Confessions of a Backup Dancer

by Tucker Shaw

  and she goes, “but don’t you love the best friend part?” I gave up right then and there. I squealed and hugged her again. besides, I reminded myself, I wasn’t Kelly anyway. I was k.k., darcy barnes’s best friend. at least that’s who I’d be for the next couple months.

  then she goes “do you have a boyfriend?” and I go no. she looked at me for a minute and I got kinda nervous so I said, “we just broke up last week,” which I totally made up just to fill the space and besides, maybe this fictional K.K. really did have an ex. hey, I could get into this fake-me thing … anyway so darcy made this sad face and I said, “no it’s no big deal. forget about him. he’s a loser and you’re here now. forget him,” and she smiled. I could tell the conversation wasn’t over. so I said, “do YOU have a boyfriend?”

  and she said, “yeah.” so I said omigod, is it Rashid?

  she goes, huh?

  I go, you know. that’s what it said on your website.

  darcy goes, oh lordy NO, that’s my crazy mother making stuff up. I was like why would she do that and darcy was like urn, well, I guess it’s good for my image to have a crush on him and he is kind of hot, I mean, I totally love him but I barely know him … he just sort of works for me, you know?

  I was thinking yeah! he’s fair game!

  then I was like ok well who IS it? someone from home or something? and she goes no not really. then she smiled and said she doesn’t want to talk about it because she misses him. she misses all her friends from home. she was like I lost most of my friends when I became Darcy Barnes but they’re a bunch of jealous people and I don’t want to talk about it.

  so I shut up. I mean, it was like she ripped open her brain for me there for a second but didn’t really let herself finish her thoughts. I guess we have all summer. I mean, I’m not about to get all up in her face about it even though i kept thinking how Tito will KILL me if i don’t find out. give it time, I figured.

  then I was like omigod, she lost all her friends when she became Darcy Barnes. does that mean I’m going to lose mine now that I’ve become K.K.? Too late.

  then she goes, You know I’m a virgin right?

  I go, are you really? I mean, I’ve heard it but I didn’t know.

  she goes, do you think I’m lying? I go, no I mean I just know that the papers make stuff up sometimes right? like that thing about you and jesse and all that.

  she goes, “THAT’S NOT TRUE!”

  and I go, I know! that’s what I’m saying, they make stuff up! but of course I was thinking damn that really got her revved up. it must be true. i wonder …

  and she goes, well I am. I am a virgin.

  and I go, Um, ok!

  and she goes, I just want people to know that.

  and I was just like, “I totally understand” even though I totally didn’t, why do people need to know that? why do I need to know that?

  then she goes, are you a virgin? not that there’s anything wrong with not being one it’s just … are you?

  and I was like what kind of question is that? I rolled my eyes and laughed. “I’m so sure!” I said. I figured that was about as noncommittal as I could get without full-on lying.

  then she goes, “Can you keep a secret?” and I said yeah and she said, “don’t tell my mom,” and she pulled down the waistband of her jockey for hers (I was like WHAT’S GOING ON) then showed me a teensy weensy tattoo of a dolphin. “mama said I can do whatever I want in the whole world … except get a tattoo. ha! don’t tell her. no one knows. I got it in brazil when I was there with …” and before she said who she was with she goes, “oh, sorry. can’t say. I promised. that whole boyfriend thing. uh, I mean crush thing. oh, whatever. anyway isn’t it the CUTEST tattoo?”

  she goes, “wanna go get a tan? I have side-by-side tanning beds in my gym downstairs and I know where eileen hides her vodka!”

  Bingo! Behind-the-music moment! Here we go …

  K.K., backup dancer and party girl said, “um, SURE! Totally!!” even while Kelly, exhausted dancer, was thinking, hey what about the CORN NUTS?!

  we finally got to sleep (me with a slight midnight tanning bed sunburn and darcy with slightly slurred words) at like 3 AM. darcy slept in my bed (which would be a true Hollywood story moment except that it was more like a sweet valley twins moment).

  the last thing she said before drifting off was, “G’night, best friend. Hey, I wonder who Pashmina’s best friend is these days? she’s probably some loser.”

