by Vivian Wood
And I wasn't the kind of teacher who could enforce that sort of discipline anyway. With the students, sure. But not the parents. I related a lot better to kids than these people who were supposed to be my peers.
"You're going to be tired, Maddy!" I said brightly, turning away from Luke. "Are you going to have a good day today?"
"Yes, Miss Riley," she mumbled sleepily.
I turned back to Luke who shrugged helplessly, tugging at my heart. He knew I had a soft spot for his kid. "She's been doing really well in spite of the issues at home," I told him. "You're doing a great job."
The corner of his mouth flicked up. "I'd love to hear more about it," he said with a shy smile. "Over drinks?"
I swallowed. I'd been dancing around the idea of going out with Luke Keely since the school year began. Gideon had called him my "ardent swain." He'd joke about bringing a baseball bat with him, fending off my suitors and I laugh and turn red and remind him that he wasn't my father. And then his eyes would get all soft and he'd remind me that nobody could replace him.
I looked down, blinking at the flood of memories. First my real dad, then my surrogate dad. Life seemed determined to deny me father figures.
"Sure," I finally said, remembering that Luke was waiting for an answer. "I'll let you know when it's a good time, okay?"
"Right sure," he said, immediately contrite. "I'm sorry, by the way. Gideon was a good guy."
I couldn't remember ever telling Luke Keely I was friends with Gideon King, but it was a small town. He probably knew way more about me than I wanted him to.
At that, another harried looking parent showed up at my door. Soon my classroom was filling up. Lisbeth, my student teacher showed up right in time to help little kindergartners with giant book bags shrug out of their winter coats and direct muddy boots towards the cubbies.
Outside in the hall, a close knot of solemn looking women in long denim skirts floated past.
Dee, whose classroom was next to mine, appeared in my doorway with a mug of coffee and wide eyes. "You see that?" she stage-whispered, pointing down the hallways.
I leaned out into the hall, unable to keep from staring. The women were all wearing the signature dark, homesewn looking clothes that marked them as part of the breakaway religious sect. "God's Chosen in public schools." I shook my head. "Wow. The district must have caught up with them."
"Their bogus 'homeschooling program' must not have passed state requirements," Dee sniffed. We watched as a few solemn children separated from the equally solemn adults. There was none of the usual bluster and tears from the mothers. I recognized the two hands on the shoulders blessing from running into the Chosen around town. Their community clung to the south end of Crown Creek, on land donated by a rich farmer who'd fallen under the sway of their leader. It was a sad cluster of houses that couldn't possibly be up to code.
But the sight of Chosen was not too surprising, not around town anyway. What was surprising was seeing them here in the schools. "Wonder if the new school board stopped taking the bribes?"
"Dr. Schneider is a stickler and I doubt the threat of eternal damnation is enough to keep her off getting kids an education." I liked our new board director. With her straight across bangs and diminutive stature, she looked more like a high schooler than someone in charge of the high school and I think she relished the startled reaction people gave her when she spoke up. I could only imagine the hell she'd given the Chosen's fussy elders. "Seriously though, they didn't think to tell us? What are we going to do with these kids?"
"I only see five. Hopefully that's it."
"I know. They are not going to fit in. It's going to be tough."
Dee glanced at me. "You doing okay? I'm sorry I couldn't come to the funeral, Kayleigh was throwing up."
"Oh no, again?"
"This place is a petri dish. She's been sick since she started." Dee's daughter was in the other kindergarten class. "I'm just waiting for my turn." She ran her hand down her belly. "Stomach flu is my diet plan these days," she grinned, lifting her shirt to reveal a thin line of toned tummy. Dee was a demon runner.
"Don't let them see you," I whispered, glancing at the knot of Chosen women who were hanging in the hallway, seemingly uncertain about leaving their kids in our heretical care. I lifted my fingers in a tentative wave and was rewarded with tight, cramped smiles. "Your belly is totally sinful. They're gonna pray for your soul," I whispered to Dee.
