“Sorry, Mom. Bye! Love you guys!” Lilli slammed her door and started the engine.
“Drive safe!” her dad reiterated.
“Thank you!” I called out to her parents as Lilli booked it out of the cul-de-sac.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Lilli muttered as she navigated toward the freeway. “Can you put the address in?” She handed me her phone, and I punched the address of the hotel into the navigation app.
“We’re going to be about fifteen minutes late,” I explained. “But it’s mostly freeways and highways, so we might be able to shave a few minutes off.” I was grateful I had remembered to make us tea before we left and that our reusable water bottles were filled. We had some protein bars that were supposed to be a snack for later in the day, but they’d have to do for breakfast.
“We have about an hour of driving, so vocal rest for twenty minutes, then we’ll check in and do some warmups.”
We listened to a podcast on the way across state lines. I needed to get my nervous energy out. I tried applying lip balm, since I couldn’t get myself to trust lip gloss yet again, and then I picked at my nail polish and instantly regretted it. The idea of having ugly nail polish on while on stage started to freak me out, only adding to the anxiety of possibly being late to the festival, so I tried my best to make it uniform. My hair was charged with static electricity from rubbing against the cloth headrest of the seat. I took some water from my water bottle and ran it through my hair, praying it would appease the frizz. I contemplated putting my hair up, but I didn’t want to risk it creasing and then going on stage with a ponytail crease in my hair.
“Shit,” Lilli broke the silence, and I see that she rubbed her eye and smeared her eyeliner along her face and hand. “Canyou get me a wipe? I need your help,” she says as she starts cleaning off one eyelid.
I took the wipe and cleaned off the smudges of black eyeliner that had migrated closer to her ear.
“My makeup is in the blue bag.”
I stared at her. “You can’t put on makeup while driving!”
“I won’t be putting it on—youwill be putting it on for me.” She was explaining it to me like it was obvious, that I should have already understood the solution.
Thankfully, the road was pretty empty—just the occasional semi-truck in the slow lane on a two-way, east bound highway, the other side separated from us by a wide desert strip.
“Fine,” I agreed. I twisted in the passenger seat and grabbed her blue makeup bag before I started applying some peach-colored eyeshadow to her eyelid. I added some white shimmer before I climbed into the back seat to do the other eye. “You’ll have to forego eyeliner or apply it yourself when we stop. Same for mascara. I’m not going to be responsible for your eye getting stabbed.”
“I can do the mascara,” she said, taking the pink and green tube from me. “We’re only about five minutes late now, which may or may not be the result of completely ignoring the speed limit. Oh, don’t give me that face. We’re fine.”
I rolled my eyes. “About to get fined, you mean.”
Lilli waved her hand, mascara wand still in her grasp. It kind of hit me right then how dangerous the last few minutes had been, and I burst out laughing.
“Dude, let’s never do that again.”
Lilli started laughing with me —honestly, we sounded a bit unhinged and slightly manic.
“One day, when we’re being interviewed for the Rolling Stones magazine or something, they’re going to ask us ‘what’sthe craziest thing you’ve ever done’, and this is going to be the story we tell.”
“And they’ll be expecting something about drugs or partying,” I interjected.
“But we are completely sober!”
“Naturally reckless and stupid.”
“Naturally.”
I opened my notes app on my phone and started jotting down some thoughts.
Driving the interstate
Putting on warpaint flawless,
A Bonnie and Clyde kind of reckless
Maybe one of these would end up good enough for a lyric, or maybe they’d die in the notes app. No one ever really knew.
We arrived at the hotel hosting AAF – American Artist Festival – this year to find the parking lot full, and we made a lap, anxieties peaking. I nearly screamed when I saw a car backing out, and Lilli whipped the car in and threw it in park. I grabbed our guitars and she grabbed our purses, and we ran.
