The next few weeks of the tour were turning out to be the happiest of Sawyer’s life.
And yeah, having sex with Vix was great, but it wasn’t that. It was everything—the sex, having a best friend for the first time in her life, and the camaraderie with her bandmates. The fact she was thinking of them as her bandmates. Hell, they let her drive the van. Which she could do without, if she were being honest, but she understood it meant something.
Then there was the music.
The music she played on stage—Vix’s music—that now had so much more significance to her, now that she understood the sentiment behind Vix’s lyrics. She found herself changing up some of the fiddle parts as they played, adapting the music to Vix’s words. She wrote a lot of songs with upbeat music but heavy words, and Sawyer had started following Vix’s lyrical lead more than the musical cues. At first it’d thrown the guys, but they’d quickly figured it out and Sawyer liked to think she was adding something to the song by shadowing the emotions of Vix’s words. Either way, it sounded great and everyone loved it. She’d caught a video online of their performance in Vancouver of “Ozone Break,” and it was one of the most-liked, most-commented-on videos of Vix’s on the internet—so much so that Vix added it to her official channel.
While Sawyer was completely aware that YouTube comments were a hive of scum and villainy, she was pleasantly surprised at the comments she saw on the video.
OMG who is that fiddle player??
Saw them in Virginia earlier this summer she’s new she’s awesome.
I hope she’s with them on the fall tour, omg I love how this song sounds with the violin!!
There were a few comments about how she was pretty, which she supposed were nice, though not nearly as nice as the ones about the music.
This is the best version of this song ever I converted to an MP3 and have listened to it like 2342 times omg I’m so getting a tattoo of these lyrics.
“People like us,” she said to Vix, snuggled up next to her on the greenroom couch in Tucson. She waved the video. “Look.”
“Ugh. My hair looks terrible.” Vix rested her head on Sawyer’s shoulder. “Can you help me dye it soon? It’s been so long it’s almost blonde again.”
“Sure.” Sawyer saw a comment and frowned. Someone else had asked, Anyone know who the fiddle player is?
Beneath it, someone else had written her name’s Sawyer Bell but I think she’s only there for the summer.
Bummer she’s great I wonder if she has any solo stuff?
Orchestra stuff from Juilliard, I think, but that’s it.
People were looking her up on the internet?
“Weird, right?” Vix said, as if she’d read Sawyer’s mind. “The first time someone took a picture of me on stage, I didn’t get it. Being noticed, it’s strange.”
“But I’m the fiddle player,” Sawyer said. She didn’t know why, but something about seeing her name right there . . . what? It made her nervous, that was what. People were supposed to notice the music, not her.
Oh well. It was only one video, right? Sawyer resisted the urge to Google herself, and put it out of her mind. Or she tried to, anyway—it was easy enough when she was on stage or when she was with Vix. It was those times Vix was asleep and Sawyer was left with only her thoughts and the open road that were the problem.
Herself, her thoughts, and a 4G connection.
She’d told her parents that she was turning off her cellular data while in Europe and not to call her, because it would be too expensive. As a way of avoiding her parents, it had worked out remarkably well. But it kept her removed from the larger picture of what was going on in the world, and although that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, it was sometimes hard to remember that the world was more than shows in midcapacity venues and an endless stretch of American highway.
She’d noticed the people in the audience with their phones, of course—sometimes people were totally clueless and left the flash on, which was annoying—but for some reason it’d never really registered that they might be filming video and posting it on the internet. And Vix did some press stuff, usually right after sound check or before if they were at the venue early enough. She’d done a few college radio station interviews too. The idea that she might be talking about Sawyer hadn’t really bothered her all that much. Who did she know in Phoenix, Arizona, anyway?
The internet was a different story.
They were somewhere outside of El Paso when Sawyer decided to bite the bullet and Google herself. She expected maybe a few videos on YouTube, an article or two in publications no one she knew would ever read. There were more than she thought, though. Everything from videos to recordings, concert write-ups and message board posts. Most of her mentions were in descriptions on YouTube videos (with her name misspelled), but there were mentions on Twitter and pictures of her on Instagram. From people she didn’t know, and comments from people who thought she was hot.
Check out my new alt-country girlfriend, Victoria Vincent’s fiddle player, Sawyer Bell.
One of the top results was an article in Pitchfork magazine, which made her frown.
Victoria Vincent, renowned for writing songs about life experiences she’s much too young for, has added a new fiddle player to her tour this summer. Sawyer Bell, currently enrolled as a violin performance major at Juilliard, is a lovely addition to a band whose music can at best be described as indie-alt-country, and at worst an attempt to mimic other female musicians who have the chops to better pull off rocker-girl chic. Bell’s playing is technically perfect but beyond that, she brings a life and an energy to Vincent’s songs that really lights up the stage. It does wonders for Vincent’s songs, which can often come across as anthems of adolescent rebellion sung to world-weary millennials.
“Oh, man, you can’t read Pitchfork,” Kit told her, when she read that out loud, unsure if she should be flattered or offended. “They hate everyone in the most pretentious way possible.”
