Grace and the Fever

by Zan Romanoff

  From there it’s just a matter of time until a few bored paparazzi make their way out to Canoga Park. At first she’s amused by thinking about how pissed they must be that the best story of the day is a girl working at a Valley Coffee Bean. Then they start taking pictures and it stops being funny.

  Benny asks, “Grace, what the hell did you do last night?”

  “I might have made some mistakes.”

  “It’s making the customers uncomfortable,” he says. “You can spend the rest of the shift in the back, doing inventory. Yeah?”

  “Please,” she says, grateful for the escape.

  In the back, though, there’s no one to stop her from checking her phone, from seeing the thousands of ways her story has been spun out and retold, misunderstood and mismanaged, tangled from gossip to myth to legend in the space of hours—not even a day.

  She’s nearing the end of the shift, finally, finally, when Raj sends her, You want someone to come get you? We should probably talk.

  Grace is so tired that her whole body aches. The idea of going back there and sorting everything out—hearing what lies they told her, and trying not to admit to the lies she told them—is too much to bear. For the first time, the prospect of seeing Fever Dream doesn’t seem like a treat; the shine of it is starting to wear down into something rougher, like shards of glitter scraping against her skin.

  I think I need some time, Grace says.

  She turns her phone off again.

  The house is empty when she finally gets home. Her mom probably won’t return for a while—she leaves for work early and comes home late. She cut back her hours at the firm when Grace was little and ramped them up again as soon as her daughter had her driver’s license. She hasn’t made partner yet, but she says she’s still on track.

  Without the structure of work to keep her standing, Grace feels like she’s going to collapse in on herself. She’s impossibly grateful to strip off her work clothes and step into a hot shower. At first the steam smells like the last twenty-four hours, coffee and cocktails, beer and sweat and sleeplessness, but that slides down the drain eventually, and then it’s just her again: her soap, her skin.

  She knows she’ll want to talk to Jes at some point to straighten out what he meant by that text and last night. The first flush of her anger is gone, now, replaced by the kind of calm that only appears when exhaustion has washed everything else away.

  She’ll call him. Either he’ll explain himself or he won’t answer, and that will be its own kind of explanation.

  Part of her knows, though, that he will. He has to. She’s involved in this, now, and no one can say it was an accident. He called and asked her to come. He took her hand. She showed up, and showed her face. There are pictures of her at her work.

  Jes walked into her world by accident, but he reached out and brought her into his.

  How could she have known how strange it was, and scary?

  Grace gets out of the shower and puts on her coziest, laziest sweats. It’s surprisingly nice to feel like her own boring, private self again. She turned her phone back on when she got home, and it’s still going crazy—she hadn’t locked down her social media fast enough and someone had figured out her email address, plus there are the texts from what feels like everyone she’s ever met. The news has spread like wildfire.

  She shouldn’t be surprised that there’s one from her mom, too. Are you home now?

  Yes, she sends.

  Good. Stay there. We need to have a talk.

  Grace’s stomach clenches. There’s no way her mom knows. No way.

  Right?

  —

  Except that one of the summer associates had the story up on his computer, and her mother happened to walk by and glance his way. At first she was just pissed that he was wasting company time. Then she saw her daughter’s face in front of her and found out what everyone else had known all day.

  Distantly, Grace thinks that someday she’ll be able to look back and laugh at the absurdity of her mother reading something she printed out from the internet, saying, “Grace Thomas, eighteen, has been spotted out and about with Jes Holloway twice this month. Friends say the recent high school grad is a longtime fan of the band, so it’s no surprise that rumor has them getting hot and heavy in the back of the same club where…”

  What friends? Grace thinks, but that’s not even her biggest problem right now.

  “God, Mom, I promise you: nothing even happened!”

  “I don’t care what happened! Whether you kissed some boy. You lied to me.”

  Grace feels like she’s drowning. She always thought she was honest with her mom because there was nothing in her life worth bothering to lie about, but now that she’s done it, she knows that she hates it. She hates hearing the way accusation and disappointment get mixed up in her mother’s voice.

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “It hasn’t—not that long,” Grace says. “A few weeks. We met a few weeks ago.”

  “Are you dating him?”

  “No! No.”

  “Are you hooking up—”

  “Ew, don’t say that. No! We’re nothing. We’re just friends.”

  “So why are people saying that you are?”

  “People lie about celebrities, you know that; you used to tell me that all the time.”

  Her mother hated Grace being a Fever Dream fan: all the fantasizing and the wasted hours. You don’t know those boys, she used to say. I’m sure if you met them, you wouldn’t like them at all, and then wouldn’t you feel silly? That was the beginning, Grace has always thought, of the particular deep rift that’s between them now: her mother didn’t want to hear about Fever Dream, so Grace stopped talking about them. When she did, she found out that it was almost too easy to stop talking about other things, too.

  Her mother isn’t a litigator, but she still gets that scary, serious lawyer face on when she asks questions.

  Where did you go last night?

  Who else was there?

  Why did you lie about it?

  “I didn’t want to know if you’d say no,” Grace admits. “I didn’t want to sneak out if you did. And I didn’t think it was such a big deal.”

