by J. C. Lillis
“Here’s the thing. I picked you two for Sudden Death because you’ve got opposite attributes, and also opposite challenges.” Tera taps her gold pen on a clipboard. Oh God please just tell us. “Ava: You’ve got that raw magnetic appeal, right? Like, I can feel you, I get your authentic soul in each word and it’s beautiful—but structurally your song was all over the place.”
C King nods. “I wrote ‘a dearth of hooks.’”
“Dearth!” Luke chortles. “Mr. Thesaurus here.”
Ava says, “Thank you. I know I have a long way to go.”
“So tell us, what’s your mission statement?” says Tera.
I do a subtle knuckle-crack. This is critical. Every Pop U contestant has to have a mission statement ready. If yours is strong, Tera respects you right off the bat.
“My first love broke my heart two years ago,” says Ava, tears shining in her eyes. “I’m still not over it, but that’s okay, because it helped me discover who I am as a songwriter. Who I am is a girl who knows how it feels to hurt, and that’s a voice this broken world always needs.”
I close my eyes, because that was a magnificent answer.
GODDAMMIT! TEARS AND EVERYTHING! shouts Evil B. HOW ARE YOU GONNA TOP THAT—
“…Barrie, hi? You with us?”
I jump. I’m standing before the woman I’ve worshipped forever, and she thinks I’m tuning her out.
“I’m so sorry.” I gulp. “Yes.”
“You write fabulous pop melodies—I mean, holy monster chorus, lady!”
“Thanks!”
“—But lyrically it’s kinda slick and surface-y.”
C King nods. “I wrote ‘sounds like a tampon ad.’”
“Like a smile with no soul in it. No you in it,” says Tera. “The kind of stuff I wrote in my twenties.”
That stuff saved me. I want to say it but instead I nod and nod, cling to the good: Tera Rivera just said holy monster chorus to me.
“It’s like—you wrote a cute song about someone else’s breakup,” she continues, “and the way you sang it was so affected, I kept thinking…”
My whole body stiffens.
Please don’t say it.
I tried so hard not to be—
“…cabaret.”
“Hey-o!” says Luke. “There it is!”
“But listen, baby. Maybe I’m wrong.” Her voice is gentle, like it is in my fantasies. “Convince me. Tell me why you need to be here. What’s your mission statement?”
I have practiced my statement before my bedroom mirror each night for nine years. It’s evolved as I’ve aged, but the sentiment has always been the same. I want to be a force for good. I want to smother sorrows in synths and soaring choruses. I want to be you.
Words clot in my throat. My tongue goes numb.
Tell her! I shout at myself. Say it! Say anything.
Ava’s stare drills into my face.
And I see, in the heroic gold-brown eyes of Teresa Cristina Rivera, the exact moment when she gives up on me.
“Okay, sweetie. It’s okay. I don’t want to drag this out.” Tera drums her hands on the table. The stage managers hustle beside us now, packing Ava’s guitar and Rosalinda into their cases. “You’ve both got work to do, so I’m going with who has the It Factor.”
“Unteachable stuff,” says C King.
“Right. And Ava—you’re an easy A there. Barrie—you’re good, sweetheart, but you’re a B. Go home, figure out who you are. And maybe I’ll see you again someday.”
I nod. I say thank you.
It’s done.
I’m done.
EASY A? WHAT THE HELL? Evil Barrie rages. DID THEY HEAR THAT USELESS CHORUS?? My eyes well with huge awful tears and I prop a smile on my face, trying to keep it together.
That’s when the wig lets go.
It happens when I rake a hand through it, the cherry-red shag that cost twenty-five dollars of my savings. I guess I do it harder than usual. Because it doesn’t stay put today, like it does when I’m not under white-hot lights.
Today it slides off my head and plops on the stage behind me.
Gasps and whispers from the crowd. The audience—my friends five minutes ago—freezes in the presence of my scarred, plucked-chicken head.
Tera claps her hands. “Minor malfunction! Nothing to see.” She makes a sharp gesture to a cameraperson and Jaz snaps the other contestants out of their shock, prods them into celebration mode. The confetti cannon booms. Stage Manager Steve thrusts Rosalinda into my arms. Ava gets a hug from Jaz and a blue and gold Pop University robe and all the other Top 16-ers leap up from the Safety Chairs and flood onstage to congratulate her.
