Out of Tune: The Original 2015 Draft

chapter 28

I think it's so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no one's ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips—Michelle Branch

It was amazing how fast three weeks could pass. It seemed as if we had only finished our first show by the time we were starting our last. As we stood backstage, waiting for our turn to go onstage, I could feel the dread in all of us. We didn't want this experience to end. It had been the best three weeks we'd ever spent together, even with the whole Jay Dawson fiasco.

I hadn't spoken to Jay since the moment in the lobby of the hotel in Philadelphia. Though I'd seen him around plenty of times, I'd made sure to give him a wide berth, especially if Spencer was with me. For the first couple of days after the incident, I'd been worried that Spencer was going to hunt Jay down and I'd read in the paper the next day that he'd been impaled by a pair of walking crutches.

Thankfully, no such incident occurred and we were able to enjoy the rest of the tour. Our second to last stop had been in L.A. and I'd been surprised to see both my mother and Brad in attendance. I'd sent her two tickets with VIP passes but it wouldn't have surprised me if she hadn't shown. I'd caught her eye once during our performance and smiled but the icing on the cake for that moment was the look on Brad's face. He'd been wearing an expression of pure bewilderment as he'd stared at me on the stage. It was quite obvious that he'd never taken the time to actually listen to us before he'd started belittling me. When he and my mother had come back stage after the show, things had been awkward but civil. I hoped that moving forward in the future, they could remain that way.

It was nice having my mom back and if Brad had to be there as well, at least we could try and manage it with as little violence as possible.

Tonight, for our final show, we were in Boston, Massachusetts. The tour would end tonight and by tomorrow we would be back in Los Angeles. It was weird to think that in a few days we would be back at school and doing homework between rehearsals. It was actually a fairly depressing notion.

The thing that was the most disheartening was the fact that we had no idea if we would ever play in front of crowds this size again. Our fan base had been increasing steadily. We had over a hundred-and-fifty thousand subscribers to our YouTube channel and almost three-hundred thousand hits on our website. It seemed that our fans only wanted more but so far we'd yet to be offered more than what we had.

We'd heard from a few people that there were supposedly recording labels attending the tour but we'd yet to see one. If they were there, they weren't interested. We chose to believe the possibility that they weren't there. Because if they were and they didn't want us, that would have put us over the edge of self-despair.

We had forty-five minutes until we were scheduled to appear on stage. For this final night, we were singing three songs—all originals. We had I Can Hear You, from the Mindy Manson show, and Keep Your Big Mouth Shut, a song about bullying we'd written specifically for the tour. Our third song was supposed to be one called Worth It, but over the past few minutes Spencer had been attempting to get us to change our set at the last second.

"I think we should do it," he said. "I think we should play Elijah's Song."

"We've hardly rehearsed it," Miles objected from across the room. He was sitting on the couch with Taylor on his lap. A pair of drumsticks jutted out of the back pocket of his jeans.

Spencer was looking positively determined from his spot against the wall. I was sitting on the ground in front of him. His hand rested on my shoulder. "I think it's good enough. And it's different than our normal sound. More mature and—"