“They said our last album sounded like an angry girl singing in her mom’s garage,” said Connor.
“They should have said that about the first album. It was the truth.” Vix shrugged. “I get that in interviews literally all the time, that I’m too young to write the songs I do. And Pitchfork is a bunch of sexist hipster assholes, so.”
Sawyer Bell, currently enrolled as a violin performance major at Juilliard . . .
Biting her lip, Sawyer returned Vix’s phone, on which she’d been perusing the internet. She was annoyed by the description, sure, but it wasn’t only that. Just because she’d been in her own little world that summer didn’t mean everyone else was. Sawyer pulled her phone out and tapped her nail against it, thinking. She’d used it mainly as a glorified camera all summer and nothing else. It was strangely freeing, and she was loath to turn it off airplane mode.
Do it. You’ll see you have no messages from your parents demanding to know why you’re showing up on YouTube videos from Arizona and you can stop worrying.
She took a pic of Vix instead, then shoved the phone determinedly back into her bag.
Texas decided it was time for Sawyer to turn on her phone. But it wasn’t because of Google or YouTube videos. It was because the van chose that moment to overheat and stall out, leaving them stranded on the side of a Texas highway. Sawyer had the most battery power left on her phone, so it was up to her to find a tow company and make the call.
She went to the settings menu and switched the phone off airplane mode, navigating to the Chrome icon and ignoring her pounding heart. The sun was brutal in Texas, and she was covered in sweat in seconds, finger slippery on the screen as she tried typing the relevant information in the search bar. She’d found somewhere they could call when the phone caught up with her, and the notifications started appearing on her screen.
A lot of text messages, which she expected. And sixteen missed calls in the last week, all of which were from her parents. There were texts from them too. And sixteen voice mails. Oh, Jesus.
Swallowing, Sawyer got the number and shoved the phone at Vix. “Here, tell them where we are.” She felt like she was going to be sick. She grabbed a bottle of water from the inside of the van and walked off a little ways, in an attempt to escape the dust kicked up by the cars on the highway and the stifling heat, the sick twist in her stomach. One of the text messages she’d seen before shoving the phone at Vix was Please call us, honey, we’re so worried.
Sawyer put her hands on her knees, dropping her head. She could taste the dust in her mouth.
“Hey.” Vix was there, her hand gentle on Sawyer’s sweat-drenched back. “I think you should probably call them.”
Sawyer straightened, too fast, and fought a wave of dizziness. Vix was holding the phone in her outstretched hand. “They’ll have someone out here in twenty minutes, so it’s no big deal. But you got three texts and a call while I was on the phone with the tow people. All from your parents.”
Sawyer took the phone. She didn’t know what to say.
“You were going to have to tell them eventually, weren’t you?” Vix asked. She was still lightly rubbing Sawyer’s back. “I mean, what were you going to do when you got home and they asked about Europe? Asked for, like, details and shit? Pictures?”
“I don’t know. Pinterest?” Sawyer gave her a wan smile. “I wasn’t thinking about that.” Her hand was shaking so hard she dropped her phone in the dirt.
Vix picked it up for her, then handed it over again with a shrug at Sawyer’s stammered thanks. “I’m closer to the ground than you are. Just call them, okay? They’re worried, and I’m sure you don’t want them to be.”
She didn’t. Sawyer went back to the van, where she climbed inside simply to escape the sun. She was never going to take air conditioning for granted again. She hit Call on her mom’s contact information and took a deep breath.
Her mother answered immediately. “Sawyer! Honey, where are you?” She sounded frantic.
“I’m—I’m on the side of the road in Texas.” Sawyer was too freaked to have realized that wasn’t the best thing to say to calm down her anxious mother. “We— No, I’m fine, the van broke down.”
“Van . . .?” Her mother took a deep breath. “You’re not in Europe.”
“Texas isn’t that big,” Sawyer said, trying for a joke. She closed her eyes when nothing greeted her but silence. Of course her mom would be mad. Sawyer had never come close to telling a lie of this magnitude in her life. All her small rebellions were nothing compared to this.
“Mrs. Smith came by to show me a YouTube video of you performing in Arizona,” her mother said. “She was putting together a presentation for—for the students. About you. And she—she saw that, and asked me if I knew you were on tour with a rock band.”
Ugh, that must have been embarrassing. Sawyer closed her eyes, lip trembling. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“Honey, why— What happened to your ensemble?”
“I’m not—not in the ensemble.” She took a deep breath. She could see Vix smoking over with the guys, who were all trying not to give her worried looks and totally failing.
“You—you didn’t get in? Honey, why didn’t you tell us that?” Her mom’s voice still had an edge to it, but there was more concern there than anything. Which of course made her feel worse. “You didn’t think we’d be angry, did you?”
It occurred to her that her mother had given her a perfectly believable, understandable story about why she’d run away with a band for the summer. That she was embarrassed at not being selected for a spot, didn’t want to disappoint them, and wanted to play music anyway. It would make sense. They’d believe it. She knew they would.
