PRESENT DAY
Britt parks outside Back to Me & You, and I get out, standing next to her in front of my mother’s tribute club. The walls are pink and the roof is glass, lit by the waning sky. This place is open from sunset to sunrise, and the parking lot is filled with cars and motorcycles, but everyone’s already inside.
Listening to that song in the Horizon and reading the clue, I just assumed it was between the lines and history, like with the lighthouse. Not right there in the lyrics.
Meet me in the lyrics so we can find our way back to me and you.
And here we are, at this club that’s twenty years young and shining in the dark. It’s an actual monument to who she was, a haven that her music made with a little less tourism and superficiality than the rest of the town. At least here—unlike the pub on Main Street—they don’t serve a drink called the Tori Rosé.
Crossing the lot, Britt and I head for the entrance covered almost completely by torn-off ticket stubs from Tori Rose concerts. I hold the door for Britt, and she slips in, her sparkly red cardigan brilliant in the sea of the crowd. I step inside next, smoothing my hands over my leather skirt that kind of matches the one on the poster of my mother’s Regret You tour—her final album—and doesn’t quite seem to match me.
My mom’s voice plays over the speakers, the same song my grandmas danced to at their wedding ten summers ago. “Remember Me.”
How does remembering work if it lets you forget me?
How does forgetting work if when I think of you, I can’t breathe?
But I wouldn’t change these memories, no matter where we go,
Because loving you was the best part of me I ever got to show.
I spent every weekend at Back to Me & You before it went full-on nightclub under new ownership. I used to bike across town, sit out front, and ask anyone who’d listen about my mom. But I got those same half-hearted answers: superstar, legend, great style, good hair, that voice.
Peeking over her shoulder, Britt mouths, “Coming?” She catches the spotlight like we tried to catch butterflies in our youth, flying even when she lands in its trap.
And yet I follow her.
Bodies rustle through open space, and sequined dresses and tailored pantsuits slip by us. People carry instruments past the stage twice as large as the Horizon’s and equipped with a working spotlight. Britt and I find a table in the back, between a couple tuning guitars and a group of Sunset Cove Community College students crowded around a menu: my future.
Next year, I’ll stop my ping-ponging between the Horizon and the inn, no longer having my own little escape at the diner, and work with my grandmas full time. I’ll attend Sunset Cove Community College, and that’ll be it. I avoid that group’s gaze and general direction, bringing a few too many looks from Sunset Cove passersby.
I still have time.
“Hey.” Britt smirks across the table.
“Hey.” My pulse pounds, and I look around as music and laughter rise. “How was practice? How’s Lost Girls?”
Her whole expression comes to life with the question. “It’s great. If Amy and I can just agree on the last song for the setlist, then we’ve got it. That’ll be the gig.”
“What are the choices?” I spent the time between what little sleep I got last night and brainstorming questions to ask Linnea watching and rewatching that latest video Britt posted on her channel. I memorized every word she wrote about a girl who chased the sun and fell for the rain. It goes along to a softer track I left on her nightstand, twinkling piano between minor chords, Chords by Mia Peters, written with a purple heart in the description.
“ ‘How to Say Goodbye’ and ‘Heart-Shaped Looking Glass.’ Amy thinks ‘Heart-Shaped Looking Glass’ goes with the fairytale theme, but I think we need something different, something to mix it up.”
“What does Sophie think?”
“Sophie thinks we should add a larger piano solo to both.” Britt laughs. “Then she’ll choose.”
“I agree with you.” My mother always did just what Britt is suggesting. She set the tone of the album, but there was this one song that spoke to something unexpected, twisted the rest of it on its head, and made the whole work have a new lens. The next words come out quieter, and I wish I could snatch them back as soon as they’re gone. “I’m always on your side.”
There’s this one variation of her smile that she saves just for me. It’s a little like a whispered secret, a sacred oath. “Oh yeah? I wish you could vote then.”
There’s a pause, heavy as it is long, and we avoid one another’s gaze as the words rest between us. There is a way I could vote. If I did more than write tracks and watch practices, if I wasn’t so scared, if me getting up on a stage didn’t remind everyone of what exactly the world lost when it lost Tori Rose.
But I still can’t. Am I fooling myself thinking there’s really a decision to make? Hasn’t it already been made?
“I’m going to go get drinks.” Britt pushes back from the table when I can’t find the words to say.
“Drinks,” I agree. I spin the saltshaker with one hand, keeping my eyes on its guitar shape and not her. “Sounds good.”
I want you to come.
