Dissonance - Chapter 20

I was right about the article not bringing a ton of turnout. There were a few new faces, and we were still packed both Friday and Saturday night, but there were less people than the previous weekend for our return show, which was to be expected. That had been a lot of people, friends or fans, who’d come out to welcome us back. I hadn’t expected that kind of turnout two weekends in a row. As it was, we were still at capacity and Chef was happy.

I think Willie might have been happy, too. He made a few comments about his hands hurting and this maybe being the last few months of his playing regularly. I hadn’t talked to the rest of the guys in his band yet, to hear if they were going to keep playing even after Willie retired, but I hoped so.

Willie might be a legend, but they were great and it would be a shame if they didn’t keep it going. Besides, I don’t know if any other groups lived in the area and I couldn’t imagine very many groups from Ashville or somewhere else coming up to play a gig here on their own. The Blue Ridge was great, and I’ll always love playing there, but compared to pretty much every venue we’d played on tour, or any of the other places Willie had played when he toured, Chef’s restaurant was just too small and was not designed for any significant performance. It would be hard for most bands to justify driving back and forth for a gig like this.

It worked out for me, because I played there three nights in a row, since I lived here. True, the rest of the guys had to drive up, but they were taking the hit for a regular gig, and they’d be living here soon, so it would be the same for them.

Still, most of the people at the show had read the review, based on the number of people who mentioned it to me when I went out into the crowd after we finished each night. Actually, I think maybe word had gotten around and most people in town had read it. I tried to not let it go to my head. Wellsville was a tiny town and I know Chef and Mrs. Phillips had been mentioning it to friends. It didn’t take much for the two of them to get the word out to everyone. It would be very different even in Asheville, which wasn’t exactly a bustling metropolis.

Sunday, I had to beg off practice with the band, because it was Kat’s first pre-season swim meet, and one of the few where the other towns came here, instead of Kat having to travel to somewhere else to compete. Even with our boundary issues, she’d not only been with me the entire summer, but had done a lot of the busy work that needed to get done, letting us focus on either playing a gig or working on songs in the studio. If she was willing to give up her entire summer for me, the very least I could do was be there to cheer her on.

Not that I expected her to lose. Swimming mostly happens in the fall and was over before we really got to know each other, so I’d only seen her practice. However, from how much she blew away her teammates without really pushing herself, and some of the things I’d heard her coach say, I doubted most of the kids at nearby schools were at her level. She’d won state last year and had qualified for the junior nationals team as an alternate.

Even with getting free from her father and all of the mess that caused, she’d trained hard all spring to get ready for this year. She’d defied her coaches and come on tour with us instead of continuing that training through the summer, which was another reason I owed her to be at her meets, but she was back now, and had been training every single day to try and catch up.

She was also the team Captain, which meant she was busy the whole time, checking on her teammates, making sure everyone was where they needed to be and cheering them on from poolside. This was a different Kat than I’d seen elsewhere. She was aggressive and outspoken, never shying away from anyone. She even had to be pulled back by her coach when someone pushed one of her teammates. I’d never seen her like this, but it was refreshing. It was confirmation that — at least somewhere inside of herself — she was capable of being her own person, not dependent on anyone else for direction.

She had just finished her first heat, where she absolutely smoked every other girl in the pool, finishing half a pool length ahead of the next closest competitor, when I saw a girl I didn’t know heading towards me. She had short, shoulder-length dirty blond hair and was wearing a long shirt of a swimsuit, which I could see part of around her neck, when the t-shirt shifted. Aside from the swimsuit, the t-shirt was a Carr high swim team shirt, so I assumed she was on the team with Kat. Since Kat mostly trained one-on-one with the coach and I’d missed all of last year’s competitions, I didn’t actually know any of the girls on the team, so it wasn’t surprising I didn’t know her.

“You’re Charlie Nelson, right?” she said, stopping several steps from me.

“Uhh … yeah,” I said waving at Kat as she got out of the pool and giving her a thumbs up. “What’s up?”

Kat stopped for a second, looking back up at me and the unknown girl, before the coach said something to her and she hurried back to the other side of the pool.

“Ohh … I’m …sorry, I shouldn’t bother you,” she said, flushing in the cheeks and turning to go back down the bleachers.

