1
Someone was playinga grand piano in the arrivals hall of Portland International Airport. The song fighting to be heard over bursts of robotic announcements was Frank Sinatra’s “Witchcraft”.
I passed by the piano player and did a double take, not expecting to see such a sight at an airport. I’d only been to two airports before—Philadelphia, about an hour from the town I called home, and Miami International, where we’d taken a few summer vacations. As far as I could recall, both were gray and sterile. They certainly didn’t have artisan coffee and live music greeting tired travelers.
The strangeness of this place felt appropriate. After all, I’d been ready to enter a new world ever since I stepped off the plane. Going on tour for two weeks with my brother’s heavy metal band, Bleeding Moonlight, was bound to be a far cry from my usual sleepy summers in River Valley.
It’s been almost a year since I last saw Cole, and I was excited to spend these two weeks together. Our eight-year age difference had always made my brother seem a little out of reach, but now that I was nearing eighteen, I hoped our relationship would grow stronger. I stopped by a newsstand and pulled out my phone to text him.
“I’m here. Don’t see you.”
When I first floated the idea of going on this tour to my best friend, Zoey, she looked at me like I’d lost it. She said it was the last thing she’d ever imagine me doing. In truth, it was a crazy idea and completely out of character for me. My entire existence so far could be summarized with one word. Dull. I blamed it on living in River Valley, where few interesting things ever happened, but even when they did, I was unlikely to be privy to them. I wasn’t very social or outgoing, and I hated crowds, which kept me away from packed house parties—the pinnacle of every teenager’s social life. This predilection had landed me squarely in the nerdy crowd at school. I didn’t get bullied, but sometimes I wondered if that would be preferable to feeling invisible.
As I neared my eighteenth birthday, the need to make a change had become a compulsion. I was about to go to college, and I was determined to reinvent myself. It was time to leave the boring small-town girl behind and become someone interesting. This tour was going to be my test run, practice for putting myself out there and learning how to meet people. If I screwed things up, I’d be leaving in two weeks anyway, and at the very least I’d surely collect a few crazy stories to use as icebreakers.
I moved closer to the door leading outside the terminal and craned my neck, looking for any sign of Cole. Before I could find him, my phone buzzed in my hand.
It was a message from my friend, Sophie.“Ives, where are you? Already at the venue?”
I texted her back.“Not yet.”Compared to Zoey, Sophie had been quick to voice her support for my plan. She’d said it was about time I realized I was a “badass who had a lot to offer”. The role of the cheerleader had always come naturally to her.
“Remember what I said! Play your cards right, and lose that V-card to a yummy rocker hottie. Make us proud, bitch.”
I rolled my eyes and tried to will away the heat spreading across my cheeks. So far, I’d only gone on a date with one guy. It had ended with a terribly sloppy kiss that I liked to pretend didn’t happen. Sure, I wanted to make the most out of this trip and maybe do something a little crazy, but sleeping with a rock star? I’d need an entirely new personality to have the guts to even try to accomplish that.
My phone lit up with another message, from Cole this time.“Sorry, stuck at sound check. Our tour manager, Ran, is coming to get you. Look for a short blond guy wearing a band T-shirt.”
A nervous tingle spread through my chest. The main reason behind my lackluster social life was my awkwardness when it came to meeting new people. The whole connecting-with-strangers thing my brother was so good at? I never inherited the gene. I was always too worried about what people thought of me. Even though one of my goals for the next two weeks was to work on my social skills, I’d been relying on the idea of Cole introducing me to the bands and tour staff. Instead, I was being thrown right into the deep end.
“Ivy?”
I lifted my eyes to a stocky man wearing horn-rimmed glasses. His Bleeding Moonlight tee told me he must be Ran. Apparently, Cole considered me short, because Ran and I stood at nearly the same 5’4”.
“Hi,” I said and extended a hand. “Ran?”
He scanned me impassively, as if I were a boring exhibit in a museum he was eager to leave. Something in the tight angle of his lips told me he wasn’t thrilled about being here. “That I am.” His palm touched mine for a mere second before falling away. “Let’s get going. I need to be back at the venue as soon as possible. Do you need any help with your bags?”
I shook my head, instinctively gripping the shoulder straps of my forty-liter backpack. Cole had warned me that space on the tour bus was limited, and that I’d better be ready to live in close quarters with the guys. If they were worried about a teenage girl overpacking, I was ready to prove them wrong.
The sound of the piano quickly faded away as we weaved through the sparse crowd and followed the signs to the parking lot. Ran glanced over at me when we stopped in front of the elevator. “You don’t look like Cole. I wouldn’t have guessed you were siblings.”
“Yeah, we’re pretty different.” In our appearance, there were subtle similarities, like how our upper lip curved and the slant of our brows, but most people missed that. Instead, they focused on the obvious things. My black hair hung heavy and straight, long enough to brush against my shoulder blades, while Cole’s would stick up in every direction if he didn’t take the time to tame his curls. It’s been that way for as long as I could remember, even in my earliest memories of us playing together on the beach when he was in his early teens. He’d been a skinny and tall boy, but he’d became a strong and imposing man. I, on the other hand, stayed wiry and thin through my teenage years, still waiting but also gradually giving up on ever filling the B-cup bras I was gifted by an aunt years ago.
“You play any instrument?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m not very musical.”
Being dreadfully normal among a family of exceptional people had surely contributed to my insecurities. My mom’s a talented painter, and my dad’s written poetry that’s won him more than a few awards. Then there’s Cole.
I’ve always thought that despite similar inputs—growing up in the same household with the same parents and going to the same school—the algorithm had spit out two completely different results when it came to Cole and I. My brother was a risk taker, a dreamer who’d decided to forego college to start a band with his best friends and found success despite all odds. Mom and Dad were free-spirited hippies and Cole was their perfect child. Artistic, multi-talented, passionate, and totally on board with doing mushrooms as a family bonding experience.
I, on the other hand, had no exceptional talents. Musical or otherwise. I was a good student but never at the top of the roster, and I was reliably average in extra curriculars. My goals in life were also entirely ordinary. Have a fun college experience, find a stable job, get married, and live a comfortable middle-class existence.
My parents had spent years trying to downplay their disappointment in my mainstream tendencies. When I told them I wanted to go on this tour, neither needed much convincing.
“I think it’s great you want to spend more time with your brother,” my mom had said before calling him to arrange everything. They’d talked on the phone for over an hour, probably brainstorming all the ways Cole could influence me to pursue goals that were a better fit for someone in the Abbott family. Mom didn’t even give me a pep talk about how I should behave before I’d left the house. It went to show how little trouble she thought I could ever get into.
The elevator made a low beeping sound, and the doors slid open, snapping me out of my thoughts.
