Rise to the Sun Page 9

  Right?

  FRIDAY NIGHT

  Quid pro quo. My cart, your wagon.

  She told me. We agreed. I mean, it’s not like she didn’t at least give me some kind of warning that the direction I was heading I was heading by myself. I don’t know what came over me. I don’t know why I thought dancing together meant more than just dancing together. I swallow down the bitter taste of embarrassment and try to smile as she walks back with the fourth apple.

  She had room in her fanny pack for it since she handed the rest to Peter earlier, so she zips it up and nods at the door. By the time we emerge, it’s dark in the way that it only ever gets dark at Farmland. The illusion of stars created by the lights from the stages and the carnival rides in the Core making a hazy sky, half blackened, half sparkling.

  Olivia yawns next to me and I try to ignore the way her shoulder bumps mine every few steps like she’s too tired to hold herself up.

  “Not bad for your first time at the rodeo,” Olivia says, jerking her thumb over her shoulder at the barn. She smiles sleepily up at me. I think it’s a little early for her to be yawning, but then I remember the toll being at a festival can take on your body the first time. Twelve hours in the hot sun, walking miles and miles, and standing or dancing in between those times can wear on a person. “You didn’t impale anyone even a little bit. I knew you had it in you.”

  I smile, but I don’t speak. Not because I’m afraid of saying something that lets her get too close to me or, because that ship has well and truly sailed, but because there’s something about this moment that I don’t want to change with words.

  The fact is, I like hanging out with Olivia. I like it when she calls me out and when she pushes me to dance in dirty barns and when she says a little more than she probably should. We had a deal, and tomorrow after the competition and after we find the last apple, we’ll probably never see each other again. I’m going to hold up my end of the bargain, and she’s going to hold up hers, and that’s how we’re going to handle this.

  “You have a lot of confidence in me for someone who just met me today,” I answer.

  She stretches and yawns again but doesn’t respond. I’m coming down from the buzz of the dance party and am feeling some of the adrenaline drain out of me too. I’m more practiced at staying up late and braving the exhaustion that comes along with the heat than she is though, so I do a better job at powering through.

  “Well, Toni,” she says between another yawn. “I have a way of knowing these things.”

  Once we get back to the area with our tents, Olivia turns toward my campsite without hesitation. I almost speak up to stop her, and then I remember. Of course, we still need to rehearse. A nervous energy courses through me. I reach into my pocket and run my thumb over the cheap plastic pick I keep on me at all times to distract myself from the feeling.

  We walk past a couple that’s around my mom’s age, who must’ve set up camp after we left for the Core this morning, right across from ours. They tilt their cans of White Claw toward us in greeting and smile at us as we pass. I can tell by their full setup they’ve done this before: tent, Farmland flag with the three-apple logo in the center, canopy tent, gazebo, tapestries hung up around the canopy to shield it from the sun. I have to fight the urge to salute them. I have a certain reverence for Farmland veterans.

  Olivia falls into the frayed foldable camping chair that I set up outside my tent and lets her head fall back to look at the sky.

  “Can you believe that we get to be here? This is some next-level cosmic intervention.”

  I sit on the small cooler that holds the already-melted ice and a bunch of bottled water and bananas. I stretch my legs out in front of me and look up too.

  “Do you believe in signs?” Olivia whispers.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean”—she waves her hand around everything near us—“do you believe that everything happens for a reason? That you stopping to help me and my breathing going haywire and your competition and my scavenger hunt practically forcing us together is a sign?”

  “I guess that depends,” I say, plucking a blade of grass from beside me and twisting it around my index finger. “A sign of what?”

  I can see her answer forming, no doubt something a little woo-woo and over my head, before her eye catches on the window of the truck. I know immediately what she’s spotted before she says anything.

  “Your guitar!” She sits up, suddenly wide awake. When she points at me, I wince at what I’m sure is the next question: If you’re so serious about this, shouldn’t we start practicing now? “You know the lead singer from Sonny Blue didn’t pick up a guitar until she was thirty? ‘The Argonauts’ was the first song she ever wrote.”

