Ballad of Darcy and Russell

by Morgan Matson

Genres: YA Family; Young Adult; YA Social Themes

Synopsis

From New York Times bestselling author Morgan Matson comes a sweeping romantic novel about love, fate…and that one night that can change everything.

Darcy believes in love at first sight.

Even though it’s never happened to her, she’s spent her whole life waiting for that perfect, magical moment. But right now, her life is anything but perfect. In the aftermath of a music festival, she’s stranded at a bus station until morning—the day before she leaves for college. Her phone is dead, she has no cash, and she’s convinced nothing good can come of this night…but then she meets Russell.

Russell. Cute and nice, funny, and kind. She knows this is the moment—and the guy—she’s been waiting for. And they have until sunrise to walk and talk and connect.

Over the course of this one fateful night—filled with football field picnics, night swimming, and escape-artist dogs—Darcy and Russell’s lives will change forever. They’ll discover things they never imagined about each other…and about themselves.

But can you really know someone after only a handful of hours? Is it possible to fall in love in just one day?

And is it worth saying hello…when you know you’re destined for a goodbye?

Release date: May 7, 2024

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 400

Sample

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1 Sunday 4:30 P.M.

Sitting alone on the floor of the bus station, I finally admitted to myself that the music festival might have been a mistake.

I was not normally a music festival–going person. I’d been to concerts at home in LA, of course—the Hollywood Bowl with my dad, the Greek Theatre or the Troubadour with my friends—but never a proper music festival, the kind that involved staying overnight. The kind that seemed to promise an experience like I’d seen in pictures on my Instagram and in cautionary-tale documentaries.

But when, six days ago, I’d gotten an out-of-the-blue call from Romy Andreoni—who I hadn’t talked to since graduation two months earlier and, truthfully, not a whole lot before that—asking me if I wanted to go to Silverspun this weekend with her, I hadn’t hesitated before saying yes. The Silverspun Music Festival—the Coachella of Nevada!—was located three hours north of Vegas, which meant it was not really near much else. That had seemed like a big part of its appeal then—that it was a real escape, and nobody else would be there other than the people who’d made a pilgrimage for the music. But now that I was stranded in the middle of nowhere, it was starting to seem like a bug, not a feature.

When I’d agreed to go to the festival, I could immediately see it playing out in my mind like a movie, the way I was sure everything would unfold. It would be an amazing adventure, all sun-dappled light and zippy montages, Romy and I running around and having fun and getting to listen to some of the best bands ever under endless western skies. And since I was going out of my comfort zone and taking a risk, like a heroine in a movie, I was sure I’d be rewarded with a great time, because that’s how things worked.

Which was all seeming more than a little ridiculous, given what had happened.

I’d been an hour into the ride south on the post-festival LA-bound bus—alone, since Romy had ditched me practically the moment the festival had started—when I’d realized I was no longer in possession of the pouch that contained both my phone charger and the bulk of my cash. I didn’t have any other form of money—I’d followed the advice of a website called Silverspun Secrets and had left my debit card and emergency credit card at home. But as I gripped my canvas bag and stared out the window, heart racing, I’d told myself it was okay—I still had enough cash in my pocket to get my car out of the garage at Union Station, and surely someone over the course of this seven-hour bus ride would lend me their charger. And if they didn’t, it would be all right, because I’d be home soon enough.

And that was when the bus had shuddered and slowed, smoke pouring from the engine, which did not seem to be a good sign.

The driver had taken the next exit, for Jesse, Nevada, and we’d crawled to the station, the engine making unhappy sounds the whole way. We had all disembarked and headed inside, milling around until the driver came back and told us to get our bags off the bus, because things weren’t getting fixed anytime soon. He told us that anyone wanting to get to LA tonight would have to first get themselves to Vegas, where another bus would be waiting. We were currently two hours north of Vegas—or an hour south of Ely. We could also get a bus in Ely, but it wasn’t leaving until midnight. If we didn’t take either of those options, we could wait here until seven a.m., when the replacement bus would arrive.

I had pulled up my ridesharing apps—despite the fact that the last time I’d checked my battery, it had been in the single digits—to see what my options were. And I quickly saw I didn’t have any. The cost of a two-hour ride to Vegas was so eye-popping I couldn’t consider it. Even getting to Ely was way out of my price range. My apps were linked to my debit card, and I didn’t have enough on there to pay for it.

All around me, people who looked older—like in their twenties and thirties—had pulled out their phones. I watched them all booking cars and going outside to wait—everyone seemed to know someone, and nobody else appeared to be alone. For just a moment, I thought about asking one of them if I could get a ride—but would that actually be more dangerous than just staying put? And what if I didn’t have enough money to cover my part of the trip—what then?

