The Dark Stage: Wylie Westerhouse Book 2

by Nathan Roden

  “I’m in. See you later.”

  “I was joking about the ‘Agent KwyK’ stuff, but there’s an element of truth to it, right?” I said.

  Skyler waved to whoever was behind the wheel of the SUV. The SUV lurched backward and zoomed away.

  Skyler took off her sunglasses with one hand, and her wig with the other.

  “You should be giving this a lot of thought, Wylie Westerhouse. Is this the kind of life you really want?” Skyler said. “If it has never crossed your mind, this is Standard Operating Procedure for moving around in public.”

  “Not for me, Skyler,” I said. “You’ve been a star for your entire life—since you were what? Eight years old?”

  “Five,” she said. “Since ‘Busghetti’.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. I smacked my forehead with my palm. “How could I forget that? Those commercials! ‘What would you like for your birthday, Baby Girl? I want a puppy, and a bicycle, and ice cream, and don’t forget—

  “The Busghetti!” Skyler and I yelled simultaneously. I don’t know what that did for her, but it gave me some serious goosebumps.

  “How much of that crap do you think you sold—all by yourself?” I asked.

  “What do you mean—crap?” Skyler asked, with her hands on her hips.

  “Well, excuse me,” I said. “Noodles, tomato sauce, and a list of ingredients and additives that no chemistry major can pronounce.”

  Skyler giggled.

  “You might have what it takes to survive this jungle after all,” she said.

  I shrugged.

  “So, where’s my boyfriend?” Skyler asked with a rather naughty grin.

  I gulped, and a chill ran up my spine until I realized that she was talking about Toby.

  “Oh,” I said. “He’s putting on his face, of course. Come on in.”

  There was no doubt that Toby remembered Skyler. I hadn’t seen him fall in love with someone since—

  “Where are you, Mystery Man?” Skyler whispered.

  I was staring out of the patio door. Skyler caught me off guard and I was embarrassed. I had just realized how little thought I had given to Holly McFadden in the last twenty-four hours. I felt sort of lost.

  “Is something wrong?” Skyler asked.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s just that—”

  A voice sounded from the living room.

  “Wylie! Duncan! Toby, Toby, Toby!”

  Nate Barlow pushed the front door open, carrying two large cups of soda and two bags of Chinese take-out. As he crossed the floor, he saw Skyler, and one of the cups slipped from his hand. He tried to catch it, but he missed, and he dropped everything to the tile floor of the dining room. Skyler’s eyes were as big as saucers.

  “Nate,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting—”

  Nate looked more lost than I’ve ever seen him in my life.

  “You’re…her,” he said, “I’m….”

  “Skyler,” Skyler and I said at the same time.

  Nate’s jaw worked a couple of times, and then he nodded. Just like a crazy person would nod.

  “I need…” Nate said. “A mop. I need a mop.”

  Together, the three of us looked down at where Nate had dropped our lunch. Toby’s back was covered in soda. Undaunted by this fact, Toby found the open container of sweet-and-sour chicken. He stopped eating and looked up at us. His normally white mustache was coated with a liberal amount of sweet-and-sour sauce. He looked like a toddler had given him a make-over.

  “Oh, my God! Toby!” Skyler squealed before she broke into laughter. This made me laugh, and then Nate laughed, too.

  I grabbed a roll of paper towels, filled a bowl with water, and took the trash can from under the kitchen sink. Skyler continued to laugh as she took the paper towels away from me and began to wipe Toby’s face.

  “You’ll just be hungry in an hour, Toby,” she said.

  “What are you doing…?” Nate asked breathlessly. “Here?”

  Skyler smiled at him. Nate turned a bright shade of red. He looked at me, helplessly.

  “Skyler KwyK is in your house,” Nate said. I didn’t know if that was a statement or a question. I resisted the urge to mess with Nate’s head while it was so easy.

  “Crazy, huh?” I said.

  “Do you…know her?” Nate asked. “You never—”

  Skyler stood up.

  “We just met, Nate,” Skyler said.

  When Nate heard Skyler say his name, his eyes glossed over again. Skyler held out her hand.

  “Hello,” she said. “I’m Skyler KwyK. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Nate looked at Skyler, and then at his hand. He wiped the sweet-and-sour sauce from his hand onto his jeans.

  “Hi. I’m Nate—”

  “Nate Barlow,” Skyler said, “Drummer with the Wylie Westerhouse band.”

  Nate nodded.

  Skyler said, “Hey, what do you call a drummer without a girlfriend?”

  Nate was caught off-guard. He turned a brilliant shade of red.

  “What?” Nate said. He scowled and looked at Wylie. “What did you tell her, Wylie?”

  “Oh, God,” Skyler said. She clamped her hand over her mouth. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean anything, Nate, it was just a joke!”

  “No, no, no,” I said. “It’s not what you’re thinking, Nate. I didn’t tell her anything! That’s one of our jokes, remember? Everybody loves that joke.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Nate said. “I’m sorry; I’m just a little touchy right now.”

  “Homeless!” I said unenthusiastically, completing the joke, and trying to smooth over the tension between Skyler and Nate. I was exhausted.

