Track 1
Back to My Roots
Paisley
July
The first few weeks of summer break pass in somber tones as I sink into myself. Picasso had his Blue Period. I guess this is mine. Most of the time, it feels like the only thing I’ll ever successfully accomplish is soaking my pillow with tears of failure and frustration. But even that’s growing old.
After my onstage meltdown, I returned home with a bruised ego, a broken heart, and only a week left before high school graduation. News of my disastrous performance had spread like wildfire, and it took all that I had left in me to pretend I didn’t hear the whispers or see how everyone stared between me and their phones. Because of course someone in the audience was filming. Multiple someones. I did all I could to avoid the sympathetic looks from friends and the barely masked smirks of frenemies.
As the weeks went on, words and snippets of nebulous lyrics raced through my mind, but I forced them away. Before the incident, I would have been racing to scrawl them in the margins of my physics notebook to be copied into my lyric book later. But not anymore.
Spring showers helped wash away some of my doom-and-gloom attitude, and now the summer sun is bringing wildflowers and new bud growth to the evergreens.
As Dad likes to say, “A little hard work never hurt anybody.” And there’s plenty of work to be found at Hidden Acres, even in the offseason. There are seeds to plant. Seedlings to transplant. Trimming and mowing and soil testing and fertilizing.
Unless it’s thundering or pouring rain, my days are spent outside—the fresh air in my lungs replacing the lingering acrid scent of the ashes of my self-esteem. I work myself to exhaustion in the hopes that I’ll fall into a dead sleep instead of lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling in the darkness of my room, unable to silence the what-ifs.
What if I hadn’t crashed and burned at the concert?
What if I hadn’t skipped out on graduation?
What if I hadn’t deferred my acceptance to Tennessee State University?
(I’d wanted to drop out entirely, but Mom managed to convince me to press pause for a beat and take a gap year instead. “You shouldn’t make any major decisions when you’re sad or snacky,” she’d said, wrapping me in a bear hug and handing me a Reese’s peanut butter pumpkin left over from Halloween.)
All in all, I’m holding it together just fine.
Or as fine as can be expected, considering . . .
At least, that’s what I tell myself as I hike back toward the farmhouse from the grove of Murray cypress I was tagging with different colors of plastic ribbon. Blue for trees less than three feet tall. Salmon for three- to four-footers. Orange, red, yellow, green, and white for the taller ones. The spools of soft flagging tape bump against each other in the canvas satchel at my hip. The scuff of my boots over the dirt adds a beat and my brain starts filling in the rest of the song. A bass guitar comes in with a syncopated groove and then a driving riff from a rhythm guitar.
My fingers twitch as if looking for a guitar to strum. I swallow down the cottony lump building in my throat, suddenly in need of a cool glass of water. Or maybe something stronger, like Mom’s fresh-squeezed mint lemonade.
I wrap my hand around the satchel’s shoulder strap and stride toward the workshop. Though muffled, the music gets louder. Dad must be listening to the radio while repairing the old riding mower.
I pause in the doorway as the chorus of a Crosby, Stills & Nash song crackles from the tinny speakers of the old stereo that probably should have been scrapped for parts years ago. Dad’s lying on a blanket on the cracked cement floor next to the mower, a raggedy red bandana wrapped around one hand and a socket wrench in the other. He hums along to the song with his soft baritone. The sound soothes me just like it did when I was younger, curled up in his lap with my ear pressed to his chest as he rocked me to sleep while humming “All the Pretty Horses” or “Blackbird.”
“Hi, Dad. How’s it going?”
Dad wipes his brow with the back of his arm and tilts his head toward me. “It’s not,” he says. He’s got a smudge of grease on his chin. While his eyes are creased in frustration, there’s a determined purse to his lips. “I think the bolt’s stripped.”
I’ve spent hours in the workshop with him: building things, repairing things, tearing things apart. I’m not particularly mechanical-minded, but I’m decent enough. A new song begins to play and I pause, listening to the solo drumbeat. My mouth hangs open as I’m about to volunteer to help, but all it takes is the three twangy chords when the guitar comes in to send my jaw slamming shut with such force, I practically see stars.
