I mumbled, “Maybe…”
“Do you have anything new? Anything at all?”
“I’ve got the beginning of a song about spaghetti hoops,” I said.
The awkward pause that followed lasted for something like infinity.
“We’ll send over some ideas,” said Tony. “And it’s great that you’re coming to the Karamel gig. Kurt’s a real fan of yours.”
“Oh, I’m not actually—”
“You two should collaborate on something.”
“Er.”
“Great, I’ll run it by him.” He saw me eyeing what was left of the cookies. “Have one! They’re here for you. And congratulations again, Katie. We’re so excited.”
“Me too.”
“Just, try not to put too much pressure on yourself, okay? With the writing. It’ll come.”
“Okay,” I said through a big mouthful of cookie.
“If you can,” said Tony, “try to go for something incredibly universal, that’ll really translate. Something that your fans can latch on to, like they did with ‘Just Me.’ Funny but serious. Introspective but upbeat. You know the kind of thing.”
“Um, yes.”
“We’re certain you’ll come up with it very soon.”
“Um, yes.”
“I’m sure you’re feeling as confident about Katie as I am,” said Adrian, giving my shoulders a squeeze. A couple of months ago this behavior would have qualified as unacceptable, but now, I must admit I was grateful for it.
Especially when I reached for another cookie, and Tony said, “About that.”
“The cookie?”
“Yes. This is a little delicate, Katie. But you’re going to be in the public eye a lot soon. And I’m sure you’ll agree that it would be great for you to go into all of this really feeling…and looking…your best.”
Was Tony calling me fat?
“So if you’d like a personal trainer or for us to get you on a meal plan, just let us know. Top Music is here to help.”
He was!
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll, um, keep that in mind.” I pushed the plate away.
“I’ve got to get back to it now—conference call to the Glastonbury Festival people. Remember, I’m on the end of my phone, day and night, if you ever want to play anything for me.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t let the pressure get to you,” said Tony. “The last thing we want is for you to experience some kind of creative block.”
I must have looked startled as he coughed.
“Crystal Skye had one after her first concert. We waited and waited, and eventually we locked her in a hotel room for a week.”
“And then she wrote a new song?” said Adrian.
“No, she had a nervous breakdown!” said Tony, getting to his feet, which meant we had to do the same. “But then she wrote a song. So it worked!”
Jaz is one of those people who seems to take up a lot of room. I’m not saying she’s big or anything. In fact, she’s a lot thinner than me. It’s just she has this really enormous aura that fills up all the space you put her in, whether it’s my bedroom or our classroom or, as with right now, the top deck of the bus. I hope we don’t ever get stuck in an elevator together. I’d probably suffocate.
“You’ve got a lot of Amy Winehouse stuff,” said Jaz, scrolling through my iTunes, which was a little surprising because I hadn’t given her my phone. The thing was far too precious to ever leave my hand, being new and nice and literally the only thing that had come out of all this fame stuff so far.
Also, I’m not hugely trusting of Jaz around phones because of how she managed to film me on hers, put the video online, and made me go viral, with the result that I almost lost my best friend, alienated the rest of my school, and almost broke up Mom and Adrian.
I reached out and took it back again. How she got it in the first place was beyond me. I made a mental note to keep it in a zippered compartment. Maybe two.
“Amy’s music is amazing,” I said, gazing out the window, and then turned back as the bus smacked into the branches of an overhanging tree. “She only did two albums, but every single track is just, you know…”
“How’s your album going?” said Jaz.
I’d always thought it was best, with people like Jaz, not to ever show any sign of weakness because they’ll just use it against you later. But recently I’d changed my opinion of her. Not that I’d decided she was the world’s nicest person or anything, but she had been, well, sort of, kind of nice.
Which is why I felt like it would be okay to say, “Not as well as I thought it was.”
We stopped talking for a moment as, two rows ahead, Nicole, who’s a freshman, lifted up her hair to show the sixth graders her infected ear piercing.
“I don’t get it,” said Jaz. “You have hundreds of songs. You showed me them. In your book.”
For the record, I hadn’t shown her. She’d gone into my bag and found them, but oh well.
“Yeah, but the next one has to be drop-dead incredible, or everyone will say I’m a one-hit wonder, and I’ll just be this complete has-been for the entire rest of my life. And with ‘Just Me,’ it was like I wrote it without even thinking about it, and it somehow came out all right. But now the more I think about it, the less I can do anything. It’s like, everything that happens to me, I’m saying, ‘Is that a song?’ and so it never is.”
“Why can’t you use one of the ones you already have?”
“Tony didn’t like any of them.” It was the first time I’d said it out loud. “We had this big meeting, and I played him tons of stuff, and he kept saying the songs didn’t work.”
“Even ‘Cake Boyfriend’?”
“Even ‘Cake Boyfriend.’ And then when I got home I had this email. Hold on…” I found it and showed her, being sure to keep my fingers firmly wrapped around the screen.
Katie!
Great meeting.