  I freeze. “What?”

  I couldn’t have heard her correctly.

  “Yeah, it’s completely amazing. I’ve listened to, like, eight hundred interviews of hers. She talks about it sometimes—how she couldn’t afford a guitar or lessons growing up, so she didn’t even buy one until she was way older. How cool is that? Finding your passion at thirty instead of eighteen?” She sighs. “It’s like everyone is supposed to know everything before they’ve even left high school, you know? Bonnie is proof that rushing is overrated.”

  “I … Yeah. That is amazing.”

  There’s something refreshing about hearing her give voice to what I’ve been thinking since before the summer started—that I’m not sure about much of anything anymore.

  “They, um, had this demo that never made it to an album that I really like. It’s called ‘Too Much, Too Soon,’ ” I say. I clear my throat a little, unsure why I’m sharing but not stopping. “My dad used to love this song. He taught me to play it.”

  I reach into the truck and grab my case. I take my guitar out and I play the opening notes for her, and for once, thinking about my dad doesn’t make my throat constrict with the telltale sign of incoming tears. In this memory, I’m thirteen and sitting in the basement with my first acoustic in my lap. He’s just finished working on Sonny Blue’s first summer tour—the one where they opened for Mumford & Sons.

  “Try this.” He reaches over and changes the way my fingers are arranged on the strings. He smiles when I get it and I’m able to switch easily between one chord and the next. “There you go, TJ. You are gonna be big one day, you know that?”

  I roll my eyes, because I’m thirteen and rolling my eyes is law, and because Dad knows that will never happen. I’ll never play outside this basement, and I’ll never tell anyone that I play at all. This music thing lives and dies right here.

  “I’m not going to be famous, Dad.”

  “I didn’t say famous, kid, I said you were going to be big! There’s a difference.” He strums a little and I follow his lead. He closes his eyes and nods his head along with the music. “You don’t need an audience to be big. Don’t forget that.”

  He opens his eyes and slaps a hand against his thigh as I continue strumming.

  “Why you moving so fast, little girl? Who told you you couldn’t have the whole world?” he sings quietly. His voice is just as heart-stoppingly beautiful as always.

  In these moments, I know my voice probably won’t ever be able to do what his can—wrapping around everything in a space until it’s the only thing you can feel—but I can make up for it with my skill on guitar.

  The time I spend playing with him are stolen moments before he’s back on tour, but I take them so seriously. I work so hard. I learn so quickly. I try to make him proud of me.

  “Whoa,” I say when he finishes. “What is that?”

  “A song I heard from that band I was with this summer. Sonny Blue?”

  He looks up suddenly and I know he can hear my mom’s keys in the lock just like I can. My heart sinks. When she comes in, we’ll stop, he’ll go upstairs to greet her, and they’ll either be sickeningly sweet for the rest of the night or I’ll have to resign myself to my room and slide my noise-canceling headphones on to avoid listenin
g to them fight.

  There are only ever two options, and something tells me tonight is going to be the latter.

  He looks back at me with a smile that is as wide as it is fake. He puts his guitar back on the stand and takes mine to hang it up on the wall. It’s incredible how quickly everything in the room shifts back to normal. To empty.

  “When I say big, you know that feeling you just got? That’s what I mean.” He jerks his head in the direction of the stairs. “Let’s go help your mom with the groceries.”

  Why you moving so fast, little girl? Who told you you couldn’t have the whole world?

  I swallow as Olivia looks at me without expectation, but with clear excitement. I’m a little rusty now, I know. I haven’t played in practically a year, but as I finish the last verse, my singing voice hoarse with disuse, I feel not good exactly, but relieved. Playing that song is like breaking through the surface of a pool after being underwater for too long. It feels like coming home.

