Out of Tune

by Gail Nall

  We run through the song once, and even though I know it needs work—I came in too early a couple of times, and he messed up the words in the middle—I just know it’s going to be amazing in time for the auditions.

  Except I won’t be here. Unless something blows up, anyway. And I still need to tell him that.

  Jack’s lazy smile looks way less lazy when he sets his guitar down and says, “That song was a really great choice.”

  “Oh, um, thanks!” My voice comes out a little squeaky, and I immediately go warm from head to toe. The second the auditions were announced, I researched the judges on the show. Chance Montgomery had done a (really, really good) cover of an old Tim McGraw song. Jodene Mitchell had a thing for big songs. And Kevin Benson was distantly related to Taylor Swift. So when Jack mentioned me and him trying out together, I pretty much immediately said we had to do Tim McGraw and Taylor Swift’s “Highway Don’t Care.” Well, after I said yes, of course. It was going to be a sure-fire win for us, and we’d both be off to Hollywood for filming, and then get record contracts and probably a world tour. Together, of course.

  Except now none of that is going to happen. I twist the end of one of my braids while Jack picks through the part he messed up in the middle, singing the right words under his breath. His hair falls into his eyes, and he’s just so . . . Jack. How in the world am I going to tell him?

  “Those judges aren’t going to know what hit them,” he says with that Jack confidence. I mean, he only won the school talent show by a landslide, so he knows how to win a crowd.

  “I hope so.” It’s all I can think of to say.

  He blinks at me from under his hat. “Maya, is something wrong? You seem kind of out of it today.”

  Yes! Everything is wrong! “No, I’m fine. Really. Want to run the song again?” I grin at him like I’m not hiding the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.

  I have no idea how I’m going to tell him. And worst of all, once I do, he probably won’t want anything to do with me.

  “Maya, Bug! Family meeting. Now!” Mom yells from downstairs that night.

  I’m sitting on my bed, Hugo purring in my lap. My beautiful audition top is spread out in front of me. It’s perfect—a shimmery silver that looks like the ocean at sunset when I put it on. I heft Hugo off my lap, flop onto my back, and stare at the TTT on my wall. I’d bet a million dollars that Carrie, Miranda, and Taylor never had to deal with their parents crushing their dreams.

  Maybe I’ll just stay up here and belt out Carrie Underwood’s entire Some Hearts album over and over until Mom and Dad agree that this whole idea is pointless.

  Mom pokes her head in the door. “Maya? Your presence is requested in the kitchen.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. I’m protesting.” I draw my knees up to my chin and wrap my arms around my legs.

  “Maya Mae Casselberry,” Mom says in that voice.

  “Fine.” I swing my legs over the side of the bed in defeat. “But just because I’m going downstairs doesn’t mean I agree to any of this.”

  Dad is sitting at our scarred-up table—the one that used to be Grandma’s and has teeth marks on one corner from when I chewed on it as a toddler. How can they even think of giving that away?

  Bug’s eating grapes straight from the fridge and rattling on and on about how she’s going to decorate her cubbyhole. I grab my usual seat closest to the door. Mom gently pulls Bug by her long blond ponytail to an empty chair.

  I lean back and cross my arms. The chair creaks as the two front legs leave the floor. “I don’t see why we have to ruin our lives. I have stuff planned this year. Important things.”

  Mom leans forward from her seat and pushes down on my knee. The chair rocks down onto all four legs. She gives me a sympathetic smile. “You can still sing, and lots of these campgrounds will have pools. You’ll see.” She doesn’t even mention Dueling Duets.

  “And what about my voice lessons?” I look right into her brown eyes. We all look the same—me, Mom, and Bug. Blond hair and brown eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Maya, but even if we stayed, we wouldn’t be able to afford voice lessons much longer.”

  That’s it? No We’re sorry we’re crushing the only dream you’ve ever had? No Sorry you’ll be doomed to a future life of drudgery in an office instead of a fabulous, sequin-riddled life onstage in front of hundreds of thousands of adoring fans?

