Chapter 9
It was the surprise of Heidi’s life that Isaac—the scrawny eighteen-year-old who’d picked them up from the side of the road—was true to his word.
Just as soon as they reached Nashville, he set Heidi and Carrie up with a room over the top of a restaurant that sold barbecue sandwiches and onion rings.
The rent was affordable, provided that Heidi got a job as soon as she could.
When Carrie suggested that she get a job, too, to help make ends meet, Heidi grimaced and told her she could, but only if she committed to school as soon as it began.
The second night after their arrival, Heidi and Carrie were invited to the barbecue restaurant downstairs.
Isaac and a variety of friends and people of all ages from all over the world who’d come to Nashville to make country music greeted them warmly and fed them more barbecue than Heidi had ever eaten at once.
Back in their small town, food had been hard to come by.
She’d always gone hungry at the end of the night.
When they finished their meals, Isaac’s friend Jefferson, a guy in his mid-forties, ordered them all pints of beer, then leaned over the table and asked Heidi and Carrie what their story was.
Heidi was immediately frightened. She didn’t want to tell anyone about Harvey and her father, how she’d been responsible for “kidnapping” her little sister, and also for Harvey’s accident on the stairs.
It was possible that they were coming after Carrie and Heidi.
“We can’t be found,” Heidi said finally, pressing her lips into a line.
Jefferson understood immediately. “Consider new names for yourselves, girls,” he said. “People come to Nashville from all over the world and reinvent themselves. There’s no reason in the world that you can’t do the same.”
Heidi understood. That night, she and Carrie stayed up late, sitting at the edge of the bed they were now sharing upstairs, and considered their new identities.
Carrie’s bruises were still prominent on her face, but Isaac and his friends had been good enough not to ask about them.
They probably understood that they were part of the reason Heidi and Carrie had had to escape.
“I always wanted to be a Sally,” Carrie said wistfully, her eyes to the window, which shook with country music coming from all ends of the block.
“Sally. That’s adorable,” Heidi said, smiling. But she couldn’t come up with a nice name for herself. She considered multiple: Anna and Felicity, Georgia and Penelope. But nothing felt like it fit her. She’d always felt like a Heidi. It was tragic to have to leave the name behind.
“What about Stella?” Carrie said offhandedly. “Stella and Sally go together, don’t they?”
Heidi agreed they did. “We’ll need a last name,” she said. Eventually, they decided on McGee because it was cute. That, and it was nondescript. They knew plenty of McGees. They could blend in with a name that almost felt as anonymous as Smith.
By the end of the first week, Heidi—now Stella McGee—got herself a job at a country-western bar down the block.
Although she’d never actually had a job that paid her a wage before, she’d been waiting on people hand and foot practically her entire life.
Bar work felt honest to her. She served drinks and food.
She smiled and laughed with people, even if she didn’t always want to.
The hours weren’t great. She started every day around 4 p.m. and didn’t come home most nights till 1 a.m. But the magic of the place, she felt, was the music.
Country musicians got up on stage both to try new material and play old favorites every single night of the week.
Although Stella had always adored music, now she felt as though it were oxygen, as though she couldn’t go a few minutes without hearing a song.
Midway through August, Carrie, now Sally McGee, enrolled in the local high school.
She was a junior. Excitedly, Stella helped Sally sign up for classes, including English literature, Intro to Spanish, and Algebra I.
It was easy to see, already, that their high school back home hadn’t covered the basics as early as this bigger-city school had, and Sally was a little bit behind.
But Sally promised the guidance counselor and Stella herself that she’d do her best to catch up.
The plan was that she’d graduate in two years and then head on to college.
Sometimes it overwhelmed Stella to think of how far they’d come. They hadn’t heard a peep from their father nor Harvey. She couldn’t imagine how they’d ever find them.
Stella’s boss at the country music bar was named Boo, which was a very funny name for a man, one that was most certainly not his “real” name.
After going through what she’d gone through, Stella didn’t think “real” names mattered anymore.
Boo was in his mid-fifties, and he’d been around for every era of country music.
He knew almost everyone in Nashville, and he could always tell if someone was going to be a star.
He could also say when someone’s career was nearly over.
He’d stop booking someone before everyone else, foretelling their doom.
By the time October rolled around, Stella had been an employee at the country music bar for three months, and Boo had taken to trusting her with just about everything at the bar.
Stella felt an ease with him, as though he was her stand-in father.
She certainly trusted him more than she’d ever trusted their dad.
Sally, too, trusted him. Usually after school, she came to the country music bar to do her homework, eat snacks, and hang out.
She really wanted to work there, but Stella told Boo to hold off on hiring her because she needed to catch up on her school assignments.
“When you can say a few more sentences in Spanish, we can talk about you getting that job,” she told Sally.
Both Stella and Sally were at times mystified and at times appalled at the music acts who came through the bar.
Sometimes Sally and Stella couldn’t stop singing their songs for the next week.
Sometimes they couldn’t stop saying how awful they were, how wretched.
Boo usually agreed with them, but sometimes he said they didn’t have an ear for the future, whatever that meant.
One day, long before the normal parade of customers came into the bar, the musician set to perform that night finished his soundcheck and left his guitar on stage.
He had to take a call, but he’d be back in time for the curtain to go up.
Bored and wanting to impress Sally, maybe, Stella got on stage, grabbed his guitar, and started to sing one of their favorite old country songs.
She’d never been on stage before. She’d never looked out at a sea of empty chairs and bar tables, hearing her voice echoed back to her. It was a grand, mythic event.
Halfway through her song, Sally mounted the stage and began to sing with her.
They’d sung together before at the kitchen counter of their parents’ place, scrubbing dishes, getting through all the tasks of the day.
Stella grinned madly the entire time, but she was on the verge of tears.
When they finished, Stella was careful to put the guitar back right where she found it, then hugged her sister.
She whispered, “I can’t believe how far we’ve come! ”
But before her sister could respond, Boo called out from the back shadows of the bar. “Who told you that you could use that guitar?” There was a harshness to his voice.
Stella’s smile melted off her face. She felt, at that moment, that Boo would turn on her, and everything she’d built with him was suddenly for nothing. She prepared herself to beg for her job. She prepared to apologize over and over again.
Boo was quiet, which felt almost worse.
Stella and Sally hurried off the stage. Sally grabbed her backpack and got out of there, heading home to do her homework, while Stella got to work again, setting out menus and making sure all the glasses were clean.
When Boo came over to her and stood, his arms crossed over his chest, she was almost too frightened to look up at him.
When she did, he had a strange glimmer in his eye.
He wanted to say something, but he didn’t know how.
Finally, Stella couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“I don’t know what came over you either,” he said.
“It won’t happen again,” she said.
Boo was quiet for a moment. “I hope that’s not true.”
Stella was stunned. She couldn’t fathom what he meant.
“You haven’t written any of your own songs, have you?” Boo asked.
Stella wanted to snort. When would she have had time to write her own songs?
“No,” she admitted.
“But you know all the old standards,” he said.
“I guess so. My sister and I always sang them together,” she said.
Boo palmed the back of his neck. “The thing is, we have a one-hour slot at the party this Sunday. We need someone to perform as the opener to the opener to the opener, you know?”
That Sunday was a little country music festival, which Boo put on every year, featuring Nashville’s finest and also a few unknowns to fill the gaps. Stella didn’t know what to say.
“I want you and Sally up there,” he said firmly. “Let’s see what you got.”