I do. But I think you're still in shock.
Forever
is practically in the can. It's perfect. The first single is supposed to release in a few weeks. And besides, there isn't time. You can't write, record, and promote a new album in three months.”

There's a buzzing in my arms and legs, the same whirring energy I used to get whenever somebody told me I couldn't do something I wanted to do. “I don't have a choice,” I say firmly. “I can't get up there and sing those songs anymore. They're lies, and I won't lie to my fans. If Jed and I are done,
Forever
is done, too.”

“Lily,” Terry pleads.

“I have to go,” I interrupt. “I promise I won't let you down. I just . . . I need to do this. I need to do it for me. Bye, Terry.”

“Lily!”

I quickly end the call and stand, wiping the sand from the back of my jeans. I take a deep breath and look out at the expanse of the ocean. The air in my lungs feels new, and the water—massive and indifferent—pulses a stubborn rhythm into my veins. It doesn't care who I am.
I close my eyes, and in an instant I feel it: coming here was, without question, the right thing to do.

The phone vibrates again inside my clenched fist.
Buzz buzz buzzzzzzzzz
.

Before I have time to change my mind, I wind up and chuck it overhead. It spins in a smooth, high arc before slipping under the still surface, swallowed into the dark, murky bay. I wait with an empty dread for the panic to set in.

But all I feel is free.

87 Days Until Tour

June 17th

THE FIRST FEW
days on the island are a blissful blur of lazy mornings, long lunches, and epic sunsets on the beach. A side perk of tossing my phone out to sea has been that I'm not obsessively waiting for texts from Jed . . . though of course I can't help but wonder if he's trying to get in touch. I've borrowed Tess's phone to check in with my parents, and after a few pathetic e-mails from Terry begging me to stay on top of my social media feeds, I've even posted the odd photo of my toes in the sand. But for the most part, I've managed to stay completely off the grid.

Our rhythm has already slowed to a leisurely vacation pace, though Tess insisted, over our first breakfast of
granola and yogurt on the porch, that we each jot down a list of summer goals:

Tess wants to learn to surf. Yesterday morning, she rented a board from the surf shop in town and has spent the afternoon getting battered by wave after wave.

Sammy wants to read more. She picked a romance novel from the living room shelves, but so far has mostly used it as a pillow on the beach.

And I want to cook, the way I used to with Mom, before all I ate were catered meals and delivery. Something about it feels meditative, having to carefully follow so many steps. It's as if by constructing all these meals, piece by piece, I might be able to construct a better version of myself—a stronger version, one that doesn't shatter to pieces every time I end up on my own.

But what's constantly on my mind, what remains unspoken between us, is what's really on my list: to write twelve new songs by the end of the summer, a new album to replace
Forever
, that's better than
Forever
; an album I can tour with in the fall. To see myself, my music, in a different light.

So far, it's been slow going. Today I stared at the blank lines in my journal, scratching things out as quickly as I'd written them down. There's still a restless energy whirring inside me, reverberations of city life. I feel like
a top that hasn't stopped spinning, as if my body hasn't quite caught up with my head.

And so it's back to the kitchen.

After we've officially overdosed on lobster rolls and clam chowder, I decide to attempt my first home-cooked dinner. Sammy and Tess hover in the kitchen, waiting for me to lose my cool. I don't. I make honey mustard chicken and coconut rice and a salad. I even toast some bread with garlic butter. There's an incident with a pan full of sizzling oil and a finicky smoke detector, but when the food is finally plated and largely resembles an actual, edible meal
,
I feel like a bona fide gourmand.

“This is not terrible,” Tess says as we take our first bites at the round kitchen table.

“Gee, thanks,” I deadpan, but I have to admit I've surprised myself. The last real meal I cooked was probably before I left home, when Mom made me help her in the kitchen on Thanksgiving. It's nice to have accomplished something, even if it's not songwriting. Anxious butterflies swarm my stomach—there are eighty-seven days until the tour, which sounds like a lot, but I can feel the hours ticking down already.

“Who wants to go out?” Sammy asks, stacking the dirty dishes after we've finished.

