TAYLOR
We were in the middle of planning the reputation tour but were taking a twenty-minute break, so I got onto Instagram to do some taylurking. I noticed that I'd been tagged a lot of times in a few posts from an account called @ skye13swiftshow so I went to check it out.
The first post I saw was of a girl with a guitar case, standing in front of a room full of little kids. The girl looked to be about eleven or twelve years old — as she was kind of short — and she also had long and really curly dark brown hair, piercing blue eyes, and was wearing a black FRIENDS hoodie and blue jeans.
I turned the sound on and heard a little girl shouting "Love Story!" and the blue-eyed girl smiled sweetly and replied to her. Then she took out a guitar that looked to be pretty old and played a few tunes before she started playing the song.
Her talent took me a lot by surprise, and I was even more surprised when she started singing; she was so good! Plus, she seemed so happy and comfortable performing which really made it even more enjoyable to watch.
My surprise must've been visible on my face because Tree, who was sitting next to me on the couch, looked over at me weirdly. I knew she had already heard the girl singing since I didn't have any headphones connected.
"What are you watching? Who is that?" she asked with raised eyebrows, and I tilted the phone so that she could see the screen better. "She's good!"
"I know right!" I said, getting excited, and went to check out their other posts on the account.
I clicked on the first video of four similar looking ones with the girl in focus — seemingly sitting in a park — and turned the sound down a little, bringing the phone to my ear instead so that I could still hear. Apparently it was their one-year anniversary yesterday, the girl's name was Skye, and her job was to perform my songs at a preschool which seemed so bizarre to me.
My first impression of Skye, after watching the four videos and the video she referred to where she was singing Shake It Off, was that she seemed like a super sweet and talented girl. I found it a little weird that I hadn't come across her account before, but my guess was that it was because her foster brother, Connor, managed the account and he didn't use it to try and get my team's or my attention.
I showed Tree some of their videos and scrolled through their feed until our break was over but continued later when I got home. I must've spent at least two hours looking through every single post they had uploaded, because suddenly I'd made it to their very first one, and they had posted two or three videos almost every week.
I realized how hungry I was when I put my phone down after taking a screenshot of their account, but Skye was still on my mind when I went to make myself a pasta salad and I couldn't stop thinking about her for the rest of the night.
A few hours later when I was lying sprawled across the couch, watching Grey's Anatomy with Dibbles curled up on my stomach, Skye was still on my mind. I picked up my phone to find their account again and I decided to like some of their posts. After that, I went to Tumblr and Twitter to see if they had an account with the same handle, but I couldn't find anything.
It wasn't just Skye's talent that got her stuck in my mind, but also the fact that she seemed like such a sweet and happy person, even after everything she had shared about her past. It wasn't like I didn't know that people were often different online from real life, but I could tell that — in most of the videos — she wasn't even aware that someone was filming her. She would look up and make the same genuine, cute and surprised face every time she realized that she was being filmed.
***
SKYLAR
I woke up the next morning from someone talking loudly and I rolled over in my bed so that I was facing the wall and pressed a pillow to my ear. Then, suddenly, my comforter was being pulled away from me, making my eyes snap wide open because of how cold my body turned.
"What the heck?" I grumbled — mostly to myself — as I rolled back around and glared at Ashley who was standing right by my bed with my comforter in her arms. "Whatcha doin'? It's freezing in here," I complained, reaching for it and she threw it back at me.
"You need to get up. Susan wants everyone downstairs for breakfast," she explained, grabbing her phone from where it was charging on the floor.
I squinted across the bright room that my eyes hadn't adjusted to yet and saw our other two roomies — Jade and Harper — standing in front of the mirror doing their hair. "What's going on? It's Saturday, right?" I asked, my voice groggy, and Ashley nodded with a grin.
"Yeah, don't worry, it's Saturday," she replied and left the room.
I got out of bed very slowly, yawned, and started making my bed as Harper and Jade followed Ashley downstairs. Since it was so cold, I put on a pair of pink socks and borrowed Ashley's green knitted cardigan. I took my time going downstairs but I didn't see anyone when I finally made it to the kitchen, so I headed into the dining room next.
I was super confused when I looked up and saw everyone sitting around the dining table eating breakfast in silence. This had definitely never happened before, like ever. Usually, people would drop in to have breakfast whenever they woke up, and the dining room and kitchen would be a noisy mess. The silence and the fact that everyone was eating together was a little freaky, but then I realized that everyone had already gotten dressed which made me temporarily forget about everything else.
"Skye, finally. We were waiting for you..." Susan said from the end of the table, her words dying down when she looked me up and down. "... is that what you're wearing?"
Almost everyone around the table turned to look at me and burst out laughing. I looked down to my clothes and realized that it wasn't the most matching outfit, consisting of bright pink socks, an old pair of red pajama shorts that were extremely short, a loose white t-shirt, and the green cardigan. But why was everyone already dressed?
I walked over to sit next to Finley at the other end of the table from Susan and poured myself a glass of orange juice. "Uhm, what?"
"Didn't anyone tell you? We're leaving for Nashville in an hour."
I accidentally spit out the orange juice like a fish fountain as my eyes widened in shock. The other girls started laughing at me again and Finley handed me some paper towels to clean it up.
"What?!" I said louder than I had intended to, staring at Susan and taking the paper from Finely absentmindedly. "Ash!" I snapped, turning to face my friend who immediately stopped laughing.
"I'm sorry! I missed that part. I just knew we had to get ready, but I figured you saw us dressed and would do the same."
"You know I don't pick up on stuff like that in the morning," I cried and then realized that I was still sitting there dressed like a clown. "Can someone please make me a sandwich while I run upstairs and get dressed?" I asked desperately, looking around. People had started talking to each other and weren't really paying attention anymore.
"I got ya," Callie called out from across the table.
"Thanks Cal, you're the best!" I smiled appreciatively at her before running out of the room.
Having no idea what we were doing in Nashville, I threw on a yellow hoodie and the same pair of jeans I wore yesterday after taking a shower and put my hair in a messy bun. Since my hair was always a mess anyway because of the curls and the frizz, the bun didn't look too bad on me, and I hurried down again to find everyone packing things up.
Callie — my life saver — had made me two cheese sandwiches and had put the plate next to my glass of orange juice. We were taking the bus to Nashville, and everyone was already on their way out when I realized I'd forgotten my phone and charger in our room, so I had to go get them, making me the last one onto the bus.