by Leah Johnson
“You’re a good egg, Toni,” she says. She zips it up behind her and I sit back down on the cooler.
This feeling is nothing like playing in front of her a few hours ago—this fear settles in my stomach and not my chest. It’s strange and scary and warm. I can hear Olivia moving around inside, her elbows clumsily bumping into the nylon of the tent while she quietly sings the chorus of Kittredge’s newest radio hit. She’s so unguarded, it feels almost intimate.
My cheeks heat at the thought. And that’s when I know this isn’t fear at all. Not really. These are the butterflies Taylor Swift is talking about in all those songs I secretly love to play.
And there’s no way I’m going to be able to shake them.
SATURDAY MORNING
The first thing I notice when I wake up is how warm I feel from where the sunlight is hitting my face, and I yawn without opening my eyes. I’m so cozy and secure nestled under my blanket, sprawled out all alone on my roomy mattress. But—I didn’t bring a blanket to Farmland. I brought a sleeping bag. Oh my God. My eyes open instantly and I sit up, clutching the blanket to my chest, my heart practically in my throat. I shared a tent with Toni last night!
The realization hits me so fast and so hard I’m not sure how to even catalog how I feel. I mean … I shared a tent with Toni last night. It doesn’t seem real as I keep thinking it, so I whisper it aloud to myself a couple of times, just to be sure.
“I shared a tent with Toni last night. Toni and I slept on the same mattress. Toni and me were in the same tent on the same mattress and—” I groan and run both hands down my face until I look like a Munch painting. “I didn’t even wear my silk scarf to bed.”
I barely get a chance to smooth my edges down and establish a game plan for emerging from this tent looking much more together than I feel before I’m being accosted by my beloved older sister. I swipe open her most recent text.
I’m flying back to Boston today. Mom is driving me to the airport now.
It’s been a long summer with Nia at home. Both she and Wash returned from Boston for the summer to internships at the same tech startup in downtown Indianapolis, her in their legal department and him in IT. Somehow they managed to make it through their freshman and sophomore years not only as the same Instagram-worthy couple, but also somehow even more … powerful.
Nia traded in her signature twenty-four-inch lace-front wigs for her natural hair, which is perfectly curly and never seems to get dry and brittle like mine (You’re not using the right products, Olivia, that’s why. Haven’t you done any research on natural hair maintenance?), and her school uniform cardigans for statement T-shirts with sayings on them like DISMANTLE WHITE FEMINISM and NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL ON STOLEN LAND.
She seemed more grounded and even surer of her convictions (You’re ordering camping gear from Amazon? Why don’t you just punch a factory worker directly in the face next time? It would probably be less of a betrayal.). Which meant, of course, that Mom is now even surer of her choice of the favorite daughter.
With Imani gone at her summer program, no one from school speaking to me anymore, and no car to drive aimlessly around town like every other bored kid I knew, there’d been nothing but time for both my mom and Nia to remind me what a disappointment I am. Conversations about me eventually choosing a major filled with insults about how I’d actually be chasing an MRS degree. Dinnertime arguments about me retaking my SATs or signing up for another AP test study group. Or worst of all, Nia’s constant side-eyes that said more than any snippy comment ever could: You’ve embarrassed this family once again, and this time there’s no achievement of mine big enough to distract from it.
I hated to admit it—because no one is supposed to think this about their sister—but by a week in, I was more than ready for her to go.
Okay! Safe travels! Have a good semester!
Her response buzzes back almost instantly:
How is it that can I hear you screaming even through texts? Jesus. Don’t answer that.
Make better choices this year.
I don’t respond. I decide to delete the entire conversation for good measure. I just can’t go there right now.
I wish I could say it wasn’t always like this between me and Nia, but I’ve been the sideshow to her main attraction for a long time. Since Mom got her job as the college counselor at Park Meade, and Nia got the partial tuition break that comes along with it at the beginning of her freshman year, she became someone untouchable. And I became the embarrassing little sister that she wanted to escape. She had a new, picture-perfect, private school life at Park Meade. She could rub elbows with rich kids and talk a future in the Ivy Leagues, and I didn’t fit into that.
