The Way Back Home (24 page)

She groans again but lets me pull her up to a sitting position and then starts mumbling some crazy stuff about dancing with dinosaur-sized unicorns. I remove a rubber band from one of my little braids and oh-so-carefully pull back Kayelee's hair to get it off her face and neck. I ask her to tell me more about the giant unicorns, partly to keep her awake and partly so she won't realize it's me helping her. I have a feeling that the minute she sobers up a little, I'm the last person she'll want seeing her like this.

Once she's clean, I wash my hands with the meticulous devotion of a neurosurgeon.

I grab a few more wet paper towels and hold them to her forehead as she dozes, dabbing her hairline and wiping away some of the makeup smeared all over her cheeks and around her eyes. I don't know what else to do.

Suddenly, her eyes flutter open, and I am face-to-face with a confused and very pathetic-looking Kayelee Ford. I flinch, worried she might go off on me. Instead, she slowly asks a simple question: “Why are you helping me?”

I don't answer. I don't
have
an answer. So I lead her to the sink and help her wash her hands. “Why don't you come over and sit down?” I gently suggest as I lead her to a bench below an open window. She plops down like a puppet without a master, her limbs splayed out at ungraceful angles, her head heavy and hanging forward. “Here, lean against me,” I say, sitting next to her. She roughly tips her head onto my shoulder.

“Thank you,” she says after a minute, turning her face up to mine. “I don't know why you're being so nice to me, but thank you.”

I nod, not knowing what to say.

And then Kayelee starts sobbing. Not sniffling or fighting back tears, but full-on sobbing. “Kayelee,” I say, alarmed. Tears stream down her face, and her body shakes violently. I wrap my arms around her shoulders and try to hold her still, but she's heaving and gasping for breath, a complete emotional release of anything she's ever held inside. I'm a little freaked out, but I think about what my mom would do if she were here and I affect a soothing voice. “Kayelee,” I purr, trying to soothe her while keeping her upright as she bawls. “Kayelee, come on now. You're okay. Adam went to get help, and you're going to be okay. It's all going to be okay.”

She wipes her face with her bare arm and gasps for breath, trying to get control of herself. Finally, when she stops shaking, she looks at me, her eyes tortured, and says, “No, it won't. I haven't been okay in a long time.”

“T
HIS IS THE
right thing,” Bonnie says as she parks her car at Cumberland Heights Alcohol and Drug Rehab outside Nashville.

I called her the day after the Grammys and told her all about the Kayelee drama. Later that day,
TMZ
leaked a terrible headline,
FORD PULLS INTO REHAB
, and that's all everybody's been talking about since. When I wanted another scandal to overshadow my own, this wasn't what I had in mind. Taking care of Kayelee that night was scary. I wouldn't wish her demons on my worst enemy.

The first thing Bonnie suggested I do was reach out to Kayelee, the same way Jolene Taylor did for her years ago. But I had to get back on tour, my schedule was slammed, and it wasn't like I had Kayelee's phone number. So a few weeks went by and I moved on, went to Europe, stopped thinking about it. Kayelee was getting help, rehab is a good thing, and none of it had anything to do with me.

But leave it to Bonnie to start blowing up my phone the minute I was back in Nashville for a special concert at the Ryman. Text after text of sage counsel like:

I thought Jolene Taylor was my worst enemy, but when I hit rock bottom, it turned out she was the only friend I had.

All she can do is tell you to go to hell, but I guarantee she thinks she's already there.

You're always talking about burying the hatchet and making things right. Well, there's no Internet or press or spotlights in rehab. If there ever was a place and time, it's here and now.

Adam-the-Saint thought it was a good idea, too, especially since Kayelee and I had “bonded” at the after party, but I quickly reminded him that she had been so drunk, she probably didn't even remember it. Stella thought it made total sense that I didn't want to go, but the fact that I was on the fence about it meant that I'd have regrets if I didn't. And my folks, well, they just said they knew I'd do what was right.

So, reluctantly, I agreed to visit Kayelee in rehab if Bonnie would come with me. It took us about twenty-five minutes to get out here. It was a quiet, thoughtful ride. I'm sure Bonnie was reliving some rough memories, and I was going over in my head all the terrible outcomes that were likely to happen once Kayelee Ford saw my face.

“Don't you think rehab is hard enough?” I ask nervously now as we walk toward the facility's front door. “I mean, it was probably really hard to come here in the first place, and she has to know that everybody's talking about it: the media, her fans, industry people. Then I come strolling in, and she thinks I'm all smug, and we already know she hates me, and—”

“Bird,” Bonnie interrupts as she opens the door. “All this visit does is show that we care. That at least two people on earth care.”

“I'm sure her family cares,” I say quietly as we enter.

“You never know,” she answers with a shake of the head. I think of Adam and his mother. “And remember, I had to have this visit approved with her therapist. If she didn't want to see you, all she had to do was say no.”

“I can't believe you're here right now,” Kayelee says as we walk down the wide, tree-lined drive a few minutes later.

“Me neither, honestly,” I reply.

We keep our eyes focused ahead, one foot in front of the other, my hands in my coat pockets and hers in her jeans pockets. We haven't made eye contact since she first came out to the lobby and asked me to go for a walk. Bonnie made herself comfortable in the waiting room with a magazine, and I was on my own.

“It's really pretty out here,” I finally comment.

Kayelee looks up and breathes deeply. “Yeah. We moved to Tennessee when I was fifteen, but I feel like this is the first time I'm really seeing it. We don't have cell phones or Internet or anything here, so all we can really do is, like, be present. Every day I take long walks on this big trail they've got, and I'm like, ‘When's the last time I heard the wind blow through the trees? When's the last time I noticed a little plant sprout through the dirt?'”