  “Well, it’s a good thing Sonny Blue never released that song,” she says when I set the guitar back into my dad’s case. My heart stops beating for a second. It doesn’t sound like she means it to be an insult, not with the way she’s smiling at me, but I can’t help but take it as one.

  “Why not?”

  “Because”—she nudges her sandal against my boot—“it would’ve been pretty embarrassing for Bonnie Harrison to have been outsung and outplayed so thoroughly by one of her fans.” She smiles and my entire body relaxes. “I mean it. A cover that’s better than the original? The power that that has? Unmatched.”

  My face gets warm, and I’m grateful for both the cover of darkness and my skin tone for hiding what would almost certainly be a blush on a lighter-skinned person.

  “You’ve never even heard the original.”

  She holds her hand over her heart and gasps. “I’m offended by your lack of faith in my judgment!” She winces as she adds a brief amendment. “Which, okay, I will admit is occasionally questionable, but in this case is absolutely trustworthy.”

  “Trustworthy, huh?” I ask.

  “Absolutely unimpeachable.” She holds my gaze for a moment longer than I know what to do with and my skin feels like it’s vibrating. I stand up and stretch even though I don’t really need to. I just have to find something to do with my hands.

  “Is this what you want to do now that you’re out in the big, bad world?” She studies me and crosses her legs at her ankles. “Become a massive rock star?”

  “I’m supposed to start college next week.” I shrug. “Maybe grad school eventually, law school like my mom. I don’t know.”

  It feels like a lie, sort of, as I say it. Somehow, the feeling of playing that song for her just a few moments ago vibrates through me. It felt so right, so unlike it has at any other point in the past eight months. I practically have to scold myself for even thinking it. Just because it feels good doesn’t make it a plan. I’m performing here to come up with a plan, to have some Truth about my life revealed to me like my dad always promised would happen.

  Besides, even if it were more than just a whim, I couldn’t pursue music without breaking my mom’s heart anyway. It’s the definition of a nonstarter.

  Olivia doesn’t respond right away, she just nods her head and taps her lips like she’s thinking. It’s silent between us, but the nighttime chorus of festival noise rages on: the muted bands playing in the distance, the shouts of laughter coming from a couple campsites away, a car crunching over gravel. It’s one of my favorite songs.

  “You know what to do,” she says, after a while. I almost forgot we were in the middle of a conversation. “Even if you don’t know that you know, it’s in there somewhere.”

  “You think?” I ask. I lean back in my chair, trying to be cool. I do what I did all through high school: I paint an expression on my face that reads ambivalent, above it all, disaffected. But when Olivia stares at me for a second, I know my usual go-to is falling short. She’s seeing me, the Toni that I used to save for when my dad had taken off on another tour and my mom was holed up in her room, pretending not to be heartbroken: young, vulnerable, lonelier than she cares to admit.

  “Yeah.” She nods. “I really do.”

  Her voice is sure. Not a hint of doubt in it. She’s only known me for less than twelve hours, but in her estimation, that’s enough time to know this. Like my dad, I’m beginning to realize Olivia has her Truths too.

  She’s a mess of contradictions. Equal parts confident and awkward. Just as likely to anxiously fidget with her hands or her clothes as she is to completely lose herself to a song she’s never heard before.

  “So that’s the song you want to do tomorrow?” she asks, after it takes me too long to respond.

  When I nod, she claps her hands together once. “Okay then. Let’s practice.”

  I look around, like someone will hop out and say that’s not a great idea. But of course, it’s just me, sputtering, tendrils of nerves still hanging on. But Olivia has committed to helping me, and I’m committed to figuring my shit out. I grab my capo out of the hard case to play this in a key I think will be better suited for Olivia’s register. She pulls her chair forward a bit so we’re even closer together, offers to take the high parts, and we just … go.

  It’s cliché to say that our voices dance together seamlessly, or that her lilting soprano is the perfect complement to my alto, but whatever we do works. We’re in it. She’s offering suggestions—I know what I’m talking about! I was in concert choir for two entire years before I got kicked out for an incident involving hair dye and half the tenor section at State. Don’t ask—and trusting my notes when I have them.

