Chart Topper

by D. M. Paige

  Text copyright © 2013 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

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  Cover and interior photographs © Jason Stitt/Dreamstime.com (girl);

  © iStockphoto.com/Jordan McCullough (title texture).

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 12/17.

  Typeface provided by Linotype AG.

  The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for Chart Topper is on file at the Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 978–1–4677–1370–2 (LB)

  ISBN: 978–1–4677–1672–7 (EB)

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 – SB – 7/15/13

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-1370-2 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-3333-5 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-3332-8 (mobi)

  In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.

  —Bill Cosby

  Dear Ms. Beth Thorne:

  Welcome to the Harmon Holt internship program.

  You will be spending the summer interning with Bonified Records, one of the most successful music recording companies of all time.

  The recording industry is changing rapidly, and the artist is becoming more and more responsible for his or her success. While you have much to learn about the business from the label, they also have much to learn from you as an artist yourself. My team and I had the pleasure of viewing your YouTube videos—your songs and your voice made quite the impression. We would like the opportunity to foster your talent—and to be there at the start of your very promising career.

  It may be hard to see it now, but the distance between me and you is hard work and opportunity. I am giving you the opportunity. The rest is up to you.

  Good luck,

  Harmon Holt

  ONE

  I was sitting in the library, checking my e-mail, when it happened. I heard my song. I tried to ignore it. It had to be some kind of coincidence. But then another person started humming, too. And another. And another.

  Mrs. Jane, the librarian, was not pleased. She stood up from her desk and frowned over the class. It was study hall. We were all supposed to be researching our last paper of the year for English. But most of us were distracted by e-mails, games, and YouTube.

  I clicked my screen back to a search on themes in Romeo and Juliet for my paper. And I prayed for the humming to stop.

  “Who’s doing that?” she demanded, putting her hands on her hips.

  “Ask Beth. It’s her song,” said Michelle Morris, one of the popular kids. She was captain of our school’s cheer squad, the star of every school play and musical, prom queen …. Michelle was high school royalty. She smiled a big smile and turned her computer screen to share it with Mrs. Jane and the rest of the class. It was me. My video on YouTube. Me singing one of my songs.

  It was my little secret. I would tape the songs that I wrote and put them up. I didn’t use my name. I used “Girl with a Guitar.” I figured no one from school would ever know. It was fun. It was mine. It seemed like such a good idea until this very second.

  I’d managed to stay off of Michelle’s radar through most of high school. We were juniors now, and she probably had said maybe five words to me since were little kids. Michelle was a bit of a mean girl. But she usually only picked on girls her own size—girls who held as much clout in the halls of Clinton High as she did. Like her feud with Tamara Kim, her cocaptain on the cheer squad, or her Twitter war with Stephy Jenkins, the girl who beat her for homecoming queen last year.

  Looking at the screen, I wondered if maybe she was confusing me with one of those girls. I looked like a totally different person on-screen. Sure, I had the same brown hair, cropped short like Rihanna’s was a few years back, and the same brown eyes and skin. But I was different. Singing at the top of my voice, beaming out at the web camera. I was never like that at school. I was quiet. Shy even. My classmates were leaning in like they were surprised to see this other me too.

  Mrs. Jane, thankfully, turned off the screen. “Ms. Thorne is very talented, but now is not the time or the place.”

  The class laughed. I just wasn’t sure if it was with or at me. I looked for Mercedes’s reaction. She was my BFF, and she was sitting in the front row of computers. But she was facing forward, away from me.

  The bell rang, and everyone began filing out of the library. Mercedes sat down beside me after everyone else moved on. Her backpack dropped in a heap beside me. I read the face that I knew almost as well as my own. She was half-excited, half-mad.

  Excited because she liked what she heard, and mad because she hadn’t heard it before everyone else.

  “I’m never going to live this down, am I?” I sighed.

  “I hope not,” she said.

  I looked up, surprised.

  “Your song was so good. I knew you sang, but you took it to a whole other level. When did you get so good, and how could you not let me know? How could you hide that? Why didn’t you tell us?” Mercedes said in a rush.

  I shrugged. “I thought no one would ever see it.”

  “But you put it on the Internet! Wasn’t that the point?”

  She had a point. Maybe I did want people to see. But not like this.

  “You really think it was good?” I asked again, needing to know. If anyone in the world would be honest with me, it would be Mercedes.

  Mercedes looked me directly in the eye, like she was making a point of being serious. She said her words slowly, like she really wanted me to understand.

  “I would think it was good even if you weren’t my girl.”

  Then she paused and bit her lip. “Did you see Michelle’s face? She was totally hating on you.”

  “So …”

  “She’s jealous, because you sing better than her.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. But I found myself smiling. Michelle had starred in every school musical from The Wiz to Les Miserables. Her voice was way prettier than her personality.