So I’d just grabbed my stuff—tent, duffel, canvas bag—and staked out a spot on the far side of the bus station, under a decorative mirror. It was becoming clear that I didn’t have another choice—I had to stay here overnight. There were a handful of people still in the bus station who also seemed to be settling in—an older guy stretching out on a bench, a couple, a guy who looked around my age—which meant at least I wouldn’t be alone here.

Trying to stop my thoughts from spinning, I did the math. The new bus would be here by seven, which meant I could be back in LA by noon—and my dad wouldn’t have to know about any of this. When the bus had first broken down, I’d called him, even though my battery was already in the red. But none of the calls had ended up going through—he was spending the weekend fishing with my uncle Drew at his cabin in Shaver Lake, which had famously spotty reception. Finally, giving up, I’d just texted him that there was a slight bus issue but nothing to worry about. As I sent it off, I said a silent thanks that my dad wouldn’t be back until Monday afternoon. I knew without question that he would not have been okay with me sleeping overnight—alone—on the floor of a bus station in Nevada, using my duffel as a pillow. But it seemed like that was exactly what was going to happen. There were no other options that I could see.

A slight wrinkle was the fact I was scheduled to fly out on the red-eye to New York Monday night—but considering it was Sunday afternoon, I wasn’t in danger of missing it. And even though I had no real desire to get on the plane and start college in a godforsaken place called Connecticut, I also knew that I had to, and I didn’t want to miss the flight my dad had paid for. I would just sleep here tonight, take the bus in the morning, and be home by Monday afternoon in plenty of time.

It was all going to be okay.

And if it wasn’t going to be okay, it would at least be fine.

But even as I was trying to convince myself of this, it was like I could practically see my two best friends standing in front of me, looking at me with mirror-image skeptical expressions. Kaitlyn and Deirdre Meredith—aka Katy and Didi, aka KatyDid—had been my best friends ever since they’d arrived in my small Los Angeles town fresh from Colorado, like avenging angels come to rescue me from the horrors of seventh grade. They were Black identical twins, with upturned noses, dark eyes, long curly hair, and finely honed bullshit detectors.

Darcy. I told you so, I could hear the Didi in my head saying. Her tone was trying to conceal her joy at getting to use her favorite phrase, but not quite succeeding.

We did warn you, Katy chimed in. What did you expect from Romy Andreoni?

It’s because she decided it would be okay, Didi said, her voice knowing.

Didi and Katy always seemed to see this as a giant flaw, but I just liked to stick to my decisions once I’d made them. Why would you want to walk around always second-guessing yourself? Sometimes, things actually were as clear as black and white. But my friends were always pointing out when I was doing it—sometimes in song. “And Darcy decides not to change her mind,” Katy was fond of singing, to the tune of “Anna Begins” by the band that was her mom’s favorite.

And it wasn’t like I never rethought anything—I’d fully changed my tune about kombucha, something I frequently pointed out to them. But for the most part, I’d found that my first instincts and impressions were the right ones. Doubting that was where you got into trouble.

Darcy just thought she was going to be in a movie, Didi said, her tone pitying. Like she always does.

Well, she kind of is! The Katy in my head chimed in. But it’s seeming kind of more like a horror movie than anything else. Maybe she should have specified the genre.

As I looked around, I realized she was right—I was in a deserted location, with a dying phone, stranded. Didi and Katy and I had started a movie club together, meeting every Friday night—it was called, creatively, Friday Night Movie Club. And since Didi always wanted horror, I had more than enough examples of situations just like this to compare it to.

But I immediately pushed this thought away and, trying to distract myself, I looked around. For the first time since I got there, I really took it in, the place that was going to be my home for the next fifteen hours. The bus station had clearly been the train station at some point in Jesse’s history. There was a large sign taking up most of one wall—NEVADA NORTHERN PASSENGER TRAIN BULLETIN was printed across the top, with columns for Ely, Cobre, and McGill, and spaces for train times underneath that.

The former train station—now bus station—was a big, open space with high ceilings and tile floors, a wooden chandelier hanging over the center of the room. There were wooden benches and a line of wooden cubbies along the back wall, which once upon a time must have been for pay phones—with none still in there. TELEPHONES, the sign above the cubbies lied.

The ticket windows were all dark, with blinds pulled down in front of them. There were two bathrooms in opposite corners, with the gender signs represented by a cowboy with gigantic pants and a cowgirl with a lasso. There was a water fountain and, tucked in the back next to the empty pay-phone cubbies, a vending machine with a flickering fluorescent light. I sighed as I looked at it, with the knowledge that this was where my dinner—and probably my breakfast, too—would be coming from.