  “But how am I supposed to keep my voice in shape?” I’ve been singing with Marianne Phelps—former backup vocalist for LeAnn Rimes—since I was eight years old and drove my parents crazy by belting out “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ ” over and over and over.

  “You can give us concerts on the road.” Dad grins at me like singing for my family in that rust-pile RV is somehow way better than weekly voice lessons with Marianne Phelps and trying out for a show that practically guarantees a record contract.

  “Why can’t we leave after Dueling Duets?” I say. “Or—better idea—let’s not leave at all.”

  A pained look flits across Mom’s face. “I know we’re asking you girls to give up a lot.”

  “I’m giving up the Girl Scout camping extravaganza,” Bug says in all seriousness.

  I roll my eyes. “That doesn’t even make sense. You’re giving up camping to go camping?”

  “It’s the camping extravaganza.”

  “Right. If we have to save money, why can’t we stay here and move into an apartment like we planned?” An apartment would not be the same as my house, but at least I’d still be in the same city as Kenzie and Jack and the auditions.

  Mom reaches across the table for my hand, but I snatch it away. “I know this is going to be hard for you,” she says. “But we’re living on one salary, and this makes the most sense moneywise. Besides, it’s a lifelong dream for your father and me. We get to live an adventure with our girls. It’ll be so much better than an apartment, I promise.” Mom makes gooey eyes at Dad again.

  Normal parents wait to fulfill their lifelong dreams until after their kids have grown up and moved out. Then they buy sheep farms or start bands and play old-people rock. They don’t uproot their kids from school and their best friends and everything for groovy travels in the world’s ugliest RV. Plus, I’m pretty sure it’s Dad’s dream, not Mom’s.

  “What about your job?” I ask Mom. If she quits work, then we really won’t have any money. We’ll have to park that awful RV on the side of the road when we run out of gas and, I don’t know, sing songs for change in an old jam jar. And that’s not exactly how I pictured my life as Nashville’s newest country music star.

  “I’m moving into a position where I can do consulting work from a home office. Or an RV office.”

  Dad laughs, and Mom smiles at him.

  Ugh. They’re really, really happy about this.

  Mom opens up a folder I didn’t even notice. She hands pieces of paper to Bug and me. “This is a list of absolute necessities. Everything else is a luxury, and we have very little space. Your job this week is to start pulling things out of your rooms to either sell or give away.”

  I scan the list.

  8 pairs pants/skirts/shorts

  8 shirts

  8 pairs underwear

  1 light jacket

  winter coat

  3 pairs shoes: tennis shoes, hiking boots, flip-flops

  Holy potatoes! I stop reading right there. “Only three pairs of shoes? And one of them has to be hiking boots?”

  “Three. And yes,” Mom says.

  I’m about to hyperventilate. I must have at least twenty pairs of shoes. There’s no way I can bring only three.

  That’s it. Kenzie’s parents have got to agree to let me move in with them.

  “Go on upstairs and get started,” Dad says. “I’m going out to spiff up our rig while your mom calls the real estate agent. Won’t be long now!” He thumps the table and grins.

  I drag my feet upstairs and stand in the doorway to my room. Nowhere on that list did it say stuf
fed cat collection or 249 books or signed posters of the TTT or anything else I can’t bear to part with.

  I’m not packing up a thing. Not until they make me.

  Chapter 3

  35 days until Dueling Duets auditions

  By the time the last day of school rolls around, I still haven’t told Jack I’m leaving. I just can’t do it.

  He finds me in the hallway as I’m cleaning out my locker. Which is full of stuff that’s not on Mom’s Packing Essentials list.

  “Guess what?” he says. “I found us a place to practice this summer. Lacey’s dad knows this guy who has a recording studio, and he said we could use space there when it isn’t booked.”

  I blink at him. His blue eyes are extra blue today, and his lazy smile is so cute that it’s impossible not to smile back at him. “That’s . . . great!” I’m still kind of reeling from the fact that he somehow snagged us practice space in a recording studio, of all places. And how it was Lacey who arranged it. I know she didn’t do it out of the kindness of her heart. She’s up to something, for sure. I figured that out about three seconds after Jack asked me to audition with him earlier this year.

