The Way Back Home (4 page)

“I am never
ever
drinking again,” Stella says. “But this Big Mac really is making me feel better.”

“Told ya,” Dylan says. “The first time I got drunk was at a kegger off campus, and I felt like y'all did this morning. But a buddy swore to me that greasy food and a sugary soda would turn things around, and he was right.”

“Well, I wouldn't say it's turned things around,” I respond. “I still feel like tiny elves are chiseling my eyeballs and worms are eating my innards—”

“Bird!” Stella protests. “Weak stomach up here.”

“Right, sorry,” I say, my mouth full of fries. “But I'm seriously never ever
ever
drinking again.”

I roll the back windows down and let the cool desert air whip through my hair. Cool desert air, except deserts are hot. That's funny.

“Uh-oh,” I say, leaning forward between the front two seats. “Can you be drunk the day
after
you were drunk?”

Rehearsal is actually a blast. If you'd have asked me this morning, I'd have told you there was no way in the world I'd be able to perform tonight, let alone rehearse. But I guess I caught a second wind because I feel okay, even if I have missed a few cues.

“I drag the sleep from my bed, I shake myself in my head,”
I sing, then start laughing when I realize I goofed the lyrics to “Sing Anyway.” “Oh my gosh, y'all, sorry, sorry,” I say as the band stops playing. “Let's go back. Sorry. I'm a little tired. Sorry.”

I see my fiddle player and drummer exchange an exasperated look when the music starts up again, which is so lame. I messed up a few lyrics in
rehearsal
, big deal. Ignoring them, I start the number again, dancing with a few of the guys in the band and even walking through the crew in the wings, giving this sound check a fun vibe for once as I sing through this song for the bazillionth time.

“Bird, are you going to mark the quick change?” Monty asks a few minutes later. I turn around and realize that the band is offstage, mocking their costume changes, and I'm still standing at the front of the T, zoning out at a spot in the upper decks.

“My bad,” I say, running back to the main stage and then to the wings, where Stella waits.

“Rip off,” she says, pantomiming pulling off my dress from the previous number.

I gasp and cover myself as if I'm really naked. “Excuse me, miss, but you have to at least buy me dinner first.”

Stella laughs and rocks back on her heels. Then she grabs the imaginary shirt I'm wearing next and tosses it at my face. I swat my hands around and say, “I can't see! I can't see anything!”

My flailing is making her laugh so hard that she's shaking and people are starting to stare. I can barely control myself, either. “Step in,” she commands. I mime one foot stepping into the leg hole. “Other leg,” she says. “And up!” She jerks the imaginary shorts up, and I grab my crotch and bend over, crossing my eyes. At this point, she falls back against what she thinks is a wall but is actually a curtain, and she lands flat on her butt.

“Stella!”

She is laughing so hard now that she's not even making any sounds. “I can't get up, Bird,” she barely ekes out. “Can't. Get. Up.”

“Bird!” Dylan shouts. Everyone near me backstage looks up as he storms toward us. “Are y'all done goofing off over here? Some of us actually want to practice before playing in front of a sold-out venue, if you don't mind.”

I look at him like he's crazy and say, “Sor-ry,” with as much sarcasm as I can muster.

“Oh yeah, you sound real sorry,” he says, shaking his head. “You think you're so grown-up, but if you want to be treated like an adult, you have to act like one.”

I roll my eyes. “Good point,
Dad
. I'll take that to heart, I truly will, just as soon as this young lady down here zips me up.”

I reach my arm out to a giggling Stella and pull her up, but Dylan explodes. “Zips you up?! It's not a real costume change! Just fake it like the rest of us and let's play some music already!”

Now all eyes are on us. Everybody, from the catering team to the grips, is staring holes through us, and I feel my face flame. “Listen, Dylan. This is
my
tour, and if I want to have a little fun once in a while, I don't need one of my
band members
coming down on me. Got it?”

He looks like I slapped him in the face, and then I see his nostrils flare. But before he can respond, Monty steps between us and suggests we all take five. Dylan storms off, and I turn toward the onlookers and say, “Sorry you had to see that, folks. Just a little sibling spat. Let's all take five.”

And true to my word, I turn to my best friend and say, “Zip me up?”

Which she does. “Ow.” She pouts playfully. “My pinkie got caught in the zipper.”

