“So what?” Lennon asks bluntly.
“So what?”
“Yeah. So what? Why do you care?”
“I care if my actions affect the band, Len.”
“But what’s the worst that could happen?” he asks. When I make an incredulous face he shakes his head. “I’m serious, man. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“We could lose sponsors. Do you know how hard it is to put on a tour without sponsors? What do you think the label will do if we lose sponsors? What do you think our next contract is going to look like?”
“So, your worst case scenario is messing up the tour and possibly losing our contract,” he says carefully. “Okay. So, I’ll say it again—so what?”
I gape at him. “Do you seriously not get why it would be a bad thing for us to lose our label support?”
“You’re not getting it, Reed. I’m asking why you care. Why do you care if we keep our label? Why do you care if the tour goes well? Why do you care if we remain popular?”
“Excuse me for wanting us to be successful.” I have no idea what he’s getting at but he’s starting to piss me off.
“But why?” He sounds kind of pissed himself. “Why do you care?” He leans across the table toward me. “Do you like this, Reed? Do you like being in the band? Touring? Having tons of fans? Because you don’t seem very happy to me.”
“You don’t seem happy to me, either,” Daltrey says softly.
“I can think of lots of reasons for this to all end,” Lennon continues. “If Daisy couldn’t handle being on the road, Dalt would walk. And none of us would blame him. If I, like, I don’t know, got sick or something, and needed to leave, you wouldn’t hold it against me. Right?”
“Of course not,” I say. “But what does that have to do with—”
“I’m saying that there are more important things in life than whether or not Ransom is a success. You know what I love? Playing music with my brothers. That’s not going to stop if someone writes nasty things about us in the paper. It’s not going to stop if Daisy freaks out and Dalt has to bail. It’s not going to change if we lose our sponsors and our label. It’s not going to stop if everything goes away.”
I just stare at him, not understanding what I’m supposed to say to any of this.
Cash sighs. “What he’s saying, man, is that you’re the only one who would never walk away. There’s nothing on earth you would put before this band. And we don’t really get why—because you don’t even seem to enjoy it much.”
“Of course I enjoy it. You’re being ridiculous.”
“What about this tour have you enjoyed?” Daltrey asks. I immediately think of Paige, laughing on the bus, and force the thought away. She’s better off, I remind myself for the hundredth time. I can’t give her anything.
“I know you don’t care about the money,” Cash says. “Because you haven’t bought anything since we hit it big.” That’s true, but it’s not like I’ve had a lot of time for toys with all the work we’ve had. “And you don’t care about attention from the chicks,” he continues. “So, I just don’t really get why you kill yourself to make this band a success. Why you constantly put our needs over your own. Why you go along with everything Dad says, even when it pisses you off. I don’t get it. Why are you so determined to take care of us all of the time?”
“Because, I remember what it was like when you had no one taking care of you!” I yell. I have no idea where the words come from, I hadn’t consciously been thinking about our mom at all. But something about the way he’s goading me has the words spilling out of my mouth, as if a dam has burst and they can’t be held in any longer.
“You were so little,” I say, my voice sounding ragged. “All of you were so little. And Cash, you used to try to be so tough all the time but I would hear you crying at night.” I close my eyes, the memory of his hard little face so clear in my mind. “And Lennon just got so quiet—he barely talked for weeks. And Daltrey—” I’m afraid I’m going to cry, and my brothers and I never cry in front of each other. I clear my throat several times, until I have it under control. “You would ask me every day when she was coming back. For months. You never got that it was never, no matter how many times I told you.”
“None of that is your fault,” Lennon says, his voice equally ragged.
“But you needed me!” I yell. “Dad was never there and Aunt Lillian didn’t even know us. You needed me to be there.”
“And you were, Reed,” Daltrey says. “You always were. You have nothing to feel guilty about.”
“You were little, too,” Cash adds.