  I was already going to audition for Dueling Duets when he asked me. I mean, of course I wasn’t going to let this dream moment of finally making it as a country music star not happen, even without a partner. But when Jack asked me to sing with him, it was like all those times I’d stared at him in class (when he wasn’t looking, of course) and imagined us singing together finally came to something. I’ve only been crushing on him since I heard him singing by himself in the music room after school one day last September. Who knew that all it would take was me singing Miranda Lambert’s “White Liar” in the talent show for him to notice me?

  The second I got off the stage, he looked at me and said, “You do that song better than Miranda.” And I couldn’t figure out what in the world to say back to him. I’m pretty sure I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. But then, right after English class the next morning, he walked up to my desk (which was right next to Lacey’s, so she heard the whole thing), pushed his hair out of his eyes, and said, “So, hey, have you heard of this Dueling Duets show?”

  All I could get out was, “Um, yes.” Then I mumbled something about auditioning for it. When I replay this scene in my head, it’s all slow motion. Like the way it is in the movies when they want you to notice every single little thing.

  “I was thinking that—if you wanted—maybe we could try out together?” He shoved his hands into his pockets, almost like he was nervous. Which is crazy, because any girl who can carry a tune would die to audition with him.

  In fact, I’m pretty sure Lacey’s eyes fell out of her head when he asked me.

  And now, here I am, trying to figure out how to keep this dream going. If Lacey gets wind of me leaving town, she’ll do anything to worm her way into my spot.

  Jack gives me the address of the studio, and we make plans to meet up in two days. He’s super excited about the studio, and I would be too . . . if I didn’t know what was coming.

  Because this thing is getting more real every day. Most of our furniture is gone. Strangers that Mom and Dad find on Craigslist come to take away our widescreen TV, Grandma’s old kitchen table, and the matching couch and love seat. Now there’s nowhere left to sit downstairs except for Dad’s ancient recliner. Mom insists we do Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who gets it for dinner each night. Everyone else eats sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  Mom threatened to take all my stuff to Goodwill if I didn’t start packing. No way was I going to let that happen. Operation Maya Keeps Everything is under way. If they’re forcing me to give up Kenzie, my school, my house, my comfy yellow-and-white bedroom, and, worst of all, my dreams of performing for thousands with Jack, then I’m not getting rid of anything else that matters.

  Dad’s standing behind the RV as I carry out a box of books. He’s holding a palette—like, a real artist’s palette—in his left hand and is painting something on the freaky spare tire cover.

  “I’m naming her Gloria,” he says as he paints over the Unterbrinks’ name.

  “Oookay.” I shift the box over to my right hip. Really, Bertha would be a better name. Bertha the Beast. Instead, I just say, “ ‘Gloria’ sounds like a hippo.”

  “Shh, you’ll hurt her feelings,” he says with a smile.

  I take a step closer to see what he’s painting.

  G L

  “Dad, you are not painting ‘Gloria’ on the tire cover, are you?”

  “Well, we’re not the Unterbrinks. So it’ll be ‘Groovy Travels with Gloria.’ ”

  Because that makes sense.

  He whistles “Feelin’ Groovy” as he paints. I’m about to ask him why he doesn’t put our last name on the cover, when I think better of it. I don’t really want anyone associating me with Gloria/Bertha the Beast.

  I leave Dad to his artistry and heft my box into the trailer. Bug’s hanging out in her cubbyhole. All her stuff fits neatly into two drawers in Mom and Dad’s little bedroom.

  “Did you know Dad named this thing?” I ask Bug.

  She climbs down and runs ahead of me to the kitchen. “Yup. ‘Gloria’ kind of sounds like a hippo.”

  Finally! Maybe Bug and I really are related. I give her back a sisterly smile.

  “I would’ve named it Hector. Because I think it looks more like a boy RV than a girl RV,” Bug says as she places a can of green beans in the cabinet.

  Never mind.

