Out of Tune

by Gail Nall

  I am officially the worst former audition partner in the entire world. And the worst best friend. The worst sister and worst daughter, too. The worst everything.

  We coast into a parking lot and up to a visitors center. I climb off my bike and let it fall as I collapse onto the pine needle-covered ground. “I’m done,” I announce to Shiver. With my eyes closed, because I don’t want to see her reaction. I can’t believe I’m admitting failure to Shiver. I wait for her to rub it in.

  “I’m sorry, what?” Shiver’s still straddling her bike on the sidewalk.

  “Done. I’m not biking any farther. I give up.” I open my eyes and stare into the bright blue sky dotted with fast-moving white clouds. Until the sun peeks out from one of those clouds and blinds me. Then I close my eyes again. All I want is my cubbyhole bed and my pillow and Hugo to curl up on my feet. “I hurt. I’m starving. I’m exhausted. I quit.”

  Shiver steps off Dad’s bike and lays it down next to mine. Then she sits right by me. I still don’t look at her. I don’t want to know what she thinks of me right now.

  “You can’t. What about your audition? And your partner? Wait, forget that. What about me? I’m supposed to ride all by myself to Cody now?”

  I open one eye and turn to look at her. She’s biting her lip, almost like she might cry. Which is impossible. I mean, Shiver, cry over me? “Um, you won’t have to ride to Cody if I’m not going, remember?”

  “Right,” she says. “Whatever. You wouldn’t remember anyway since you’re so involved with yourself.”

  “What?” I drag my aching body into a sitting position, and the irritation rises with me. “Why are you so rude?”

  “I’m not being rude. Just stating facts.”

  “What’s your problem? No wonder you don’t have any friends. You can’t be nice for anything.” The words fly out of my mouth. I imagine them stabbing her with their mean word power.

  And then I feel really, really bad.

  Her face twitches and she’s quiet for a few minutes. Then she rubs a hand across her eyes and looks at me. “Can we just be nice to each other for three seconds?”

  “I’m sorry,” I croak out. “I didn’t mean that.” I wish I could take it back somehow.

  She frowns at me for a moment. “Look, Maya, I don’t get why you need to be on this show so badly, but I can tell it’s something you really want to do. And if it is, you’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t see it through.”

  “I know. I just can’t do it, though.” I try not to think of Kenzie’s face when she realizes I’m not coming. Or of Jack and Lacey, singing together. Or of my mom looking permanently stressed out. Or of Dad, getting weirder and weirder. “Why are you being so . . . not mean to me?”

  “Maybe I’m trying to be your friend.”

  I swallow down a whole jumble of feelings that have lodged themselves in my throat.

  Shiver looks out over the parking lot. “I wish another ranger would show up and give us a ride.”

  “Right. Except we don’t have Remy to sweet-talk one now.”

  “Who needs him anyway?” she asks, just as a small bus with a trailer attached to the back pulls up a few feet ahead us, burping and belching the way every bus I’ve ever seen does. The little accordion doors open, but no one comes or goes.

  The side of the bus reads, ADVENTURE SEEKERS!

  “Hmm,” Shiver says.

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “Follow me.”

  I sigh as loudly as I can. Because standing up is seriously the last on my list of things I really feel like doing right now. Shiver jumps up, grabs Dad’s bike, and rolls it toward the bus.

  I peel myself from the ground. I don’t even have the energy to brush off the pine needles that are stuck to my clothes. I drag my bike the few feet it takes to reach Shiver.

  “Hey,” she says to the man sitting at the wheel of the bus.

  He lowers a book. “You girls done for the day?”

  Shiver and I look at each other.

  I’m totally done for the day.

  Chapter 22

  3 days until Dueling Duets auditions

  “Well, come on, then! We got other Adventure Seekers to pick up before we get back to the hotel.” The man stands, walks down the steps, and picks up my bike. “Are your parents coming?”

  “Um, I think—” I start to say, but Shiver cuts me off.

  Shiver laughs—and it sounds really un-Shiver-like. “That’s so funny. Only because if you’d seen how happy they were when I offered to take my little sister off their hands for a week.”