  “I do. Do you know the difference between you and Michelle?”

  “Everything.”

  “She thinks she’s more talented than she actually is, and you’re the exact opposite. You don’t have a clue how good you are.”

  I opened my mouth to protest. But Mercedes was already back up on her feet. She gave me a quick hug and skipped out of the library.

  I started to gather my backpack and books, but then I noticed I had new e-mail from an address I’d never seen before.

  It was a request for a video chat.

  TWO

  A video chat window popped up on screen. There was a guy who looked like a male model. He was so tall, dark, and handsome that he looked like he should be on the cover of a magazine or something, not talking to me on my tiny computer screen. He was holding a piece of blue paper.

  “Hi, Beth. I’m James, one of Harmon Holt’s assistants. You’ll be getting a copy of this in the mail. But Harmon wanted you to hear about it right away.”

  Harmon Holt? The Harmon Holt. The multibillion-dollar mogul behind all kinds of media and business ventures. Why would he—or his really, really hot assistant—be video messaging me? I looked around. Was this some kind of joke? Maybe Michelle orchestrated it. She didn’t like me. But this se
emed like too much even for her.

  The guy on-screen began to read in a deep voice, “‘Dear Ms. Thorne, Welcome to the Harmon Holt internship program.

  “‘You will be spending the summer interning with Bonified Records, one of the most successful music recording companies of all time …. My team and I had the pleasure of viewing your YouTube videos—your songs and your voice made quite the impression. We would like the opportunity to foster your talent and to be there at the start of your very promising career.’ And it’s signed, ‘Good luck, Harmon Holt.’”

  The cute guy looked up from the letter and looked right into the camera. “I see you accept. I’ll see you next week in New York.”

  The screen went blank. I sat back in my chair.

  New York. Bonified Records! There was no way this was true. It was one of those crazy ­Internet scams where they follow up and ask you to send money to Nigerian princes or something. It wasn’t my real life.

  But five seconds later, Mrs. Jane looked at me and said, “Oh, good you’re still here. The guidance counselor wants to see you. Don’t worry it’s not a bad thing.”

  I followed her out. This couldn’t be real, could it?

  THREE

  “I don’t understand. There are tons of kids who are in the music program. Why me and not them?” I asked as I sat in front of Ms. Hamilton’s desk in her office.

  Clinton High was known for its arts programs, but I was there for its academics. I was a good student. But I wasn’t one of those kids that it came easily to. I had to study hard for every single A. But it was worth it. All the work was paying off, and I was on track to get into a good state school. The music thing was something I did on my own time. I wasn’t good in front of crowds, and the musical-theater kids were really good at being in front of people. So I wasn’t one of them. And no matter what Mercedes said about Michelle, I wasn’t really a threat to her because I would never, ever get on stage at our school.

  Mrs. Hamilton was super excited for me. She clapped her hands together and handed me the blue letter. A copy of the same one I had seen on the video.

  “Your video came to the attention of Mr. Holt. He feels like you are the perfect ­candidate.”

  “How?”

  “Mr. Holt works in mysterious ways. It’s a tremendous opportunity, Beth. Remember how we talked about having a well-rounded resume for college applications? This internship, your music would actually be the perfect thing to make you that much more attractive to colleges. This is a win-win for you.”

  I left the office, holding the letter tight in my hands. I stuffed it into my notebook and carried it around with me all day, reading it and rereading it to make sure that it was actually real.

  FOUR

  Asking my mom if I could spend the summer in New York on my own was like asking her if I could go to the moon.

  But I had to ask.

  Mom was still wearing her nurse’s scrubs. She looked tired from pulling the late shift. She sat down in a chair at our kitchen table.

  She took off her ugly white nurse’s shoes. They looked comfortable, but Mom said that after ten hours nothing was comfortable. I heated up the dinner I’d made for her in the microwave and put it in front of her.

  Mom pushed the chicken around on her plate before taking a bite. It wasn’t that she didn’t like my cooking. It was that she wasn’t a fan of healthy food. Mom had been on a low-salt, low-sugar diet since she found out she was prediabetic last year.

  “It tastes better than it looks. I promise.”

  She took a bite. And finally broke into a smile.

  “Not bad, but not as good as my chocolate cake.”

  Chocolate cake had been off the menu at our house for over a year now. I ate whatever Mom ate, or didn’t. We had both lost five pounds since she started the diet. Only I didn’t really need to. Unlike my mom, who was all curves, I didn’t have any.

  “Mom—something happened at school ­today.”

  “I know. I already got a call from your ­counselor.”

  “I want to go.”

  “Of course you want to go. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea. I see girls your age in the ER every night.”