“I promised myself I would take care of you,” I mutter, rubbing at my eyes. I’ve never told them this. “I promised the day she left that I would always take care of you guys.”
Cash lets out a low laugh. I turn to him, ready to kick his ass. Nothing about this is funny. But he’s rubbing his eyes too—are those tears? “Oh, Reed, you asshole,” he mutters, still chuckling.
“What the hell?” I ask, my voice low.
“You’re not committed to the band, you dumbass,” he says, finally moving his hands so I can see his whole face. There are tears in his eyes, a fact that I find so shocking I’m rendered speechless. But he’s also smiling at me. “Your obsession with work and responsibility and making everything turn out okay isn’t about the success of the band at all. It’s about us.”
“Bingo,” Lennon mutters. “You’re working yourself ragged because you’re still trying to take care of your brothers.”
I’m taken aback— I had never thought of it that way. “Well, doesn’t it come down to the same thing? Making the band successful is how I take care of you.”
“But it’s not what we want, man,” Daltrey says. “We don’t want you to make yourself miserable just so we can be famous.”
“We’ll always play music together, Reed,” Lennon adds. “Whether we’re famous or not. Whether we have a fancy tour bus or a shitty old van. That’s not going to change.”
“If you think we want you to be unhappy just so we can have all this,” Cash says, waving his arms around the conference room in the fanciest hotel in Beverly Hills, “then you don’t know us very well.”
“So you’re saying I should just... what? Give up?”
“No, you dumbass,” Lennon says, rolling his eyes. “Of course we want the band to do well. We’re just saying it isn’t the most important thing.”
“The most important thing is that we’re happy,” Cash says, meeting my gaze. His black eye is fading, turning a greenish color. Of course, on Cash, a black eye still somehow manages to look pretty cool. “That includes you, man.”
I stare down at the table, feeling overwhelmed. But there’s also a sense of... freedom? The easing of a heavy weight on my shoulders. They aren’t little kids anymore. They don’t need me to ensure every little thing goes okay. Maybe I don’t have to force myself to do all these things I don’t want to do. Maybe I can actually go after what I want, for once.
“What would make you happy?” Cash asks, his voice low. But I think he already knows. I think again about Paige laughing, the softness of her hair against my cheek, the way her body looked above me, loving me. The way I felt when we were able to get away from the band, a little escape in the middle of the tour. How she could take the silliest, most random thing and somehow make it fun. Somehow make it important.
“Daisy told me where she is,” Daltrey says. I look up and he’s grinning at me. Cash and Lennon are also smirking. I guess I haven’t done a very good job of hiding my feelings after all. “I’m not supposed to tell you,” he adds. “But in this one case, I think I can make an exception.”
“Bros before hoes,” Cash says solemnly, earning himself a kick under the table from Daltrey.
“I think I already know,” I say, standing. There’s only one place Paige would go if she was upset enough to leave the tour. Suddenly, I’m excited, more excited than I’ve been since the day we found out we were touring wit
h Grey Skies. My life seems open with possibilities, instead of stifled and closed. I don’t know if she’ll forgive me, but I have to try. If I’m starting a new life I want it to be bright and free—and there’s no one in the world who makes me feel that way more than Paige.
“What, uh, do you want us to tell Dad about the premiere?” Cash asks, looking slightly frightened by the prospect.
I laugh, slapping him on the back. Let him be the one who has to deal with our father for once. “Tell him whatever you want, Cash.” I say, walking to the door. My mind is already on packing my bag, getting to the airport. I pause, looking back at my brothers. There’s a part of me that still feels entirely wrong walking away from them. They’ll have to attend the premiere on their own, no doubt fielding questions about my absence. My natural instinct is to shelter them from that, deal with whatever the situation is so that they don’t have to.
But I’m done with doing that. They say they want me to be happy and I have no reason to doubt them. Besides, maybe it’s time to let someone take care of me for once.