Grinning, I kiss it. Then we throw our arms around each other and head for Craft Services, where we each pound a Gatorade before getting on with the show.

“Tammy, can you please stop jerking at my hair?” I complain in my dressing room later. My hairstylist looks at me with surprise and nods crisply. “And Sam, seriously, my eyes are really sensitive, and you're practically gouging them out with that shadow brush.”

“Mm, mm, mmm,” he murmurs. “Somebody's in a bad mood today.”

“Sorry,” I say, reaching for the aspirin bottle Marco just brought me. My tour manager is cool. I think my parents were hoping he'd step in as a sort of chaperone, but he rides with the band and lets me be. He didn't even ask questions about last night—just brought me the pills and got back to his job. “My head is pounding.”

I take two aspirin, drink some more Gatorade, and check my cell phone again. Anita is trying to squash a story about me “partying hard with playboy Colton Holley,” and her constant judgmental texts aren't helping my headache. Luckily, he was spotted with a tall, redheaded model in a skimpy bikini this morning at the pool, and the images they do have from last night are too grainy to confirm anything. Anita is threatening libel if the rag mag links him to me. I think I dodged a bullet, both with the story and a fling with Colton.

But I still feel stupid.

There is a knock at the door, and I look up. “Come in!” I shout, but then I wince from the effort.

“Hey, it's me,” Dylan says, stepping inside. “When you have time, can we talk a minute? In private?”

“Sure,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Can y'all give us a minute?”

My styling team exits the dressing room, and I swivel around in my chair to face my brother. He doesn't look as angry as he did before, but he doesn't look apologetic, either.

“Bird, I know you're eighteen, and you can make your own decisions,” he starts. “And I know that this is your tour. Believe me, I'm aware. It's awfully hard to forget when your face is plastered on billboards across the country.” He points at me. “But
you
have to remember that, too. This is
your
tour.
You're
the boss.” He steps back and opens the door, and the sounds of equipment rolling by and crew conversations fill the dressing room. “Look around. All those people out there? They depend on
you
for a job. For some, like Stella and me, who are just starting out, our
careers
could be based on the success of this tour. Don't you feel some responsibility for us? For everybody?”

“Yes, Dylan, gah!” I swivel back around and lay my head down on the vanity. “I had a bad night. I made poor decisions. But I swore off drinking, and you can trust that I'm paying for it enough without you coming down on me, okay?”

“Okay,” he says simply. And leaves.

My styling team files back in quietly, but it's pretty apparent that they heard everything we said after Dylan opened the door. Stella is the last back in, and when I see her, I say, “Can you believe him?”

She surprises me when she picks up a handheld steamer and shrugs noncommittally. “Well, you
are
the boss now.”

I gape at her, but she doesn't meet my gaze. She sided with Dylan. They've been hanging out for, like, three or four weeks, and she sided with Dylan. I thought they were just friends—I was
hoping
they were just becoming better friends—but she has always had my back until now. She likes my brother, and she sold me out.

“Unbelievable,” I mutter. I pull out my earbuds and iPhone and blast my Now Is Not a Good Time playlist, determined to block out everybody else.

Okay, yeah, I am the boss. Except I'm not. I still have to answer to my parents, my label, and my fans. Oh, and
I'm
the bad guy, but they were both there
partying with their boss
last night. Unbe-freaking-lievable.

I close my eyes and quietly fume. Dylan and Stella may be right, but they don't have any idea what it's like to be me.

“B
IRD
?” S
TELLA CALLS
outside my door. The bus is making its way over to Salt Lake City, and I'm trying to hold tree pose without toppling.

“Come in,” I call.

She slides open the divider and holds up a DVD. “Want to watch
Pitch Perfect
?” she asks. I can see from her expression that she's trying to smooth things over.

I give in to the rhythm of the bus and let my foot fall to the floor. “You sure you want to mix business with pleasure?” I ask a little snidely. “Hanging out with the boss can get pretty tricky.”

“Don't be like that, Bird,” Dylan says, squeezing past Stella to sit on my bed. “Listen, we were all hungover and we all acted dumb. Can we just agree to that and move on?”

I chew my lip and consider.

“Bird?”

“Yeah, fine,” I finally say. “But Dylan, we can't fight like that in front of everybody.”

“I know. I should've kept my cool.”

I sigh heavily. “And I shouldn't have been acting so ridiculous. I do take this seriously, and now everybody probably thinks I'm losing it.”

