“She’s worried if people found out the truth, it would ruin her. All that she’s built up. She has to make sure her past stays in the past.”
“I’M NOT HER PAST! I’M HER KID!” I yanked open my sock drawer, pulling out the records I’d stuffed inside. “This is what I think of her!” I didn’t even take the records out of the sleeve. Holding one over my knee, I brought it down hard. With a satisfying crack, it split in two.
“Dizzy!” Dad shouted, realizing what I was doing. He jumped up, lunging for the next record. Her name was visible on the sleeve, black marker on white paper. I twisted away from him and slammed it against my dresser. “No!” His face was a mixture of shock and rage. He made a grab for the one record left, but I beat him to it, ripping it away. I turned, smashing it against the edge of the dresser. It broke and dropped to the floor in pieces.
“I hate her!” I seethed. I stomped on the record fragments on the floor. My heel cracked them into smaller pieces.
“Enough!” He spun me around, holding me roughly by the arms and stared at me. “Enough!” Dad shook me until I looked at him. “Look what you’ve done!” he yelled. His face was inches from mine, mottled with fury. His hands were curled into claws, squeezing my arms too tight.
“Ow,” I whimpered. He let go, ran a hand through his hair, and took a step back, shaking his head at me.
All the rage trembled through me, then seeped away. I collapsed to the floor, crying. “I wish I’d never gone to see her,” I sobbed.
“I know,” he said. “I know. But, Dizzy, the records …” His voice, tinged with regret, trailed off. He picked up a shard, shaped like half a broken heart. “These are all we have of her,” he said and tossed it back to the floor, just another piece of plastic.
I couldn’t look at Dad. I held on to my dresser to stand up. Lou had it right all along, shutting the door on Georgia. She couldn’t hurt him if he didn’t let her in. Georgia wanted us to stay in the past, but that wasn’t going to happen. I was here. She was my mom. And she couldn’t keep pushing us into the shadows. The world needed to know who she was. Who we were. I could make that happen.
I had an audience now: over ten thousand people were my fans on Mixcloud. My Instagram followers grew hourly. All it would take was one well-placed post to light a spark. I wasn’t a piece of her life that could be erased. I’d kick and scream and make my voice heard.
There was nothing Dad could say to fix this, and I didn’t trust myself to say anything to him. “Can you leave, please?” I whispered. I waited until Dad left my room and heard his footsteps recede down the hallway. When his bedroom door closed, I went to my dresser. Buried under my socks was the photo of my family before Georgia had left, before I’d been born. I looked in the mirror. My face was puffy from crying, but I didn’t care. I rubbed away the smudged eyeliner and lipstick. I needed to get this message out now, before I chickened out. I propped my phone on the dresser and flipped the camera to reverse so I could watch myself. I stared directly into it and pressed the red button. It was filming.
“Hi.” My voice wavered. I took a breath and kept it steady. “My name is Delilah Doucette. Or Dizzy. Most people know me as Dizzy. But what people don’t know about me is who I really am. It’s been a secret my whole life. But now, I’m ready to tell. I’m tired of pretending to be someone I’m not.
“My mom is Georgia Hay. You probably know her as someone else. She changed her name before she became famous.” I held up the photo of Georgia pregnant. “This is her, with my dad and brother. I wasn’t born yet. In case you haven’t guessed yet, her name is Georgia Waters.” I put the photo down. “She, Georgia, I mean, has tried to keep me and my brother a secret. She’s worried what it will do to her career.” I scoffed. “But I can’t keep living a lie. The world needs to know … so, now you do. I’m Dizzy Doucette and I am Georgia Waters’s daughter.”
I let it run for another few seconds and then reached over to turn the camera off.
I pressed play and watched the video. My face, close up, a little grainy in the dim light, looked intense and honest.
I uploaded it first to YouTube, then posted it on Insta and to Snapchat on my public setting and linked it to Mixcloud. I put a link on the store’s webpage and our Facebook and Twitter pages. And then, I posted it on Georgia Waters’s fanpage as a comment. It would spread, faster than the mixes I’d posted. The world’s curiosity about the private lives of celebrities was insatiable. Once it was out, there was no taking it back.
I stared at my phone like it was a bomb set to detonate. I’d done it. I’d outed myself and my whole family. Now, I could only sit back and watch the fallout.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep after I posted the video. I kept checking my phone and online to see what was happening. Who’d seen it? Had it been shared? It left me jumpy. I needed a distraction. I needed my best friend. I sent Maya a text, hoping, but not expecting, to hear anything back from her. Her mom had probably either grounded her or taken her phone away.
Are you there?
Hey.
What did your mom say? I asked.