“It's almost spring,” I say, thinking about the metaphor and how it could apply to her situation.

“Don't
even
say it's the perfect time of year for rebirth,” she warns.

I scoff, giving her my best
as if
expression while I secretly worry she's telepathic.

Kayelee exhales and looks back down at her feet. “Sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. They're really driving that home in group therapy,” she explains.

I rack my brain for something appropriate to say. Nothing comes to mind. We walk.

“I feel like I've been going so hard the past few years that I've missed real life,” she admits.

“I actually know what you mean there,” I say.

I see her nod in my peripheral vision. We keep walking slowly. The sun shines down brightly on the expansive acreage, and I can see why someone would come here for a break during a breakdown. It reminds me of my time at Bonnie's.

“I really can't believe that you're here,” Kayelee says again, shaking her head.

I glance over at her, but then look away quickly.

“We're in group sessions and individual therapy a lot during the day, and in the, um, twelve steps we have to acknowledge our wrongdoings and make amends with the people we've wronged. If it's possible.” She takes a breath. We keep walking. “I knew I'd need to get to you. I don't know if you've noticed, but I had my mom deactivate my Twitter account. I'm sorry for… well, a lot.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Kayelee takes a deep breath, and then words start tumbling out of her mouth like water from a busted dam. “It was so weird when we were coming up together and everybody kept telling me that we looked alike and sounded alike, and I knew that Dan had poached you from Randall and I—” She kicks a rock from the path into the grass. “This is going to sound so stupid—” She stops walking. “I just wanted to prove to Randall and everybody that GAM didn't get me as some kind of consolation prize. That I could be as good as you.”

I feel her staring at me, so I look over at her. “Oh.”

She starts walking again, and I match her pace. “My dad actually invested in GAM to encourage them to offer me a development deal,” she admits, embarrassed. “He's always reminding me how much he's sacrificed. And I don't know if you know this, but my mom was Miss Florida, like,
way
back in the day, so she's constantly on me to be her perfect, pretty girl and—” She shakes her head. “I know this is all so dumb. When I hear it, I feel so dumb. But it got to the point that I was always ‘on.' All these people were constantly around me telling me to do this event or that, to sing this type of song when I wanted to do something different, or they were in my ear about where
you
were on the charts.”

“They pitted us against each other from the start,” I say.

She nods, chewing her lip and thinking. Then, very quietly, she says, “It's like I'm always surrounded but somehow… I just feel totally alone.”

I don't know what to say. I'm shocked that Kayelee Ford, my supposed rival, is opening up like this.

“So anyway, with you and these ‘amends,' I figured one day I'd have my publicist reach out to yours, or I'd try to contact you somehow to apologize for letting it all get out of control, but then my therapist said you'd reached out and—” Kayelee finally stops walking and looks up at me. “I don't know why you're here, Bird. I've been so mean.”

I stop, too. I look at Kayelee, her face in a genuine expression of wonder. This is the first time I've seen her without intensely made-up eyes, without her violet-blue contact lenses, in jeans that don't look painted on. She looks like an average girl. She looks like me.

And I hug her.

I don't know why, but I reach out both arms and hug this girl. Because I know the pressure she's talking about—the pressure to make sure your parents didn't sacrifice everything for nothing, the pressure to make it to the top, the pressure to hone a public image, and then the pressure to maintain it. I know this hurting girl who wants a break sometimes, and I hate that she found it in alcohol. I hate that she doesn't have an Adam or a Stella or a Bonnie or a Barrett Family Band. And I am so grateful that I do.

I pull away and see that she's crying. I feel pricks at the corners of my own eyes. She passes me a tissue from the little pack in her pocket and smiles. “My therapist thought we might need these,” she explains with a sniff. She rolls her eyes. “God, they act like they know everything.”

I laugh out loud. “Now there's the Kayelee Ford I know.”

“Hey, I'm here to stop drinking, not to stop telling it like it is,” she says with a wry grin.

We start walking again and things feel, surprisingly, easy and normal. She asks about Adam and tells me she thinks we're a really good fit. “He's a great guy.” And she tells me about a recent falling-out she had with Devyn Delaney, commenting, “She's such a user.” She asks what people are saying about her online, and I try to soften the blow, telling her that all anybody wants is for her to get well. I tell her about my time at Bonnie's farm and how songwriting is always an outlet for me when I need one.

“You're lucky,” she says. “I don't play an instrument and I'm not exactly poetic. I kind of have to go with whatever the label picks. Whenever I suggest something it's like, ‘No, we know what's best for you.'” She sighs. “I feel like such a puppet sometimes.”

Immediately, “Paper Doll” comes into my head, and I start to sing:

“Some see a paper doll.

Strung out for all to admire,

Who would curl and crumble in the fire,

Two-dimensional.

But there's more to me.

I'm a different person than they see.

I'm not a paper doll.

Not their paper doll.

At all.”

Kayelee stops walking and grabs my upper arm. “Yes,” she says. She squeezes tighter, and tears well up in her eyes again. “Yes, Bird.”

“You're not, you know.”

She nods sharply, pursing her lips. “Sing it again?”

I start the chorus again, and by the time we're at the end of the drive, she has joined me. We turn back toward the facility, and I harmonize as Kayelee carries the melody. It shocks me how well our voices blend together, what a pretty sound we make when we're not screeching at each other. When we finish the chorus, we walk the rest of the way back in comfortable silence, breathing in the fresh, cool air.

I know that while we may never be best friends, we will always have a respectful understanding of each other from this day forward.

And I'm so glad I came.