Pop Princess

by Rachel Cohn

  DO sneak out your bedroom window at night to meet him down on the beach. DO ignore Science Project’s window surveillance of you sneaking out your bedroom window and climbing down the tree outside the window. DO lie down on the blanket Doug’s laid out on the sand and DO let him kiss you and touch you for hours on end. DO let him beg you to give it up.

  DO NOT give it up.

  Doug was not exactly fulfilling my ideal of having a boyfriend as part of my new life in Devonport. He was not the kind of guy like Science Project who offered to carry your books, or opened a door for you, or who talked to your parents when he was dropping you off after rehearsal like they were real people instead of morons whom you had to bail from as quickly as possible. When Doug and I passed each other in the halls at school he mumbled “Hey” and kept walking, and during rehearsals he snapped at me if I missed a note, or he would say, “Is this Wonder’s Band or is this Doug’s Band?” In private, he was a different guy. All the sweet nothings this girl wanted to hear, Doug was throwing bull’s-eyes: “You’re so pretty,” “I want you so much,” “You fucking rock as a singer.” Yeah yeah yeah.

  One evening after rehearsal we were making out in his basement while his dad was still at work. It was only about six o’clock, but the room was dark except for the flickering TV. My shirt was off and Doug was lying on top of me, his hand between my inner thighs, but not quite you-know-where. My jeans were still on, though the friction between our bodies as Doug rubbed against me told me the jeans were soon to be goners.

  “Do you have, you know, something?” I whispered in his ear in that moment of heavy-breathing weakness. What the hell, I thought, why not just do it? Doug and I had gotten so close so many times in those stolen nights under the blankets on the beach late at night, maybe if we just crossed the line we could officially be boyfriend and girlfriend. But Doug’s dad would be home any moment; if we were going to do this, it had to be soon.

  “Yeah,” he grunted. He jumped off me and raced toward his bedroom. “Be right back,” he called out behind him.

  His absence gave me time to reconsider. I thought, Is this how I want my first time to be, a quick shag in some guy’s basement while Urkel pratfalls across the muted TV?

  I was convinced Lucky watched me at all times. Ever aware of Lucky’s spirit, I often kept naughty behavior in check—binging on Devil Dogs late at night, peeking at the smart girl’s answers during chemistry, touching myself under the covers at night after groping sessions with Doug—for fear that Lucky was observing and scrutinizing me. In my mind, I could see her giving a thumbs-up when I was kickin’ it at dance class, or nailing a song with Doug’s Band, and when I wasn’t being so good, I could see Lucky turning her blond head away from me in disgust.

  I thought of how I must appear to Lucky at that moment, splayed out on a basement couch, my shirt draped over its side, my bra unhooked but not yet off, my hair tousled over a pillow. What must Lucky think? Sleazy, that’s what she’d be thinking. You know better, Wonder Anna Blake, she would say. Unlike Lucky, I had no intention of waiting for some mythical “true love,” but I knew I didn’t want the first time to be like this.

  When Doug returned to the basement snapping a condom package against his wrist, he found me sitting upright, the lamp turned on, the TV off, buttoning up my cardigan sweater.

  “Wha?” he said. He turned the lamp off and returned to his spot on the couch next to me, leaning in to breathe on my neck, as if he could somehow recapture the moment that had led to his running back to his bedroom for a condom.

  I squeezed out from the embrace he was trying to lock me into. I said, “I don’t think I want it to be like this.” I started to say “I’m sorry” but then I thought, What do I have to be sorry about?

  “C’mon, Wonder,” Doug said. He patted his lap, as if beckoning me to jump onto it.

  I averted my eyes from the partial woody going on under his boxer shorts. I said, “You won’t even acknowledge that I’m your girlfriend.”

  “Man, is that what this is about?”

  “Yes. Mostly. Maybe. I’m just . . . I’m just . . . I’m just not ready.”

  I expected to hear him say, I’ll wait for you. I understand.

  But what he said was “Get out.”

  “You’re serious?” My heart felt like the Vulcan death grip had been clenched upon it.

  “Yeah, I’m serious. I don’t need this shit.” Doug grabbed the remote from the coffee table and turned the TV back on.