  I plug in my earbuds, turn up my favorite girl-power country mix, and spend the rest of the day dragging bags and boxes full of my life into the hallway cubbyholes. I fill the extra bunk from mattress to ceiling, plaster the tiny wall space next to my bed with the TTT (so what if the posters curve up onto the ceiling?), stuff the drawers until they barely shut, and shove the mini-closets full of clothes and shoes.

  Three pairs of shoes. Ha.

  Score one for Operation Maya Keeps Everything.

  It’s a gorgeous Saturday afternoon, and Kenzie and her mom are coming to take me downtown for One Last Big Nashville Blast, as Kenzie calls it. I’ve changed into a white sundress and my favorite pair of red cowboy boots. I even took extra time to flat-iron my poodle hair so I wouldn’t have to braid it. And my dress is just long enough to cover the giant scrape I got on my knee this morning when I tripped over my piggy bank and a pile of blankets while carrying a box into my new so-called bedroom.

  “What would you girls like to do first?” Mrs. O’Neill asks when I climb into the backseat of her car.

  Kenzie and I look at each other. “Pancake Pantry!” we yell at the same time.

  Mrs. O’Neill rolls her eyes at us in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know why I even asked.”

  When we get to the restaurant, Kenzie orders the plain old basic pancakes like she always does, and Mrs. O’Neill asks for an omelet, which is so boring at a place known for its pancakes. I take forever to decide. How can I pick just one kind of pancake when it’s possibly my last time ever at the Pancake Pantry? I finally choose chocolate chip, and then I spend the rest of the meal trying to remember every last detail of the restaurant, from the wooden floor to the way it smells, all warm and pancakey.

  And then, of course, we go to the Ryman. It’s early enough that the church-turned-concert-hall is still open to tourists. And us.

  Inside, I run my fingers over the tops of the pew seats. The whole place is filled with this . . . feeling. Like greatness that could come at any moment and take you completely by surprise. It’s heavy in the air, and I breathe it in. Maybe—just maybe—if I soak up enough of the ghosts of this place, I’ll get my turn to stand on that stage.

  “Go on up.” Kenzie gives me a little push toward the steps at the front of the house (which is theater lingo for, well, the theater).

  Usually there’s someone standing near the stage who’ll take your picture if you go up and stand at the mic. But it has to be almost closing time, be
cause no one else is here but us.

  I climb the rounded steps that lead to the center of the stage. When I turn around, Kenzie and Mrs. O’Neill start clapping and whistling.

  As if I need much more than that to break into song at the Ryman, of all places. I close my eyes and sing the first thing that pops into my mind. Which is “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” And it’s as if Loretta Lynn herself is standing right beside me as my voice carries through the theater to my audience of two.

  It’s perfect.

  When I finish, Kenzie and her mom give me a standing ovation. I take a few exaggerated bows before running down the steps and collapsing in laughter against Kenzie.

  “See, one dream fulfilled,” she says.

  We stroll around the rest of the theater for a few minutes, and then Kenzie and I beg Mrs. O’Neill for a walk down Lower Broad.

  “Please?” Kenzie asks as we push through the door and head out into the sticky June evening. “It’s not even dark yet. And we’re already almost there.” She waves her hand toward the masses of people moving down the sidewalk.

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever get to walk here again,” I add. Okay, maybe that was a little over the top, but still. I need to drink up all the Nashville I can before I have to leave. And Mom and Dad would only ever take me down here in the morning, when it’s practically dead.

  Mrs. O’Neill sighs, clicks her phone to check the time, and then says, “All right. But only for a few minutes. You know how crazy it gets.”

  Kenzie and I grab hands and jump up and down and squeal like we’ve just been given a gazillion dollars. Then we link arms and just stare for a moment at all the neon lights and the people and the honky-tonks with music pouring out into the street.

  It’s just . . . everything. Everything happens here, on this street. It’s all of Nashville, smooshed down into a few insane blocks. The sidewalks are already teeming with people. Kenzie and I grin at each other, then step forward and join them, Mrs. O’Neill trailing behind us.