“Out?” Tess laughs. “Did you maybe get a little too much sun today? We're on an island with three
restaurants, one of which is also the post office. There is no
out.
”

Sammy drops the plates in the sink with a clatter, and I notice the pink lines of a burn on her neck. I feel suddenly guilty for dragging her here, where her fair skin and freckles will be at constant risk of sun damage, and where there isn't a decent cocktail menu within a fifty-mile radius.

“There has to be something,” I insist on Sammy's behalf. “What do people here do for fun?”

Tess leans back against the wide bay window. “You're looking at it,” she says.

“No way,” Sammy says, turning off the faucet. “Get dressed. If there's a jukebox in this town, I'll find it.”

Energized by the possibility of stimulation, I grab Tess by the hand and pull her from the cushioned bench, shooing her toward the shower. I almost make it to the top of the stairs before I remember my journal, which I stashed in Sammy's bag after the beach.

I race back downstairs and duck into the living room. The bag is slumped against the tattered ottoman, and as I pull it up by its leather handles, a magazine slides out and into my hands.

My heart drops.

There I am, in all of my clumsy glory, sprawled out on the shellacked floor of a midtown Starbucks. One
arm shields my eyes but my mouth is locked in a pained grimace. In boxy white type the headline reads:
Down on Her Luck: Lily's Alone Again.

I'm in such a trance that it takes me a few moments to register the other tabloids that have tumbled out of the bag at my feet. I glance down and am assaulted with the same photo from different angles. More oversize type, exclamation points:
Bruised and Brokenhearted: Lily Heads to Rehab
and
Where in the World Is Lily Ross?

“Shit.” I hear a voice over my shoulder. I stare at the jumbled collection of my own startled faces. Tess rushes into the room and sweeps the pile aside with one foot. Sammy stops short in the hallway behind her.

“I'm so sorry,” Sammy says. “I was trying to clean out the shelves at the grocery store. They only had a few of each . . .”

“I want to see them,” I say sternly.

Sammy bends down to scoop them up but Tess puts a hand out to stop her. “No,” she says stubbornly. “You don't. It's all garbage. None of it is real.”

I collect the magazines myself and walk briskly up the stairs.

“Birdie!” they call after me in unison.

I shake my head. “I'm good,” I say, my voice trembling. “Really. I just . . . I need a few minutes.”

I close the door to my room behind me and collapse onto the bed, my pulse pounding an erratic beat inside
my ears. I try to count my breaths, to close my eyes and be present, but none of the usual tricks work.

This is not the first time my face has been plastered on the cover of trashy tabloids. It comes with the territory, particularly post-breakup. After my first boyfriend in LA, Sebastian, it was a circus. Word was he was cheating with one of his backup singers. Then:
all
his backup singers.

After Caleb, I was the one who was moving on too fast. I was “heartless” and “career obsessed” for ending things and moving to New York when my second album took off and his, well, didn't. I could have set the record straight, done an interview and insisted that
he
broke up with
me
, but Terry was sure it would only make things worse. The best thing to do with this kind of press is ignore it. Days later, it's always somebody else's heartbreak, someone else's mistake—real or fabricated—staring back at the world from the checkout racks.

But this time, somehow, I'm not prepared. Being here, away from everything, it's easy to forget that the world is still chugging along. Jed is still touring, answering questions, being who his fans want him to be. I'm not. I'm nowhere. So I'm fair game.

I open the magazine on top and flip slowly to the center spread. It's all there. Our last dinner date. The stupid soup. A grainy shot of me watching Jed's car as
it sped away, spare keys dangling in one hand, staring after him like an abandoned puppy.

I quickly scan the poorly written copy, quoting various “inside sources” about our relationship, how it had been stalled for months. “Lily is ready to settle down, and Jed isn't. The pressure became too much.”

I scoff.
Pressure?
The only thing I ever pressured him to do was sleep in on Sundays and eat fewer carbs. Tess was right. There's not a single kernel of truth to be found anywhere.

