Bright Lights: Book One of the Talia Shaw Series

by Darcy, Christine J

  It struck me like a bullet that I hadn’t thought about it all day. Not the accident or my friends, I was distracted by dolphins and Lord of the Rings locations and watching the sunset from a helicopter. More things that they would never get to do.

  I got out of the shower and wrapped myself up in a robe. I took a notepad and a pen from the little desk in my room and took a seat on the couch. I wrote like I did when I was a kid, just letting all of my thoughts fall from my head onto the page.

  I took those words and picked up my guitar and started playing. I tried to make it sound exactly how I felt. I hadn’t composed like that, when it wasn’t for Ashley and Kelly, in years. But then, this time it was still for them.

  I wrote until 2am when my eyes were too heavy to keep open. I wrote half a song.

  When I woke up, all the pieces of paper were around me on the bed, some of them crumpled up from my tossing and turning. My guitar was half off the bottom of my bed. I pulled it closer to me to keep it from falling.

  I sat up and adjusted to the light. I stretched out the soreness from the night’s sleep and realised I felt so much lighter than the day before. It was relief, at having written down some of the things that were in me, heavy and sticking to my insides like tar.

  I showered and dressed quickly and ran straight to Teddy’s door. I banged a little too loudly. He came to the door, still in pyjamas, wiping his eyes like he’d just woken up, too.

  “Morning,” I said. He opened his eyes a little wider, surprised by my expression and energy.

  “Morning. What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I did some more writing last night,” I answered as he opened the door wider and let me through.

  “You did?”

  “Not a whole song. Only half of one. But it felt so good to write it all down. And, I want to keep going. There’s so much I’ve been feeling and-”

  As I moved further into the room, I saw that he’d done some writing himself. A dozen scribbled on pages were spread over his coffee table, lyrics and notes written in and scratched out.

  “You too, huh?” I asked.

  He looked at me and smiled. “Yesterday was pretty inspiring,” he said and redness coloured his pale cheeks. Before I could question it he moved towards his bathroom. “Let me shower quickly.”

  I nodded. He closed the door behind him. The shower started quickly after that. I took a seat on the lounge and looked at the papers. One line stood out to me immediately.

  A friend I never knew I’d be missing

  I smiled. It was a song about new friends and lifelong friends. Maybe about Teddy and me. We were fast becoming friends. It could’ve easily been about me and Kelly and Ashley.

  My stomach rumbled, and I reached for the room service menu. I picked up the phone and started ordering; “Eggs – scrambled, bacon, sausage, pancakes…” I shouted through the bathroom door, “Teddy? You like pancakes?”

  “They got waffles?” he shouted back.

  “And waffles. And two glasses of orange juice, please.”

  * * *

  Teddy came out in a towel, dressed quickly behind me and was halfway into playing the song he’d written when the food arrived. I barely noticed the knock until he stopped playing. I shot up and grabbed the door. The room service guy stood at the other side, annoyed.

  “Sorry,” I said as he wheeled the trolley in, laden with metal dome covered plates emanating the most delicious scent. He held out the receipt for me to sign. “Thank you very much.”

  “Enjoy your breakfast,” he said, insincerely, as he left.

  I looked back at Teddy who had a questioning look on his face. “So, what do you think?”

  “I think it’s incredible. You are so talented,” I gushed. Teddy set his guitar aside, shaking his head. “You are,” I insisted.

  “Thank you. But, it’s not much at the moment. Do you have any thoughts?”

  “Is it about me? Your new bestie?” I asked. He laughed, his cheeks flushing again.

  “I meant about the music or the lyrics?”

  “I don’t know. I want to hear you play it again.”

  Teddy hid his eyes. So, he didn’t take compliments well. He took the lids off the dishes letting the aroma heavy steam drift up to us both. We loaded up plates and got right back into it. Teddy played the song again. This time I picked up a piece of paper and started writing as ideas came to me. We worked on it, rewriting and making changes until we were beat by it and set it aside.