  I’d glare at her if I could stop standing there with my mouth open already. How in the world does she expect this guy to believe she’s so much older?

  “How far away is the hotel from here?” Shiver goes on. “With all this biking, we lost track.”

  The man unlocks the trailer, my bike propped against his hip. “ ’Bout a hundred miles or so.”

  “Really?” Shiver raises her eyebrows at me.

  The man lifts my bike into the trailer, and I’m way too stunned to say anything. What exactly is going on here? I mean, he obviously thinks we’re some other people. And somehow, he actually believes Shiver.

  “So what’s going on tonight?” Shiver asks, like this whole thing is no big deal.

  “There’s the Cody rodeo, and we’ve got dinner lined up at a Mexican restaurant,” he says as he rolls Dad’s bike to the trailer and lifts it inside too.

  “The rodeo,” Shiver says to me, pronouncing the words very carefully, “in Cody. A Mexican restaurant. In Cody.”

  And then I get it.

  “Hop on board!” The man gestures to the door.

  So we do.

  “Hey.” I nod to a messy-haired guy sitting about five rows back, like Shiver and I totally belong here. He’s the only other one on the bus.

  “Yo,” he says. “I don’t remember you from this morning. I’m Stu. My buds call me Sick Stu because, you know, I’m, like, sick on the trails.”

  I have no idea what this guy is talking about, but I guess Shiver does because she nods and says, “Right on, Sick Stu.” And she conveniently doesn’t give him our names.

  “You guys musta come up yesterday, huh?”

  “Um . . . yeah. We did.” I bump backward in the seat as the driver takes off. Toward Cody. I can hardly believe my luck!

  I can hardly believe that Shiver got us here.

  “That’s sick, man. Real hard-core adventure, you know?” Sick Stu says.

  “Yeah,” Shiver says. “Sick.”

  Then Sick Stu must decide he needs a nap, because he leans back and closes his eyes. Which sounds like a really good idea to me.

  I bump Shiver with my elbow. “Thanks,” I whisper.

  She blinks at me a second and then smiles. “Thank me if we actually get there.”

  I lay my head on the seat and watch the pine trees fly by, with glimpses of the lake in the background. I stretch out my arms and legs, and before I know it, I’m asleep.

  I wake up to a lot of shouting and talking and laughing. “What’s going on? Are we in Cody already?” I ask Shiver.

  “No. It’s some kind of store.” She points out the window at a general store off to my left. “I think they’re picking up more people.”

  I rub the sleep from my eyes and stand up. Sure enough, all the noise is coming from right outside the bus, where there are about six people loading bikes into the trailer.

  The driver pokes his head into the bus. “You can get off for a while if you want. We don’t leave here till one-thirty.”

  My legs are all stiff from biking so long and then sitting still. “Come on,” I say to Shiver. “Let’s go walk around.”

  “No way.” She’s already curling into a ball in her seat. “I’m taking a nap.”

  “Fine. I’m going to look for more ice cream.” I figure I’ll eat the granola bars and jerky on the bus ride home, so I might as well spend my few extra dollars on some
ice cream, right?

  I make my way toward the store. Inside, there’s a huge freezer full of ice cream. I grab a Drumstick—Bug’s favorite—and pay, then check my phone. 1:05. Plenty of time to kill, and I really don’t want to get on the bus and have to answer questions about sick trails or yesterday’s “adventures.” So instead, I unwrap my ice cream and follow a small crowd of people down the pavement past the bus.

  I have no idea where they’re heading, but I have ice cream, and it’s really nice outside now. It’s so quiet that I almost miss Shiver’s sarcasm.

  The group of people in front of me walk to a bridge, and I tag along. As I polish off my ice cream, I shade my eyes from the sun and think about how much Dad would love this. Everything about it, from the clear blue river below to the kids playing in the shallow water. I’m pretty sure we passed through here on our way into Yellowstone, but we didn’t get out. He’d be all over this bridge, reading every single sign and probably joining the kids down by the water. Mom would shake her head and laugh. And Bug would be right down there with Dad, probably trying to catch a fish with her bare hands.

