Chart Topper

by D. M. Paige

  “Hi, I’m Paloma.”

  Oh well.

  SEVEN

  I wasn’t great at making new friends, but Paloma was super friendly. She was from New Mexico, and she was doing an internship at a fashion magazine in the city.

  “It’s just an internship, but if I do well, I think I’ll get to come back next summer. Or maybe I’ll try a different magazine. The important thing is that I’m making connections. I want to write. And one day I’ll be writing for them or someone like them.” She talked fast, so fast that I half-expected her to have to catch her breath when she paused. But she didn’t seem to need to breathe. “What about you?”

  I was surprised by her confidence. I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t get to have the thing that I knew deep down I wanted. I would never be a singer. Except like my mom, in the shower and at church. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy the summer.

  I told her I was working at Bonified in A&R.

  “What does A&R stand for, anyway?” she asked, her face lit up with curiosity. As much as she talked, she also liked to listen.

  “Everyone thinks it stands for artists and recording—or artists and records—but it’s artists and repertoire, which a fancy way of saying that A&R handles everything that an artist does, from publishing rights to recording. Everything that the label does for the artist from the second they sign to the second they get released.” I hadn’t known what A&R stood for until after I got Harmon Holt’s blue letter and looked it up.

  “Cool,” Paloma said. “So do you want to be a big-time music exec or something?”

  I shrugged. “I sing, a little.”

  “Like what kind of stuff? Hip-hop, R&B, pop?”

  “Like R&B, I guess.”

  I wrote about everything. Boys I liked at school who didn’t know I was alive. Girls who annoyed me like Michelle. Friends like Mercedes who made life at Clinton bearable.

  “Cool, you’re going to rule the music world and I’m going to rule fashion.”

  She pulled a box that smelled like sugar out of her bag.

  “My mom makes the best sugar cookies.”

  I reached out and took my first bite of sugar in ages. I looked out the window, which faced a little New York park. Could life get any sweeter?

  EIGHT

  Bonified took up an entire office building. It was in the middle of downtown New York, overlooking the Hudson River. The security guard downstairs sent me up to the top floor, where J. T. Lane, CEO of Bonified, ruled over his empire.

  The building was thirty stories high. If I wasn’t nervous before, I was after the elevator ride, which took half the length of a song from one of the label’s major artists: Pippa. Pippa was just a year older than me, and she already had two hit albums. And she was already one of those stars that just went by one name, like Beyoncé or Mariah. Her music was the kind of stuff that got stuck in your head even if you didn’t want it there. And she was known for elaborate stage shows and costumes, like Gaga and Nicki Minaj. Lately, she’d been sporting blue hair—which somehow looked amazing on her. Her skin tone was the same honeyed brown as mine. But I wouldn’t caught dead in blue hair. Of course, I wasn’t known for taking fashion risks. Right now, I felt super uncomfortable, having given up my usual uniform of jeans and a T-shirt for a pleated skirt and a blouse that my mom had bought for me so I would look ­presentable.

  When I stepped out of the elevator there was guy waiting for me next to the receptionist’s desk.

  “Hi, I’m Malik, J. T.’s assistant.”

  Malik looked like a younger version of that English rapper I always forgot the name of, Lil’ Sean or Dr. Sean or something. He was wearing a striped button-down shirt and dark blue jeans and Converse. I hoped that meant that I was allowed to wear jeans too.

  Malik looked young. But not as young as me. I wondered if he’d started out as an intern too.

  He shook my hand and led me through the automatic frosted-glass double doors and into the Bonified offices.

  I was expecting some kind of supermodern offices, but instead it looked like a fancy hotel with wingback chairs and French furniture and silvery brocade-y wallpaper. But up close, you could see the wallpaper had little tiny record players all over it. And the portraits that lined the wall were of the label’s biggest stars.

  “Not what you were expecting, huh?” Malik offered. I nodded. “The first time I got here, I thought I was walking into a museum. But J. T. says that he likes the classic stuff, because one day what he’s making will be considered masterpieces, too.”

  I almost laughed. Pippa’s latest single was called “Papercut My Heart.” Catchy, but I wasn’t sure I’d call it a masterpiece. I wondered if you had to have a huge ego to work in this business. Malik didn’t seem to. But he was still an assistant.

  He pushed into the heavy walnut door that led to J. T.’s office. J. T. sat behind his desk, poring over something on his iPad.

  J. T. Lane looked exactly like what I thought a music producer would look like. He looked beyond cool. And expensive. Everything had a label I recognized—Fendi glasses, Polo shirt. His own one-of-a-kind Nike sneakers peeked out from under the heavy wood desk.

  “J. T., this is our new intern. The one that Harmon sent. Beth, this is J. T.”

  He started speaking even before I could say hi.

  “Usually we don’t take high school kids. They lack the maturity to handle what we do here. Their feelings get hurt. I am not a ­babysitter.”

  I almost laughed. I was a really old sixteen. I’d been taking care of myself and my mom for as long as I could remember.

  “So there will be ground rules to make this work.”

  I nodded.

  “Consider yourself an invisible person. Only speak when spoken to. I say jump …” He paused.