"Good, I need all the help I can get," Dee grinned. She put her hand on my shoulder. "Gid was an awesome guy. Have you listened to the tapes yet?"
I knew what she meant but I shook my head. "Not since - " I trailed off and blinked, my eyes suddenly filling.
"Of course. Yeah not since he -"
"Right."
"I'm glad he gave them to you though. When you're ready, you can hear him singing any time you want. Pretty cool he wanted to pass his recordings on to you."
I nodded, but the same niggling feeling I'd had since he handed me the box tickled at my brain again. When Gideon had handed me the box full of old tapes and demos, I asked him point blank why he wasn't giving these to his nephews. He'd laughed it off, saying that he could jam with them any time. Make new music just as soon as they got home.
They hadn't come home quick enough. And now the only thing left of his music was in a box in my living room. He'd given it to me, but it felt wrong to hold on to it now that he was gone. But it also felt wrong to bring it over to the Kings. I felt protective, wanting to curl myself over that cardboard box and shield the remnants of Gid left in the world. What if the Kings didn't want it? Or worse, what if they didn't appreciate it the way they should?
I found myself wishing like hell I could run up to the music room and ask Gideon what he thought. He would know the right thing to do, for sure.
Chapter Five
Jonah
I was lying on my too short old bed, scrolling angrily through my phone, reading the reviews of my performance at the Hullabaloo festival in Texas. The critics and bloggers were really falling all over themselves to pile on me while I was down, and I had the perverse drive to read every hastily written take, just so I could go out tomorrow and prove them all wrong. I wasn't used to feeling embarrassed about a show. Panic was licking at the edges of my consciousness, egging me on to go do something. To work harder. To fix this.
"Knock knock!" my mother said softly as she knocked on the half-shut door to my bedroom. And kept knocking on it until the door was all the way open.
Some little bit of leftover muscle memory made me shove the phone back under my pillow, as if she was catching me do something illicit. I relaxed almost as quickly, and leaped to my feet. "Really?" I said, more pleased than I was letting on. "I was going to get that." Then I did a double take. "You folded my underwear too?"
"Nothing I haven't seen before," my mom said with a grin. "You like to forget I wiped your little tushie."
I took the laundry from my mother's hands. It still smelled the same. I tried to keep from inhaling the scent of her detergent into my lungs and then holding my breath forever. It had been a while since someone last took care of me without asking for money in return. "Thanks Mom."
She nodded and brushed her hands off down the front of her sweater. "Well of course." She wrinkled her nose. "I wasn't sure if you even knew how to do laundry."
I laughed. "I would have figured it out. I'm not as helpless as people think I am."
"I know," she said gently. "You're a hard worker, Jojo."
I smiled, feeling like she'd given me something I didn't know I needed. "Thanks." I turned and set the folded laundry directly into my open suitcase.
My mom's eyes followed me. "You're not staying?" she asked, wistful hope hanging around her words, clinging like the smell of fabric softener to my freshly laundered clothes.
I stood back up and let out a deep breath. "Mom, I can't."
"I know," she said quickly, lowering her eyes.
"My manager is going to want
me in New York," I pressed. "We're supposed to be working on a guest list for the new album. Some new vocalists and stuff -" I trailed off, the checklist growing ever longer in my head.
There was so much work to be done to prep for the new album, so many things I needed to go over with Leon Jensen, the hotshot manager I had hired to manage my solo career after the King Brothers imploded. He was all business, and I liked that. He was exact opposite of the last guy, who'd spent way too much energy trying to be our friend - to the point of stuffing Gabe full of pills just to make and keep him happy.
Jensen didn't want to be my friend and it made for a refreshing change of pace. "I've got some ideas and I need to see if their workable. Maybe a duet?" I mused aloud, making a mental note to have Jensen start making me lists of female vocalists that suited my new style.