  A little pang of something—just like I felt when I thought about Bug earlier—hits my heart. Am I actually missing my family? My off-the-wall crazy family?

  Well, duh. Of course I am. They are my family, after all. And it’s not like I won’t ever see them again. I will. They can’t say no to a new house when I win Dueling Duets. And we have the pedestrian bridge in Nashville. Although it’s not like you can splash around in the Cumberland River under the bridge. It’s probably toxic or something.

  I take a picture of the river and put it into a text to Remy for Bug, once I finally get a signal again. I’ll send it to Mom and Dad later, when I’m in Nashville.

  Nearby, a park ranger is explaining to a family about how even though this bridge is called the Fishing Bridge, no one is allowed to fish from it anymore. His walkie-talkie buzzes with static.

  “Sorry, just a minute,” he says to the family. He pulls out the radio and listens.

  “All personnel, be on the lookout for four missing children. One boy, three girls. Ages thirteen, thirteen, twelve, and nine. All children believed to be riding bicycles. Last seen near Lewis Lake at approximately nine-thirty a.m. Please check incoming text for names and physical description.”

  Oh no. No, no, no, no!

  I duck my head, as if I’m examining the water below. Then I glance up, my heart pounding, but no one’s looking at me. So I go.

  I don’t run, because that would look super suspicious, but I walk really, really fast back to the bus. Shiver’s asleep, and I have to shake her to wake her up.

  “What the . . . ? Maya, quit it. What’s wrong with you?” Shiver bats my hands away.

  I hold a finger to my lips and then check around to see if anyone’s listening. Sick Stu is passed out in the seat across the aisle, and a couple of the new cyclists are in the very back. In a whisper, I tell her, “Mom must’ve gotten back early. They’re sending out our descriptions to all the rangers and the police and probably the FBI! We have to hide! Or put on disguises. Or something!”

  “Calm down,” Shiver says, although she looks a little panicked too. Why, I don’t know. It’s not a big deal at all if she doesn’t get to Cody. “Let’s just stay on the bus, and no one will see us. And take your hair out of those braids.”

  For a split second, she sounds just like Kenzie. I undo the braids and then squint at the blue hair peeking out from under her knit hat. “Your hair sticks out a lot more than mine.”

  She tugs the hat down farther and tries to stuff her hair under it. “Well, not a whole lot I can do about that. Let’s just stay low, and we’ll get there. Where’s the map?” She reaches down to the floor, grabs my backpack, and starts to unzip it. I rip it from her hands.

  “Okay. Possessive much?” she asks, looking at her fingers like I burned them.

  “No. I just don’t like other people digging in my backpack. Do you?”

  She just makes a hmpf sound and crosses her arms. Maybe she got us on this bus, but I still feel like she’d find something mean to say about the music I love.

  I find the map and spread it out on my knees. I run my finger up the line Remy highlighted until I come to a river that connects to the big lake, with Fishing Bridge labeled nearby. “We’re here,” I say to Shiver.

  She looks over my shoulder. “So we’re almost out of the park. That’s good.”

  The other cyclists pass through the aisle, and up front the driver turns the ignition. “Ready to go, Adventure Seekers?” he calls.

  “Yeah!” the whole bus echoes back, except for Sick Stu because he’s still asleep.

  Once the “yeah”s have stopped, the driver pumps up the volume on the radio.

  The radio. I grab Shiver’s arm. “He can’t have that on,” I tell her. “What if they broadcast it on the radio? My mom’s probably called every police department in the state by now.”

  “Wow, your mom means business.” She raises her eyebrows, almost like she’s surprised Mom would call the police when she discovered her kids and tagalong Shiver missing.

  But I don’t have time to think about that because I have to figure out how to get the driver to turn off the radio. I channel Kenzie.

  “Ohhhh.” I slap my arm to my head and dramatically lean back in my seat. “My head! The noise! Make it stop!”

  I’m so loud I wake up Sick Stu. “What’s wrong, man?” he calls across the aisle.

  Shiver catches on. “She gets migraines. Hey, Mr. Bus Driver?”

  “Carl,” he corrects her.

  “Carl, can you turn off the radio?”

  “I need my tunes to drive,” he says.