I was a reminder of her life before—imperfect, nearly impossible to fix—and she’s never let me forget it.
From our grades to the way we look—her model-long legs and narrow hips like my mom, and me with my curves for days and height that’s entirely dependent on my collection of platform sandals—we’ve just never been on the same side of whatever line divides people who have it all together and the people who don’t.
I lock my phone and try my best to settle the creeping insecurity that always comes after an interaction with my sister. I shake out my hands and roll my shoulders a few times, trying to get back to that feeling I had when I first woke up, instead of this aching feeling settling heavily over my body. Today is going to be a good day. I am going to help Toni with this competition. I am going to work my magic and make sure that Imani and Peter finally stop dancing around each other.
Even if it’s just for this weekend, in these small ways, I can bring something good to the lives of people I care about. I rub my eyes just in case there’s still sleep in them and crawl out of the tent, all disheveled and no-doubt gross looking.
Toni is sitting in one of the foldable camping chairs with her guitar in her lap, and last night comes rushing back to me. The sound of her voice, low and scratchy and perfect, perfectly complementing the sound of her gentle strumming. The way she sang a song that, even though I’d never heard it before, made it sound like greeting an old friend after too long away. I kind of wanted to sink into it. I kind of definitely want to hug her.
“Good morning,” she says, looking up briefly through her thick eyelashes. I don’t even try to think about what mine must look like right now, all caked together from not wiping off my makeup properly before going to sleep. It’s skincare maintenance 101.
“What are you doing up? It’s early.” She holds out a banana to me in offering and I shake my head. “We pretty much just went to sleep a few hours ago.”
The camps around us are still quiet and still but the muffled sound of distant soundchecks in the Core rings all the way to us.
“What can I say? Late to bed, early to rise makes a girl cranky, sassy, and snide. That’s how that goes, right?” She huffs a laugh in response before turning her attention back to her guitar. She looks so comfortable with her acoustic in her hands and still a little sleepy. Her locs fall forward and frame her face as she tunes it silently while I just stand there, staring like an idiot.
My chest tightens momentarily. I should definitely leave. I should go back to my tent before I do something or say something that’s going to mess this up. Things between us are going so well, I want to keep them that way, and my track record tells me the best way to do that is to make myself scarce. I don’t want to leave her though. I don’t want to walk away, even if it’s just until the performance later.
I swallow down a lump in my throat and plaster on a smile.
“Our name is going to be in lights tonight!”
I clap my hands together and try to think happy, pleasant thoughts. But we’re so close to the moment of truth, it’s only a matter of time before I do what I always do. Maybe I’ll accidentally step on the neck of Toni’s guitar and break it before we even make it to the performance barn. Maybe I’ll buy her a burrito at the taco cart that gives her food poisoning—oh God, what if I get fo
od poisoning and she doesn’t have a partner? You know what? I decide right then and there I won’t eat until after we’re done performing. And I’ll go back to camp and grab my slippers, just in case. It never hurts to tread lightly.
We’re one of the first slots after the lunch break ends, so we have a few hours to practice, see some shows, and maybe find another apple if a clue drops between now and then. But first, I need to pull myself together. I’m feeling jittery and unsure, and it always helps me to put on a cute dress and spend some time putting my makeup on. It’s like donning a suit of armor. And with Nia’s texts still floating around in my head, and my nerves about the performance later, I need all the help I can get.
“I know a creative genius like yourself must need some time alone to get into the right headspace, so I’m just going to grab my stuff and be out of your hair.” I duck back into the tent to grab my clothes from the day before and say loud enough to be heard outside, “Just one second and I’ll be ready to go!”
When I find my left sandal, I come back out, raising it over my head in victory.
“Got it! Okay, I’m just gonna …” I look over my shoulder and jerk my head in the direction of my tent.