  He asked me to play the song I came up with and I was too shy. “You wanna take a walk?” he asked. I nodded.

  We grabbed some gelato and did a few laps of the ship, talking about the two songs we’d already written and others we had in mind for the album. I hated the idea of giving an album, this album, to the label that forced it from me. But I was enjoying the process. I was almost grateful to them because of Teddy.

  By the time we returned to the room I had found some courage. I played the song. I couldn’t look at him through it, but I could feel him watching me. I finished the lyrics I had written but I kept playing the song until I felt like it was done. I took a moment, a few breaths, and looked up. He was looking at me, elbows on his knees, his hand over his mouth. I bit my lip, scared. What if he hated it? He’d liked the first one but that’s no guarantee he’d like this one. And, this one had meant so much to me. It would’ve killed to think he hated it.

  “If you hate it-” I started, wanting him to rip it off like a band aid.

  “It’s heartbreaking,” he said, cutting me off. “I’m sorry, Talia.”

  He covered his mouth again.

  “Do you have--” I was going to ask for his ideas, but he cut me off again.

  “You’ve gotta write this one on your own.”

  I furrowed my brows.

  “Keep going. Let me hear it when you’re done,” he insisted. He let out a breath of air. “Wow. What’s it called?”

  I thought for a second. It seemed to me there could only one title. “Bettys.” He smiled.

  I felt so good. That he liked it. That it moved him. That he trusted me to do it on my own. I was happy that this song, a tribute to the friends I lost, might be put on this album and sent out into the world. I hoped they would be proud, wherever they were. And, that their parents, their family, might be proud, too.

  Teddy sat back on the lounge. “I think we need a break.”

  I nodded.

  “Pool?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said with a smile.

  * * *

  So, we went to lay by the pool, until I wanted to write some more. And, that’s how it went. We wrote, we ate, and we lay by the pool. Sometimes, we wrote by the pool, if it seemed like we weren’t bothering anyone. Sometimes people came and sat by us to listen.

  By the time we got to the Pacific Islands, we had written three more songs, and I had almost finished Bettys. We snorkelled the reef and hiked the trails on the island of Moorea. We found a waterfall and jumped in fully dressed to wash off the sweat.

  We lay out on the beach and Teddy had a thought so he went to grab his guitar. He came back with both of them. He taught me the hook he had thought of and we started playing it together. We started singing a line at a time, seeing what went with the song. A few local kids heard the music and came over. They started dancing and their parents came next. Soon we had a crowd of locals and passengers. It made me nervous. More nervous than I usually was. We played them the songs from our album, minus Bettys, until we had to get back on the ship. They gave us a round of applause and Teddy soaked it up. I smiled at them, unsure why I felt so anxious in front of the tiny crowd. Teddy squeezed my waist as we walked toward the ship. “We’ve got something special here. They loved it.” he said.

  “It might be just the novelty of it,” I said, unconvinced. He rolled his eyes. I noticed the sky becoming grey as we stepped on board.

  We ate dinner in a sushi restaurant but I didn’t have much of an appetite. The ship had started rock
ing from the weather.

  “You wanna go see a show or something?” Teddy asked when we were done.

  “I think I’ll have an early one,” I replied. And we went our separate ways.

  I got into my room and was immediately struck by how dark the sky was outside my window. It lit up suddenly with a lightning bolt. I got into my bed and wrapped the covers tightly around me. I closed my eyes and willed myself to fall asleep. The ship tipped a little and a heavy creaking sounded in my room. My eyes opened.

  I sat up. I had started to shake. I felt warm. My breathing became quicker as my heart sped up. Thunder roared. My breathing came harder and faster. There was another crack of lightning and I heard a smash of glass inside the ship. I could feel myself starting to panic. My chest started pulsing as I tried catching my breath. A banging sounded on my door.

  “Talia?” It was Teddy. He banged again. “Talia, let me in.”

