Katie Cox Goes Viral

by Marianne Levy

  “Good.” She was still looking at her phone.

  “Um, what time are you getting to Savannah’s?”

  “Around eleven.”

  Eleven? Eleven was when I would be going home. I tried not to let this show on my face as I said, “Okay, cool, yeah. I might be there a little earlier, but not much. Late nights and pop stars don’t mix.”

  “Yeah they do,” said Jaz.

  “Just, you know, with the single coming out and everything…”

  Jaz did this epic sigh. “All right, fine. Play it.”

  Another corner, and now we were on the fast part of the road heading up to school, where all the trees hang low over the road, and three years ago a piece of the bus roof got caught on one and came off. There were pictures all over the Harltree Gazette. I hadn’t thought about it at all since then, but I did now. Because presumably I’d be on the front of the Harltree Gazette again soon. I was just as exciting as a low tree. Maybe even more so.

  Except…

  “They still haven’t sent it to me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, wishing I’d had the idea to ask at the time. “I’m probably going in again soon though, to talk about the album and the tour and everything. They must be waiting for that.”

  “When?” Funny how when I wanted Jaz to listen, she never would. But the very second we got into stuff that I would rather have left alone, she grabbed and hung on and wouldn’t let go, like when the next-door neighbor’s dog got under the fence and dug up the body of Amanda’s hamster.

  “They haven’t said. Soon. It’s got to be soon. At the meeting, Tony said time was really important. We have to keep up the momentum. You know how it is.”

  And then we got to school or, to give its real title, Savannah’s Pre-Party Warm-Up Zone.

  And if I’d had someone to get ready with later, then maybe I’d have been excited too.

  Me and Lacey were so good at getting ready for parties. The getting ready part was always the best part too. Having Lace do my liquid eyeliner with flicky bits curling up at the ends and me gluing fake eyelashes onto her and once pretending one was a spider so she screamed and covered us both with a bowl of veggie chips. Trying on every last thing in whoever’s house we were at, or dancing to Beyoncé in our heels and tights.

  I wasn’t going to let this…thing go on any longer, I decided. Being a celebrity was a lonely business, and I didn’t want to end up in a humongous mansion all on my own, collecting shoes I couldn’t walk in and probably having a ton of plastic surgery because there wouldn’t be anyone around to tell me I shouldn’t.

  I’d figure it out at the party. Whether she wanted to or not.

  • • •

  As it turned out, I did have someone to get ready with. A brown furry thing that came scuttling across the floor while I was trying to squeeze myself into Amanda’s green dress. For a second, I thought it was a huge spider, and then I realized it was either a mouse or a baby rat and that this was both better and also worse. Especially when I then saw a spider two minutes later hanging next to the door.

  I pulled on my sparkly tights. It certainly was quicker, getting ready this way. Even the curly eyeliner worked on the first try. I hadn’t gotten to the end of “Single Ladies,” and I was hot to trot.

  Then, because it was still only seven thirty and Jaz had made it clear that arriving at a party in the first hour is literally the most embarrassing thing anyone can do, I sat back down on my bed and contemplated going downstairs for something to eat. There were definitely fish sticks in the kitchen, and I thought I remembered a half dozen eggs too. Not quite the chocolate fountains and cotton candy and personalized pizzas that the rest of my classmates were currently enjoying for dinner. But then, like Jaz said, you don’t go to a party to eat. Or have fun.

  Exactly what you do go to a party for, she hadn’t said.

  I emptied out my backpack and started pouring it into my evening bag, which was by far the best thing I’d ever found in Harltree’s secondhand store. A little, black, shiny leather purse with a real metal chain, far too small to take anything more than my phone and wallet, which made it completely impractical but also really lovely. I was just pushing everything else into a pile when I saw some gold writing. A piece of card. Tony’s card. With his phone number on it.

  And then the feeling that had been nagging me since my conversation with Jaz came creeping back.

  Why hadn’t Tony sent me my single? Especially when playing it at the party would make everything work out right, once and for all.

  All right, not quite everything.

  But most of the important stuff.

  Well, it would make me look cool, and really, everything else was just details.

  Could I ring him and ask for it on a Friday night?

  A little much.

  But then, this was an emergency.

  Then—of course—I knew what to do. I wouldn’t do anything stupid, like wait until Monday.

  I’d send him a text!

  Hey Tony, it’s Katie here. I was just wondering if my single was ready because if you could maybe send it to me I could play it at this party I’m going to tonight. Thanks! Katie xo

  The reply took forever to come. Long enough to decide that the xo had definitely been a mistake. Long enough for me to pluck my eyebrows, then overpluck my eyebrows, then draw them back in again with an eyebrow pencil.

  Finally, when my lower forehead was at pretty much the limit of what it could take, I got a response:

  Katie, good to hear from you! Sorry, it’s still being mixed at the moment. Sounds terrific though. You’re going to love it. T

  Well, it was something. Straightaway, I texted back.

  I don’t mind playing whatever version you have! Also, you said I was touring soon…? Where? Want to invite my friends! So excited! Kx

  Another eternity, this time long enough for me to apply nail polish and let it almost dry and then check to see if it had dried with just the lightest touch of my thumb and ruin it.