  “You’re starting college in the fall, Grace. I don’t want you to get distracted by some boy, even if he’s famous. Especially if he’s famous! I don’t want you to start getting into trouble. You’ve made it so long without being difficult.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem.”

  “What?”

  “I said, maybe that’s the problem.”

  “I understood what you said. I just don’t understand why you said it.”

  “I’m sick of being no trouble,” Grace says. The words just come spilling out of her. “I’m sick of being practical. I’m sick of being nothing. No one. I am starting college in the fall, and I’d never lied to you, or snuck out, or gone anywhere I wasn’t supposed to be. And I wanted to start that life with one adventure. One thing I’d done because I wanted to, and not because it was expected of me, or because it was allowed.”

  The minute she stops talking, Grace wishes she could take every word back. Her mother’s face is empty. She looks like she did right after the divorce: like the glassy top of a frozen pond.

  You know better than this, Grace reminds herself. She knows better than to churn up the dark waters underneath her mother’s calm. Her dad was the trouble in the family, and he’s the one who left. She’s supposed to be the part of it that was worth keeping: the sweet, smart daughter, the good, good girl.

  “You don’t have to rebel to grow up,” her mother says. “I always thought you understood that.”

  Grace doesn’t have any of the right words, but somehow she’s full up of the wrong ones. After weeks of lying and years of silence, the truth tastes so good in her mouth. “I know I don’t have to,” Grace says. “But what if that’s what I want to do?”

  —

  Her mother decides overnight to ground her, and takes th
e keys to Grace’s car when she leaves for work in the morning for good measure.

  Grace calls her when she wakes up. “I have a shift!” she says. “How am I supposed to get there?”

  “Call a coworker,” her mother says patiently. “Take the bus. Call a cab. Call in sick. Walk, and take the time to think about what it means to abuse your privileges.”

  “If I get fired, it’s technically your fault,” Grace says, and hangs up so she can frantically text her coworkers.

  Violet agrees to pick her up. I O U x forever, Grace tells her.

  Another text arrives just as she’s hitting Send. Katy. Will you at least tell me if you’re never going to speak to me again? it says.

  I’m thinking about it, Grace says.

  The paparazzi have given up on her being interesting, which isn’t surprising—you can only sell so many pictures of a teenage girl making coffee drinks—but the fans have not. When Grace and Violet pull up, there are a few girls idling outside, and once they send out the word that she’s here again, their ranks swell.

  The smart ones get drinks early and set up shop inside; the rest of them are periodically dispersed by the strip mall security guard, who seems more excited to have something to do than like he’s going to intimidate anyone into actually staying away.

  Why? Grace wants to ask them, but she knows the answer. She was going to do the same thing outside of the hotel Fever Dream was staying in; she would have, if Jes hadn’t shown up on her street the night before. They do it because they’re bored and hungry, because they’ve found something that makes them feel happy and busy and like things are possible, and they’re set on chasing that high. They’re tired of being told that they’re silly or small or that they want things that aren’t going to happen for them. They’ve set out to make something happen, or at least to be there to see it when it happens to someone else.

  It is weird, though. No one approaches her directly. They don’t ask her anything except for coffee and water and the occasional pastry. As the afternoon wears on, it starts to seem like a piece of performance art: all of these girls on their phones and computers waiting for Grace to turn into the creature they saw in pictures on those same screens. She wonders how many of them don’t know that they follow her on Tumblr.

  Finally, she blurts out, “He’s not coming,” when a girl named Jade orders her third iced coffee. Grace is a little afraid of how much caffeine they’re collectively consuming to justify their presence here, but she’s also just sick of the waiting. It’s making even her feel like there’s something to wait for, and she’s supposed to be the one who knows better.

  “You would say that, though,” Jade says. “I heard some girls saying they were going to follow you when you leave, just, like, FYI. To see where you go.”

  “I’m going home,” Grace says. “After. Please ask them not to.”

  “I don’t know them,” Jade says. She seems offended. “We don’t all, like, know each other or anything.”

  “I didn’t think—”

  But Jade is already gone. She doesn’t care what Grace has to say; she cares about the idea that she’s a portal to Jes, to Fever Dream, to that distant-horizon something else they’ve all got itching under their skin.

  Benny is reluctant to do anything about it. “You can’t tell me they aren’t good for business,” he says. “Verrry thirsty.”

  “Can I take a few days off, then? Just until things settle a little bit?”

  “You can see if anyone will cover your shifts,” Benny says. “I can’t change up the whole schedule because you went viral. You know that’s not fair.”

  “I feel like this is an extenuating circumstance!”

  “I mean, I don’t mind the company.”

  “You’re gross,” Grace says.

  “I’m just saying. You think I might be able to give them something for that fever they’ve all got?”

  All at once, the same girls who’ve been driving Grace crazy all day seem impossibly precious and important to protect. “Oh my god, get over yourself,” she says. “They’re— They don’t want anything to do with you. That’s not why they’re here. You don’t know anything about them.”

  “I know they’re not afraid to try to follow some dude they don’t even know around the city,” Benny says.