  “Mom, I know, but I’ll be careful. I’ll just go to my internship and back to the dorm. My counselor says it will increase my chances for a scholarship.”

  “I thought music was just a hobby?” She said it like it was an order, not a question. And it kind of was.

  “It is.”

  It hurt to call it that, but Mom was right. I had to be realistic. My mom could sing, too. Her voice might even be better than mine. But she only sang in church and in the shower.

  “I don’t want you getting any big ideas in your head, B. The plan is college. I’ve seen way too many girls take detours with big dreams and small ones.”

  I nodded. Mom wanted me to go to school and study something serious like law or medicine. Something that she was sure I could get a job in and succeed. She didn’t want me to get sidetracked. And I didn’t want me to get sidetracked either. But I wasn’t dropping out of school to sing in nightclubs. I was going to spend the summer at a major record label, learning the business and beefing up my resume. If anything, it would help Mom’s realistic dreams for me.

  “But having something like this on my college application, it might make a difference. There will be an RA on the hall I’m staying in in the dorm. And I’ll have my phone. Mom, please.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  It wasn’t a no. And, knowing Mom, it was probably as close to yes as she could get. I gave her a hug.

  A few minutes later, I picked up the phone to call Mercedes. I held the phone away from my ear because she was screaming so loud.

  FIVE

  When I got to school, everyone had heard about it. Or, rather, Mercedes had told everyone.

  “I heard she got a record deal in New York,” someone said as I rounded the corner to algebra.

  “I heard it was L.A. and that she’s dropping out of school to do it,” someone else said as I slammed the door of my locker before English.

  I wasn’t good at getting a lot of attention. But by sixth period I’d had like ten people congratulate me. Most of them looked beyond surprised that I would have anything to do with the music business. The rest had seen my video. Mercedes was enjoying it a lot more than I was.

  “You’re already a star,” Mercedes said, linking her arm through mine and sounding way more sure than I felt.

  “It’s just for college applications. I am not going to be a star. I’m going to be getting coffee and making copies for people who make stars.”

  “Keep telling yourself that,” Mercedes said, clearly not believing me.

  In English class, Michelle was playing my song again. Or, rather, singing. She definitely was making fun of me.

  I opened my notebook and looked at the letter again. I didn’t say anything. It was enough to know I was going.

  SIX

  A week later, an SUV picked me up from the airport after my very first flight. There had been some turbulence, and I had held onto my seat’s armrest for dear life while the other passengers continued to drink their beverages and ignored the seat belt warning light. I was shakier now as the SUV drove into the city and the buildings I’d seen my whole life on TV cropped up beside the car. I was in New York City!

  The TV screen behind the driver’s seat suddenly came to life. Harmon Holt’s assistant’s pretty face filled the screen. I jumped up in my seat.

  The driver announced a little too late that the car was equipped with videoconferencing. And that I had a call.

  “Hello, Beth. James here. I help Mr. Holt with everything,” Harmon’s assistant explained as I recovered from the surprise of the TV screen talking to me.

  “Hi, James,” I said, waving at the screen. Then I put my hand down, feeling a little silly about the wave.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there. I’m in Beijing with Mr. Holt on urgent business.
But you have all my contact info, and if you have any problems at all, please don’t hesitate to contact us. I’ll e-mail you all my information.”

  “Thanks,” I said as James disappeared and the screen went back to black.

  I took a water from the SUV’s minibar and took a massive gulp. I guessed this was how people in Harmon Holt’s world lived. I reminded myself not to get used to it. I was just visiting.

  A few minutes later, I was in my home for the next three months: the tenth floor of NYU’s dorms. The dorms were mostly full of college students. But two floors were reserved for high school kids who had internships in the city. There were two beds and two desks. Someone had already been there. There was an open suitcase and a pink bedspread on the bed closest to the window. I took the other bed and began unpacking my stuff.

  A guy who looked a few years older than me knocked on my door.

  “You must be Beth. I’m Tom. I’ll be your summer resident adviser. Anything I can help with?”

  I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

  I was surprised that my resident advisor was a boy. Mom would not be thrilled. The dorm and the floor were coed.

  “Bathrooms are down the hall. They’re cleaned daily, but I’d still recommend shower shoes. We’ll have a floor meeting tonight and once a week. Everyone has dorm duties so that we can get to know each other. I know that everyone’s doing their own thing this summer, but I want you to think of this place as your home base. The other kids here are going out there every day to their internships, too, so they actually might be the best ones to talk to about what it’s like to be an intern.”

  “Sounds good. Thanks.”

  He nodded and shut the door behind him.

  I sank down on my bed. I’d make it up later. Now I just needed a moment of peace to get used to … whatever this was.

  A few seconds later, my lock turned and a pretty, dark-haired girl entered.