  Will be in touch about that soon. Got some great venues lined up. Madison Square Garden. The Hollywood Bowl. And heard of a little place called Wembley?

  The spider-mouse-rat finished doing whatever it had been doing down under my bed and zoomed off back across my rug.

  “Amanda?” I shouted. “Manda, are you there? I have news. Manda?!”

  Nothing. Just the drip-plunk noise of the hot water tank filling up.

  I looked in the mirror and said, over and over again, “You are going to be a star.”

  Somehow, I wasn’t quite feeling it.

  • • •

  In the end, I got to Savannah’s at nine thirty. Which was interesting, because I’ve never turned up late to a party before. I’ve only ever seen the late turner-uppers, who’ve always seemed just awesomely cool.

  Maybe I wasn’t doing it quite right, or maybe I simply wasn’t cool enough, because turning up late wasn’t as much fun as Jaz had made it sound.

  The tent was off the chart, of course, completely enormous and taking up most of Savannah’s massive garden, almost like a real room with lights and speakers and everything.

  Only it wasn’t quite a room. The air was simultaneously cold and hot and smelled of trampled grass. There was a small tree in the middle, which someone had covered with pink crepe paper to try to disguise the fact that it was a tree. And you could hear the generator even over the stereo.

  Plus, for all her catering talk, Savannah’s not the biggest eater, and she’d clearly hugely underordered. The chocolate fountains had run dry, the cupcakes were gone, and there weren’t even any chips left.

  Now, here’s the thing.

  According to every movie and TV show and article ever, it’s stupid to feel ugly and awkward at a party. Because everyone else there might look as t
hough they are having a great time. They might seem as if they are confident and relaxed and gorgeous and happy. But, deep down inside, they’re completely miserable and insecure and not enjoying themselves any more than you are.

  I’d always been a little suspicious of this.

  And I have to say that Savannah’s party proved once and for all that it is a complete bunch of lies.

  I know this because I spent a full fifteen minutes closely observing everyone in that tent, and they were all having the most marvelous time. Ignoring me.

  After an infinity of staring at Sofie’s streakily self-tanned back, I gave up trying to penetrate Savannah Circle and went and stood next to Devi Lester and his friends. He, at least, would be grateful for a little of the Katie Cox stardust.

  “What?” said Devi, after about twelve minutes of talk about Star Wars.

  “Nothing,” I said, going back to the food table in case there were any chips that I hadn’t spotted the first time around. There weren’t.

  There was Lacey though, coming in from the garden with the canal crowd. Wearing a purple top I’d never seen before. She had been to the secondhand store—without me.

  “Helter-skelter!” she was saying. Everyone in the vicinity cracked up. She turned to me. “Katie!”

  “Hey, Lace! Ha-ha!”

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “Because…it was funny?”

  “You missed the beginning,” said Lacey, her eyes shining with a very particular kind of cruelty. “You don’t know what we were talking about.”

  “Sorry,” I said, simultaneously wanting to disappear and die. You don’t point that kind of stuff out when people can hear. Especially not to your best friend. Even to your ex-best friend.

  “So what’s been happening?” I said in this super casual way.

  They all stared at me, then started giggling.

  I was starting to think that this evening might have been a mistake when—

  “Katie, have you got a lighter? This is, I don’t know his name. He was outside the liquor store. Boy, this party sucks.”

  Jaz was in this humongous black ball gown, slashed up the legs to show all this red netting stuff, and she had about six chokers around her neck. One was a pair of interlocking hands, which made it look like she was being strangled by her own jewelry. Plus, she seemed to be wearing all the makeup in the universe. Really. It was a miracle she could keep her eyes open. And the strange thing was that she still managed to look incredibly messy, what Grandma would call “slovenly,” as if she’d sort of fallen into her clothes, even though getting that outfit together must have taken forever.

  “Hi, Jaz. No, sorry, I haven’t got a lighter. I find them a little frightening, actually. Mands has them for burning incense, and I always worry she’ll set fire to her fingers.”

  “Well,” said Jaz, looking at me with disdain through about thirty-seven coats of mascara, “it was a long shot.”

  “Hi, Nicole,” I said. “And hi…you.”

  The guy Jaz had brought shuffled and took a swig from a small bottle.

  “How’s your, erm, hickey, Nicole?”

  Nicole answered by pulling down the neck of her polo shirt and showing me. I sort of wished I hadn’t asked.

  “Whoa,” said Jaz’s guy. “That is blowing my mind.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m probably going to have nightmares about it later. Nicole, should you maybe put something on it? Or go to the doctor?”

  “Not that,” said Jaz’s bloke. “That.”

  I followed his eyes to the middle of the dance floor, where two people who I assumed were either Savannah’s parents or her servants (or, from their exhausted expressions, possibly both) were unveiling the world’s most ridiculous cake.