Again, I see Paige’s face in my mind. Who took care of you? she asked me once, and I didn’t have an answer for her. But now I do—she’s been taking care of me for months, the only person to take care of me since our mom walked out. With her silly games and distractions, and the way she always listened—the way she always heard me, whether I said the words out loud or not. I was an idiot not to see that for what it was, an idiot to risk squandering it.
I grin at my brothers, more sure of my decision than I have been of anything in my life. “Tell him you guys got this one without me.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Paige
“This is exactly what I needed,” I say, pulling a carton of sweet and sour chicken toward me. “Thanks.”
“Like you need to thank me,” Karen says, attempting to maneuver her chopsticks into the proper position to grab some noodles. “Damn it, I don’t know how you do this.”
“Like this.” I show her with my own chopsticks. She attempts again and drops the left stick.
“Screw this, I’ll use a fork.”
She gets up and rummages around the plastic drawer above our mini-fridge. It’s strange, being back in this room after so long on the road. So much happened between the last day of fall semester and now. I sniffle a little, wishing, not for the first time, that I had just stayed at school with Karen.
“Was that a sniffle?” she asks sternly, turning around to glare at me.
“No,” I say quickly. “No sniffles here.”
“I hope not. Because if it is, you’re messing with the Project Get Over Reed schedule. And, as you well know, the Project Get Over Reed schedule is sacred.”
I nod. “Absolutely. Very sacred.”
“Okay.” She looks at me uncertainly, as if she thinks I might just burst into tears at any moment. “Do you need a quick recap of the Project Get Over Reed schedule?”
“No. I have the fine points memorized.”
But she moves over to the white board on her desk anyhow, holding it up so I can see. “Tonight is junk food and Disney movies,” she says, pointing at a pink square on the board. “In order to chill and decompress. There’s no sniffling tonight, Paige. Now,” she points at the blue square next to the pink one. “Tomorrow is the day to wallow. Tomorrow we will eat milkshakes and watch John Hughes movies and you may cry as much as you want. Okay? And all of that will be followed up with day three,” she points at the yellow square, “when we’ll go shopping and get pedicures to remind you of how much fun your life is.”
“It’s a good schedule,” I tell her as she puts the white board back in its spot.
She joins me on the floor, fork in hand. “It’s served us well through many, many breakups.”
“We’ve edited it down to an exact science.”
“That,” she points her fork at me, “is because we’re awesome.”
“Totally awesome.”
“Way too awesome to be overshadowed by moody rock stars.”
Her words make me think of the way Reed looks, up on stage, whaling on his drums until his arms are a blur, the fans going crazy. Schedule or not, tears fill my eyes.
“Oh, no!” Karen cries, shoving napkins at me. “What did I say? Shit!”
“I’m okay,” I whimper, trying to wipe my eyes.
“We’re messing up the schedule,” Karen says, looking a little panicked. “What do you need, Paige? Should I turn on Mulan? What about potato chips? I have potato chips!”
“I’m okay,” I assure her, wanting her to sit down and stop being so manic. Sometimes Karen takes my need for schedules and order just a little bit too far. I wipe my eyes and give her a watery smile. “I just think that maybe this situation is a little too drastic for the Project Get Over schedule, you know?”
She nods seriously. “You’ve obviously been through a big trauma. Maybe we should add another day of wallowing in there. I can buy more ice cream.”
“I’m fine now,” I say, putting a hand on her arm so she doesn’t jump up in search of sweets. “Really. Let’s just eat our food and watch Mulan.”
“Okay.” But she continues to look at me from the corner of her eye, clearly concerned.
I don’t blame her. I had shown up at the dorm at midnight two days ago after three days on a bus. Exhausted, dirty, and on the verge of hysteria over Reed, I’d had to wait for a taxi in the rain. I was pretty soaked by the time I knocked on the door. When she opened it, and I saw her standing there in her familiar pink fleece pajamas, I had immediately burst into noisy tears, which I wasn’t able to control for a full twenty minutes. Poor Karen. No wonder she was worried about me.