  “I say, ‘How high?’” I guessed.

  “Wrong. Trick question. Remember the first rule—”

  “Only speak when spoken to,” I said. Technically, he had spoken to me, but I wasn’t going to point that out.

  “I think she’s got it,” Malik jumped in, in a tone that seemed to say, “Cool, it J. T., she’s a kid.”

  J. T. looked up, surprised, like Malik didn’t unusually interrupt him. He almost looked embarrassed. Almost.

  “Malik will get you settled,” he said and became interested in his iPad. It looked like the digital issue of Rolling Stone. Pippa was on the cover. She was the label’s hottest artist right now.

  I wanted to tell him that talking too much had never been a problem for me. But that would require speaking again.

  “So Harmon says you’re the next Beyoncé or something,” he said, looking me up and down as if trying to see what Harmon was talking about.

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “I don’t know about that either, and I don’t want to know until after the internship is over. So keep the demo CD in your pocket until the summer is over.”

  “I wasn’t going to try to hand you anything,” I said honestly.

  “Then maybe you don’t belong in this ­business.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I will say no, but you should always, always be trying.”

  I walked away feeling more confused than ever.

  NINE

  Malik gave me the grand tour. Every floor had a purpose. Publicity, social media, accounting. He told me I was lucky because I’d spend most of my time in with J. T.

  The label was its own universe. It had its own cafeteria and coffee shop and juice bar. It actually had its own in-house recording studio. He saved that for last.

  “How do you feel about Pippa?” he asked as he pushed open the door to the studio’s control room.

  The recording light was on outside the door to the sound booth. He put his finger to his lips, so I couldn’t respond that I had every single song. And that I’d even covered a few and put them up on YouTube.

  Through the glass of the recording studio, I could see Pippa. The Pippa. But Pippa wa
s in the middle of a tantrum.

  I have never thrown a tantrum in my life. And I’d never seen anyone over the age of three throw one. But Pippa was throwing a tantrum. Her pretty face was red. Her arms were flailing. And she literally was stomping her six-inch heels.

  She stopped suddenly and flashed me a big smile as Malik opened the door to the sound booth. She straightened up to her full height and towered even further over me.

  “Do you know who you are?” the words spilled out of my mouth. The last thing I wanted to be was to be the super fangirl.

  Pippa laughed. “I do. Do you know who you are?”

  I was hoping that when I finally met her I would play it cool, like it was no big deal. But I totally failed.

  I paused a couple of seconds, but she said nothing.

  Pippa actually wanted to know who I was.

  “Me, I’m nobody—I mean, I’m Beth.” I looked up at her pretty face. She was so calm now, and I was the complete opposite. She was the first famous person I’d ever met.

  “Nice to meet you, not-nobody. No one on my team is a nobody.”

  TEN

  J. T. announced his presence by growling, “Blair, don’t disturb the talent.”

  “Beth’s not disturbing me, J. T. Don’t be so rude.” She turned back to me, but she spoke louder for J. T.’s benefit. “He thinks that being a jerk gives him power. I think it’s because he was some super shy kid who never talked, and now he’s trying to make up for it.”

  She could have been describing me. Only I hadn’t made up for my shyness. I glanced at J. T., who was smiling, but I knew he was seething underneath. I couldn’t see another, younger J. T. who was nerdy or shy. I figured he was born like this—cocky and sure of everything. Right now he was probably wishing that he had never hired me.

  Malik put his hand on my shoulder, reminding me that it was time to go. I tried to snap out of fan mode. I waved to Pippa, who smiled at me and let Malik push me back out the door.

  “Was I as bad as I think I was?” I asked.

  He laughed. “The first time I met Drake, I actually quoted one of his rhymes to him.”

  “What did he say?” I asked, feeling a little better already. Malik had a way of putting me at ease even though I barely knew him.

  “He did the same thing Pippa did. He laughed and smiled. Pippa’s used to people turning to mush around her. It’s okay.”

  I wondered what it would be like to have people get tripped up just meeting me. I couldn’t imagine it.

  “Come on, I’ll show you the gym,” he said before taking off down the hall.

  “You have your own gym?” I asked, wondering if this place could get any more fabulous.

  ELEVEN

  The next day I made a point of getting to work ten minutes early. I didn’t want to be late.

  Malik walked me through my responsibilities. I would follow him through the day as he followed J. T.

  “The rest we’ll make up as we go along.”

  J. T. had a breakfast meeting with his VP of social media. Malik took notes on his tablet.

  I was there to listen and to go fetch anything that J. T. wanted.

  The social media guy looked like he wasn’t much older than us, but it was like he was ­speaking a whole other language. I knew about Twitter and YouTube and Facebook, but he talked about them like they weren’t just for fun. They were another way to measure and predict how an artist’s album would do. Pippa had millions of followers, and they were active. J. T. looked down at the numbers and seemed more than pleased. It was boring and fascinating all at once.

  Malik got a text from the recording studio and whispered to me, “Head down to the studio and get her whatever she wants.”

  “Get who whatever she wants?” I asked.

  “Pippa,” he said it like it was no big deal.

  “And what do you think she’ll want?” I asked, not wanting to see another one of Pippa’s tantrums.