At that my mom snapped her eyes back up eagerly, like a shark scenting blood in the water. "A duet? Oh Jojo, you know Claire would be perfect for that. Your sister would love to, she has such a nice voice."
Oh god no. I could just picture Claire in a recording studio with me. The family story was that I was the control freak, but that's only because Claire manipulated everyone into thinking they wanted what she wanted all along. If I was a control freak, then she was a control mutant. "Mom, I have to do what the label tells me to, you know the drill."
"Well I would think you had some clout..." my mom said, going right for the sore spot. "They have to listen to you, don't they? If you really wanted to, you could make it happen."
I licked my lips. "Does Claire really want to?"
Mom hesitated.
I let out a breath and a low chuckle. "She doesn't even know you're asking."
Mom threw up her hands. "You caught me, fine. You happy now Mr. Smartypants?"
"What's wrong, Ma? Are you trying to send Claire as a spy or something? Make sure I'm not embarrassing the family name?"
Her cheeks reddened slightly and I knew I'd guessed it. "Well, I never had to worry about the four of you when you were together!" she huffed, mad at being called out. "The four of you out on the road, most people thought I should be petrified you would try stuff, get exposed to all these bad influences, but I knew that you had each other. And as long as you had each other, you didn't need anything else."
I inhaled slowly. As I did, my mother's face fell as she seemed to realize the absurdity of her words. "Well, I mean - " she started, and then stopped.
"Yeah," I said stiffly as I turned and zipped up my luggage. "That turned out to not be the case, did it?"
"Jonah," she sighed. Heavily. "You're still blaming him."
"No," I said straightening back up again. "Let's be clear here. I don't blame him for breaking up with his cheating girlfriend one bit. That was awful, Mom, walking in on her like that. Until the day I die, I'll never forget the look on his face. No," I shook my head. "I blame him for breaking up our band. Talk to him about how we had each other."
My mom hated this. She hated that her sons, the four famous King Brothers who were once a symbol of sibling affection for the whole damn country, now barely spoke to each other. I knew it was tearing her up inside. "He was hurt," she pleaded. "He was so angry."
"Well he was angry at the wrong people," I snapped.
My mother did that pressed lip thing she always did, like she was physically holding back the words she really wanted to say. She looked at me fiercely for a moment, the kind of maternal fire that makes you flick through your conscience really quick so you have an answer when she asks you if you know what you did wrong. Is it the broken window? The flat tire? Did I leave the lid off the milk carton again?
But I knew exactly what she thought I did wrong. And I also knew she was mad at the wrong person, so I wasn't about to apologize.
Slowly the fire drained from her eyes. She stepped back into the hall. "Well, it was good to see you, Jojo. Even if it was under sad circumstances."
"You too, Ma. I'll be down in a minute."
I hefted my suitcase and patted Duke on the head. He huffed a lungful of doggy breath in my face and gave me one of his big, dumb smiles. "You be a good boy," I told him, as I pulled my phone out from under the pillow.
There were three missed calls. All from Jensen. I must have never turned the volume back up after the wake yesterday. Curious, I swiped to call him back.
He answered like he had been waiting for me. "About time."
"I had my ringer off. What's so important?"
"Listen," I heard him shuffling papers on his desk, which was odd because he always made a point of giving me his full attention. "Were you headed in to New York?"
I blinked and then laughed. "We've had a meeting on the books for weeks now, and I have that appearance on the Howard Stern Show. So yeah, I'm headed to New York."
Jensen paused, though I could still hear the paper shuffling. He cleared his throat. "Maybe don't."
"What?" I half-laughed, half shouted.
"Don't come. You can stay home longer if you'd like."
This wasn't making a bit of sense. "Didn't we need to go over the game plan for the new album?" I reminded him. "You said you wanted to audition some guest vocalists."
Shuffle shuffle "I said that?"
"Yeah," I said, trying to lean more towards laughter than yelling. This had to be a joke. Jensen was on top of things, he was one of the best in the biz. He also seemed to have an endless stack of papers to shuffle. "You sound stressed, man," I joked. "Does my manager need a manager?"
