2. Savannah
Two
Savannah
One year earlier
The problem with being adored by twenty-two thousand people was that none of them could help you out of a pair of rhinestone pants.
“I’m trapped,” I announced.
The wardrobe assistant crouched behind me, both hands fighting with the zipper at the base of my spine.
“You’re not trapped.”
“I can’t feel my left leg.”
“That’s unrelated to the zipper.”
“Is that supposed to reassure me?”
Rachel Donovan stood on the other side of the dressing room, reading something on her phone while three people moved around her carrying makeup brushes, garment bags, and enough electrical equipment to launch a small satellite.
“You can still sing without feeling your left leg,” she said.
“Thank you for your compassion.”
“You hired me for judgment, not compassion.”
“I distinctly remember compassion being included in the premium package.”
“You stopped paying for premium after you bought a horse trailer you don’t use.”
“It’s vintage.”
“It has raccoons.”
“They’re not included.”
Rachel looked up from her phone. She wore a black suit that had survived airports, dressing rooms, and several years of managing my career without acquiring so much as a wrinkle.
Her dark hair was twisted into a neat knot.
Her expression suggested she had been born knowing how to renegotiate a contract while ordering lunch.
“Thirty minutes,” she said. “Then press. Then meet-and-greet. Then the label dinner.”
“I thought we cancelled the label dinner.”
“You asked if we could cancel it.”
“And?”
“And I admired your optimism.”
Behind me, the zipper finally moved.
I inhaled.
The rhinestone pants tightened around my ribs.
“I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
The wardrobe assistant stood and smoothed the back of my silver jacket.
“You look incredible.”
“I look like a disco ball with a mortgage.”
“You look like Savannah Brooks,” Sophie Grant said from the doorway.
Our publicist entered with a tablet tucked beneath one arm and two phones in her other hand. Sophie was blond, polished, and physically incapable of entering a room without bringing at least one potential headline with her.
She looked me over from boots to hair.
“Perfect.”
“That word has lost all meaning in this room.”
“It means the clothes fit and you’re not visibly bleeding.”
“The night is young.”
Sophie ignored me and passed her tablet to Rachel.
“The pre-show interview wants one question about the rumors.”
“No,” Rachel said.
“I already told them no.”
“Then why are you telling me?”
“So you can appreciate me.”
“I appreciate you every second you prevent Savannah from answering spontaneous questions.”
“I’m excellent at that.”
I reached for the tablet.
“What rumors?”
Both women moved it away from me at the same time.
“That feels healthy,” I said.
“The usual,” Sophie replied. “New album. Secret relationship. Surprise collaboration. Possible feud with a pop star you met once in an airport lounge.”
“She took my charger.”
“She says you took hers.”
“It was plugged into my phone.”
“Which is why we’re not discussing it.”
Rachel handed the tablet back to Sophie.
“No personal questions. No tour exhaustion. No relationship speculation. Keep it on the show and the next single.”
“Already handled.”
I stared at them.
“Do I need to be here for this conversation?”
“No,” Rachel said.
“Good. I’d hate to interrupt the planning of my personality.”
That earned me the smallest flicker of amusement from her.
Rachel came closer and adjusted the lapel of my jacket. Her movements were brisk, but her eyes stayed on my face for a beat longer than necessary.
“You sleep last night?”
“Of course.”
“How many hours?”
“Several.”
“That isn’t a number.”
“It is emotionally a number.”
“Savannah.”
“Four.”
Her mouth flattened.
“Four and a half.”
“Better.”
“I rounded down for drama.”
“You’re exhausted.”
“I’m wearing enough highlighter to reflect emergency signals. Nobody will know.”
“I’ll know.”
The answer was quiet enough that Sophie looked away and began checking one of her phones.
I smiled at Rachel.
It was the right smile. Reassuring. Warm. Effortless.
I had been practicing it for years.
“I’m fine,” I said.
Rachel did not look convinced, but a knock sounded at the door before she could argue.
“Five minutes to stage.”
The room changed instantly.
The makeup artist powdered the side of my nose. Someone checked the transmitter hidden beneath my jacket. A sound technician clipped the battery pack more securely to the waistband of my terrible pants. Sophie began listing the interview points I was supposed to remember after the show.
New single doing well.
Tour sold out.
Grateful to the fans.
Excited about what came next.
Always excited about what came next.
That was important.
Savannah Brooks was never tired of anything.
Not the travel. Not the interviews. Not answering what her dream collaboration would be for the four hundredth time. Not being asked how she stayed grounded while standing in boots that cost more than the first car my mother had driven.