  I lay there for a while trying to figure out what she meant. No luck. the best I could do was just decide that darcy was, in fact, an alien from outer space. The longer I thought about it in the dark by myself, the funnier it seemed. I actually giggled myself to sleep.

  how psycho is that?

  SATURDAY JUNE 8

  D-ZONE, LUNCH BREAK, 12 PM

  Outfit: I’m singin the capezio blues?

  Hair: stringy, sweaty, dirty … but blond.

  Mood: The grind

  I woke up to darcy barnes howling at the top of her lungs in the room next to mine.

  Aaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii! Aaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

  of course my first thought was dang if she’s a virgin I’d like to know exactly what’s going on in there …

  but then I realized she was really screaming. there must have been something really really wrong. was she being attacked? where were the men in black?

  I sprang out of bed, raced to the hallway, sprinted down to her door. there was a woman in black standing out-side. I screamed, Can’t you hear? she’s in there screaming! I dove over the woman in black and lunged for the doorknob. I burst in, and there was darcy, standing there topless, looking in the full-length mirror and screaming like a crazy person. I was like ARE YOU OK???

  and she just went quiet and turned around. hey K.K., she whispered. I’m fine! I’m just warming up my voice. I have a recording session in a couple of hours, and I like it better when it’s kind of scratchy. Don’t you?

  yup, alien from outer space. that sounds just about right.

  since then we’ve been dancing pretty much nonstop. I am SORE. I’m SERIOUS. so this is how the dancers get their bodies so tight. dancing their asses off every day, all day. luckily it seems like I’m getting fewer looks from Armand and Jesus. And Li’l D and his Tina are starting to be way more, uh, open. Make that public. in fact, I’m pretty sure their public displays of affection could get them arrested in some states.

  But the good news is I finally got THERE this morning, during my private session with Rashid. he’s been helping me out with this one transition that’s been driving me crazy. it involves a spin that I have to enter fast, then slow down in the middle, then come out of fast again. it’s not easy, and being three weeks behind and the only one in the crew who doesn’t have it down yet makes it even harder. and the more I kept trying and failing, the more my confidence got sapped. so I asked him if he had time. he said yes, he had a half-hour. he’s the best.

  it was actually more like an hour and a half but by the end, I totally had it down. Rashid goes “kel” (he calls me “kel,” which is way better than K.K. if you ask me … it makes me really listen to him), “what I need is for you to do it like you just did on every dance, every night. you need to get there every single time. do you have that in you?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t know the answer. rashid told me to think about it, then he left.

  SlipKnotRules933111: I can’t come tonight. I don’t have enough for a bus ticket.

  KellyKelSoCal321: dude it’s $16

  SlipKnotRules933111: I know

  KellyKelSoCal321: I think u can scrounge it.

  SlipKnotRules933111: i tried.

  KellyKelSoCal321: go in my room and get my secret $20. it’s under the lamp next to my bed.

  SlipKnotRules933111: don’t you know? the village of the damned twins moved into your room

  KellyKelSoCal321: are you KIDDING me? are you SERIOUS? I cannot BELIEVE that.

  SlipKnotRules933111:
so your twenty probably isn’t there anymore

  KellyKelSoCal321: damn! well how much do you have.

  SlipKnotRules933111: $11.

  KellyKelSoCal321: ask Mom you dink.

  SlipKnotRules933111: she wouldn’t even let me go if she knew, let alone pay for it. I have to sneak out as it is. what am I going to do?

  KellyKelSoCal321: I’ll get tito to meet you at the bus station tomorrow. I can’t believe it’s this hard to scrounge money for a bus ticket. it’s so jerry springer. what time is the bus?

  SlipKnotRules933111: 4:30

  KellyKelSoCal321: ok I’ll tell tito. be there on time.

  SUNDAY JUNE 9

  D-ZONE, OMIGOD IT’S 3:15 AM

  Outfit: Darcy’s acid-wash jeans, they are so 80s I love them.

  Mood: Kinda wiped out in that awesome way when you’re having so much fun.

  Fortune: You’re young now. You won’t be later.