  I stood in front of him in shock, speechless. “I said go,” he mumbled. He pulled an afghan over his lap, and I saw small beads of sweat on his forehead.

  “Doug . . . ,” I started.

  “Don’t bother coming for rehearsal anymore. You’re out.”

  Fifteen

  At school the next day, I walked around slouched over, dazed, feeling as if I had been repeatedly kicked in the stomach and smacked in the face.

  Oops, algebra exam. Oops, spent all night alone in my room staring at the dark sky. Sorry, teacher, forgot to study, forgot to care. We both know I’ll be failing this class, so you don’t mind if I just stare mindlessly out the window while Jen Burke’s pencil flies across her test paper in contempt of me, do you?

  At lunch, Science Project found me sitting alone under a tree, shivering without a winter coat in the December chill. He sat down beside me and handed me a paper bag. “Here, I brought you some hot chocolate.” Then he sang out, opera style, “Here I come, to save the day!”

  I didn’t laugh. I knew Science Project was just trying to be nice, but I wished it were Doug bringing me hot chocolate, Doug joking with me, Doug looking at me with the puppy eyes.

  I felt tears stream down my face, and I wished my eyes could suck the tears back in so Henry would not see me like this. I looked into his brown eyes and thought, Why couldn’t I be into a guy like you? Someone nice and dependable and maybe a little geeky and not a gorgeous rock star wanna-be?

  In that shaky voice that comes along when you’re trying not to cry, I said to him, “I think I’d like to be alone right now, Henry, if you don’t mind.”

  As I watched Henry slump off in the distance, I saw Jen Burke standing against the school’s brick wall, a cigarette in her hand. Doug was standing over her with his arms on either side of her, leaning against the wall and pinning her there. She was at some distance from me, but I was sure I saw her glance toward me and smirk.

  Screw school today. Screw Devonport High every day!

  I jogged all the way to the dance studio in the center of town. I had to jog half a mile out of the way so I wouldn’t pass by the grocery store where Mom worked during the day. When I got to the dance studio, I realized the difference in my body since the jog I had taken with Trina a few months earlier. Then, my muscles had ached and I had wheezed through most of the run. This time, I felt energized, ready for more, with no aching body parts and only a mild sweat on my brow.

  As I sprinted up the steps to the studio, I remembered: Oh yeah, demo tape. Three months had passed with no word from Tig. I could only assume record companies had found my singing as laughable as I had found the prospect that Tig would even consider me worthy. The math skills that had eluded me that morning suddenly came into play as I equated in my mind: no Doug, no band, no passing grades in school. With no word from Tig, that meant that the last best thing I could possibly have going was also gone. Shit.

  Jodie, my dance teacher, was practicing alone in her studio when I burst in. She stopped her moves and looked up at the clock.

  “Aren’t you about four hours early?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “S’pose.”

  There was a pause like Jodie was considering whether to bust me or just deal. She let out a small sigh. “Well, if you’re going to cut school I guess I’d rather you be here where you’re safe than roaming the streets.” Yeah, like boring Devonport could even dream of being that scary. Jodie said, “Go get changed. You’ve gotten so far ahead of your regular class that we ca
n use this time to go over some moves the rest of the class will just never be ready to do.”

  Jodie took the hardest steps from each class I had taken over the last few months and lumped them into one session. It felt great. I felt like friggin’ Janet Jackson and Madonna rolled into one superhuman dancing girl. The dancing freed my mind to think rationally. I realized: I had made a huge mistake with Doug. We could work this out. I couldn’t lose him. He and the band were my only hope to survive Devonport High. Of course I was ready to go all the way—what had I been thinking? Anyone who could dance with the kind of abandon I was experiencing that afternoon was surely ready.

  I watched the clock until I knew school had let out and Doug would be arriving home. I sprinted to his house, not caring that when I arrived he would see a sweaty girl with flushed cheeks and armpit stains from the day’s workout overload. The band wasn’t rehearsing that day, so I knew I would have Doug all to myself, to plead my case.

  I knocked on his front door, but there was no answer. I could hear the television blaring from the basement and assumed he couldn’t hear the doorbell buzzing. I entered the house through the open garage and crept downstairs, stopping to smooth my hair in a mirror lining the wall. When I heard squeaking noises as I walked down the steps, I figured they were coming from the TV.