“Wait! You came all the way over here. If you run away now, I’ll be trying to figure out what just happened the rest of the day.”

She turned back, her cheeks still flushed, and said, “Sorry. I just had some time before my group goes, and I wanted to say ‘hi.’”

“Hi,” I said, giving her a half-wave and pointing to the seat next to me. “See, that was underwhelming. Did you want to sit down and say something else, or just say hi and run away?”

“I … uhh … didn’t really think this through. Katharine’s talked about you and said how great you are, and I’ve seen you play at the Blue ridge a bunch of times, and I watched you play baseball last year, and I just thought you were kind of great.”

She paused, looking embarrassed again. once she’d started speaking, the words had gotten away from her and come tumbling out of her mouth, like she had no control over them. It was actually kind of cute. Now that she’d said all that, she’d gone back to being shy, standing with her legs twisted, so the left foot was on the right side and the right foot on the left, almost like when a little kid has to go to the bathroom. She was actually kind of cute, too. She had light blue eyes and her nose turned up a bit at the end. That, with the tops of her ears poking through her dirty blond hair, gave her an almost elfin appearance.

“Sooo … are you going to sit down, or run away?”

“My suit’s still damp, I wouldn’t want to get you wet.”

“I’ll live. Please, if you have a second, sit down and talk to me. Drive-by compliments feel weird.”

“Okay,” she said sitting a half arm’s length away and crossing one leg over the next before pulling the t-shirt over her knees.

“So, you think I’m great, huh?”

“Don’t fish for compliments,” she said, rolling her eyes.

I’d hoped she had some backbone. Although it had bitten me in the ass with Rhonda, I liked it when girls had forceful personalities.

“Hey, you’re the one who came over and practically swooned in my lap.”

“I never,” she said, slapping my shoulder.

“Okay, it wasn’t quite a swoon. You did, however, forget to introduce yourself. You know who I am, but I don’t even know your name.”

“Sydney.”

“Good to meet you, Sydney. So you’re on the swim team?” I said, pointing at her shirt.

“Yeah. I swim butterfly and freestyle in the relay.”

“I haven’t seen you around school.”

“I’m not surprised. I was a freshman last year, and was absolutely terrified of Katharine. I didn’t really start talking to her till this week, when she was telling stories about your tour.”

“I find it hard to believe that anyone is scared of Kat.”

“Are you kidding? Have you seen her down there? She’s the best swimmer I’ve ever seen, and she kicks our asses if we’re not pulling our weight. She’s scarier than Coach Becker.”

“Until seeing her down there today, I wouldn’t have believed you; but she’s a very different person by the pool, than she is everywhere else.”

“Weird,” Sydney said, getting quiet.

I thought she might have more to say, since she’d been the one to come up to me, but we lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. Other than hearing about me from Kat, I couldn’t really figure out why she’d want to come talk to me, but the silence was getting too awkward. When she started to fidget with her hands, I figured it was up to me to carry the conversation.

“So, you said you’ve heard us play at the Blue Ridge?”

“The week you came back. It was packed, but Kat got a bunch of the swim team through the front door. You were amazing. I’ve never seen anyone play guitar like that.”

“I appreciate it,” I said with a laugh. “But you must not have been to many concerts, because there are a lot better players out there than me.”

“No way. I go to shows all the time, and not just to Asheville. My sister is in college in Nashville and she takes me to concerts there all the time, plus we went to a bunch in the eastern half of the state this summer. We even saw Missey Wallace and Ishaan Potter play in Greensboro in July.”

Missey Wallace was straight pop and put on huge performances with more than a dozen backup dancers and a whole light show. Her music was really synthesized and while I knew she had guitar players, they weren’t the focus of the music. Not that she wasn’t good, because she was, but everything sounded almost electronic after it went through soundboards and mixers. It worked for her sound; but there wasn’t really a comparison between what I did, and what she did.

Ishaan Potter was a R&B singer. His voice was as smooth as anything I’d heard before, and he could hit a stunning falsetto, but his music was also very different and often featured well-known rap artists doing verses in between a sung chorus.

The fact that she liked my music and theirs, said something for how eclectic her music tastes were.