“You move so fast,” she says.
Her voice is so low it’s almost inaudible, but I stop.
“Huh?”
“You’re like a sped-up audiobook.” She searches my face and rubs at her eyes sleepily. “I can mostly follow what you’re saying, but sometimes I think I must be missing some of the nuance.”
My heart sinks. This is it. I don’t even get the weekend before things go south. She’s annoyed with me; I’ve been too much of myself.
“Sorry,” I start. I clench my fists over the silvery straps of my Birkenstocks. My leg starts bouncing of its own accord. “It’s totally okay, I get it. This happens sometimes. Me and my big mouth, you know what I mean? Always running …”
“Sorry? For what? People have to work to keep up with you, you know?” She sets her guitar down gently into her hard case and rubs her hands down her bare thighs before sliding them into the pockets of her red Indiana men’s basketball hoodie. Oh my God how did I not notice how short her sleep shorts were?
She scratches the back of her neck as she stands up.
“I just mean, um, you’re the kind of person who takes work to understand.” She looks up at me and I want to cry a little at how earnest she looks. “I’m saying you’re worth the work, Olivia.
“Anyway, um”—she looks away before straightening her spine and smiling, just a little—“you want to grab breakfast and showers before we head in?”
I’m saying you’re worth the work, Olivia. I don’t know what to say to that, but those seven words are marching straight into my brain and taking up residence where just a few seconds ago lived insecurity. If she wants to do the work for me, I can do the same for her.
I shake my head. I don’t want to go back and change or eat or leave, period. I want to practice. I want us to be so good that there’s no way we could mess this up. I want to prove Toni right about me. I want to have walked into her life and made it better and walk away without being shattered. It has to be possible, otherwise I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what hope there is for someone like me if I try my best and still end up ruining everything.
When my mom got her master’s through night classes and got her job as an administrator at Park Meade, it was supposed to change our lives. It got me and Nia seriously lowered tuition to one of the best high schools in the state, it got us out of our shitty two-bedroom on the east side of town and into a cute little house near Broad Ripple. It got Nia into Harvard, and my mom the respectable white-collar job she’d always wanted. I could put on the requisite pleated uniform skirt and the gray-and-red Park Meade cardigan, but no outfit could ever dress me up enough to hide who I really am.
The faulty piece was always going to be me. Over and over again, mediocre test scores, more interest in punk shows than Key Club, too many dates and hookups and heartbreaks to count. And then the pictures of me that were never supposed to get out, and the scandal, and the star basketball player whose entire future now hinges on whether or not I testify against him in a few days. The embarrassment of a family and the ruined career of a boy with more potential in his pinky finger than most people have in their whole bodies all comes down to me.
So, if I only get one chance, this girl’s life will be better for having had me in it. That’s all I want.
“We should rehearse.” I point to Toni’s guitar case, where it leans against her truck. “Can we try it from the bridge first? I think I’m coming in flat on the fast part.”
Toni looks at me for a second before she sits back down. She hesitates, but eventually nods.
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s do it.”
SATURDAY MORNING
We practice for so long my voice feels a little raw by the time we decide to take a break. Thank God for Olivia’s short but spectacular stint in chorus, because I think we sound good together. Really good. Her voice is a little lighter than mine, something delicate, but we weave together like two halves of a whole.
By the time we’re finished, nearly two hours have passed, and I didn’t even notice. Peter bounds over to us, his hair pulled back in the same loose man bun that he insists makes him look like the brown Brad Pitt, while Imani lags behind him, arms crossed as usual. I’ve never seen someone so committed to keeping their arms firmly locked in that position. It’s honestly impressive.
The two of them both look ready to go, unlike me and Olivia. Peter shifts his eyes back and forth between the two of us, still a little worse for wear from practicing all morning instead of getting ready.
“Well aren’t you two just a sight for sore eyes?” he says, arms wide. “Bestie and future bestie—I’ve decided we’re going to be best friends, by the way, just so that’s on the record—you both need to get yourselves together. DJ Louddoc goes on in thirty!”