  It was five tiers high, kind of like a wedding cake, if a wedding cake had been pimped so hard that it barely stayed up. Each layer was a different color, with gold decorations on it and flowers and candles. And then—

  “Darling, lift up your feet?” The man pulled out an extension cord and plugged it into the generator, and then the thing lit up like Vegas, and a literal waterfall started coming down from the top. Sploosh sploosh sploosh.

  It was simultaneously the best and the worst thing I’d ever seen.

  “I love it,” Savannah shrieked. “I love it! I mean, it’s smaller than in the picture. But I love it!”

  Jaz had now made her way over to the speakers and was hooking up her phone. Ambient Karamel made way for a bang-bang-bang bass overlaid with a man who sounded like he was being burned alive.

  “No!” said Savannah, gliding across the floor like a seriously angry swan.

  “No offense, Sav,” said Jaz, “but your taste in music is garbage.”

  “Yours is worse,” said Savannah.

  “I am not staying to listen to that boy band puking into my head.”

  “Fine by me,” said Savannah.

  Not quite fine by me though, seeing as how Jaz was the only person at this party who had bothered to talk to me.

  “There must be something we can all listen to,” I said, searching through her library for some Mad Jaz/Savannah crossover music. A sort of sugar-pop metal hard-house fusion. Oddly enough, there didn’t seem to be anything that would even slightly work.

  “It’s too bad you won’t let us play your single,” said Jaz. “It’s literally the only thing we both want to hear.”

  “You know I don’t have it yet,” I said.

  “So sad,” said Savannah with pity.

  Lacey was just coming back in from the garden and even though I waved at her, she looked straight through me. As though I was a ghost. Not even the scary kind that get to star in horror films, but the invisible kind that just trails around after living people, waiting to get noticed for the rest of all eternity.

  Wembley Arena though. She’d notice me then.

  But by the time I was at Wembley, she’d just be a dot in the crowd. I needed her to see me now.

  “How about I sing it live?” I said.

  The canal crowd came bobbing along behind her.

  “You know, unplugged. Acoustic!”

  There was no time to think whether or not this was a good idea because right away, Jaz was turning off the stereo, and everyone stopped talking.

  A space opened up around me.

  Lacey’s eyes met mine, and I felt myself go solid again.

  This was my chance.

  To show her.

  To show everyone.

  I opened my mouth and in my head the song swelled up behind me, a huge wave, and I let it rise, and rise, until it lifted me. And then I opened my mouth and sang.

  “I got mad skin,

  I got mad hair…”

  And right away, I knew I’d made a truly epic mistake.

  Basically, there was a complete disconnect between how the song sounded in my head, i.e., magical and awesome and amazing, and how it sounded in Savannah’s mega-tent. And that was—and I’m not going to linger on this because it is too, too painful—was not magical or awesome or amazing. It was small and sad and garbage.

  I got through the first part though, and while I missed having my guitar there every last second, I was just starting to think that maybe it would be, and if not Okay then at least not suicide-level awful.

  Only then, while I was singing, that guy, the one Jaz had picked up like the rest of us might pick up a penny, started looking kind of restless, shaking his little bottle, then said in a very loud voice, “What else is there to drink?”

  And—total traitor weirdo that she was—Jaz said, “Probably not much. I told you this party would be bad.”

  I continued on, louder now, and shifted my eyes over to just behind Dominic Preston’s gorgeous head.

  And Dominic was talking too! Whispering to Devi Lester.

&n
bsp; Aaaaaargh!

  I was still singing, which was my second mistake. If I’d stopped at the end of the first verse, maybe I could have saved myself, pretended I’d always meant to end there, while at least some people were still listening.

  No, though. Toothpaste for brains Katie has to plow on through like a sad slug and—

  “Savannah!” Paige came whizzing in. “Karl is making out with Nicole. In your roses!”

  And that was that. The whole crowd relocated itself outside to see Nicole and Karl.

  I couldn’t join them, since I was trapped in my own song, flailing around somewhere toward the end of the second verse.

  Still, at least I didn’t have to worry about where to point my eyeballs anymore, because the only person left in the disaster zone was me.

  “Oh, Katie.”

  And Lacey.

  I stopped singing.

  It was very quiet.

  Except for some laughter from outside and then a double shriek. It sounded like Savannah had thrown Karl and Nicole onto the grass. Savannah is surprisingly strong for someone who makes stick insects look pudgy.

  “You poor thing.”

  Lacey came over and went to hug me. Only, because she was Lacey, she gave up at the last minute and half draped her hand on my shoulder, as though she was patting me and I was an injured horse.

  I realized that no one had put their arms around me in a while.

  “That was a little embarrassing,” I said.

  “A little?!” said Lacey, and we both laughed.

  “Can we…can we be friends again?” I said. “Because all this stuff is really wearing me out.”

  “Me too,” said Lacey. “It’s hard enough having to do the walk every morning on my own, without having to spend all day being upset.”

  This I did not understand. “But you’re not on your own. You’re with the canal crowd.”

  “Who toss my bag in the water and call me ‘Lacey with the stupid facey.’”

  “Do they?”

  “They always did. And they do it even more now that you’re gone.”

  “I thought you were all pals?”