  Saturday was like the hardest day yet of dancing. we got done at like 7, and I went straight to my room, where I knew I had a half-hour to rest before I had to go pick up evan. it felt like I had barely put my head down when my pager went off.

  DUDE WHERE R U

  it was from Evan. omigod I forgot! he was at the bus station. it was 11 PM. he’d been there for three, no four hours! that is, if he was still there. I went to throw on some clothes and splash water on my face, hoping to bolt out of there with no one noticing.

  and ran into darcy in the bathroom, she looked like she’d been cryin. her eyes were all red and she was kind of short of breath and her hair was a disaster. “what are you doing?” she asked. I told her. she immediately perked up, going, “no WAY!! lemme drive you! I just got a new Navigator yesterday! we’ll sneak out and go!” I said, “dude no way aren’t you exhausted?” and she said, “no way let me just grab a baseball cap” and I go, “what’s wrong? you look like you’ve been crying” and she goes, “nothing. nothing big. just jesse. he was supposed to come this weekend but now he’s not. it totally bums me out when he blows me off like that. I keep thinking he’ll change.”

  I was like but I thought you were just friends!

  she paused for a minute, inhaled deeply like she was going to say something, but stopped short. “we are. he’s just a friend. a really annoying friend” all sad, then she goes, “but whatever, let’s get out of here. I’d love to get out for a drive.”

  I was like well, well, well, the plot thickens. I’m still not convinced they’re going out. I mean they talk on the phone like three times a day and darcy’s always talking about him. but she’s sticking to the “friend” story. Though sometimes it’s “best friend” and today it’s “really annoying friend.”

  but sorry, tito, I’m not about to get a smackdown for asking too many questions. I mean, I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough. also, I wonder if Jesse’s a total jerk after all. Could my celebrity crush possibly be a jerk?

  so we headed out. doesn’t seem like a big deal for a megafamous pop star and a high school girl of driving age but we had to sneak out because all those men in black don’t like it when darcy takes off alone and if darla ever found out I can only imagine how pissed she would get. she’d probably withhold food from the entire company for a whole day. darcy pretends to be like “whatever” about her entourage, but I can tell she likes it. plus I did hear she had some stalker in texas who offered her big $$ for her virginity … hello, stalker! anyway we made it to the garage and out onto the street without being noticed.

  if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last week or whatever it’s that I have no clue. these people are so strange. I mean darcy the alien’s got at least three personalities so far:

  the superhard worker

  the little kid watching Disney flicks

  the heartbroken girlfriend

  and now there appeared to be a fourth: a seize-the-day, crazy, let’s sneak out and misbehave chick, this one was my favorite.

  the other thing is, sometimes it seems like she’s in charge, running the whole show, and sometimes it seems like a whole elaborate show set up by darla and eileen and all those people in black without darcy having anything to do with it. I don’t know. the only thing I can say with certainty is that darcy barnes has no business having a driver’s license. that girl is danger behind the wheel. we’re talking Thelma-like driving. or was it Louise?

  at the first stoplight she actually obeyed (which was about four stoplights from our start point), she turned to me and said, This is fun. Thanks for letting me come. I never get to do anything fun with anyone I actually like. this whole best friend thing isn’t that bad, is it? then she turned up the radio and started jamming out to the white stripes. Another surprise—I didn’t think she listened to real rock.

  when we got to the bus station I’d almost forgotten where we were going. but there was evan, all by himself, sitting outside the entrance on his knapsack, with his headphones on, bobbing his head and smoking a cigarette.

  we drove up and I hung out of the Navigator screaming EVAN PUT THAT SHIT OUT! he isn’t a smoker, he just does it sometimes to look tough. he’s so 9th grade.

  anyway, he wasn’t that mad about us being late. he said it was pretty cool hanging out at the bus station. but evan’s like that. he likes wandering around alone checking people out and “looking tough.” I think it makes him feel really independent or something. he wasn’t even all that upset that we missed a show. I think he was just so glad to be away from home, on his own, even if it was so far mostly at the bus station, even if it was only for a few hours.

  oh, and when I introduced him to darcy he goes, “what’s your name again?” he totally didn’t recognize her. ha! she laughed at him. “you don’t know?” he goes, “sorry, I forgot … my bad.” and she goes, “that’s AWESOME! I love you!”

