Page 35 of Hero on the Road
Abigmagazine.
And as I read through it, I started to understand what Connor was talking about. This magazine, it turned out, had picked up Colin’s little blog and given him a column. Or rather… No, they hadn’t given him a column. This wasn’t fresh writing from him. It was a collection of his blogs.
His blogs about us.
Last night, it seemed, had been big enough to get some real press. And the press was focused on our little tour.
They’d written around Colin’s blogs to fill in some blanks and were calling our adventure ‘Olivia and Connor’s Road Trip’ and talking about how we’d been hitting the smallest venues around. The places no other musicians hit. They were saying that fans—we had fans now?—were guessing at where we’d play next and building maps of where we’d been. They were taking bets on whether we’d be back next year.
And whether we were together or not.
This… This was a major magazine talking about us and our little tour. They were running through our songs and critiquing them, talking about the impact we were having on the state. Calling us the blue collar workers of the music industry.
There was an entire paragraph detailing our road-side shows for cash, because our label wasn’t providing any. The shows we were doing outside the label’s prescribed tour.
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
If Atomic read about those, our contracts were dead. We were breaking the agreement we had with them, and we wouldn’t have any recourse.
All of this would have been for nothing.
Another contract down the drain, and I didn’t think my career would recover from another failure like that.
When I looked up at Connor, my eyes were wet with tears.
“I notice they’re refusing to call it the Mystery Tour like we wanted,” I said quietly.
He huffed and took his phone back. “That’s probably something to do with the fact that we didn’t actually tell anyone we were calling it that. We have a problem, Liv.”
“Yes. You get dressed. I’ll call Taylor.”
Parker might have been a better choice—she had an even stronger personality than Taylor did—but at the end of the day this contract was between Atomic on one side and me and Taylor on the other. Taylor was the one they knew.
I hoped she was the one they’d listen to.
* * *
“Okay, well I’ve got good news and bad news,” Taylor said when she called me back. “Which do you want first?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Bad.”
“Atomic has seen the article. They’ve read it. They know everything.”
The world around me exploded. And then it pieced itself back together, with a lot less color. Because I didn’t have time to break down right now. “Okay. I was afraid of that. What did they say? Are they actually going to send help now that they’ve been publicly shamed for not supporting us?”
“No.”
I frowned. “I thought you already gave me the bad news.”
“This is the good news, Liv. They’ve read it. They’re not dropping you immediately, but you’re on thin ice. They aren’t sending help because they think this is amazing publicity. They want you guys to carry on. Keep on your tour, keep signing autographs and making fans. Keep your funny van and all that. They’re not going to penalize you. Yet.”
“Why do I feel like that’s not the whole answer?”
I could almost hear her doing that thing where she narrowed her eyes and bit her lip, trying to decide whether to tell me the rest. In the end, though, I guessed she had to tell me. After all, I was the one with the contract on the line.
“No more appearances outside the bounds of the contract. They think the roadside stuff was great, but they aren’t going to allow any more of it.”
“And yet they’re not going to send money.”