She cranes her neck in the crowd to find me. Her eyes go right to the wig and I know I have to turn and pick it up but I can’t, I can’t move, I can’t think.
Sorry, FARG, she mouths. Then Ukulele Johnny high-fives her and musses her curls, and my spotlight shuts off with a schthunk. And even though it’s officially not my policy to let setbacks set me back, I will tell you a secret: there is nothing I’d rather do at this moment than fall through the floor.
Then the platform I’m standing on hisses and jerks, and I do.
Chapter Two
“Oh shit.” A male voice. “Jim, what did you do?”
No. No no no no.
I’m in the tunnel. The elimination tunnel under Studio 5. It’s as cramped and dark as Season 6 Annie said in her exit interview and oh crap why is this happening. I filled out the form. I gave them a doctor’s note.
“Sorry, sorry!” Another voice. I’m seeing stars. “I cranked the platform down too fast—”
“No, dammit, she has an exemption! Didn’t Zoe tell you—”
“Huh?”
“She’s got a tunnel phobia, bonehead. Steve was supposed to lead her off the other way.” Someone hands me my wig, taps my cheeks. “Kid? You okay?”
I’m not okay. I blew it. My wig flew off on national TV, and I blew it.
“Oh, man. She’s losing it. Get her out of here, now!”
“I’ve got her.” Third voice. A woman.
“Okay, so this lady here—”
“Viv.”
“Viv’s gonna lead you out, okay? Follow her.”
Everything spins. I feel a cool rough hand in mine, tugging me forward.
“Breathe.”
The voice is hoarse, hypnotic, like an aging rocker who’s lost her range but kept her charisma. My lungs listen. I suck in stale air. I follow the stranger down the dim narrow walkway: heart thumping, eyes squeezed shut.
“I bet you hate life right now, honey,” Viv rasps over her shoulder. We stumble around a bend in the tunnel, my keyboard bumping the close walls.
I find a voice. “It’s all good.”
“You know you can’t try out again. Four strikes and you’re—”
“I know how it works.”
“You’ve been slaving away for years, all for this once in a lifetime chance…”
“Everyone worked hard.”
“Ava Alvarez didn’t. Didn’t have to. You know she wrote her song in seven minutes? Not a single cross-out, no crumpled—”
“She’s very talented and totally deserves it.”
“Please.” Viv stops in the dark. I bang into her back. “Let’s be real.”
My scalp crawls. Who is this person?
“Admit it,” she murmurs. “Deep, deep down in your secret heart of hearts—”
“No!” I hug Rosalinda to my chest. “I wish her the best.”
“I’m so sure.”
“It’s the truth.”
“You don’t hate her.”
“No.”
“You’re not dreaming of her downfall.”
“No.”
“You wouldn’t smile a little if she got big ol’ vocal-cord booboos and had to drop out?”
I pause. Viv cackles and pulls me forward again.
“Of c
ourse not,” I insist. How long is this freaking tunnel? “She’s—you know.”
“Your nemesis. Your arch-rival.”
“She’s just a girl. And she…” We navigate a hairpin turn. “She beat me fair and square.”
“Oh good Lord.”
“What?”
“Duck.”
I dip my head and the tunnel ends at last. I let out a shuddery breath. We’re in a wide vestibule with double glass doors that lead to a tiled green staircase. The pale light reveals Viv: nose ring, leathery face, greenish-yellow eyes, hair in a bunch of twists dyed all different colors. Her POP U CREW polo shirt hangs on her awkwardly, like maybe she stole it. A chill shoots down my back.
Viv gives me a look like I’m a needle and she’s trying to thread me. I pull my wig back on and tuck the hair behind my ears. It almost feels real when I do that.
“I have something for you,” she says.
“I don’t want anything.”
She lifts a pierced eyebrow. “I didn’t ask if you wanted it.”