I pulled out my phone again to see the time, and then a second later, wished I hadn’t. There was a wall clock, after all. My heart clenched as I looked at the battery icon—I was now down to just 2 percent.

Keeping my phone charged had been a nightmare the entire festival. There weren’t enough charging stations, and the lines to get to them were epic. And the reception and Wi-Fi had been so spotty that they seemed to immediately drain any charge you did manage to get.

I looked at the angry red of my battery icon, feeling like it was judging me. In my regular life—when I wasn’t in bus stations or music festivals in Nevada—my phone was always charged. It was one of the things I was forever bugging Katy about, since her phone was constantly dying, usually at the worst moment possible. “Two percent is for milk,” I’d always tell her. “Not phones!”

Now that I was in this state, I was haunted by every time I’d used my phone casually, just because I was bored. The time I’d managed to get some service and had idly scrolled DitesMoi for some celebrity gossip (Scarlett Johansson had brunch; Wylie Sanders of the Nighthawks was locked in a courtroom battle with his much-younger wife, fighting over both their Telluride estate and custody of their three-year-old twins; there were rumors Zendaya was having relationship drama; pictures of Amy Curry’s lavish Kentucky wedding). When on the bus, I’d reread two chapters of Theseus’s Sailboat in my ebook app. It was my all-time favorite novel, and even though I had a hardcover and paperback copy at home, I kept a digital copy in my library so I could always have it with me.

But in retrospect, the biggest phone mistake was recording the Nighthawks set for my dad. I should have just recorded “Darcy,” the song he’d named me after, and left it at that. Ever since college, he’d been a huge fan of the band—“the American U2,” according to several rock journalists, even though my dad preferred to think of U2 as “the Irish Nighthawks.” But he hadn’t seen them live in years, not since the lead singer and front man, Wylie Sanders, had set up his Vegas residency at the Wynn. When I’d suggested a few years ago that we could get tickets for my dad’s birthday, he shook his head. “The Nighthawks belong in an arena. Not in a casino next to a mall in the middle of the desert.” Then he’d smiled at me and bopped me on the head with his crossword (New York Times, Wednesday, half-done, pen). “But you’re sweet to think of it, kid. Let’s go when they’re back at the Bowl, okay?”

So even though I knew I was flirting with disaster, battery-wise, I’d pressed record for the whole hourlong set, holding my phone above my head as I danced and sang along to the words I’d known my whole life, some of the very first songs I’d ever learned. And while I was glad to have the recording for him, I was paying for it now.

Okay, then, said Didi in my head. So what’s the plan, Milligan?

I dropped my phone back in my bag and took a breath. I knew what I had to do, but that didn’t make doing it any easier. I had to ask one of the people here if I could use their charger.

I looked around at the four people that were left, weighing my options. There was the middle-aged guy sleeping on one of the benches, an angry-looking red sunburn across his mostly bald head. There was the couple with headphones on sitting under the big clock on the wall, watching a shared tablet. And there was the guy across from me, the one who looked around my age.

Figuring he was probably the best candidate, I leaned forward to look a little closer. This guy was leaning back against the wall underneath the closed ticket counter, his face obscured. He was sitting cross-legged, bent over a thick book. Every now and then he would absently run a hand through his hair as he read. The very fact he had a book with him was like spotting a mirage in the desert. This guy had brought a book—a hardcover, no less—to a music festival?

I agree! the Katy in my head said approvingly. Go ask the guy with the book. He’s a snack.

Don’t say snack, my inner Didi said, rolling her eyes at her sister.

Just because you don’t think so.

I’m not disagreeing with your assessment, just your word choice.

I pushed myself up to standing, wondering how I was still having to hear their bickering when they weren’t even here, and caught my reflection in the mirrored sign behind me.

WELCOME TO JESSE, NEVADA! WHEN YOU’RE HERE—YOU’RE HOME.

The lettering on the mirror was done in white and gold paint, peeling off in patches. The font was what I could only describe as old-timey Western, but I knew my dad, who ran his own advertising firm, Milligan Concepts, would have known the name of the font straight off.

This sign, combined with the chandelier and the sheer size of this building, evoked a kind of faded grandeur. It seemed to say that maybe at one point Jesse, Nevada, had been a real destination, a prosperous town, one that needed a train station this big to handle all the comings and goings. But it didn’t feel that way now, from the little I’d seen of it as we’d limped into town, engine smoking. And the chandelier and the mirror’s fancy script seemed to sit uneasily next to the vending machine with its fluorescent, flickering light. Like IKEA furniture in a Victorian mansion.