  “My sister here has a migraine, and if it gets worse, she might puke all over the bus. The noise makes it worse,” Shiver tells him.

  “Turn it off, man! I can’t roll with the vomit!” Sick Stu shouts.

  Which, if I really had a migraine, would not help at all.

  But it must work, because the music cuts out right away, and the bus goes along in silence. I lean my head against the window to keep up the migraine act. Right outside is the lake, which is so enormous I can’t see the other side. Just some dark mountains way off in the distance. Waves lap the shore, and clouds block the sun over half the lake. It looks almost artistic, so I pick up my phone and grab a picture for Bug.

  “What are you doing, Migraine Girl?” Shiver hisses in my ear. “People with splitting headaches don’t take pictures.”

  “Fine,” I mutter. I watch the lake until it disappears behind the trunks of burned-out trees.

  Not five minutes later, Carl pulls the bus onto the shoulder and shuts off the ignition.

  “What’s going on?” I ask Shiver.

  She shrugs, but there’s this worried look on her face.

  Carl can’t know. I mean, how would he? But then, why are we stopped?

  “I can’t pull this rig up the road to the lookout, but if any of you want a short adventure with a great view, I’ll get your bikes out and you can ride up,” Carl announces with a huge grin.

  “What?” Shiver asks a little too loudly.

  “I know! Sick, right?” Sick Stu says as he leaps out of his seat. He’s the first one off the bus.

  “I’m going to stay here with my sister,” Shiver tells Carl. He nods, and the adults in the back follow him, leaving only me and Shiver on the bus.

  After they all ride off, Carl sets up a chair outside and falls asleep. Shiver moves into Sick Stu’s seat and does the same thing. I use the time for some non-migraine-approved reading and some trail mix–eating. If I was hanging out in Bertha, I could’ve eaten a piece of Mom’s leftover lasagna. That tastes about nine hundred times better than some old raisins and peanuts.

  I’m through two chapters and half the bag of trail mix before I realize no one’s come back yet. What time is it? It feels like they’ve been gone forever. I check my phone. 2:37. Huh.

  When
the numbers on the phone show 2:45, I start to get worried. What if the group ran into a bear?

  At 3:14, I’m getting really, really annoyed. We need to get to Cody before the last bus leaves at eight o’clock.

  At 3:27, when I’m about to march up that hill and drag them down, fake migraine or not, the group pedals across the road. I poke Shiver in the leg, leap back into my seat, and pretend to be fighting off the worst headache in the history of headaches. Everyone loads onto the bus, chattering about the ride to the overlook.

  Shiver falls into the seat next to me when Sick Stu arrives.

  “Hey, man, you missed a sick ride!” he says.

  “Maybe next time, if this one feels better.” Shiver jerks her thumb toward me.

  I raise my hand weakly, like I’m just in too much pain to say anything.

  Trees flash by outside the window as the bus finally pulls out. I’m not Bug, so looking at trees gets really boring after a while. I’m dying to read my book, or check my phone for a signal, or start singing (I can almost feel the notes tickling my throat), but none of those are migraine approved, and Shiver would have a field day if she heard me sing.

  Instead, I lean against the window and think about how, with every minute, I’m getting closer to home.

  Until we stop again, that is.

  “Oh my God. If this is another bike ride . . . ,” Shiver grumbles under her breath.

  I’m totally with her. If we keep doing this, I’ll miss the bus home for sure. And I have to get on one tonight if I want to make it in time for the audition.

  Not to mention, the fact that I know how worried Mom is right now is eating away at me. If I can just get on the bus, then I can send her a text and let her know I’m okay. Plus, once Bug and Remy call to get picked up, they’ll probably have to confess everything that happened, so I’ll be found out tonight anyway. I only have to be on my way to Nashville, and everything can go as planned.

  Which is why this bus needs to quit stopping already!

  Carl hops out to help what looks like a big group. These Adventure Seekers don’t have bikes. Instead, they’re decked out in hiking gear. Some have huge overnight packs, while others just have hiking poles and CamelBaks. They all clamber on board, filling up the remaining seats. Carl climbs back into the driver’s seat and starts the engine.