It’s a Six String Justice song.
In an instant, I’m back on that stage, the bright lights blinding me. I can feel the heat of them on my face, burning my skin. My heart pounds as my memory conjures up the off-key notes I sang to mixed-up, mumbled lyrics. A memory I thought I’d lost but that has now reared its ugly head to haunt me.
It hurts to breathe in this musty, dusty workshop air. My legs wobble and I reach out and grab the door frame, my hands gripping it so tightly the weathered wood sends splinters into my palms. My heel slips off the threshold and I stumble back. The fresh air is like a slap to the face, jolting me out of the flashback. “I, uh . . . I gotta go.”
Dad says something but I can’t hear it over the pounding in my ears. I turn, the gravel crunching under my boots, and then I’m sprinting to the farmhouse.
My heart aches.
My throat’s tight.
I’m pretty sure I’m spiraling.
As I pound up the stairs and collapse in a heap on my bed, I can’t help wondering: Am I doomed to relive the worst moment of my life whenever I hear one of Six String Justice’s songs?
A crop of freckles has sprouted across the bridge of my nose, moving outward along my upper cheeks, in spite of the sunblock and hats I wear to shield my face from the sun. They remind me of constellations in the summer night sky. I brush my finger over a particularly large one that has a tail like a comet as if I could wipe it away. It makes me think of my older sister, Halley. Of course, she’s named after the comet, and unlike me, she’s bold and fierce. Unstoppable and unshakeable. Halley left home for college at seventeen and I’m not sure she’s ever looked back. Just like Halley’s Comet, she blazes into our lives periodically, each visit brief. A long weekend here, a holiday there.
My gaze goes to a set of cloth-bound journals on my bookshelf, each one wrapped in a different paisley print. I will inevitably get at least one paisley-themed gift for my birthday and Christmas, as if sharing the name with the design means that I’m a huge fan. I suppose I should be grateful I’m not Chevron or Gingham or Houndstooth. Instead, I was named Paisley for no other reason than Mom liked the word.
I suppose Paisley’s a fitting name since my life feels a lot like a paisley pattern, swirls of teardrops and uncertainty. Though I can’t help but wonder: How would things be if I was named Athena or Cassandra instead? Would I be bold and brave, holding my guitar onstage like a battle-ax? Or would I still be me, cowering behind my guitar the moment I step onstage?
My phone, which has been living at the bottom of my sock drawer lately, sits on my dresser, charged and ready for our scheduled call. As if she can tell I’m thinking about her, Halley texts.
Halley:
Grab your guitar. Karl’s birthday FaceTime in 5.
My thumbs hover over the phone screen, about to type out a protest. I haven’t so much as touched my guitar since May. The only reason it’s even out of its case and propped in its stand is because Halley snuck into my room and put it there the last time she was home for a visit. There it sits, haunting me. Taunting me.
I reach out a tentative finger and brush it over the cool, wooden body, leaving a trail in the thin layer of dust that’s collected there. A faint tingle of anticipation skirts over my skin, but it’s not powerful enough to dispel the anxiety that coils like a cobra in my gut. It used to be easy playing for my family, but now it feels anything but.
My phone buzzes with another incoming message.
Halley:
Don’t make me drive home.
I can almost hear her lecturing me in her practiced bossy-pants voice.
“You’re not the boss of me,” I mumble, feeling like a little kid again. I guess no matter how old we get, I’ll always be her little sister.
Still, my hand hovers near the neck of the guitar like it’s the north pole and my arm is the magnetic needle of a compass, trying to guide my path forward.
Halley:
We’re waiting.
It shouldn’t be this hard. I shouldn’t have to wage war with myself just to play “Happy Birthday” for our neighbor Karl, who’s currently in an assisted living facility. Karl had a stroke last year and, while he still has trouble communicating, he responds well to music.
“For Karl,” I say, like it’s a battle cry. I suck in a deep breath and grab the guitar before I can talk myself out of it.
It’s just one song. I can strum just one song.
Can’t I?
Copyright © 2026 by Katrina Emmel. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