  “Relax, you’ll be fine,” he whispered, turning his attention back to J. T.

  I tiptoed out of the room, not completely sure. What if she threw a phone at me, or worse?

  When I got to the recording studio, Pippa wasn’t throwing anything. She was sitting calmly on her stool, looking at her sheet music. But her sound engineer, Mike, didn’t look happy. He looked almost like he was going to cry.

  “What is it? What is she doing?” I asked Mike.

  The sound guy shook his head. “Nothing. She won’t sing.”

  “What does she want?”

  He shook his head again.

  “No clue. She’s not talking to me either. Good luck. I’m going to go get a coffee.”

  He walked out.

  I took a deep breath and entered the sound booth.

  Apparently there was something worse than Pippa screaming. It was Pippa not talking at all.

  She studied me for a beat as if trying to place me.

  “I’m Beth. I heard that you might need something.”

  She didn’t answer. She kept staring at me.

  “Can I get you anything? Water, coffee, Coco-water—”

  She was the poster girl for Coco-water, one of those fancy bottled-water drinks, and whenever she wasn’t photographed holding a giant Frappuccino, she was carrying a bottle of Coco-water.

  “Can I tell you a secret? I hate Coco-water.”

  I almost gasped, but I pursed my lips together instead.

  She leaned closer to me, whispering again. “And J. T. didn’t discover me singing in the subway, either. J. T. doesn’t even take the subway. It was a casting call, and I was the lucky girl.”

  I gasped for real this time. I’d read about Pippa getting discovered with her guitar on the subway. I’d even tacked up an article of her talking about it over my desk back home. I got that she was making money off of the ads—but why not pick something she liked? And the other lie didn’t seem worth it. I was a terrible liar myself. I couldn’t keep up with stupid fake details like that.

  Pippa seemed to read my outrage on my face. “It makes me seem more like a real girl,” she quipped.

  “Don’t you want the fans to know the real you?”

  She laughed again. “You really are completely new to all this, aren’t you?”

  I nodded, feeling self-conscious.

  “It’s a persona—it sells. I’m a brand, not a person,” she rolled on.

  “You’re more than that. I’ve been listening to your music. It means a lot to a lot of people.”

  She shrugged, looking unsure for the first time since I’d met her.

  “Can you get Mike back in here? I think I’m ready to sing now.”

  “Sure.”

  I raced out, smiling a little. I had talked down my first star. But I felt a little bad, too. It’s not like I could pity her, exactly. I mean, she had everything, right?

  TWELVE

  No one was using the recording studio. I was supposed to be cleaning up after Pippa left. But my eyes got stuck on the microphone in the center of the recording booth. I couldn’t not stand in front of it. It might be the same mic that Beyoncé or Usher or Christina Aguilera sang their first big hit on.

  I caught a glimmer of my own reflection in the glass of the sound booth. And something else.

  Malik was standing in front of the soundboard. I stopped singing and stepped away from the mic.

  “Nice pipes,” he said.

  “I was just …”

  “Don’t stop on my account.” He was ­smiling.

  The spell was broken for me. I couldn’t sing in front of him. I couldn’t sing in front of anyone. I rushed over to where Pippa had left her water bottle and song sheet and picked them up.

  “I know he gave you the whole don’t-give-me-your-work thing. He comes on hard. But he’s good to his people. I started out an intern too.”

  I wasn’t sure if I believed him about J. T. I thought maybe he was just trying to make me feel better.

  “You did amazing with Pippa yesterday. She
doesn’t usually respond that well to anyone. She went through the whole session without stopping once. Which is kind of a miracle for Pippa.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t think I deserve the credit.”

  He shrugged.

  “I didn’t think she’d be so …” I searched for the right word.

  Malik tried to fill in the blank. “Crazy?”

  I shook my head. “Unsatisfied.”

  THIRTEEN

  “Everyone out!” Pippa’s voice filled the room as she screamed into the mic in the recording studio the next day.

  I’d been bringing Pippa a glass of regular, non-Coco water, when she suddenly began ­yelling.

  “Everyone out,” she repeated.

  I stood for a second like a deer in headlights, not sure whether I should deliver the water first.

  The sound guy, Mike, gave me a look that said I should save myself. He held the door open for me behind him as he exited.

  “Hey, Beth.”

  She remembered my name. I turned around.

  “Stay.”

  I walked back to her.

  “I just wanted to listen to the track on my own,” she said quietly. She wanted me to listen to it with her. She sat at the soundboard, and her song filled the little room. I sat down, not really sure what she was doing.

  It was just her voice; the instruments would be added back in later. It sounded pure and great and happier than the girl in front of me, who was frowning at the sound of her own voice.

  When the song finished, she said, “You were honest with me the other day. I need you to be honest with me again. What do you think, really think, of my song? Because I think it sucks.”

  “Your voice is so amazing. It sounds even better than it does on your album,” I began.

  She sighed as if she already knew that about her voice, “Not my voice. The song. And be honest. I can take it.”

  What could I say? Did I tell her the truth? Malik had praised me for getting Pippa to calm down yesterday, but if I told her the truth, she’d be the opposite of calm.