But as my eyes travel down the page, they land on a quote that makes my stomach drop. “Sources say that Lily's new album,
Forever
, was a promise to Jed. A promise he wasn't ready to make. ‘It was never the big, epic romance everyone wanted it to be,' says one inside source. ‘Maybe Lily thought they were
Forever
, but Jed never saw it that way. Just last month she wanted him to fly home to meet her family. He pretended he was busy with work, but really he thought things were moving too fast.”

My heart feels like it's being squeezed in a vise. It was my grandparents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. My parents had planned a surprise party at the Italian restaurant where Grandpa had proposed. Jed promised he'd come, but at the last minute a bunch of appearances were added to his schedule. I hadn't told anyone he was coming. He had a habit of double-booking himself, and I was tired of getting everyone's hopes up.

There's a timid knock at the door. Without waiting for an answer, Tess and Sammy shuffle carefully into the room. “Are you okay?”

Sammy slumps beside me and rests her head on my shoulder.

“He talked to them,” I say, my voice a trembling whisper. “He had to. There are things in there . . .”

“We know,” Tess says quietly. “We're so sorry.”

“How could he do this?” I'm genuinely bewildered. I've been around long enough to know there's no such thing as an “inside source.” He talked to the press about me, my family. And
why
? So he could have the last word in our relationship? So he could come out on top? If he wanted to make me look pathetic, it worked. Tears burn my eyes and I fight not to let them spill over. If I felt shock and heartbreak when he broke it off, this is a thousand times worse—now I feel like a fool.

“You have to forget him,” Tess urges. “I mean it. This is exactly why we're here.”

Sammy rubs my back. “She's right,” she says. “It's not worth it. This summer is for you. For us, right? Remember how fun it was, just the three of us at camp?”

“No bugs or bad food,” Tess cuts in. “But otherwise, this summer should be like a grown-up version of the way things used to be. No responsibilities. No stress. Deal?”

I wipe my eyes and smile. “Deal.”

“Good,” Sammy says. “Now . . .”

“
Let's go out
, we know,” Tess singsongs, finishing her thought. “Hold your horses, party girl. I haven't even showered.”

Tess scoops up the magazines on her way out and stuffs them under one arm. Sammy lingers in the doorway. “See you downstairs?”

I shake my head and put on a smile. “You guys go ahead,” I say. “I think I'll do some writing.”

“No wallowing!” Tess calls from the hallway.

“No wallowing,” I promise.

Sammy looks skeptical but blows me a kiss from the door.

I grab my journal from the nightstand, my guitar from its case on the floor, and cozy up in a corner of the bed, wedging the pillows behind me.

There's so much I want to say. I could write a dozen songs in the next three hours about all the ways Jed has hurt me. But they would still be about
him.
Every time I write a song it feels like I'm giving little bits of myself away. And I don't want to give Jed—or any of the guys I've dated—another piece of me.

A cool breeze tickles the back of my neck. I look out the window, where the sun has just set, casting an orangey-pink light over the treetops. The water sparkles beyond the jetties, the ocean reaching out in every direction, as
far as I can see. This is why I'm here. Real quiet. Real life. Real time with real people who love me, who care about me enough to buy all ten copies of the junkiest magazines on the newsstand, just so I won't see them.

This new album needs to be different. There has to be more to me than just a girlfriend, a lonely left-behind. Before Sebastian, before LA, I'd never been in a relationship. I made it nineteen years on my own, nineteen years that I spent binge-watching
The O.C.
with Sammy, daydreaming about moving to California. Or spilling secrets to my journal on a Friday night, about how lonely it felt to be different, to never know how to say or wear the right thing. Those secrets turned into songs, my very first songs—the songs that got me a manager, a record deal, a life beyond my wildest dreams.

I close my eyes and imagine the summer I discover who I used to be, who I still could be, with nobody watching. The summer I write the songs I'm meant to write, songs that are more than just starry-eyed sagas or recycled broken-heart ballads. The summer I turn down all the noise and listen to the voice in the quiet, the voice I heard when I was a little girl, telling me to stop worrying so much about what everyone else was thinking.
Close your eyes
, the voice said.

Close your eyes and sing.