  I wondered when the last time was that darcy met someone who didn’t already know who she was, some-one who didn’t already have ideas and expectations about who she should be. Probably like never. She seemed almost thankful.

  you know how I was just saying how I needed a friend? tonight, I was almost starting to feel like I had one.

  anyway the three of us decided to just cruise around Santa Monica in the Navigator listening to the radio. evan kept flipping the station around like a maniac. even when there was a song he was into, he’d still hit “scan.” he’s such a boy. but every time one of darcy’s songs came on (and three of them did: “Love You Like a Lollipop,” “Whenever,” and “Kooky”) she would insist we turn it up full blast, roll down the windows, and sing at the top of our lungs. evan didn’t know any of the words but he tried.

  Darcy and evan talked a LOT about pyrotechnics and fires. Darcy’s really into that stuff too. they talked about it, seriously, on and off the whole night. I guess pyromaniacs have a lot to say to each other. I was thinking how weird it is that they probably both have it in ’em to burn down a building, only evan actually did it. I wonder if that means they both have it in ’em to be pop stars, too. then I wondered if I had it in me. anyway she kept saying how she always wanted tons of explosions and stuff in her show. the whole thing kinda freaked me out a little given evan’s deal with burning down the organic grocery but whatever.

  it was kind of cute that he and darcy got along so well. it was nice to see her being so cool with him. I mean, I’m the first to admit that it’s not easy to get along with my brother, but darcy and he were like long lost buds.

  I was digging this new darcy. I wondered how often it came out and if it ever existed in the D-Zone.

  darcy kept asking evan if he would ever cheat on a girl-friend. he kept being like, HUH? But she just kept asking. finally he figured out that he should say “No,’ though, and started saying that instead. so Darcy goes, “see, there are good men out there. don’t ever become a vj, evan.” he just laughed. luckily he was having too much fun to pay attention too closely.

  Evan goes, Where are you from anyway? to Darcy and she goes, Texas! and she goes,
“Dang I wish we were back in Texas so we could go cow tipping!” then she goes, “Evan, can I have a cigarette?” he goes, yeah but I got a joint too.

  I was like WHAT?? evan what the HELL? isn’t that a probation violation? gimme that! what the hell are you doing?

  and darcy was like “omigod you have pot??” she pulled into the 7-11 parking lot and was like come on let’s smoke it.

  I was like I cannot smoke pot with my brother! and Darcy goes oh relax, no one’s going to find us. do you think I’d risk my reputation? it’s no big deal. And I was like well, maybe not for you, but he’s MY brother. and she goes, evan hand me that joint and your lighter.

  Sometimes you just gotta go with it. rock on, girl.

  it was the most fun I’ve had since I got here. evan for-got the Milky Ways I’d asked him to bring but darcy gave him $40 and he went into the 7-11 and got nachos, sour patch kids, combos, and slurpees. we pigged out! screw darla.

  did I mention that darcy is an INSANE driver?

  SUNDAY JUNE 9

  D-ZONE, LUNCH

  Outfit: all business: tracksuit and headband.

  Mood: A little manic. The show debuts in less than TWO WEEKS.

  Fortune: Free lunch? Are you kidding?

  darla decided to give us all an early start today as in 8 AM on a sunday. you know, the morning after last night, which had only ended a couple of hours before. I wonder if she did it on purpose because deep down she knew that I’d been out with her darling daughter, inhaling illegal drugs and running stoplights and potentially jeopardizing her entire public image.

  Bleary-eyed and bitchy, I desperately chowed a banana and sucked down two big iced coffees (nonfat milk, no sugar, ICK). that’s all we got to eat. that’s all walter put out for us. he looked at me like “sorry” and looked over at darla. “master’s orders” he mouthed. yup, she knew. sigh. and this was exactly the kind of morning I could have used an egg mcmuffin, know what I mean?

  I guess we were being punished for having any fun last night and I heard darla and darcy arguing in low voices in the hall about how much gas is in the Navigator’s tank. they were like whisper-yelling, like they’re always doing on soaps. “But it’s MY car mama!”