There’s a knock at the door and she looks at me with eyebrows raised. “That might be Mellie. We talked about hanging out before you came back. Want me to send her away?”
I like Mellie, one of our floor mates, very much, but there’s no way I can handle hanging out with her tonight. For one thing, she’s a major Ransom fan and would, I’m sure, spend most of the night grilling me on my experiences on tour. “I don’t want company,” I tell her. Karen nods and gets up to answer the knocking while I climb up onto the futon, where I can’t be seen from the doorway.
When the door opens, Karen gasps loudly. “You!”
“Is she here?”
Oh, my God.
That’s Reed’s voice. What in the hell is Reed doing here? Reed is supposed to be at a movie premiere in three hours. Why is he in Tennessee? Why is he at my dorm?
“You must be crazy,” Karen snarls. “Do you honestly think I’m going to let you in this room?”
“Karen, please—”
“Save it. You are a creep and a bastard. I trusted you with her and all you did is make her cry. I don’t care how famous or rich you are—you can go right to hell.” And before he can say another word, she slams the door in his face.
“Holy shit,” I mutter, staring at her. She stares right back, wide-eyed, as if she can’t quite believe she did that.
Then Reed starts pounding on the door. “Paige! I know you’re in there!”
My mouth drops open. “What am I supposed to do?” I hiss.
“I don’t know,” Karen hisses back. “We don’t have a contingency for this on the schedule. This is uncharted territory.”
“I can hear you whispering,” Reed yells. “Let me in. Please, Paige!
I look down at my clothes—I’m wearing flannel pajama pants decorated in little owls and a raggedy t-shirt from my high school. My hair is a tangled mess in a ponytail. I couldn’t possibly look worse—there’s no way I can let Reed in here.
“Oh, my God!” a loud girlish voice squeals from the hallway. “Are you Reed Ransome?”
“Shit,” Karen says. “He’s going to get mobbed now.”
I jump up from the futon and join Karen at the door, both pressing our ears against the wood to try to hear what’s going on. “I am Reed Ransome,” he says. “But I can’t sign an autograph r
ight now. I’m trying to get Paige Brennen to talk to me.”
“He’s telling our floor mates!” Karen whispers.
“I know!”
I have no idea what to do. It’s too overwhelming, him being here in the first place. My brain is all scattered and buzzing. I have a feeling that if I open the door I’m going to do something really crazy—like kiss him. Or slap him across the face. So I stand frozen with my ear against the door.
“Paige,” he calls again, just as loud. “Fine. I’ll just tell you from here. I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am.”
Karen stares at me, her eyebrows raised so high they’re in danger of flying up into her hairline.
There’s a soft thump sound against the door and I picture him leaning against it, his head directly across from mine. “I love you, Paige,” he says, his voice loud in my ear now. I have to take a step back—I’m so unprepared for those words. He loves me?
“I’ve always loved you,” he continues. I feel like my chest is going to explode with some unknown sensation—fear? Joy?
And still Reed is talking, yelling through my door with God knows how many curious onlookers watching. “I just thought you deserved better. But I know that was wrong—it’s not my job to make that decision for you. It’s my job to be better—to be the man you deserve. Please let me in, Paige. Please. I love you.”
Karen is actually speechless, something I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed before. She keeps opening and closing her mouth but no sound is coming out. I hear several more squeals from the hallway and I know that more of our floor mates are gathering; that they may have heard that entire speech.
“There are, like, twenty girls out here staring at me,” Reed calls. “But I’m not going to leave. Not even if they maul me. I’m staying right here until you come out, Paige. I’m never leaving you again.
I finally find my voice. “Unlock it,” I whisper to Karen. She still seems too shell-shocked to move. “The door, K. Unlock the door.” When she doesn’t move, I push her aside. “Oh, never mind, I’ll do it.”
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