Loved revisiting your back catalog! You are such a talent.
Our feeling is that you should try to write a brand-new single.
Possible themes:
• A song about partying. Please, no references to anything inappropriate.
• A song about first love. Please, no references to anything inappropriate.
• Something about animals. Maybe cats? People on social media love cats. Do you have a cat? If not, we can loan you one.
Hope that has you feeling inspired! If you want to run any ideas by me, my door is always open!
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Tony
“So he wants a song about going to a party where you fall in love with a cat,” said Jaz.
“Yeah.”
“I wouldn’t mind hearing that,” said Jaz unhelpfully.
“Don’t hold your breath,” I said, wondering if I felt kind of sick because of our conversation or just from reading my phone while sitting on the top deck of a bus. “I’ll have to come up with something soon, but I don’t know what it’ll be.” Then: “Sorry, are you okay there?”
I was starting to suspect Jaz wasn’t completely focused on what I was saying, on account of how she had my phone (Again? How?) and was frantically typing.
“Jaz!”
“It’s all right. I’m not logged in as you.”
“Can’t you use yours?”
“I’m out of data.”
I looked to check she really wasn’t logged in as me—because that really would have been a major disaster—and then said, “What are you doing?”
“Giving Nicole’s troll the smackdown.”
“Nicole has a troll?”
“Yeah,” said Jaz, her fingers a blur. “Every time she posts a video, he pops up from his troll hole and tells her she stinks.”
“What’s she been posting?”
“How she had her wart frozen off.” Jaz finished whatever she was typing and tossed my phone into my lap. I picked it up and had a look. There was Nicole’s video, paused on a picture of her elbow, which I decided I wouldn’t examine too carefully.
Then, underneath, a bunch of likes, a few thumbs-down, and people like Devi and Fin and Paige saying things like “Ugh!” and “Way cool, Nicole” and “So gross I luv it.” That was followed by approximately a hundred and twenty posts, all from someone called “sampand45xcg1,” saying:
Harltree scum
and
THE WORLD DOES NOT NEED YOU
and
u r a disgusting cow
And so on and on and on.
It was kind of upsetting. And I say that as someone who finds Nicole a little bit disgusting too.
Jaz picked at the lace on her scarf as I tried to imagine what it would be like to be on the receiving end of something so harsh. Tried and failed. In the end, I decided I would never put anything out there that would get anyone quite so worked up.
“It’s weird that they’ve latched on to Nicole,” I said. “Maybe she should just stop posting stuff. Or ignore them. It’s just words; it’s not like it matters.”
Jaz gave me a “Jaz” look, which reminded me that Jaz is really very scary sometimes, and that even though she and I were on fairly good terms at the moment, it was probably better if I continued being a little bit careful in her company.
It also made me think that any troll who dared take her on would be a total idiot, because while a troll is a troll, Jaz is Jaz.
Meanwhile, IRL, Nicole was squirting white junk out of her ear, and Finlay was burping up his breakfast and trying to make us guess what he’d eaten, which made me feel sicker than ever.
So I shut my eyes and lay back, and I tried and failed to think of a song.
Take it from me, you don’t want to be doing English homework and simultaneously trying to write a world-conquering hit single. Unless, maybe, the hit single is about English homework, but I sent the idea to Tony and got a single-word reply. A word that began with an n and ended with an o.
Still, at least I had my best friend to turn to for support. “I am so stressed right now,” I said.
We were digesting a particularly grim school lunch, I’d just finished a guitar lesson, and we were sitting on the radiators along the top floor hallway. It’s nice up there. The radiators mean it’s warm even in winter, and there’s a really good view. Only of the parking lot, but still, a parking lot is better than a brick wall. Which is about as much as you can see from the lower hallway, where we’d sat in sixth grade.
It was sad that I knew without even having to ask that Tony wouldn’t let me release a song about hallways.
“What’s there to be stressed about?” said Lacey, who was rocking a particularly breezy look. She’d clipped her bangs back and rolled down her sock to display the bronze ankle bracelet we’d found on our last trip to the thrift store. “Chill out. It’s summer, babes.”
“Babes?” I repeated. “Babes is a Savannah word.”
“Well, anyway, it’s summer,” said Lacey. “Which is the least stressful time of year.”
“Unless you have a sunburn.”
“I don’t get sunburnt.”
“Or chafing,” I said.
“I told you, stick some talc in there.”
“And tests.”
“I’m not thinking about that.”
“Then what about wasps, Lacey? I can just about maybe believe you’re not as sweaty as I am and that maybe your epic-level test denial is keeping you from freaking out, but you have an extreme phobia of wasps!”
“I’m over it.”
This did not seem likely, since, last year on field day, Lacey had been chased by a wasp in the four-hundred-meter race and had set a new school record. Which was really something, given that she hadn’t even been in the race.
“I thought we were all about winter,” I said. “You know. With the Christmas carols and pies. And big coats!”
“Savannah says I’ve got a great back,” said Lacey. “You can’t show off your back in a big coat.”