  They weren’t. The sounds were coming from the couch, where Doug was naked on top of Jen Burke, going at it, all the way.

  Sixteen

  I raced the few blocks to the ocean and threw my shoes off. I headed toward the water but stopped right in front of the surf. The day was gray and cold, blurry, and the roar of the ocean and its stormy motion made me dizzy as I stood before it. I vomited on the sand, a chunk-free liquid heave that burned my throat as it came up. Within seconds, breaking waves had washed the mess away.

  I crouched down for a few minutes, attempting to slow the swirls in my head. Home was about a half mile down the beach. I barely had the energy to stand myself upright. Images of what I had just seen pushed their way to the front of my mind: Doug and Jen, nekkid; me, an imbecile. I couldn’t go back to school. Ever. I wished the sea would suck me in and turn me into a mermaid. Wonder the Mermaid would swim out to where the humpback whales ruled the North Atlantic coast and live with them and never come out again, not even to show off for the tourists on the whaling boats. I could never show my face again in front of, like, the whole island of Cape Cod, and Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, too, and quite possibly the whole State of Massachusetts.

  I started walking home, slowly. I bet this is what a hangover feels like, I thought, your head a ton of bricks and your body like Jell-O. I had a plan. When I got home, I would call Trina and throw myself on her mercy. Surely she would let me come stay with her for a few weeks, till I could figure out how to permanently liberate myself from Devonport.

  When I made it back to the house, it was silent, as usual. Charles would be out, Mom still at work, and Dad tapping away on the computer, probably IM’ing his little heart out instead of working on his great novel. Cash wouldn’t even bother to bark. We might as well all have been ghosts with Lucky.

  But when I opened the screen door to our house, to my horror, Mom, Dad, Charles, Henry, and Katie were standing in the living room. “Surprise!” they called out. Charles was holding a lumpy layer cake with sloppy pink frosting and burning white candles, but it was Katie I looked at: Did she know? Her smile was broad enough to glimpse her braces, but her eyes revealed no knowledge of my humiliation, just a slight twitch to indicate either that Henry had made her come or that she was looking toward the window to make sure no one she knew could see her inside.

  As they sang “Happy Birthday,” I glanced at the date on the pink Baby-G watch that Lucky had given me for my thirteenth birthday. Today was my birthday! Geez, file this incident away for future therapy, the mental girl who doesn’t remember, or care, about her sweet sixteenth. I blew the candles out. I muttered “Thank you” and then ran to the bathroom, where I crouched at the toilet to heave again, though nothing came up.

  Unfortunately, in my haste I’d neglected to lock the door, so who should follow me inside but Mom. At least she held back my hair as I attempted to throw up. When I was done, she sat on the ledge of the tub. “Oh God,” she said. “You’re pregnant. I knew I shouldn’t let you sing with those hoodlums.” Mom let out a soft chortle; she was kidding—mostly—but I didn’t find the joke funny.

  “Mom, eww!” And yo, Ma, relax—at the rate I’m going, the only way I’ll ever get pregnant will be by Immaculate Conception.

  “School called. You didn’t show up for your afternoon classes. I would have been in a panic if Dad hadn’t gotten a call from Jodie saying you were spending the afternoon there. Charles has been looking out the window for an hour waiting for you. He and Henry baked the cake themselves. Isn’t that sweet? Henry said you weren’t feeling well at school and that maybe you wouldn’t want a celebration, but I insisted. Is that why you left school, because you weren’t feeling well?”

  “Yeah,” I lied.

  The ring of the phone distracted us. We were not the popularity house; the only time the phone usually rang here was when the firemen were selling raffle tickets or when Mom was moping around in her robe and slippers munching Nutter Butters and forgetting she’d taken the afternoon shift at the grocery store.

  Charles knocked at the bathroom door. At least someone in our family had manners.

  “WONDER!” he shouted. My head pounded again. “PHONE!” As I walked into the hallway, Charles shoved me lightly on the arm. “Dude,” he said. “Thank Henry already, why don’t you. I swear, you can be such a rude bee-yatch. The guy’s not gonna hang around forever.”