“Nah,” he says. “You just have to have boundaries.”

“Oh, like you?” I retort. “One minute you want me to be the boss of the tour and keep it all together, and then the next minute you want to be my overprotective big brother who doesn't let me make out with hot, rich guys.”

Stella laughs and sits by Dylan. “That's true.”

He just shrugs.

“Hey, Colton was there last night in the front row,” Stella says to me now. “Did you see him?”

“Yes, I saw him and his
two
dates.”

“See?” Dylan says. “It's sleazebags like that dude that make me act all ‘overprotective' or whatever. And I'm not sorry for playing the big brother card at the casino the other night.” He stands up and holds out his hand. “But I do promise to dial it back otherwise, okay?”

“And I'll do better at treating you like a respected member of my band instead of the annoying nerd that you are,” I say, shaking on it. “Deal?”

“Deal.”

Dylan leads us out to the living room area and crashes on the couch as Stella loads the movie. I grab some snacks from the kitchenette, relieved that we're putting the stupid spat behind us. With three of us cramped on the same bus all the time and working together, too, we are bound to have a few tiffs, but I'm glad we could work it out and get back to normal. When I head toward the couch, Stella slips down next to Dylan before I can sit, her expression that of attempted nonchalance although she clearly cut me off. Then Dylan oh-so-casually drapes his arm around the sofa, not necessarily across her shoulders, but the two of them look quite cozy as they stare past me at the television, apparently super absorbed in the opening scene, as if we haven't seen it a million times before.

I turn around slowly and drop into the recliner with the unsettling feeling that it may be too late for normal.

It was a madhouse in my dressing room tonight. Troy was prepping me on a few talk show appearances he wants me to make, and Stella was frantically trying to get a lipstick stain out of my opening costume. Sam and Tammy were talking nonstop about a
Real Housewives
scandal, and Amanda was in a mood about us being five minutes late. All that to say that by the time I took the stage, there still hadn't been a private moment to talk to Stella about what is going on between her and Dylan, because clearly something is happening there and clearly she wants me in the dark.

And it hurts my feelings. Yeah, okay, the likelihood of a “Stylan” relationship is a little, um,
yuck
, but I'm her
best friend
. During the last couple of costume changes, I've just wanted to shout,
Hello! I'm not an idiot. Talk to me.

“Let's bring it down, one time,” I say near the end of “Notice Me.” The band softens and the instrumentals play as I talk, totally off script. “Is there somebody out there you've been friends with for a long time? Maybe you're thinking about being more than friends. Maybe you want to take things to the next level, but you have absolutely no idea if that person feels the same way.” I glance back at Dylan and raise my eyebrows. He looks away. I knew it. “In fact,” I go on, stronger now, “maybe you think they like you back, but there's another factor, another person maybe, that's in your way. Or that you assume might be in your way. Anybody out there want somebody to see you as more than what you've always been?”

The crowd cheers.

“Salt Lake City, let 'em know!” I shout out. I cue the band, and they play louder at my lead, nearly fifteen thousand voices filling the arena as we sing:
“Is it real? Do you see? Say you notice me.
Come on!
Notice me. Oh, say you notice… me.”

As the crowd goes wild, we cut the song and I race backstage. A short video plays on the giant screens onstage, a roadie hands me a bottle of water, and Stella rips off my fire-engine-red sequined dress. We're going fifties-mod for the next song, the one I wrote with Adam last year called “Worth Being in Love.” I know now is not the right time to bring this up, but I can't stop myself, blurting out, “Do you like my brother?”

Stella has a vintage black-and-white polka-dot dress halfway up my body, and she stops cold. “What?”

I tug at the dress. “Keep going. I've only got another minute until this video is over, but it seems like you guys have been flirting lately and, I don't know, maybe I'm crazy, but do you like Dylan? Like
that
?”

She looks away, pulls the dress all the way up, and steps behind me to zip me in and tie the halter. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “I do.”

I shake my head.

“See, I knew you'd be mad,” she says, walking around and fluffing the full skirt with its tulle peeking from the hemline. “That's why I didn't say anything. Well, that and I don't think he likes me back.”

“Are you serious?” I ask. “First of all, I'm not mad that you like him, although I do question your taste in men. But why didn't you tell me? I asked you about him before, and you said he wasn't your type.”