  Grace can’t possibly explain to him: he’s not some dude and they’re not following, exactly. It’s more like a pilgrimage: a journey undertaken to prove devotion. A test of strength and resolve, a path that weeds out the weak and leaves you in rarefied and exalted company. These girls have transcended the need for the ordinary world, with its ordinary disappointments.

  She feels a fierce pang of loss at the realization that, whatever else happens, she doesn’t really live among them anymore. That she might not get to ever again.

  “I quit,” she says.

  She thinks about telling Jade, but that seems pointless. She knows what they want from her: a talisman or a relic. Something they can take with them to prove that they followed the path.

  Grace writes JES ISN’T COMING, AND I’M NOT COMING BACK on a sign, and tapes it to the window. The girls are photographing it when she walks out the door.

  Tumblr text post

  Jadeonfire.tumblr.com

  July 1, 4:12 pm PST

  Anonymous asked: WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING THAT HAPPENED TODAY (HINT IT IS NOT SOME BLONDE GIRL AT A COFFEE SHOPPPPPPPP)

  I assume you mean this, anon? (In case you’re too lazy to click, tl;dr is that Diana saw someone she’s 95% sure was Raj at a jewelry store today, trying to pick up a resized ring. That’s right. A ring!!! It wasn’t ready but they gave him a pickup date so she’ll report back when that happens )

  Anyway, I agree. I think this is pointing at something huge. Lolly have been seeding the idea of their own coming out for years (since R&H won’t do it for them!!), and I really, really think that the day is coming sooner than we’ve been thinking.

  So, okay, I got too excited and put together a whole timeline:

  The “what’s true” pictures were taken on July 14, 2016.

  Around the same time, Land added a rosebush to his collection of sharp tats, turning it into a legit sleeve. (The artist Instagrammed the first pictures of the ink on July 16, but we don’t know when it was actually done. We also don’t know who did the what’s true, though there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence that suggests it was Rosa Eve, who’s one of their usual artists.)

  Six months later, on February 14, 2017—VALENTINE’S DAY!!!!!!—Solly got the matching pricked finger tattoo on his arm.

  Solly has the number 14 tattooed on his hip. (There aren’t many pix that show it clearly, but there are a few here and here. NB his birthday is September 14!)

  Clearly it’s an important number for the two of them.

  Bee has the best roundup of evidence from other sources that it’s their anniversary—tweets from Land’s mom and sister about being happy on that day, Rowena’s you don’t know what it’s like / inside Instagram. It’s also true that 7 is considered a lucky number in many countries, and two 7’s is 14—what you get when you’re lucky enough to put the two of them together.

  I just, guys:

  IF LOLLY ISN’T REAL

  THEN WHY IS LOLLY SO REAL?

  Okay! So. What do they have planned for this 7/14? We’ve gotten a LOT of distraction and noise recently, between the canceled tour dates, Jes taking a leave of absence, and then this whole Grace debacle. I know you don’t want to talk about her, Nonny, but hear me out for a sec.

  Everyone who met her at her work today says she seemed normal, normal, normal, and super overwhelmed by all of it. I was there for a while and concur. (Though it’s still possible she’s just a great actress? Em found a few shots that could be her modeling/acting from a few years ago.)

  Anyway, today got me thinking: we all assumed that she was hired by R&H to try to create interest around Jes (and by extension the rest of the band) being FUL
LY HETEROSEXUAL, and to create new kinds of hype before they release their next album.

  But why go with a relative unknown? Usually their move has been to tie Jes—and all of them—to higher profile beards/fake gfs, so they get mutual promo on their projects. Obviously there’s an upside for Grace, but why would R&H choose her?

  Unless, you know, they didn’t.

  R&H pretty much always works with the same publicity firm, a well-established outfit called Hemsworth-Pickett. They’ve been doing FD’s PR since the band signed in 2013.

  But a few months ago they quietly dropped H-P, and signed with Pixel and Grain. They have a much newer, younger, hipper take on things, and when media reported on it, they said P&G was going to be taking the group away from the boy-band thing and toward something more mature and edgier.

  What they didn’t mention is that Pixel and Grain’s founder is an out gay man.

  If you look at the work they’ve done pre-Dream, it’s pretty fascinating. They launched Amina, for one thing, and she’s become a total viral sensation. They’re good at understanding what we, actual living human girls, want in a way that the old white men at R&H and Hemsworth-Pickett never were.

  So what if their move was to try to take things down a little bit—to walk Jes out of his dramatic relationship with a high-profile model, and put him together with a nice local girl. To find a way to give them a break from R&H’s frenetic schedule.

  To let Lolly come out at last.

  I’m just saying. We’re two weeks to the day from their fourth anniversary. (There’s a whole other thing about the number 4 in the band, and especially with Lolly, here.) They have to know we’ve been watching them extra carefully since the abrupt end of this tour. They’re seeking new representation.

  And then today we got Solly’s first tweet since they landed in LA to record:

  If it doesn’t add up, maybe you’re doing the wrong kind of math.

  Two hours later, Land posted an Instagram of his Sudoku game that PROMINENTLY features a 14 on it.