I stared at my refection in the mirror for a moment, just taking stock of myself—Darcy Milligan, eighteen years and three months old. I’d gotten some sun, despite the fact I thought I’d been really careful with sunblock. But I could see my cheeks were faintly pink (honestly the last thing I needed, since I was a champion blusher), and I had a new scattering of freckles across my nose and cheeks. I had dirty-blond hair that was wavy—not curly, not straight, just sitting somewhere in that nebulous, often-frizzy middle. I had dark brown eyes—my dad’s eyes—which were probably the thing about me most people commented on, since they were such a contrast with my hair and coloring.

And even though I wanted to look like my dad, scouring pictures to try to prove the resemblance, the fact was there in the mirror. It was in my strong nose, my thick eyebrows, my deep-set eyes. I was the spitting image of my mother, Gillian—I never called her Mom. Which seemed patently unfair, that she should be so present on my face when she hadn’t bothered to stick around anywhere else.

But the last thing I wanted to do right now was think about Gillian. I gave myself a final look, brushing some dirt off my cheek and reasoning that I could have looked a lot worse, considering that I’d been sleeping in a tent for the last two nights. I smoothed out my shirt, even though I knew the wrinkles were beyond help at this point. I was wearing a variation on what I’d worn the whole festival—jean shorts and a tank top. This one was white and flowy, with an embroidered top. I had my dad’s vintage Nighthawks sweatshirt in my bag for when it got cold—which I’d thought would be for the ride home, but would apparently be for sleeping overnight in a bus station. It was from when my dad was in college, and when he’d given it to me for Christmas when I was in eighth grade, it immediately became my prized possession.

I turned away from the mirror, confident that I looked like a not-dangerous, fairly normal—Ha! Katy and Didi said in unison—eighteen-year-old. I didn’t look like someone who was about to abscond with a charger and disappear into the night, never to be seen again. Out of habit, I glanced for a second at my duffel bag and at the tent I’d borrowed from Katy and Didi—MEREDITH was printed on it in huge Sharpie’d letters—but then figured it would be fine.

I started to walk over to the guy with the book—when I realized he was no longer sitting there. Regrouping, I changed direction and headed over to the couple. I played with the pair of bracelets on my wrist as I walked. Everyone had gotten them upon arrival at the festival—mine indicated I was there on a three-day ticket, and that I was under twenty-one and not allowed in any of the beer tents, despite the fact that Romy had tried her level best to get inside all of them.

I stood in front of the couple, who were focused on their tablet. I cleared my throat, but neither of them looked at me, and I silently cursed their headphones for a moment before taking a step closer and nudging the girl’s sneaker with my Birkenstocked foot.

She glanced at me, then tapped the guy next to her. They both pulled off their headphones and looked up at me questioningly. It seemed like they were in their twenties, probably. She was wearing a Charlotte Sands T-shirt, and he was in Bad Bunny merch.

“Hi,” I said, giving them a small wave. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“It’s okay,” the girl said easily, even as I saw the guy cast a longing look back at the tablet. “Kind of a crazy situation, right? Like, how can they not get a bus fixed faster?”

“Right? I know!” My words spilled out in a rush, and I realized it was a relief to acknowledge the weirdness we were all collectively experiencing. “I don’t get it.”

“You going to be all right here?” she glanced over to where I’d left my stuff. “Are you alone?”

“I’m okay,” I said quickly. “I was just… wondering if either of you had a phone charger I could use? Just for a little bit! I, um, lost mine.”

“Sure.” She whacked the guy on the arm. He sighed, put down the tablet, and started to rummage in his backpack. I could see, frozen on the screen, that they had been watching Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which I knew well from the Edgar Wright run Katy had gone on in movie club sophomore year. It was frozen on the party scene, when Scott first sees Ramona across the room and immediately falls in love—one of my favorite moments.

“Here you go.” He held out a cord to me, and I eagerly grabbed it—only to realize a second later that it wouldn’t work.

“Oh.” I turned it over in my hands, as though I could somehow will the plug to change shape. “You don’t have an iPhone charger?”

They shook their heads in unison. “Android,” the girl said.

“Right,” I said, handing it back. “Well… thanks anyway.”

“If you need to call anyone, though,” the girl said, her brows knitting in concern, “you can use mine. Just ask, okay?”

“I think that he had an iPhone,” the guy said. He pointed to where the boy with the book had been. He shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll be back.”

I nodded, and gave them a small smile before I turned to walk back to my stuff. What if I really couldn’t charge my phone? What then?

I was almost back to my corner when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“I heard you were looking for me,” a voice said.

I turned around—the guy with the book was standing in front of me. I could see him clearly now.

And my heart, for the first time ever, skipped an actual beat.