“That was, what, almost two years ago?” she asks, pulling my boots off. “I didn't even really know him then. And this just sort of happened over the past couple of weeks, where I realized, ‘Oh, for real, I think I like this guy. And he's my best friend's brother, and it's weird.' I've wanted to tell you, but I've been like, ‘Ah! What do I do?'”

I slip my feet into a pair of retro-style pumps and sigh. “Honestly? I can sort of see it,” I admit.

She clutches my forearms as I balance. “Seriously?”

I look down at her face, at the excitement there and the childlike hope that I've never seen in her before. Suddenly it feels like there's some sort of distance between us even though she's right in front of me. I shake it off. “But Stel, it sucks that you didn't tell me, 'cause you're the only person in my whole life that I can be one hundred percent totally real with twenty-four-seven. And I want you to feel the same way with me.”

She nods. “I do!”

“Then why—”

Jordan hands me my microphone. “You need to get out there,” she says, looking at her wristwatch. The video onstage ends and the audience cheers, meaning that even though Stella and I should probably have a real talk, we can't. Not right now.

“Okay, we'll talk later,” I say as I back toward the stage. “But I'm pretty sure he likes you, too.”

“Really?” she squeals from the wings. “How do you know? Bird Barrett, don't you dare leave me hanging like that!” she calls. “I want details! Come back!”

I smile as she pantomimes fishing for me, but I feel anxious inside as I rush to my mark. If Dylan and Stella get together, I'll definitely be a third wheel. And then if it doesn't work out, life on my bus will be miserable. Will I have to fire one of them?

I stand between two male dancers behind a door in the big screen, and as the music starts, they lift me onto their shoulders. When the spotlight hits and the crowd swells, I plaster on a big smile and focus on the show, on the moment, on being a professional musician instead of a worried teenager. This is who I need to be now, so I sing with all I've got, even as I chew on the quickie backstage convo.

I obviously want them both to be happy, but as I belt out the chorus of “Worth Being in Love,” I can't help but think that, in this case, it may not be worth it at all.

“So, basically, after the Salt Lake show, when you jetted off for LA again, it was just me and Dylan on the bus,” Stella says a few days later. Troy had a town car waiting for me at the back door of the arena the other night, but I had called Stella on my way to the airport and we talked about every single nuance of her crush on Dylan. I felt thoroughly filled in on Stella's feelings for him, but now that I'm back on the bus and she's sitting across from me on my bed with a ginormous smile, I have the feeling that something happened—with my brother—and I'm not sure I want to hear every juicy detail.

“So you know how the other night in the wings you were saying that you think Dylan might like me back?” she asks. I nod. “Well, I
think
I found out while you were gone that he does!”

“Oh, wow.”

Stella throws herself back against the pillows beside me and rushes into the whole story. “Okay, so that night it was just Dylan and me—alone on the bus—and I was charged from telling you I like him and admitting it out loud and everything. Like, that made it real, you know?”

She rolls her head toward mine, and I face her and nod. “Totally.”

“And every time he squeezed past me on the bus, I swear I thought he could hear my pulse, it was beating so loud. Or he could read my mind or something. But he acted totally normal. Just regular ol' Dylan zoning out after the show on his Beats, staring up at the bottom of my bunk, so I just got ready for bed like usual except, with you not here, I was, like, ‘Um, what do I do now?'”

“What did you do?”

“I climbed up into my bed and started watching
10 Things I Hate About You
.”

“Oh man.”

“I was feeling romantic!”

“Okay, so did something actually happen between you guys, or what?”

“Wait for it!” she says, grabbing my arm. “So I was all into Heath Ledger and his bad-boy charm, but at the same time, I was thinking about being on the bus
alone
with Dylan. So finally I kind of flung my arm off the side of the bed, like, so casual, and I was waiting and hoping he'd just, like, touch it or hold it or something.”

“You thought he was going to hold a hand that was just hanging out there in the wide open?” I ask, teasing her.

“I just—I don't know! It was stupid. But I fell asleep with my hand like that. And I guess Dylan had to get up later, and when he did, he closed my computer and set it to the side and tucked my arm back in my bed—obviously I woke up but pretended I was still totally asleep—and his face literally lowered toward mine, and I was like,
‘Oh my God, this is a freaking Snow White moment.'
But he didn't kiss me or anything. He just whispered, ‘Good night, pretty girl.'” She pauses, looking at me expectantly.