As soon as her heels clip away, I look up and watch her leave. I watch her flipping her fake ID between her fingers as she makes her way to the bar. There are just enough out-of-towners for her to slip through unrecognized. She doesn’t drink often, only at parties or after she aces finals—when the two of us sneak some liquor from Nana’s stash and replace it with water—but whenever she does, she can work a fake ID like no one else. We got ours together last summer.
I pull the orange envelope from my purse. I have to find my mother’s message and what it means for me. I have to assume it’ll show me what to do without hurting any of the people I care about.
I place the envelope on the table next to the salt and pepper. I study my mom’s handwriting, and I don’t know how to get used to seeing the way she so carefully writes my name when nothing else about her was careful. My breath shudders on the way out.
“What should I do?” I whisper.
The envelope stares back, the letters swaying in and out of focus as I blink.
A waitress I don’t recognize makes her way over. Her name tag reads “Owner (she/her),” without a name. She pauses a second, balancing a tray of used glasses and empty plates. “Can I get you anything?” Her eyes are on the envelope, and I almost tuck it away.
Her hair is a light purple, close to white. Freckles dot her pale nose and cheeks, and her eyes are endlessly blue. She looks to be in her late forties or early fifties, close to Linnea’s age. Her makeup is flawless. She must be the one who turned this place into a club—the owner.
“No, thank you,” I say, still staring at that word clipped to her shirt collar. “My friend is getting drinks.”
She’s staring in return. “Do you come here often?”
“No.” Not now.
But she doesn’t move on. She stands there and tries to place me before her mouth forms a perfect O, the shape peoples’ mouths usually make when they realize. Her gaze locks on the poster I didn’t realize was behind me. It’s the Regret You deluxe album cover in which half my mom’s face is photographed—wig red and wild—and the other half is made of a rosebush with only thorns.
“You’re . . .” There’s something in her eyes and it hits me all at once. There’s something beyond just recognition. “You’re her kid, aren’t you?”
“Mia. I’m Mia Peters.” It’s clear from the lines of her features, the downturn of her lips, the way she’s looking at the clue on the table, there’s something new I haven’t seen before.
Britt moves into view, two glasses in hand. Her eyes dart between me and this woman and my mom’s legacy somewhere in between. The owner is staring with greater intensity, and my stomach flips.
“What’s up?” Britt slides onto my side of the booth, putting herself between me and this woman.
“Nothing,” I say.
The owner shifts, purple hair falling off her shoulders.
Britt doesn’t believe me. “Hi,” she says, her tone curt in a way I haven’t heard before. “I’m Britt.”
Gesturing to her name tag, even with its lack of name, the owner shakes her head. She leaves as suddenly as she came. I want to get up, but my feet are stilled. I will them to move, to follow, but I’m left staring after this person who owns this club dedicated to my mom. Just as I’m about to push myself forward, Britt slides the glass my way.
“That was weird,” she says. “The bar was so busy tonight. The guy didn’t even card me. Who was that?”
“I don’t know. She knows my mom.”
“Knows knows her?” She pauses midsip.
“I think so.”
There was something in the way she looked at the envelope. I grasp it tighter.
My mom had to have sent me here for a reason.
I don’t say anything else, and Britt’s gaze is locked on the crowd. My breath is still uneven as I open the letter, sitting beneath my mother’s songs, pouring from all directions as I read.
Mia,
Welcome to the place the sun sets latest. Everyone knew my ego didn’t need the added boost of this tribute, but I’m glad you’re here. I wanted you to meet someone very important to me.
You’ll probably find her at the bar. Tell her me and the music say hi. She’ll lead you to the next parts of our story. She’ll know what I mean.
Love,
Mom
It is her. It has to be. I stare after her purple hair, barely visible as she retreats. Then the owner ascends the rectangular stage at the front of the diner—to the left of the bar—under the blinking skylight and decals of budding roses on the walls.
“Who wants to sing?” she asks the bar’s crowd with surprising enthusiasm. I half expect her to belt out the words to one of my mother’s hit tunes. “Rules of open mics at Back to Me & You are simple. I’ll call you up, you get your ass on stage, and we never boo anyone unless they really deserve it.”
There’s a quick chuckle. Britt and I get up, making our way through the crowd and toward her. This woman has to be who my mother was talking about.
“Do we have any volunteers?” she calls.
Britt raises her hand. She’s always ready for the music.
But then she turns to me. “One song?” she asks, hand still raised. “Sing with me.”
One song. After all this time, can’t I give her just one song? I haven’t sung since that show.