It’s still before noon since me and Olivia had a bigger head start to our day than anyone around us. Peter looks like freshly canned sunshine, all smiles while telling a bland-faced Imani how John Quincy Adams used to skinny-dip in the Potomac—one of his favorite factoids.
I’d probably be smiling too if I’d managed more than a few winks of sleep last night. Having Olivia next to me all night left me buzzing. I couldn’t relax knowing how close her body was to mine, how when she turned on her side, I could feel small puffs of her breath on my neck. It’s like I couldn’t tune anything out. The warmth of her, the soft sound of her snores—all of it made for an impossible sleep situation. So I woke up at the crack of dawn and decided to pick up my guitar. It didn’t feel as alive as it had the night before when I was playing with and for Olivia, but it felt good. It felt better than it had in eight months.
“You two need to get dressed!” He points at Olivia and me. I don’t bother to note that he’s still wearing his clothes from the day before, so he doesn’t have much room to talk.
Imani rolls her eyes and adds, “I refuse to miss this DJ after Peter has talked about him all morning. I need to be able to hold it over his head if he actually sucks.”
Peter looks absolutely smitten as he responds, “No way, don’t turn this around on me. You totally want to see him too.”
“Liv?” Imani ignores Peter in favor of turning to Olivia, and I realize then that she hasn’t spoken since the two walked up. She’s biting her lip and flipping her phone over in her hand, almost nervously. I think about asking what’s wrong, but she snaps out of it. She looks up at our friends as if seeing them for the first time, and smiles.
And if nobody else notices how fake it looks, then who am I to mention it?
We make it into the Core just in the nick of time for the set to start.
“We have just enough time to run through the song a few more times after this,” Olivia says, her voice raising to be heard above the reverb coming from the massive speakers behind us. She
squeezes my shoulder like I need reassuring. “It’ll be great.”
Her voice is drowned out by the wave of people carrying the four of us farther and farther into the fray—the telltale sign that a set is getting ready to start. It’s the same thing I’ve been swept into hundreds of times over the course of my life, at over a dozen Farmlands, but with her next to me, it’s unimaginably different.
Olivia is practically bouncing on the balls of her feet as we wait.
We all get a notification on our phones with a clue for the next apple, but it’s the one Olivia found in the barn last night. Knowing that we’re ahead of the game makes me feel looser, a little more free.
Peter is talking to my left, going on about his dead presidents obsession in the way that I just find endearing now—“Did you know James K. Polk banned dancing from the White House? It was like Footloose!”—as Imani nods along distractedly. It feels good, standing between my best friend and Olivia even though I’m still not sure, exactly, who she is to me. I just know that whatever we are to each other is working. That I feel excited about something—about someone.
“You guys, this is too good,” Olivia says over the low roar of crowd noise. She smiles at the three of us and holds up her camera. “Everyone, squeeze together!”
She holds it up to her face and aims it in me and Peter’s direction. Peter is quick to pose, his weight leaning into mine, his tongue out and hang loose sign at the ready. It’s so him that my laugh bubbles out before I can even think to stop it. Even Imani offers a tentative quirk of her lips, on her tiptoes to be seen over Peter’s shoulder.
The flash comes so quickly, I’m still laughing even after Olivia pulls the film from the camera and holds it up as she waits for the photo to emerge. When it does, I feel something bubbling up inside that seems dangerously close to really damn happy.
I feel almost outside myself—like the last eight months of my life haven’t disappeared exactly, but that the sharpness of their edges has rounded enough for me to breathe. I’m back in my favorite place on earth, and the sensation of being surrounded by people who love music as much as I do is almost overwhelming. There’s an energy buzzing in my hands and feet that feels boundless in its sudden intensity. I want to play my guitar, and dance, put my arms around Olivia, and scream at the top of my lungs all at the same time. Bodies are pressing in from all sides, and instead of it feeling claustrophobic, it’s a welcome embrace.