***
I follow her upstairs because what else can I do? We’re back in the green room, where all of us waited in agony before the taping. Three short hours ago I was sitting on this leather couch with Ukulele Johnny and a cute blond tattooed girl named Medora, and we were harmonizing on “Somebody to Love” and betting on who the teachers would be at Tera’s Pop U campus this year. “God, there’s no way she won’t make it,” Medora had said, jerking a thumb at me. “Tera’s gonna love her.”
She still will. Someday. I hum her song “Comeback” in my head: You can make a comeback, Y-O-U/Take the stage and show ’em the real true you. I used that song like a shield in eighth grade when Kevin Trotta called me Dykey McScabhead, and it’s still extremely effective.
“Your bag, girl.”
Viv walks us by the wall where luggage is piled: suitcases, backpacks, messenger bags. She hooks the strap of my blue and yellow duffel and hands it to me.
“How did you—”
She holds up a hand to cut me off. She shuffles to a row of lockers, opens number 42, and hauls out a huge patchwork sack. It looks sewn from a thousand scraps of stage costumes, all sequins and velvets and snakeskin and leather.
Viv paws through the mystery bag, muttering no…ugh, no… Metal clinks on metal. My phone BING BINGs while she digs and it’s Ma, of course, with a single word: WELL? I shove the phone back in my duffel. I can’t deal with Ma yet.
“Where the devil did it go?” says Viv.
“Do you need help—?”
Viv tips the bag over and it coughs up color on the gray carpet. Jewelry. Tons of it. Rings, bracelets, chokers, cufflinks, a rainbow of tinted metal. I kneel down for a closer look and wow, every piece is engraved with these intricate patterns and pictures.
“Is this your work?” I ask Viv.
“None other, hon.”
“It’s beautiful.”
My eyes linger on a golden sun ring—it reminds me of the sun pendant I saved up for years ago, because Tera rocked one in her “Get off My Shine” video. I wore my knockoff every single day for two years, rubbing it for luck and making wishes on it that sometimes came true, until the thin chain snapped at a school dance. I combed the gym with Chelsie for an hour after but we never found it.
I reach out for the ring. Viv kicks it away.
“That one’s not yours,” she says. “This is.”
She crouches beside me and reveals a hunk of metal. I jerk back. It’s a wide cuff bracelet, poison-green, infected with bulbous purple pustules.
If Evil Barrie wore a bracelet, this would be it.
“Go on.” Viv prods me with the thing. “You can touch.”
My fingers are trembling but I take it to be polite. It feels like a shackle in my hand. And ew, the purple metal blisters are etched with faces: grimacing, shouting, sobbing, snarling.
TRY IT ON, says Evil Barrie. IT’S YOUR COLOR.
I thrust the bracelet back at Viv. Maybe I passed out in the tunnel and this is some weird metaphorical nightmare.
“Thank you anyway,” I say. “I’m not really a bracelet person—”
“But it’s yours.”
“I can’t accept it.”
“You have to.”
“Look—” I unzip my bag and show her my clothes. All superhero colors: blue, red, yellow. “It doesn’t go with anything.”
“It will.”
She steps closer. She smells like chicken soup. She’s about to get mystical on me, I can tell.
“You have a gift,” she says, “to share with the world.”
“Yes.” I nod vigorously. “I know.”
“Maybe not the one you think.”
She closes the bracelet around my wrist and it locks with a sharp ck-ck. I stiffen. I know she thinks she’s my fairy godmother or something, and as much as I love Cinderella stories, I never cared for fairy godmothers. They seem so presumptuous, whipping up big floofy dresses and breakable shoes. They never ask Cinderella what she really wants, like perhaps a nice sequined jumpsuit or a bracelet that doesn’t reflect the darkest crannies of her soul.
“Once more! From the key change!”
Footsteps up the stairs. The other contestants. Viv stuffs an envelope in Rosalinda’s front pouch.
“Own what’s inside you,” she says, squeezing the bracelet. “Embrace it. Use it. And remember—”
The door swings open and cuts her off. A pack of Top 16-ers burst in singing “We Are the Champions,” majestic in the Pop U robes I’ve ached for since I was a kid (I made my own from a bathrobe which was still very nice). Ukulele Johnny spots me and shouts “Hey, give it up for Barrie!” and then they’re crowding around me, giving me hugs and cooing I liked your song and You’re gonna go far. I bask for a second. They like me. Misfortune has made me a saint in their eyes. And hugs feel good, even if they’re pity hugs.