  “Yeah. Homeless. Right,” Nate said. He forced a polite smile.

  “Wylie and I met yesterday,” Skyler offered.

  “At the airport?” Nate asked. “Wylie meets all kinds of girls at the airport.”

  “All kinds?” Skyler asked, looking at me. I shrugged.

  “Who is Duncan?” Skyler asked. Now it was mine and Nate’s turn to look uncomfortable.

  “Duncan is…he’s a friend of ours,” I said. “Duncan called, Nate. He can’t make it.”

  “I thought that you were expecting me this afternoon, Wylie,” Skyler said, skeptically.

  “Yeah,” I said. I smacked my forehead with a palm. “That was yesterday. Duncan called yesterday. Man, the days just run together.”

  “Would you be surprised to find out that most people remember the days that I knock on their front doors?” Skyler asked. “Some people think that I’m kind of a ‘big deal’, you know?”

  Skyler wore a sly grin and winked at Nate. He immediately turned to slush and looked like he might fall down.

  “So, do we go ahead with the meeting?” I asked.

  Skyler looked at Nate.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I hadn’t really planned on an audience.”

  “Nate isn’t an audience,” I said. “We’ve been friends forever—and since we’re talking about my music career, Nate is part of this.”

  Nate looked uncomfortable and confused.

  “Look, I’ll take off,” Nate said. “It’s not your fault that I walked in here like I own the place and made everything awkward.”

  Skyler looked at me sheepishly.

  I shrugged.

  “You should stay, Nate,” Skyler said.

  “Let’s sit down,” I said. “Who needs something to drink?”

  Nate held up his cup.

  “My drink landed right-side-up,” he said. “Toby is wearing yours.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Yours was choc—”

  “Chocolate cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper,” Nate said.

  “Ugh,” I shuddered. “Skyler? What can I get you?”

  “Vodka tonic,” she said.

  “Wha…?” Nate and I said at the same time.

  Skyler shook her head, reached for her purse, and pulled out a bottle of water.

  “Doesn’t take much to
blow your dresses up, does it?” Skyler said.

  Nate looked at me.

  “The lady hath judged us weak and easily duped,” he said.

  “As if we should be prepared to hear such a thing from the lips of America’s Princess,” I said.

  “I must cry ‘foul’,” Nate said.

  “Funny,” Skyler said. “Perhaps you two should consider a career in comedy.”

  “Pffftt!” Nate said.

  “Comedy?” I said. “That’s almost the same as ‘show business’.”

  “Not a chance,” Nate said. “Comedians and show business people are crazy.”

  “I want us to make an album together,” Skyler said.

  That shut us up.

  Twelve

  Wylie Westerhouse

  Branson, Missouri

  “I want us to make an album together,” Skyler said. “Followed by a tour. Together.”

  I know that I already said that. I just wanted to say it again.

  Skyler leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. She raised her eyebrows and silently tapped the tips of her fingers together. She looked like a psychiatrist addressing her patients, which was kind of appropriate.

  “You…?” I said. “Could you say that again?”

  “No,” Skyler said. She opened her purse, reached inside and took out a CD case.

  “Put this on,” she said.

  “This is audio?” I asked, turning the CD case over like I had never seen one.

  Skyler nodded and sat down.

  I turned on my sound system, put the CD in the tray, and waited. A few notes into a song intro, I recognized the tune. It was one of the five songs that I had demoed during “America’s Brand New Voice”. I turned to look at Skyler, who was giving me the universal “turn it up” signal with her thumb.

  I edged up the volume. This was different from the recording that I remembered. I heard myself sing the first line. The second line…

  Oh, my God.

  An angelic female voice faded in from the background in one of the most beautiful harmonies I had ever heard. It was Skyler’s voice—and along with her voice, an entire orchestra.

  The goosebumps flooded through me so fast that I turned around to make sure that I hadn’t wet myself.

  I turned back around. Skyler was still seated, rocking side-to-side with her eyes closed. I looked at Nate, who was staring wide-eyed at my stereo.

  When the song faded out, I stopped the CD player.

  “There are more,” Skyler said.

  “How many more?” I asked. My voice cracked a little bit.

  “All five,” she said.

  “Wow,” Nate whispered.

  “You didn’t like it?” Skyler asked.

  “Are you kidding?” Nate and I said together.

  “That was epic,” Nate said.

  Skyler smiled her million-dollar smile.

  “How long have you been working on this?” Nate asked. “That demo is like—two years old.”

  Skyler jumped up and started pacing.

  “Look,” she said. “I know music, okay? I always have. But I’ve had very little say over my own career, until now. Whenever I would have an idea or an opinion I would get a pat on the head, and people saying, ‘Isn’t that cute? Maybe we should get Skyler a little business suit!’ Until two days ago, there was nothing I could do about it.”

  Skyler continued to pace. I pictured her having discussions like this with her mother.

  She stopped abruptly and pointed a finger at me.

  “Wylie Westerhouse should be a star,” she said.

  “A star?” I said. “I can’t even get out of the Branson club scene. Oh, wait. Correction. Now, I’m blackballed from the Branson club scene.”

