I'll Follow the Sun (A Beatles/Paul McCartney Fanfiction)

{ Chapter One }

The blazing sun beat down on South Carolina, not only illuminating the nearby land, but heating it up to the point where one might feel as though they were trapped inside a microwave oven if they, by chance, were traveling through it. Many were spared from this dreadful warmth, however, seeing as the road on which this story began was fairly obscure, but one boy in particular didn't happen to be as fortunate.

Nineteen-year-old Paul McCartney was walking miserably alongside the road, worn out by the heavy bags and guitar case on his shoulders and carrying a cardboard sign under his arm, mentally pleading that someone would come along, see him, and lend him some help. He'd been in this same state for over twenty-four hours now, gradually trudging his way down to his destination and stopping only when he needed to eat. He was stranded in a place he'd never been before and where he didn't know anyone, with only the money in his pockets to support him — and his supply was draining fast.

Paul wanted nothing but to see his mates, play some shows, and finally go back to Liverpool where he could relax and be at home again, close to his loved ones. And this near-desert in the middle of nowhere wasn't exactly Liverpool.

It had all started when the boys went off to Hamburg to play a couple of shows at the Kaiserkeller, a German club. Tensions began to rise between the remaining members of the group, especially with their poor living conditions, once Stuart decided to leave them in order to stay in Germany with a photographer named Astrid. It seemed as though they all thought that anyone else could leave at any given moment, and therefore found themselves running low on trust for each other.

Then, they met a man named Brian Epstein who wanted to support the group. He booked them some gigs down in Florida, in a club that was supposedly much cleaner and more popular than the ones they'd played in Germany. The boys leapt at the opportunity, but were left to buy their own flight tickets. Since Paul didn't have much money, he'd called up his father and asked for him to pay for the flight, but this had unexpectedly enraged him, and he said that Paul should be able to get a ticket himself without his dad's help. This led to an argument that Paul won, and reluctantly, Jim McCartney bought his son a ticket.

The only problem was that the destination was in Florida and the ticket Jim had bought was for a plane that landed in Virginia.

So, of course, Paul had called again, but this time, Jim declined altogether, hanging up on him before he could even begin to explain why he needed another ticket in the first place. Since his fellow band members had already arrived and had claimed they couldn't come get him, he was on his own.

So, alone in a foreign country, Paul got to walking, headed for a destination that never seemed to get any closer.

However, at least he had a destination at all.

In a nearby Route 66-esque diner, Lena Grant, at that very moment, was wondering what she wanted to do with her life. She was certain her parents were off having themselves a grand time, wherever they were. She wondered if they even remembered that they had a daughter waiting for them back home, and who'd already been waiting nearly twelve years. Lena was seven years old when they'd brought her to her uncle's house, promising a return that would never happen. Years had passed and Uncle Phil had slowly turned into an upset drunk. Lena, however, was just a matured version of the person she'd always been.

Lena was a generally quiet girl, often finding herself lost in thought, somewhere deep in the vast ocean of dreams that she knew she had a very little chance of fulfilling. Deeply inspired by such performers as Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth, Lena dreamt of being twirled around a dance floor and having her name up in lights on the marquee sign. But she was never much of a performer herself and thought she lacked the boldness. When the daylight came around and she could dream no more, she found that she would much rather be involved with writing or photography, where she could express her thoughts in a way that allowed her to thrive despite her shyness, instead of reciting big, dramatic soliloquies with a dozen cameramen capturing every second and every flaw.