Then she thought about Vix, about the songs she wrote and the honesty it took to put them on a page, much less stand up on stage and give them voice. She shifted and held the phone with her shoulder, shielding her eyes from the sun. She wasn’t going to lie. Not this time. “I didn’t try out, Mom.”
“You— Why not?”
“I had a panic attack at the audition. So I left.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” her mother said, the anger gone now. “Honey, I can’t imagine the stress that you’re under there, but why not tell us that? Why are you— Who are these people you’re with? I almost had a heart attack thinking about you traveling with these—with people you don’t know, and now you say you’re on the side of the road—”
“I knew Vix—Victoria—in high school,” Sawyer said. That was stretching the truth a bit, but comparatively, not that big of a deal. “They needed a fiddle player, and I wanted to play music.”
“Why on earth didn’t you tell us, Sawyer?”
The million dollar question, and what the hell. Sawyer was going make the stuffy interior of this broken-down van her stage, and give her own truth the voice it needed to finally be out there. “Because I’m miserable at Juilliard, Mom. I hate it. I’ve hated it since—since my second semester. I thought it would get better, but it didn’t. I’m stressed all the time, and that wasn’t the first panic attack I’ve had. I can’t—I can’t stand the competition, I don’t have any friends—” She sniffled, hating the burn of tears in her eyes. “And I don’t know what to do because I was supposed to love it. I was supposed to love it, and be happy—but I don’t, and I’m not.”
There. It was out, at last, and there was relief as she waited for her mother’s disappointment to take that small feeling of satisfaction away.
“Oh, Sawyer.” Her mom sniffled too. “Baby girl, why did you wait so long to tell us this?”
“Because you were so proud of me,” Sawyer whispered. “For getting in. The scholarship. You were so proud and I—I wanted to—” She didn’t know what to say.
“We were proud and happy because we thought it’s what you wanted.” Her mom sounded dazed. “Sweetheart, did we put too much pressure on you? I hate to think it’s our fault that you were so unhappy.”
“Mom, no,” Sawyer interrupted. “It’s not. I was proud of myself for getting in, and for the scholarship. I was! It turned out to be . . . nothing like I wanted it to be.” Never once, in all her preparations for the rigorous application process, had Sawyer ever expected to hate the school she was trying so hard to get into. “And I felt like a failure admitting that. So I stayed.”
“Baby,” her mom said, voice so kind it made Sawyer tear up again, “you aren’t a failure. You did something incredibly difficult and it didn’t work out, but sweetheart, you can’t stay there and be miserable. Especially if it’s making you sick. And it breaks my heart a little that you thought you had no other choice.”
Sawyer did cry then. Because it was the reaction she should have expected all along, wasn’t it? Her parents had never pressured her. They weren’t the kind that demanded perfection, who held her to impossible standards. No, she’d done that all on her own. It wasn’t her parents she was running away from at all. It was herself.
“. . . and you can transfer. When you get back, we’ll sit down and look at schools . . .”
“Mom,” she interrupted, as the panic surged anew. “I’m not sure I want to go back to college.”
That brought the disapproval back to her mom’s voice. “That’s not an option, Sawyer. You need an education, and your father and I will understand if Juilliard isn’t the place for you, but . . . sweetheart, be reasonable. You’re a senior. You’re so close to graduating, what are you going to do instead?”
Sawyer stood up, leaving the shelter of the van and catching sight of a tow truck headed their way. This is what I want. Playing music, being with Vix and the band. She couldn’t say that, though. She didn’t know if they’d want her around for more than this tour. “I’m—I’m thinking about all my options.”
Her mom made a noise that suggested the conversation was far from over, but she was obviously willing to let it drop for the moment. “I looked at the tour schedule. It looks like your last show is in Memphis. So you’ll be home soon, won’t you?”
Sawyer wasn’t dreading the end of the tour quite like she’d been before, but the thought of things coming to an end still made her feel anxious. Despite the unending, stifling heat of the late afternoon, her hands felt clammy. “Yeah. A few weeks.”
“We’ll talk about this when you’re done.” Her mom gave a little laugh. “I never would have suspected my daughter was the type to run away from home with a rock band.”
Sawyer smiled at that. “Me, neither. Mom, the tow truck is here and I have to go. I’m sorry I lied to you and Dad. I really, really hope you believe me. I hated doing it, and I know it wasn’t right.”
“It’s all right, honey. I’m glad you’re safe, and I’m still a bit confused how you turned into an Americana fiddle player, and I’m still concerned you’re in a situation involving Texas and a tow truck, but we’ll get this all figured out.” Her mother’s voice was soothing. “Do you need any money?”
God, why had she done this to her parents? The guilt made her eyes burn again. “We’re good, I think.”
“Will you please stay in touch the rest of the tour?”
She nodded. “And . . . if you want, come to the show in Memphis. The last one. I’ll put you on the guest list.”
“Of course I want to, Sawyer. Your father and I, we’ve always loved watching you play.”
“Thanks,” Sawyer choked out, and ended the call as the van was hooked up behind the tow truck, dust stinging her eyes along with the tears.