  “If it wasn’t for the stunt that your manager pulled, you would be a star already,” Skyler said.

  “You think Wylie would have won?” Nate asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You think I would have won?”

  Skyler squinted.

  “It would have come down to you or Brandi. At that point, first or second place wouldn’t have made any difference.”

  “No difference?” I said. “Fifty grand difference, to be exact.”

  Skyler dismissed this with a wave of her hand.

  “Album sales, downloads, tour, merchandise—if you had finished first or second, you could have fifty thousand dollars appear or disappear from your bank account and you would never even notice.”

  There was something a little dirty about this kind of talk. I liked it very much.

  “No offense, Skyler,” Nate said.

  Have you ever noticed that when somebody says that, they are getting ready to say something offensive?

  “Aren’t you just speculating about whatever success might have come after the contest?” Nate asked.

  Skyler reached for her purse again. She took out a small notebook. She didn’t open it. She sort of…shook it. At Nate.

  ‘I’ve spoken with the two finalists from that particular contest for the past five years. At length,” she said. “And I take very detailed notes.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Ten finalists,” she said, opening the notebook. “Six of them have made enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their lives, and three more are on their way to that level.”

  “That leaves one—” Nate said.

  “Winston,” Skyler and I said at the same time.

  “What an idiot,” I said.

  “It’s one of the things that no one likes to talk about publicly,” Skyler said. “But we used to get regular lectures about such things on the set of the TV show. There are certain things that are off-limits when you become a celebrity.”

  “You lost me,” Nate said. “I remember that guy Winston getting slammed over something…”

  “Slammed is an understatement,” I said.

  “If you can’t handle your liquor,” Skyler said, “You don’t take the bait on social media and let the world find out that you’re a foul-mouthed bigot.”

  “Ouch,” Nate said with a wince.

  “He could have had the world,” Skyler said. “He flushed it all away in five minutes.”

  “You really think Wylie could have beaten Brandi?” Nate asked. “I mean, she’s hotter than a firecracker. No offense, Wyles.”

  See? See what I told you?

  “That depends,” Skyler said. “The producers were already playing down the ‘country’ angle with Wylie. Whoever picked the demo songs was on the right track. If you had stayed in, and they kept steering you toward some edgy pop music—dressed you dark and sexy, did something different with your hair—”

  “What’s wrong with my hair?” I asked.

  Nate giggled uncontrollably.

  “Don’t get all pouty with me, Wylie,” Skyler said. “It’s all part of the business. If you’ve noticed, my ‘look’ has been carefully crafted to follow the changing demographic of my audience. That’s not by accident.”

  “What if I don’t want to be ‘carefully crafted’?”

  “Well, good luck with your core audience who are drawn to a mixture of Hank Williams and Slipknot.”

  I really wanted to make a smart comeback right there, but I didn’t have one.

  “Uh-huh,” Skyler said, as she bobbed her head. “Look, Wylie. I’m not that crazy about the corporate approach either. But I also have no intention of being thirty years old and dragging my worn-out, has-been self to smaller and smaller venues—singing sixteen-year-old hit songs about my love for a stuffed animal. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I nodded. So did Nate.

  That’s one way to make musicians shut up— bring up the life of a has-been artist doing the ‘oldies’ circuit. Musicians aren’t exactly famous for their retirement planning.

  “Here’s the way it works,” Skyler said. “If you are insanely talented and reasonably easy to work with, you get to play. You have little or no say about anything, but you get to p
lay. And if you make enough people like you, you get to stay. The longer you perform as a money generator, the more power you begin to accrue, and your opinion begins to matter. You do that long enough and well enough—you start to call the shots.”

  “Like you,” I said.

  “To an extent,” Skyler said. “Now that I’m eighteen—that extent will be taking a giant step forward.”

  “So your first power move as a legal adult is to kick Wylie’s career up the ladder?” Nate asked.

  “You could say that,” Skyler said.

  “Who else is in on this plan?” Nate asked.

  “Is that important?” Skyler asked.

  “This is a pretty big secret to keep for—you said three years, right?” Nate said. He looked at me with a smirk. “Would have been nice to know about, huh, Wyles?”

  Skyler stood in front of Nate. I guess Nate felt a little intimidated because he stood up as well.

  “Just who do you think was listening to a fifteen-year-old girl’s plans, Nate?” she said, inches from Nate’s face.

  “I don’t—” Nate started.

  “A fifteen-year-old girl whose job is to stand on a sound stage and pretend to have a spray-can whipped cream battle with her make-believe friends. What kind of respect do you think I got?” Skyler said.

  “I had a dream like that once,” Nate said.

  Skyler blew out a breath and unclenched her fists.

  “That song,” I said. “That’s not even the same demo that I made. Not by a long shot. That was my voice, though. That track was amazing.”

  “Yeah, well, my producer is amazing,” Skyler said. “His number-one recording engineer is, too.”

  “They worked over my demos?” I asked. That made me feel better about this whole thing. It was still a little creepy.

  “They’re both in on it now,” Skyler said. “But two years ago, these recordings were my birthday present.”