Open Road Summer(7)

Looking at Dee, I can’t hear the din of the people bustling around us. The world goes quiet as I watch her face, moments from one of her biggest dreams coming true. I lift my camera and take a picture before she can swat me away.

“At least take one of both of us,” she says. I hold the camera up with my good arm—a total photographer no-no—and grin as it clicks. When we survey the final product, it looks like two normal best friends. And we are, I guess, outside of my police record and her superstardom.

“Frame-worthy,” Dee decides.

“Hey.” I click back to the picture of the little girl in the Dee costume, posing next to her mom. “You have to see this.”

Dee laughs and presses the zoom button. “Oh my gosh. So cute.”

“Her name’s Olivia.”

“Lilah,” a production assistant says. “It’s time. The local opener’s on in five.”

Dee nods, glancing at me. “I guess this is it.”

“Guess so,” I say as she stands up, taking another deep breath.

She slides off her robe to reveal her first outfit of the night—a bright-red dress with cap sleeves. Dee hugs her arms around my neck, channeling all her nervous energy into an uncomfortably tight squeeze. Quietly, she says, “Infinity?”

“Infinity,” I agree as she releases her grip on me.


“See you after,” she calls, and then the assistant whisks her away. I put my camera back around my neck and glance around. Nearby, Peach is talking to one of the venue managers, explaining something that requires counting on her fingers so he’ll understand. I click a few more pictures of the bustle backstage, capturing images of the backup band tuning their guitars and performing their preshow cheer.

I see it all through the lens of my camera—the flurry of movement, the venue staff in black T-shirts, giving orders into their headsets. As I take it all in, my mind weighs the texture, the composition, the possibility of each changing scene, and I struggle to hold back, to keep my finger from pressing too soon. That’s my biggest flaw as a photographer. I’m impatient—trigger-happy. I want the shot now, now, now, click, click, click, and if I could just wait a second more, the moment would really flourish.

From the wings, I watch as Dee’s band begins the first song. Even though I know the exact moment she’ll enter, it still makes my skin prickle. The opening chords break into the first verse, and her silhouette rises from a hidden compartment in the stage. At the sight of Dee’s outlined form, the audience erupts. Screams and whistles lift toward the high ceiling, so powerful that the roof could pop off like a champagne cork.

Dee struts to center stage, singing into a handheld microphone. Now the crowd starts singing along and clapping. Behind Dee, the huge screen bursts into an image of blue sky. She throws her whole body into the music, tossing her hair around. Despite the enormous stage, she looks tall, this tiny girl who can fill a venue with thousands of people and her own music. You’d never know that her nerves are zapping like electrical wiring gone wrong.

Halfway through the concert, I sneak out to the VIP area, which is the floor space right in front of the stage. While I wait, I snap a few pictures of Dee’s brothers, who are wearing big headphones to protect their ears from the huge amps. Mrs. Montgomery catches me lurking and waves me over with a wide grin. Dee re-enters the stage—this time in a different dress, and the crowd reignites.

“Isn’t this amazing?” Dee’s mom yells to me over the cheers.

Dee takes a seat on a stool in the middle of the stage with her guitar and starts strumming chords. Her horseshoe necklace glints in the light of the stage.

“This song is called ‘Old Dreams.’ It’s for my mama, and for all the girls who came here with their mamas tonight—especially Olivia.”

This is what I could have told the guy from earlier, the one who asked what she’s like. Amid the jitters of her first opening show, Lilah Montgomery remembered the name of the little girl who dressed up like her for this show—that is what she’s like.

I wish I could see Olivia’s face, wherever she is in the crowd. I imagine her shrieks of joy, how she’ll run into school to tell her friends. I wonder if her mother feels the same joy, watching her daughter. The same joy all over Mrs. Montgomery’s face. I wonder if my mother thinks of me at all, wherever she is.

For the rest of the concert, I’m rapt as though I’ve never heard these songs before. The first ending comes quickly, and then an encore. When Dee returns to the stage, the background screen changes to a field of wildflowers. Guitar in hand, Dee sings about where we met all those years ago—the middle of nowhere, Tennessee.

With a full house and a full heart, my best friend strikes her final pose—arms raised high, head thrown back. She’s doing it, like she always said she would.

The memory comes barreling back to me, from three years ago. I wasn’t surprised that the school counselor called me down to her office to “check in” only a few days into freshman year. Gossip had been following me around since I was in middle school, when a gaggle of mean girls started a rumor that I was anorexic. By the time I hit a C-cup in eighth grade, they were saying that I’d gotten implants, that I was an aspiring porn star, that I was a slut. Any time I missed school for a dentist appointment, I returned to rumors that I was cutting class to fool around with a senior. I was the girl who had no mom, the girl whose dad was not so anonymously in Alcoholics Anonymous. Even the school counselor believed the rumors about me might be true. I could tell she was fishing around for information about the gossip du jour—that I’d hooked up with a teacher. I was fourteen and had only kissed two boys ever. Plus: ew. A teacher?