  The ship tilted again the other way. The phone Manny had given me, which I’d never used, slid off my bedside table and onto the ground.

  “Talia!” he yelled again.

  I pushed the blankets off my legs and moved to the door. I opened it up to Teddy, looking fearful and red.

  “Are you okay?” he asked me, moving me inside so he could come in. He closed the door and then took hold of my arms. “You’re shaking.”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  He didn’t believe me. “Sit down.” He pushed me back to the bed.

  Teddy opened a cupboard, which turned out to be a minibar, and brought me a bottle of water. He took a seat beside me as I drank, spilling water down my chin.

  “It’s okay. It’s just a bad storm.”

  I nodded. Another roar of lightning. I closed my eyes. Teddy took hold of my hand. “It’ll pass.”

  I kept my eyes closed but feeling the boat rock the way it did was starting to make me nauseous. I opened my eyes as Teddy ripped his hand from mine. He ran to the bathroom, pushed the door closed, and started throwing up. The door didn’t latch and it swung back open.

  I stood up and walked straight over. “Teddy, are you okay?”

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered after he’d emptied his stomach.

  “Don’t be,” I said, as I handed him my water. He drank it there on his knees. “Do you want a hand up?”

  I held my hand out but he wretched again. “Fuck, why did I have to eat sushi tonight?”

  I laughed a little, pityingly, and grabbed a clean towel from the rack. I handed it to him as he shifted to sit beside the toilet seat. “Are you okay?”

  “Man, I was trying to look after you. Now look at us.”

  I sat in the doorway. “It was a good distraction,” I said as I remembered the storm was still going and the boat was still rocking.

  He drank more water and then looked at me, a little sadly. “I thought it might freak you out.”

  “Vomiting?” I asked, confused.

  “The storm,” he confirmed. “I read about the plane…”

  I nodded, “I think I was having a panic attack.”

  I touched my chest, feeling my slowed heartbeat. I was scared. I felt like I couldn’t control my breathing and it would just keep getting faster and harder until my lungs gave out. Or my heart. It was a worse version of what I felt getting onto this boat and speeding away from Sydney. I hoped it didn’t become a habit.

  “Have you seen anyone about it? A professional?”

  “A therapist?” I clarified. He nodded. “No.”

  “Maybe you should. No shame in it.”

  I didn’t feel ashamed. But, I had already found something that had been making me feel better. “I think I should write about it.”

  He smiled a little. “It might help.”

  I helped Teddy up and led him to my bed. I went to the pharmacy on board and grabbed some nausea tablets. I gave them to Teddy, along with some more water and then brought the guitar over to the bed. I sat beside him and started to play. I fiddled around with a few notes.

  “There,” he said, reaching out and touching a chord.

  I played. I sang some lyrics. The storm actually helped. Teddy beside me helped. After a while, we fell asleep, the guitar between us.

  * * *

  Teddy said we needed more upbeat songs. I asked him to tell me about his first love and he told me about an Italian girl he met on a family holiday when he was 12. Her name was Natalia and she was fourteen with green eyes and tan skin. The Italians made fun of Teddy’s pale skin but Natalia told him it was beautiful. He asked me about mine and I told him about Cole. But when we started writing the song I wasn’t thinking of Cole, I was thinking about Laurie.

  We wrote a song about falling in love. Green eyes, tan skin. I sang about my necklace and ships passing in the night.

  * * *

  Midway between the Pacific islands and Hawaii, Teddy and I discovered that the ship had a skydive simulator. We both tried it and discovered it provided endless amounts of entertainment. The joy of it and the other activities on board like the bumper cars and the gigantic slides, led to a song about life and fun and sailing the oceans.

  We had almost 10 tracks by the time we reached Hawaii.

  “Drinking!” Teddy suggested as we docked.

  “I can’t. I’m underage,” I whined.

  “I’m buying,” he claimed. “You’ll be fine.”