There was a time we sang together for people, when that was our thing and our songs were just ours. All those years ago, my mom got up on a stage to make fate happen for herself. Shouldn’t I try? If there’s anywhere in Sunset Cove that might be safe to, it’s here where her person is honored with her story. It’s here where she’s led me. It’s here with Britt.
The woman on the stage points to Britt through the crowd, and I grab Britt’s hand, squeeze it yes. Her smile lights up my world, and she raises our interlocked hands into the air.
I can do this. I can do this.
For Britt. For Tori Rose.
Face falling when she sees me with Britt, the owner slowly lowers the arm she’s pointing with, but it’s too late. We’re making our way through the crowd.
“And who are you?” she asks in this practiced way, into the mic.
“Britt Garcia.” Britt’s glowing. She’s so beautiful. She shines. These are the times we slip up, because how is it possible to not want to kiss her when she looks that alive?
“Mia Peters,” I whisper, hoping it’s swallowed by the noise.
Cheers echo, knowing me as they always do from name and appearance. My mom was Tori Peters before she was Tori Rose, and apparently that was exactly who she left Sunset Cove to escape. With my grandmothers’ permission.
But this is one more chance to sing with Britt before she leaves after a lifetime of whispered and exchanged melodies. Six days is turning to five, and her goodbye aches a little less with the promise of a song.
People are calling us up to that stage, and Britt’s hand is still tangled with mine. I should take every moment I can get—plus, the owner is already up there. Trailing after Britt, a step behind, I weave through the parting crowd, toward the mic. But, too soon, I look behind me, and my own eyes reflect back to me through my mom’s portrait in a nearby window.
“Ready?” Britt shouts over the claps, turning back under the flush of the skylight.
Phone flashlights flicker, swaying to nonexistent music, cameras rise, and that picture stares, my mother’s blue eyes seeing everything.
It’s too late.
I’ve played Spot the Difference too many times and fought for similarities, but there are so many more differences, and looking her in her daring eyes only confirms that.
I’m moving away, peering at that poster, and finally knowing who I am as the crowd presses in. This club is a tribute to who my mom was. The people here remember her the best of anyone in this town, better than any of the half-drunk partiers at graduation or people in the inn or the Horizon. This whole club represents the legend I’ll never live up to.
The journal is everything—it’s already shown me part of who she really was—but I also know from my own intentions for this summer and her words that I am not her. I have the angles of her features when I search for them, I have her songs in my heart, but I will never have her fate, and I will never get out of this town.
So I run like I always do, but for the first time, it’s away from Britt, pushing through the door and into the chilly night. When there’s nowhere to go, I sit on the curb, gasping for air. The parking lot is silent, and I wonder momentarily if Britt’s going to come. Please don’t let her come. When I look back, she’s already taken the stage, scanning the room, still searching for me in a way that I hope she one day—in six-almost-five days—won’t, if only so I can stop being the person who lets her down.
I bury my face in my hands.
It’s a couple cold minutes of sitting on the curb with the orange envelope at my side before the door opens behind me and a song in Britt’s voice—“How to Say Goodbye”—spills out. Silver boots stop next to me, and my eyes travel to the face of their wearer, who scuttles away like a deer in headlights.
“Wait!” My voice cracks, and I stand again. “Wait. Please.” The owner of Back to Me & You’s focus whips toward me as she slides into the driver’s seat of a black sports car that makes me think of funerals and goodbyes. “Please.”
It’s a staring contest.
The two of us stand there.
Me: wobbling on heels in a tank top and skirt that are now too tight, outside another place that immortalizes my mother.
Her: in her car, with answers I need as badly as air. Her, shaking her head before she turns the key in the ignition, leaving me shivering in the parking lot and feeling like I’m going to lose everything in my stomach.
“Wait,” I say to no one as she pulls onto the road beneath red taillights and the twilight sky.
The wind slaps me, and the keys around my neck are freezing my skin. I can’t go back in; I can’t leave; I can’t stay.
I can’t do anything.
I can’t do nothing, so I pull them off, taking the mystery key in my hand as I wind around the side of the building. I pull off my heels, feet throbbing, careful not to step on the shattered glass littering the ground in multicolored shards. There are five doors, and I try my odd key in them all like I sometimes will. Back here, the music is finally silent, and I’m at peace.
The key doesn’t even slip inside the first door like I knew it wouldn’t. It never does, but I keep going, clearing my head, fighting for control. The second fits, but it won’t turn. The third and the fourth are the same, and breathing gets a little easier, a little slower. One more. Deep breath.
I slip it in, and the fifth door is different. For a moment, I believe I’m high on the music, on the longing, but the key undeniably slips into the lock, turns, and lets me inside.