  I shoved Charles back. “Shut up,” I said, and took the phone from him. Please let it be Trina, I prayed, Trina calling to wish me a happy birthday. I could plead my case to her. I stumbled to the phone and said in major sick voice, “Yeah?”

  “Wonder Blake?” a deep voice asked.

  “Yeah,” I repeated, trying not to sound so awful. What if this strange voice was like a radio station calling to tell me I’d won some cool prize and here I was, practically spewing into the phone for all the New England airwaves to hear.

  “Wonder, it’s Gerald Tiggs. Don’t you even recognize my voice? Are you sitting down? Listen up, Cinderella. Pop Life Records wants to sign you up. Kayla’s label! They want you to come audition this week. Think you can get to Manhattan tomorrow? I can have a ticket waiting for you and your mom at the airport in Boston.”

  Did I think I could? Uh yeah, I thought I could.

  Hallelujah. Escape.

  Part Two

  Shades of Blonde

  Dirty Blonde

  Seventeen

  Just days after signing with Pop Life Records, I received this e-mail from Kayla, who had agreed with Tig to “mentor” my new pop princess career.

  Hey girl!

  How To Become A Pop Princess, in Five Easy Steps:

  Step 1—Hair. For the raven-haired like me, streaks of red, orange, or pink will do. For the mousy-haired like you, move on up, girl, to a dirty blond shade with streaks of gold. Tousle ’n’ go go go.

  Step 2—Dialect Coach. Your name is Won-DUR, not Won-DAH. Regional accents are forbidden for teen movie stars, but acceptable in a pop princess only if the accent is subtle and unaffected, and preferably Southern. If you are from Boston, you will have to work wicked hahd to unload that accent. Don’t be a chowDAHhead. You prefer chowder, thank you very much.

  Step 3—Diet. Expect rigorous dance and workout sessions, but don’t expect those cal-burning sessions mean you can give in to the chocolate monster. Your outfits will be skimpy and so should be your meals. Skip the appetizer, dessert is a no-no, and you can forget you even know about the existence of pizza (“pizzer” to us Cambridge girls, hee hee). Learn to love your new best friends: grilled chicken and fish, and salads drizzled with fat-free dressing. The occasional Coca-Cola is acceptable, for a boost. The
exception to Step 3 will be lunchtime interviews with teen magazine journalists, who will feel good about themselves when they can report to their readers that you gleefully munched down a double cheeseburger and fries dipped in mayo and ketchup, as you apparently do all the time. Throw in a slice of cheesecake to really make ’em feel extra good.

  Step 4—Talent Manager. Tig is that rare commodity: an ethical manager with killer instincts, who will protect your interests and instruct you in ensuring your financial future as if you were a corporation rather than a person. Don’t ever expect to learn anything about him personally—he is all business and you are all product. Do expect consultations with top Wall Street financial advisers and brand-marketing executives.

  Step 5—School. If you are under eighteen and maintaining a professional career as an entertainer, the law requires you to spend a certain amount of time in school, or with a tutor. Lucky for the pop princesses of the world, there’s a nice little legal loophole called dropping out of school entirely. Go for the G.E.D. if you want, but you are a professional person in the working world now—and no one in the music biz cares whether you have a high school diploma or not. Your time will be consumed in rehearsing, performing, appearances, hair, and makeup. Try to ignore the look of sadness and disappointment on your dad’s face as he watches your mom sign the form. You have a high-five-figure recording contract that could be worth millions if your album is a hit. His look could signal to you that for all your newfound success, your dad considers you a failure, a high school dropout. You know better.

  See you soon in NYC!

  Love ya baby, Kayla

  Eighteen

  The first single I recorded was called “Bubble Gum Pop.” The song was about two kids who are making out and the girl’s bubble gum goes into the guy’s mouth and then they’re in love. It was a pretty stupid song, if you ask me, with refrains like “Chew it, blow it, lick it, I love my bubble gum, pop pop pop” and you can imagine why all those religious groups later tried to have the song banned even though it really was just about bubble gum. It was a silly song, but a classic in that cheesy, catchy pop song way, the kind of song generations of teens would remember like they did “The Macarena,” or “Whoomp! There It Is.”