The shuffling suddenly stopped and in the ringing silence left behind, I could hear every word he was saying loud and clear. "Listen, Jonah. There's no sense beating around the bush," Jensen said, ignoring the fact that he'd done five minutes of exactly that. "When you hired me on, it was to manage you as a King Brother. But you've gone off the rails, man. I can't work with you any more. Not after that performance at the Hullabaloo."
I felt the heat rising to my cheeks. "A fucking storm blew up, Jensen. What, you think I can control the weather? They hauled me off the stage and shut down the entire festival." My voice rose higher as I tried to make him understand. "I wasn't trying to leave."
"Have you seen the press?" he said shortly.
I'd been looking through it obsessively all morning, but he didn't need to know that. "No. I've been at my uncle's funeral," I said through gritted teeth. "With my family. My mourning family." I shook my head and tried to force a smile back onto my face so he couldn't hear how badly I was starting to panic. "You obviously watched some of the video from the festival, right? So you saw how I was giving it everything I had. I mean, Christ, didn't you see how hard I was working out there? If they hadn't dragged me off the stage I would have won that crowd over," I declared. "I know it."
"'Would have' doesn't pay the bills, Jonah. You've had three cancelled appearances since that day. Howard Stern being one of them."
My jaw went slack. "Jensen, the festival was not my fault. The wind..."
"Save it."
"You're shitting me."
"I'm not. And I can't see a way to right this ship," I heard his chair creak as he leaned back. I could picture him there in his office, completely at ease with making the biggest mistake of his career. "You've gone off course and are sinking badly. "
And the more I thought about what a mistake he was making, the more I felt better. In my mind I could see myself, working harder than ever, coming out with something brilliant and brand new, the avalanche of good press and the world at my fingertips again. The vision wrapped itself around me like a protective cocoon, knowing that all I had to do now was make it a reality
That was easy.
I sniffed. Exhaled. "So," I said, a new steel in my voice. "Instead of righting the ship, you're abandoning it. Fine," I said, setting my suitcase back down again. "I'm a better fucking Captain than you ever could be, Jensen." I cleared my throat so he could hear me loud and clear when I told him, "Go fuck yourself."
Whether he hung up first or I did didn't
really matter. What mattered was I had been turned loose. I'd clawed my way up from the bottom before, I would have no problem doing it again. I just needed space and time to figure out a brand new, brilliant game plan. On my own, with no short-sighted managers to get in the way.
Duke lifted his head and thumped his tail. I looked down at my dog, and then the bedroom around me. Where I'd spent my childhood dreaming of the exact same stardom I was about to reclaim again.
I needed space. Here was the perfect space.
"Mom?" I called. "Change of plans!"
Chapter Six
Ruby
It felt like I got home in the dead of night, but it was only 5:15PM. I'd forgotten to turn on the light over my back door. "Stupid time change," I muttered, using the flashlight app on my cellphone to well enough to put my key in the lock.
My tiny little house still smelled like stale coffee from the morning, which felt like ages ago. Thank God it was Friday.
I heard a thump and then the sound of little feet on the wood of the stairs. A little ball of fuzz came staggering over the the door, still sleep-drunk and swaying a little.
"Hey there little girl," I murmured to my tiny new kitten as I crouched down to pet her. I'd gotten her the day before Gid died, but already enough time had past that she was getting long legged. "How's my tiny little terror?"
Ginger purred and nipped at my fingers as I picked her up and went into my tiny, sparsely furnished living room. The box was still there in the middle of the floor because I didn't know where else to put it. The basement was too damp and I was afraid it would hurt the tapes. And I didn't want to shove it into a closet because it seemed disrespectful to Gideon.
I set down my cat and poked the box with my toe, thinking. I'd managed to survive my first full day at work without Gid, and tomorrow would be just like this one. I hated that someday I might actually get used to this feeling.