Page 42 of Selling Out
A pause.
Mia
Yes?
As I close the bus door behind me, Gemma calls. Keeping aneye out the window for Rose and Kelly, I answer and give her the Spark Notes version of the last few days, but even that version isn’t finished by the time they come out, armed with two bags of snacks. Probably because Gemma can’t help interjecting every five seconds.
“Gotta go,” I say. “We’ll catch up more later.”
“Mia, you better not hang u?—”
The door opens, and Kelly and Rose walk inside as I mercilessly hang up on my sister.
“That’s all you got?” Rose asks at the sight of my sole candy bar.
“I thought you were starving,” Kelly says.
I try to come up with a reasonable response, but Kelly saves me. “Don’t worry. We got plenty.”
Half an hour later, we’re all stuffed, lazing around the common area as the buses ramble closer to Venice.
Rose and Kelly slump next to each other in a snack-induced half-coma and watch videos on Kelly’s phone. I have my headphones in, listening to Noah Hayes’s newest album as I watch the scenery through the window. The album is almost two years old, and I’ve been waiting for him to announce the next one for a few months.
Movement catches my eye, and I glance at Kelly and Rose, who are suddenly talking animatedly about whatever they’re watching.
I pull out one of my earphones, and music fills the bus. It’s a slow song, one I don’t recognize. My earphone hovers in the air as I listen, trying to identify the familiar voice.
“Wow,” Rose says, staring at the screen. “Hubba hubba. How old is this?”
There’s a pause as Kelly does a bit of recon. “Five years.”
My idle curiosity has officially passed the threshold into I-need-to-know-who-that-is territory, and I take out my other earphone and stand behind them.
It’s a YouTube video, and my jaw slips open when my eyes register who I’m looking at.
Austin’s definitely a few years younger, sitting in a nondescript room, strumming his guitar and singing with his eyes closed. His hair is short enough that you might not know it’s wavy, and his face isn’t quite so sculpted.
“What song is this?” I don’t think I’ve ever heard Austin sing a ballad, which, now that I’m confronted with it, has definitely been for my own good. Rose’shubba hubbadoesn’t even begin to cut it. That voice… Merciful heavens.
“I don’t know,” Kelly says. “One of his own, I’d guess.”
My eyes are starting to dry out, but I can’t blink, or what I’m seeing might disappear. All I can think is,If Austin can write and sing songs like that, why in the world isn’t he doing it?
“How did you find this?” I ask.And who is this stranger I’m watching?
“My friend sent me the link,” Kelly says. “She stumbled on it while watching every Austin Sheppard YouTube video she could get her hands on.”
The song comes to a close, and my eyes drop to the information about the account that posted it. I commit the username to memory just as a call comes through and Kelly answers.
“The man can really do it all, can’t he?” Rose says through a yawn as Kelly slips past her and heads to the back for privacy.
“Guess so,” I say, making my way to my perch at the window. With a stealthy glance at Rose to make sure she’s falling asleep like I thought she would be, I navigate to YouTube and search forsongstrider842.
My heart skips as his account pops up at the top, and I tap on it. There are about twenty videos uploaded, all at least four years old, some as many as eight. I can hardly stand how young he looks in the oldest of them—or how different his voice sounds.
Making sure my earphones are connected to my phone, I tapthe oldest video and stare, totally and completely transfixed, as twenty-year-old Austin serenades me.
It’s dark, and I’m on my fourth round through the videos when the bus finally comes to a stop. I blink and turn off my screen, hardly registering where I am. I have two questions zooming around in my mind. What happened to the Austin from these videos, and did I just fall in love with a historical figure?