  Two hours pass before Olivia’s eyes start to look so heavy I’m afraid she’s going to fall asleep in the middle of the bridge. When we finish the song, she stands, yawns, and stretches her arms over her head.

  I want this to work, I realize. This feels like more than a last-ditch effort to figure my life out. I want to sing that song with her and I want to win and I want to believe that music still holds some answers for me. That the way I feel right now means something.

  “So we’re definitely doing this,” I say. Until we started singing together, I guess a part of me still figured this was all going to be a fluke. That Olivia wouldn’t be able to sing, that I’d freeze when it came time to finally play, that even if everything worked exactly right, the two of us just wouldn’t click. But none of that happened.

  Olivia simply nods, like she understands all that I’m not saying. It’s nice, feeling like we’re communicating without exchanging any words. I turn my face up to the sky to see what she’s seeing, and try to ignore the way the warmth spreads through my chest.

  Maybe I should tell her the truth about what happened to my dad. If she’s going to do this with me, if we’re going to be in this together, then she might need to know. But when I look at her, looking at the stars, I know that’s not an option. She’s happy and I—I feel as close to happy as I’ve been in months too. And I just can’t. I know enough to know that some dark corners inside us are better left dark, and Olivia is all light.

  “Oh my God. Oh my God!” she shrieks. I think she must have stepped on something again, so I leap into action, ready to patch up another festival injury. But when I crouch down next to her, Olivia is giggling and shaking her head in disbelief at the same time. “My best friend is in love!”

  She holds up her phone and shows me a picture of Peter drooling all over a sleeping bag in their tent, UNO cards stuck to his face, with a text underneath:

  I went to the bathroom for five minutes and came back to this

  I laugh at Peter’s slack, drooling, sleep-of-the-innocent face.

  “Imani is totally buying me a new one.” She pouts. “I didn’t even get a chance to sleep in it!”

  “I don’t know how he manages it, but the guy can fall asleep anywhere, under any conditions. And stay asleep despite every attempt to get him to wake up.” I think abou
t trying to get him up in time to catch his flight last time he came to town, and barely keep myself from shuddering. The memory of a frantic Peter, half-dressed and sleep-mussed, running through security at Indianapolis International Airport isn’t a scene I’d like to repeat anytime soon. “I think you might have to consider your sleeping bag collateral damage in the Peter Menon Experience.”

  She doesn’t respond right away, so I add, “You can, um, stay here. If you want. I have a pretty massive air mattress. You and Imani, I mean. We can just, um, trade tents for the night?”

  I hate that my voice comes out sounding like a question, but I’m out of my depth here. I can’t wrangle Peter back to our campsite, so maybe a switch is our best bet? I can’t read her expression as she looks up at me. She cocks her head to the side like she’s trying to figure me out, and after a few hour-long seconds, she nods once like she’s figured everything out.

  She quickly types something on her phone before responding, “I’ll just stay. I’ll have you know, if you’re dangerous to dance with, then I’m lethal to share a bed with.”

  I’m practically operating on autopilot as I reach into my duffel bag and pull out a spare tank top and some old softball shorts. I’m going to share sleeping quarters with a living, breathing human being who also happens to be someone I thought I might kiss a few hours ago. I hand everything over to her, take a deep breath, and think, This is going to be okay. Yes, we’ll be sleeping not even two feet away from each other while she wears your clothes, but this is fine.

  I’m the cartoon dog in the fire meme in human form.

  She clutches the clothes to her chest. She looks between me and the tent and then back at me again before mumbling, strangely shy, “You’ll stay out here while I’m changing though, right?”

  It seems like such a strange question, such a no-brainer—because why would I invade her privacy like that?—that my nod is slow. It seems to be enough for her though because suddenly she’s smiling again. She kicks off her Birks and unzips the tent. She turns around once she gets inside, and pokes her head out of the flap.