I took a moment to consider Lacey’s back. From what I could remember, it was just a normal back. Which I told her.
“Actually,” said Lacey, looking a little offended, “Sav says it’s way better than average. I don’t have pimples or back fat, and my shoulders are this perfect ratio to the rest of me. I’m thinking I might go backless to the school dance. Show it off a little.”
“Right.”
“Katie, are you being unsupportive of my back?”
“No. I love your back. I’m its biggest fan. Second biggest, after Savannah.”
“Good.”
There was a silence. “We have so much work right now,” I said. “I just feel like however much I do, I should be doing more.”
“Then why aren’t you working now?” Lacey wanted to know. “You could go to the library.”
Which wasn’t the point. “It’s the idea of working that I find so hard. It’s all this invisible pressure.”
“Seriously,” said Lacey. “If you want to go, I won’t stop you.”
“Plus, I can’t seem to think of a new song. I just spent a whole entire guitar lesson with Jill trying to come up with something, and nothing happened, and nothing happened, and then I finally had this idea, but when I tried it out, Jill said I was playing the verses of ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ and the chorus of ‘Empire State of Mind.’”
Was it my imagination, or did Lacey very slightly roll her eyes?
It was my imagination. Of course it was. Because then she said, “Let’s write one now. We could call it…‘By the Radiators.’”
“Er, no.”
“‘Looking Down into the Parking Lot’?”
“Lace, it’s okay. No one wants you to write it for me,” I said. And for some reason I couldn’t even begin to understand, she twitched and looked away.
I searched around my brain for things to cheer us both up a little. Usually, the inside of my head is like my bedroom floor, filled with interesting items if you can just find them underneath all the junk. Today, though, there was pretty much nothing.
Nothing except for Dad.
Ever since the phone call, the word had been going around my head like a drumbeat.
Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad.
And—well, you get it.
I was desperate to tell Lacey, crazy eager to talk about it with someone who’d understand. Not Mands. She’d been down on Dad ever since he had gone to America, even though he’d had no choice, because work is work, plus, America is awesome.
And telling Mom…well, to be completely honest, I was still working up to that.
But my best friend would understand, wouldn’t she? Lacey knew the whole entire history of the divorce. She’d even been lucky enough to witness a couple of the arguments. Which is, I guess, what had stopped me from saying anything so far. Lace completely got it, of course she did, but if there was even a chance that she’d be anything less than totally excited for me, then it wasn’t a conversation I was particularly interested in having.
But she would be. Of course she would be. She’d met him. And now she’d be seeing him again. Maybe he’d even take us out for dinner…
“Dad’s coming home,” I said, just as Lacey said, “Savannah’s dad’s hiring a pink stretch limo to take us to the Karamel concert.”
“What? That is so tacky.” Maybe it was better to leave the family stuff for the moment.
“Yeah. And we’re getting majorly dressed up first at Paige’s house.”
“What a hassle.”
A group of boys from our class walked by. A group that included Dominic Preston, who is extremely good-looking.
He gave me a smile, and I fell
off the radiator.
“Keep walking please. Nothing to see here,” said Lacey, picking me up from the floor.
He laughed and continued down the hall.
“Now that is an above-average back,” I said, dusting off various pieces of hallway dirt that had stuck to my skirt.
“Katie!” said Lacey. “Are you in love with Dominic Preston? Whoa, are you going to ask him to the dance?”
“He is extremely good-looking,” I admitted.
“I thought we promised to fall in love at the same time so that we could talk about it together.”
We had agreed about this when we were eleven, and falling in love had been as academic as something that was actually academic, like trigonometry. I think we’d even pinkie promised, which is embarrassing, partly because I don’t like to break that kind of thing, and also, pinkie promises are extremely cringeworthy.
“I cannot control my heart,” I told Lacey.
“So you are in love with him! That is so unfair! Who am I supposed to fall in love with?”
“You’re basically in love with Savannah,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Um, Devi Lester? Finlay? You could totally go to the dance with Finlay.”
“Finlay smells like pickled onion rings.”
“And do you find that attractive in a guy?”
“No!”
I did, for a second, wonder what it was that I found attractive in Dominic Preston and whether I really was in love with him. There was his extremely good-looking face, of course, a sort of biggish nose and gray-blue eyes. And his mouth was the right size for a mouth. Not small, like Finlay’s, with his little nibbly rabbit teeth. And not huge and flappy, like Devi Lester’s. Kissing Devi Lester would be genuinely hazardous. He’d probably get most of your face in there. You’d be at risk of losing your chin. Kissing Dominic Preston, though… What would that be like? He was a smiley kind of a person, so it would maybe be really fun. Probably he’d make a joke, and then I’d laugh and he’d smile.
Having him get really close, though…maybe even sticking his tongue in my mouth…hmm. I probably did want him to, but not as much as I wanted the green suede sling-back pumps I’d seen last week at River Island.
Katie Cox vs. the Boy Band Page 3