Page 17

“It’ll go like this,” Barry says. “Tomorrow, you’ll head up to this farm about a half hour, forty-five minutes from Nashville. It’s an out-of-the-way place with a recording studio, so you shouldn’t be too distracted to work. The label’s rented out the neighboring apartment for the rest of the year, so you have a place to stay while you’re songwriting. You can work with her a little or a lot. That part’s up to you.”

Even so, I’m not sure I can get on board with this. Can I really put my music career in someone else’s hands again? Shouldn’t I be able to do this on my own?

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Look, kid,” Barry says, his tone going serious. “This call is really just a formality. I’m asking you, but I’m not really asking you. Catch my drift?”

Here it is. The line in the sand. If I say yes and step up, I’ll still have a shot of making it happen. I could write the songs and get the demo turned in. But if I say no, I’ll sure as hell watch another opportunity get away from me.

I close my eyes and see the red taillights of the van leaving me in a cloud of dust.

“Any other questions?” Barry asks.

Yeah, I think as my fingers curl around the guitar pick in my hand. What the hell have I just gotten myself into?

Track 5

Imperfect Strangers

Paisley

November 1

“Hidden Acres Christmas Tree Farm,” I say after picking up the receiver and tucking it between my shoulder and ear. The smooth, heavy plastic is cold against my skin and I stifle a shiver as I reach for the memo pad we use to mark down Christmas tree and wreath orders.

Mom and Dad insist on keeping the old wall-mount rotary phone, an artifact from the past that probably should have retired with the previous farm owners. It’s not as old as the farmhouse—at least, I don’t think they had phones back when it was built—but it’s definitely an antique, with its yellowing ivory case and perpetually tangled coiled handset cord.

It’s not that we don’t all have cell phones or get bad cell service out here or anything. Mom’s phone is always tucked into a pocket, and Dad likes to wear his in an indestructible case on a belt clip. Right now, my cell phone’s upstairs in my sock drawer, where it’s spent most of its time lately.

While videos of my disastrous performance initially only went viral at school, spreading like a bad case of the stomach flu, my embarrassment was mostly contained to the greater Nashville area. At least, it was until my nemesis, Seth Carpenter, got it into his head that it would be a great idea to create a bunch of remixes and heavily edited clips of the worst day of my life. He posts a new version every so often, as if he thinks I need a regular reminder of my failure.

Seth and I have had an academic rival relationship going all the way back to elementary school, but he’s really had it out for me ever since seventh grade, when my science fair project on the effect of country music on the growth rate of Norway spruce seedlings took third place in the district, narrowly defeating (by two points) his project on 3D-printed optical illusions, garnering him honorable mention and preventing him from moving on to the Robertson County competition.

Now I’m a meme.

And it seems like I’m getting tagged in every post and group chat whenever another video drops. Every time a notification pops up on-screen, it feels like I’ve just been zapped by an electric fence.

I think it was Oscar Wilde who said, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” No offense to Oscar, but he’s wrong. In the modern, internet-powered world, being talked about can be brutal. And once something is online, it has the nasty ability to haunt you forever. I just can’t with it anymore.

It doesn’t help that Mom and Dad refuse to cancel my cell phone plan because “this too shall pass” and “we need a way to get ahold of you when you’re out and about.”

Not only is that super helpful, but I have zero desire to ever leave the farm again.

Yo ho, yo ho, a hermit’s life for me.

In fairness, I don’t think they’re torturing me on purpose. Mom and Dad also refuse to cancel our landline, even though Halley and I have been trying to persuade them to get rid of it for years now. They insist on having a backup just in case the local cell towers go down in an ice storm or some other unexpected crisis hits.

“Like…an emergency Christmas tree order?” I once asked, before pretending to make a call. “Hello, Hidden Acres Christmas Tree Farm? We’re going to need a six-foot white pine over here, stat.”

Halley laughed so hard, milk shot out her nose.

I suppose I can see their point. It can’t hurt to keep the landline just in case. The number’s been used in countless advertisements for the tree farm over the past fifty years or so. Some of our most die-hard Christmas tree customers probably have the number memorized. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs. Larson, our local octogenarian and oldest customer (literally), has it on speed dial. She calls us at least four times between Halloween and Thanksgiving to make sure we have a tree reserved for her.

I blink away my thoughts and continue answering the phone the way Dad drilled into me when I was a kid. “This is Paisley speaking.”

A scratchy, baritone voice from the other end of the line says, “Paisley. Just the person I’m looking for.”

Me?