“Ho-kay, Top 16!” A mustachioed Pop U staffer in a blue polo shirt claps his hands for attention. “Photos with judges, then back to me for your official Pop U smartphones, then straight to the limos. Tera’s taking you to Oblivion for your initiation dinner.”
A cheer goes up like a firework. I turn away, my throat burning with want.
Then I see Ava.
Medora’s chatting her up by the bags. Ava’s shed her robe already, slung it over her shoulder like it’s a gross thing her mom made her wear. Her eyes catch mine.
“Hey. FARG.” Oh crap. She’s waving me down. “I need you.”
SHE WROTE HER SONG IN SEVEN MINUTES, taunts Evil Barrie, but I kick her down the stairs. I have to be good and strong and loving. I take a deep, deep breath and follow my defeater down an empty aisle of lockers, making the best smile my mouth will allow.
“Congratulations, Ava,” I say when she stops us.
“Don’t be nice, okay? I know you hate me right now.”
“I don’t—”
“This is business.” She pulls a twenty-dollar bill from the zipper compartment of her Vassal boot and coolly displays it between two fingers. “I need information. I’ll pay you.”
“What kind of information?”
“Word is you’re a Tera expert.”
“I dabble.”
“Rumor has it you’re the three-time champ of the Tera Trivia Showdown on her fansite.”
“I am, yes. But—”
“Medora’s second cousin’s friend was on Pop U two years ago. And like, apparently the people who impress Tera most at this dinner get the best performance slots.” Ava opens her Notes app and holds her phone out to me. “I need three smart things to say about her work. Her songs, albums, videos, whatever.”
I stare at her. What the F! This girl has some nerve—
“I know, you’re thinking I have some nerve. But look, be practical. Twenty bucks for three sentences you could say in your sleep.” She wiggles the phone. “Plus it’s not like we’re still in competition.”
/> I close my eyes. I tamp down several unkind thoughts. I calculate exactly how many burritos twenty dollars will buy while I’m home trying to book more gigs, and sadly that is what it comes down to when you don’t have money, always and forever.
I take the phone from her, tap the microphone icon, and quietly speak the following into her Notes app:
Tera, I think Thirteen Black Umbrellas is underrated, and I can’t believe you had to fight your producer to keep “Unsheathed” on it.
Tera, the video for “Happy Endings” is your biggest visual triumph—the Lego castle scene is inspired by Michel Gondry, right?
Tera, I love how 1 Poptopia Drive fuses Latin rhythms with mid-80s synthpop. Is that a vintage Prophet-5 synth on “Rearview”?
Now, I could have given her falsified Tera intel. Evil Barrie would have. But I speak the beautiful truths of my heart, because I am not that kind of girl.
YES YOU ARE, cackles Evil B, and Lord I hate her.
“Perfect. Thanks.” Ava hands over the twenty. I tuck it under the bracelet. “Good luck with your music, woman.”
With that she subjects me to a very intense handshake, her right hand squeezing mine and her left clamped on the bracelet. I flush head to toe. I have not had sustained physical contact with a human for eleven months; also, it’s possible she’s telepathically plundering me for more Tera stuff. Her deep brown eyes lock onto mine and I want to look away but sheesh, there’s a reason why she captivates a crowd, and it’s not just her voice.
“Why did you need me?” I say. “Why don’t you tell Tera what you think of her?”
“I don’t think anything of her,” says Ava, her eyes still on mine. “I’ve only heard like two of her songs.”
Then her eyes cut away and she mumbles, “They were silly.”
What happens next is extremely disturbing to a woman of stubborn kindness. A hot rush of anger shoots through my veins. Beneath Ava’s hand, the bracelet becomes a living thing, warm and tingly. And the first line of a song zaps into my brain.
Not like one of my regular songs.
A trouble song.
I shake my head, try to whoosh the words away. Then I remember Viv saying And remember and it feels critical now, to hear the rest of that sentence. I dash out of the aisle to find her and she’s halfway out a door on the far side of the room.