“I’ve never seen them in concert, but both of their music is really good. I actually worked with the same producer they used when we were recording our first album this summer. We were rushed, so I didn’t get a chance to ask about stories of working with other people, but it was still really exciting to work with the same guy that made their stuff so great.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to have your own album. That’s huge, it’s like,” she started, and then paused, clearly looking for some kind of analogy. She apparently gave up finding one, because instead she said, “It’s huge.”

“I’m pretty excited about it, but I also remind myself every time I get too excited, that a lot of people make records, but never get out of playing the local clubs. Getting my own record doesn’t mean I’m gonna have success.”

“Yeah, but most of those aren’t with major record labels.”

“You’d be surprised how many of the people who have deals with a major label end up getting dropped after their first album doesn’t go anywhere. It’s why they sign so many small bands. Even if they think a band is great and has the potential to be huge, skill isn’t what decides if someone gets famous or not. That’s all luck. Hell, my dad had a record contract for like six months in the early nineties, and ended up playing in small dive bars the rest of his life. I’m only just now getting to how long he had a contract. If my record doesn’t do well, I’m back to just playing at the Blue Ridge or some other local bar.”

“You’re dad had a record contract?”

“Yeah, but his record didn’t sell very well and they dropped him. He says it’s because they didn’t put enough marketing into it, because someone at the label had it in for him. Having seen the process from the inside, I’m not sure how true that is anymore, but it’s still a good lesson to not count your chickens before they hatch.”

“I guess, but it’s still a really big deal. And you’re so good, I know you’re going to make it.”

“I appreciate it. I guess I’m just surprised people even know about me. I mean, I know we had a full crowd for our homecoming show, but at school or where ever, it hasn’t ever mattered before.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I mean, I knew who you were last year, and I was just a freshman. Yeah, you weren’t the talk of the school, at least about music, every day, but people did talk about you. We live in a small town. You think it isn’t a big deal that you’re our classmate and you’re up on stage playing every weekend, and sometimes in bigger clubs in Asheville? And that was all before you got a record contract and went on tour. Trust me, you’re the biggest thing at our school by a mile.”

“I guess. It didn’t really seem that way to me. I mean, I think the things I heard people saying was more about my run-ins with Aaron than anything else I did.”

“Ohh, yeah, don’t even get me started on that. People’ve been talking about what happened with you two at prom all summer. I mean, you broke up a fight in the bathroom or something and knocked out him and a teacher … and they got arrested. That’s big.”

“That wasn’t what happened. I didn’t knock out either of them, and it wasn’t a fight. Aaron had carried an unconscious girl into the bathroom with plans to … anyway, I couldn’t let that happen, so I told them to stop. He came at me, so I defended myself. Both he and Coach Bryant were fine and only Aaron got arrested, although I’d be surprised if he actually went to jail or anything.”

“He didn’t. They had a hearing in July where he pled to something and got probation. His dad got the probation moved to California, or something like that, so he could go there to college. He left right after the trial.”

“Figures. At least I won’t have to deal with him anymore.”

“Not everyone agreed with him, though. A lot of us thought he was a jerk and took your side. I mean, I was just a freshman, so what did I know.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Sydney!” one of the girls below called up the stands, waving her arms back and forth over her head.

“I gotta go,” she said, getting up. “Maybe I’ll see you around?”

“For sure. I’ll be here watching Kat’s meets and we’ll see each other in school. Don’t be all weird when you stop to say ‘hi’ to me next time, though.”

“With that attitude, I might just walk by and not say anything at all,” she said, but the way she smiled suggested she wouldn’t do that at all.

She gave a little half wave and ran down the bleachers to her friends, putting her arm through the other girl's arm and leaning in close as they walked back to the rest of the swimmers, whispering and giggling as they went, occasionally shooting a glance back my way.

I watched her antics and smiled. After three months on the road, it was good to be back home and just act like a kid again.

I looked past her to the other swimmers, looking for Kat, who was off to one side, her eyes glued to Sydney as she walked back. The expression on her face made it clear Kat wasn’t too happy. I hoped that was just because Sydney hadn’t been where she was supposed to be, although a little glance Kat made at me before going back to stare at Sydney suggested her attitude might be a lot more personal than that.

The last thing I needed was Kat becoming territorial over me, if that’s what this was. I guess it was a step up from her throwing women at me, but I didn’t want her taking out whatever this new phase of my relationship with her on Sydney, or any other girl I happened to talk to in school.

Of course, maybe I was overreacting.