  “Okay,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I believed him that it was so easy. “You don’t want to go shopping or hiking or swimming at Hawaii’s famous beaches?”

  “Okay. First we hike and swim. You can shop if you want but then we’re drinking.”

  I laughed. He was such an easy guy. Easy to know. Easy to be friends with. Sometimes I thought he might even like me a little. But, then I thought better of it. He was so specifically friendly. So, when I saw a pretty dark-haired girl looking at him in the bar we found at the end of our day, where they didn’t care a jot that I was drinking, I told him he should go over there.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Go over and say hi to that girl,” I said, gesturing with my head in her direction. He looked and saw her. She ducked her head, embarrassed. Teddy looked back at me with furrowed brows. He’d told me that his last girlfriend cheated on him with a member of a boy band. It had hurt him pretty bad, but it was over a year ago and he was ready to move on. He just hadn’t yet. Maybe he needed a little encouragement. “What? She’s pretty!”

  He looked back at her. “You think I should go over?” he asked, his tone making me question myself.

  “Why not?” I shrugged. Teddy looked at me a moment longer and then drank his beer.

  “Yeah, okay.” He stood up and walked over. I watched as the girl realised he was coming and straightened her hair a little. She tried to look casual. He said something to her and she brightened up, offering a big smile. He said something and she nodded. Teddy moved to the bar and ordered a couple of drinks. He looked back at me as he waited and I winked in encouragement. He smiled back at me.

  He took the drinks back over to her and they chatted for a bit. I distracted myself with the football game on TV, which I had little to no interest in and eventually he came back. The pretty girl waved to us both as she left with her friends.

  “Hey…” I welcomed him back.

  “Hey,” he said, giving me nothing. I eyed him. “What?”

  I rolled my eyes. “What happened?”

  “Nothing much.”

  He took the last sip of his beer and I waited him out.

  He relented. “Her name was Georgia, she lives outside LA in Santa Ana and I got her number.”

  I wooed, and shouted to the bartender, “Another drink for my friend here.” The drinks arrived and we toasted.

  We had a few more, played a terrible game of pool, terrible on my end, and then walked a little way along the beach, arms over each other, talking like silly drunk friends do.

  We stumbled home to the ship and slept in Teddy’s room. After our hangovers had p
assed, we decided to try sobriety for the rest of the trip and made it all the way to the night before we were set to arrive. We went to a comedy show and had a few glasses of wine, then went to a bar on the ship that had, for a bartender, a very clever robotic arm. By the time we were forcing down paracetamol the next morning we had docked in Los Angeles.

  Four

  Manny had a car waiting for us. A driver held a sign with my name on it. It hurt my head to look out the window, but I couldn’t help it. In Australia, I grew up watching television and movies all set in Los Angeles. I imagined the Hollywood sign and Rodeo Drive and all the celebrities who lived there. When it came down to it, what I saw from the airport to the house didn’t look that much different than Sydney.

  And, then we were in Malibu. It felt like Point Piper, a Sydney suburb with dozens of gorgeous houses whose backyards led right into the water. Malibu was similar but with more sand between the houses and the ocean, and way more palm trees. The car pulled up at a big wooden gate. The driver made a call and the gate soon opened. The house was a little way beyond it, a modern white boxy thing with mountains of plants and pink flowers surrounding it. The great big timber front door opened and Manny stepped out, phone pressed to his ear and a smile on his face.

  We got out of the car and he hung up.

  “Welcome to the city of angels, Talia. How was your journey?” he asked as he reached out a hand. I shook it.

  “It was fantastic.”

  “And you, Ted? Did you get on well?”

  “We had a blast,” Teddy grinned.

  “What does that mean?” Manny asked, impatiently. “I had hoped you would use that phone to keep me updated, Talia.”

  I bit my lip.

  “You and the label will be very happy,” Teddy assured him.

  “That’s fantastic. Well, I’ll have my assistant liaise with you about everyone. We can have them ready tomorrow, if you two are ready?”