Savannah was grateful.
Savannah was blessed.
Savannah could not believe she got to do what she loved every night.
The irritating part was that the last one was still true.
The opening chords of my entrance music shook the walls.
The crowd roared.
It moved through the concrete, through my boots, through every exhausted inch of me. Something inside my chest woke at the sound.
There she was.
Not the woman in the mirror.
Not the woman Rachel managed or Sophie protected.
The other one.
The girl who had stood on a kitchen chair at nine years old with a wooden spoon for a microphone.
The teenager who had played to twelve bored people at a barbecue restaurant while a blender screamed through every chorus.
The twenty-one-year-old who had driven to Nashville with two hundred dollars, four songs, and an engine light that had been on so long it felt decorative.
The stage manager held up three fingers.
The band moved into position.
Rachel touched my arm.
“Remember where you are?”
I gasped. “Canada?”
“We’re in Dallas.”
“I knew that.”
“You said Denver during soundcheck.”
“Denver was very memorable.”
“We haven’t played Denver yet.”
“Then I’m manifesting.”
Two fingers.
The crowd began chanting my name.
Savannah.
Savannah.
Savannah.
It was strange how quickly a name stopped belonging to you once enough people said it at the same time.
One finger.
I looked at Rachel.
“Do I have both legs?”
“Last I checked.”
“Then let’s make irresponsible choices.”
She shook her head, but she was smiling when the platform began to rise.
The stage opened around me in white light and noise.
Twenty-two thousand people stood.
For the next ninety minutes, I was not tired.
That was the magic of it.
Everything that felt heavy backstage disappeared the second the first line left my mouth. The band was sharp. The crowd was louder than the monitors. Thousands of lights moved through the arena like stars someone could hold in one hand.
I ran the length of the stage.
I changed guitars twice.
I missed one lyric and pointed the microphone toward the audience before anyone could notice. Twenty-two thousand people sang the correct words back to me, which was both moving and professionally useful.
During the acoustic set, the arena darkened.
I sat on a stool at the end of the runway with my guitar across my lap. The rhinestone pants had cut off circulation to most of my internal organs, but they sparkled beautifully under the spotlights, which was apparently the exchange rate.
“This next song,” I said, “is about leaving home.”
The cheering softened.
“It’s also about realizing that leaving a place doesn’t mean it leaves you.”
Someone in the front row shouted, “WE LOVE YOU, SAVANNAH!”
“I love you too,” I said automatically.
The crowd screamed.
My smile stayed in place.
I started the song.
It was one of the quieter tracks from my second album, the one Ellie Parker would tell me a year later had carried her through a bad winter.
That night in Dallas, I did not know Ellie existed.
I only knew the song had been written in an apartment with broken air-conditioning after I had called my mother and lied about how well Nashville was going.
I knew the label had wanted a larger chorus.
I knew Richard Greene had suggested changing one line because women tested better when they sounded nostalgic but not resentful.
I had kept the line.
It was still my favorite.
Halfway through the second verse, I saw a woman near the front holding a sign.
THIS SONG GOT ME HOME.
She was crying.
Not loudly. Not in a way meant to be noticed.
She simply held the sign against her chest and sang every word.
Something inside me shifted.
The crowd disappeared for one moment.
The cameras. The arena. The screens showing my face forty feet high.
It was just a song moving from one person to another.
That part never got old.
That part was still mine.
By the final chorus, the entire arena was singing.
I let them carry the last line.
Their voices rose around me, imperfect and enormous.
For a few seconds, I felt less alone than any person in the world.
Then the lights went out.
The stage crew rushed in.
The band scattered toward the tunnel. Someone pulled the guitar strap over my head. Another person handed me a towel and a bottle of water. The noise of the crowd followed us backstage, muffled now by concrete walls.
Rachel was waiting beside the stairs.
“Good show.”
“Good?”
“Very good.”
“Your enthusiasm is overwhelming.”
“You missed a lyric.”
“I offered the audience an interactive experience.”
“You said Denver.”
“That was before the show. It doesn’t count.”
She handed me my phone.
Forty-three notifications covered the screen.
Messages from my mother. My stylist. Sophie. Two people from the label. Someone I had not spoken to since an awards dinner three years earlier. An entertainment alert using my own name.
Nothing I wanted to open.
“Press in eight,” Rachel said.
I looked back toward the stage tunnel.
The crowd was still calling for another encore even though we had already done two.
“Can I have five minutes?”