“I wouldn’t do it if I were you,” he answered, and I felt a little jolt of anticipation because I knew he’d resigned himself. “But ... I know you, and it sounds like you’ve already made your decision.”
I can’t lie. I called the number on Ryan’s CD right after we finished talking.
Five
Mari
Skip was like a younger, edgier Frank who had tattoos and chewed a lot of gum because he was trying to quit smoking. He had the same music philosophy: Don’t rush things, take the time to make the thing you’re producinggood.
It was really lucky that Ryan ended up with a producer like him. Things happen for a reason, I think.
You already know where this went. Of course she did great in the test session—I got the impression that it was more to see whether she and Skip could work together than to gauge her skill. He seemed to have already made up his mind that she had talent, and it sealed the deal when Ryan came in all professional and friendly even at her young age, cracking jokes with Skip about Austin traffic and the dry heat. Just like an interview.
He had her sing a few things for him—not recording, just to listen—and asked her to try changing keys, swapping out one lyric for another, and so forth. I think he wanted to see whether she was willing to be flexible and work with feedback.
After about forty-five minutes, he thanked Ryan and asked if he could talk with her parents separately. There was a studio assistant who brought us snacks and chatted with us while we waited, but Ryan couldhardly focus enough to have a conversation; she kept looking toward Skip’s office door. She had a paper Dixie cup in her hands and was slowly crushing it and bouncing her leg.
We figured that Skip wouldn’t have brought the Holdings to his office if he wasn’t interested. Looking back, it was really decent of him to talk with Barb and John first. He could have easily told Ryan to her face that he wanted to sign her, forcing the pressure on her parents in the same way those toy commercials do.Tell Mom and Dad to buy Barbie’s tropical beach house today!or whatever. But I think he was treading very carefully.
It was more than half an hour before they reemerged, and I remember John just having this totally blank look on his face and Barb being dazed. Both of them were blinking like they couldn’t quite remember where they were.
And Skip shook all our hands, said it was nice to meet us, and that he would be in touch. To her credit, Ryan didn’t push it just yet. She only said, “I hope to work with you again soon!” and looked Skip straight on with those green eyes of hers.
The second we were back in the rental car, though: “So? What did he say?”
John answered, “We’ll talk about it when we get home. There’s a lot to talk about.”
“You have to give mesomething!” Ryan pressed, and honestly, she was right. I was buzzing back there too.
“He was impressed by your music and your work ethic,” Barb said. She was cracking quicker than John; I remember catching this faint smile on her face when she said it. Barb was dazzled, in a word.
“We’ll leave it at that for now,” she went on. Ryan nodded and knew what that meant. She grabbed my hand in the back seat as we drove to the hotel, and I held on tight.
I’m pretty sure the Holdings’ first call when we all got back to Hamilton was to their lawyer. From what Ryan told me, they spent more than one evening that week at his office, talking late into the night. It turned out that Skip had presented them with a contract and encouraged them to take as much time as they needed going through it and discussing it with Ryan. When they finally got through the first phase with the lawyer, they sat Ryan down and had a long, long family meeting.
She told me about it breathlessly over lunch the next day, how they talked about what each of the different legalities meant, but also what would happen if Ryan actually signed.
She did, of course.
And that changed both of our lives for good.
Justin
Ryan didn’t even tell me that she was moving to Texas. I had to hear it from Matt Danvers, who said she’d be gone by the Fourth of July. I remember having this image of Fourth of July fireworks in Texas and how everything would be bigger and better there.
She didn’t say goodbye to me.
Frank
I was sorry to see her go. To see all of them go—I felt like I’d gotten to be good friends with the Holdings over those early years. But Ryan was on the warpath, and she had important things to do. I gave her a little care package with all the extra strings and fingerpicks she could want, plus a few treats from around town to remember Hamilton by.
I think she might’ve got a bit choked up during our last lesson. I know I did.
Mari
Of course I tried to convince my parents to move to Texas, and of course my parents, born-and-bred New Englanders, were appalled by the idea. I knew it was a long shot, anyway. But even though Ryan and I crammed every bit of quality time we possibly could into the end of our eighth-grade year, it felt like I blinked and suddenly we were lying on our backs on a picnic table in Patton Park, throwing Skittles up in the air and trying to catch them in our mouths the night before Ryan left for Austin.
“I don’t want you to go,” I remember saying. It kind of came out of nowhere, and I immediately felt terrible—like I wasn’t supporting her dream, like all I cared about was keeping her stuck in Hamilton for the rest of our lives so she could go to high school with me and come to my harp recitals and watchEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, quickly becoming our favorite movie, over and over again.
