But that was only when she—and my parents—let me come with. When Ryan wasn’t going to Boston or Albany or Poughkeepsie, she was scrambling to catch up with schoolwork or preparing for another audition cycle.
It got worse in the spring. I should have seen it coming, and maybe I had, deep down, but when Ryan asked me if I wanted to go for ice cream at Crosby’s, I was just happy that she wanted to spend time with me again.
It was a sunny but cold spring day. I remember I was excited to see the leaves coming back on the trees because it meant that baseball season was coming. Ryan had come to a lot of my games the summer before River Rocks. I was hoping she’d do that again.
She was just as good at listening as she’d always been, but she’d become ... I don’t know, distracted. Ryan used to ask aboutme, how things were going in my life, but she just sort of—stopped.
I know how it sounds. I can hear her legions of fans coming at me like little yappy rabid dogs—Oh, boo-hoo, he’s so sad a beautiful, intelligent woman wasn’tinterestedin him as a middle schooler!
Yeah, it did make me sad. I was a kid, and she was my first girlfriend, and I really liked her.
So it shouldn’t have surprised me when she had her mint chocolate chip, and I had my butter pecan, and we were sitting on top of the picnic table outside like we always did, that she turned to me with this really sorry look on her face.
“So ... I’m going to compete in the Raleigh Bluegrass Festival in June,” she said.
I knew what that meant. More practicing, more traveling. But I wanted to be supportive. “Hey, congrats,” I said. “I know how hard you’ve been working for it. Can I come?”
“If you want.” She looked down at her sneakers. “But the finalists go on to compete in Nashville in July. And ... my dad is going toAustin for work—Austin,Texas”—I remember she saidTexaslike it was impossibly far away from where we sat on Walnut Road—“so I’m going to try to plan something there too.”
I nodded. Tried not to look at her. “Going to be a busy summer.”
“Yeah.”
That summer had already been looming over both our heads. We were going to start high school in the fall, and although that just meant moving to a different building down the street to Hamilton-Wenham, it felt like a huge leap. Some of our classmates were heading to Bishop Fenwick or Salem Prep, and it felt like we’d never see them again. It was already a lot of change.
Ryan went on, “Look, William ...”
I wanted to save face. I preempted her and said, “Okay, so I guess I might not see you that much. If you want to just call it for now, that’s—that’s okay with me. I’ll always be cheering you on from the sidelines.”
“I’m really sorry,” she said. “Maybe down the road, if things are different ... we could try again someday.”
I nodded. She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek; I remember the way the cool mint smelled on her breath.
Then she got up and walked home without me. We didn’t talk again for years after that day.
But I held her to her word. I did.
Four
Reddit user u/Hear_Me_Now:
I think the bluegrass community is covering something up, tbh. I mean, she *belonged* to them as a kid. She spent all her summers at those festivals. Also ... Ryan’s talked about that guy who followed her to all her festival appearances in interviews. How do we *know* that wasn’t Simon McCarthy?
Yes I realize that should have come up in the McCarthy investigation but u don’t understand how many years passed between those incidents. And I think Ryan’s team wanted the McCarthy stuff to blow over as quickly as possible.
But I mean, this could be a case of someone who’s really obsessed. Who’s to say there’s not some connection between them?
Just food for thought . . .
#RescueRyan
Frank
I couldn’t believe how much Ryan took on that year. One festival after another—the poor kid hardly had any summer vacation left! But Ican’t deny that she was making a name for herself on the circuit. She grew her hair out even longer, and I think that really helped cement an “image” in people’s minds; she was a force to be reckoned with up there, all those messy auburn curls around her skinny shoulders and her throwing it about every which way, not missing a note on her strings the whole time.
Ryan had a real energy. A lot of kids can perform, get up onstage, and get kind of overwhelmed by the adrenaline and forget what they’re doing, but Ryan never let it get out of check. She had stamina.
I was pretty impressed by her. And even though I was already feeling guilty about putting her on what was looking to be a career track at the tender age of fourteen, I did help her out with a secret project that summer.