We’re having a talk in the morning. She’d have all night to worry about her punishment. Another text bubble appeared. She was shocked that I’d sold clothes to buy tickets.
Did you tell her the truth? I texted. Carla might understand why we’d had to go to the concert if she knew who Georgia was to me and why going mattered. Maya had only been trying to help me.
No, was Maya’s response.
The video was already posted. My secret was out. Show this to your mom, I texted and included the video.
My cell rang a few minutes later. “Oh my god, Dizzy,” she breathed into the phone. “What’s going to happen now?”
The determination that I’d felt when I was filming ebbed away. “They’ll want to know more. She’ll have to say something. Admit who we are.”
“Isn’t this like your dad’s worst nightmare? It’s not just Georgia people will want to talk to. It’ll be you and Lou, too. And your dad.”
“I don’t care.” I didn’t want to drag Lou and Dad into this, but there was no other way. The pieces of broken records were still on the floor of my bedroom.
“What if people want proof? Something to show you are who you say you are?”
“Look at me!”
“Lots of people look like famous people. That’s not proof.”
“I showed a photo in my video.”
“Of her pregnant. You weren’t even in it.”
I’d given her the one of us together, when I was a baby. A moment of sentimentality that I wished I could take back. “I need my birth certificate.”
Maya was quiet on the other end. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yeah.” My heart pounded.
“Are you scared?”
“Nervous.” I’d been worried about Dad’s reaction when I’d come home from the concert, but needlessly. It was almost like he felt bad for me. I guess we’d both been duped by Georgia. But to put this video out there … well, Dad would be blindsided. “I don’t want to be here when Dad finds out what I’ve done.” I wasn’t afraid of Dad, but I didn’t think I could handle seeing the shock and disappointment on his face. He’d need some time to let it sink in and realize I hadn’t made the video to hurt him.
“Do you need to come over?”
“Yeah. I think so.” Compared to going into the city by ourselves, walking three blocks to Maya’s house in the middle of the night didn’t seem so scary. We hung up and I grabbed a bag from my closet and stuffed in some clothes. Dad had shown me my birth certificate; I knew it was in the safe downstairs. I needed it. There couldn’t be a shadow of doubt about who I was.
I dodged the creaky third step — tricky with a bulging bag — and went to Dad’s office. As usual, his desk was a mess of papers. I knew the combination to the safe, but my hands were shaking. It took me three tries to get it right. The heavy door swung open. Inside the safe were cash and important
documents: the deed to the building, tax stuff, and on the bottom, one that was unmarked.
I pulled it out. Inside were our birth certificates, mine and Lou’s. The birth certificate paper was thick, like parchment. A design scrolled around the sides. Father: Ray Ronald Doucette; Mother: Georgia Louise Hay; and my name: Delilah Etta Doucette. I put Lou’s back inside the envelope. There was another piece of paper, folded in half. I opened it up and read:
Ray —
You are my rock
my unbending beacon
You shine light where there is none
guiding me home
to a place where our life has begun
I whisper in the night
Try to hear my own voice
It echoes back, empty
I made the wrong choice
Please forgive me but I have to go
Staying here will kill me slow
My heart is breaking, the door will close
But leaving is all I know.
I will always love you.
— G.
The song, written in Georgia’s own hand, was her goodbye letter. There was no date. Nothing that told me whether it had been written as her way of saying goodbye to us fourteen years ago or ten. I wished Dad had shown it to me before. It wouldn’t have made her ignoring us any easier, but at least there was regret in the lyrics.
I took the letter, the photo, and my birth certificate. I put them in the front pocket of my bag. If I needed proof, I had it. I closed the door to the safe. It slammed harder than I thought it would. I waited, holding my breath, in case I’d woken someone up. I counted to ten. No footsteps, no lights flaring on. I was safe.
I turned off the light in the office. The store plunged into darkness, only the street lights from outside lighting up the space. I looked at my DJ table with contempt. Spinning had led me to this point. Being behind the turntables, trying to tell a story with my music had unleashed my past. I’d broken Georgia’s records, let my anger get the better of me. I wouldn’t destroy my equipment, but I knew I couldn’t spin again. That part of my life was over.
I left quickly, the store alarm beeping as I disabled it and then set it again. The street outside was empty. One or two parked cars lined the curb, but no one was out. I hiked the bag up on my shoulder and gritted my teeth. Walking the three blocks to Maya’s house alone at four thirty in the morning might be the craziest thing I’d done.
Well, second … make that third … craziest. Leaving now, I texted her.
Waiting …
I laid out all the evidence on Maya’s coffee table. “Yeah, this proves things,” she agreed with a whisper.
“That’s not all. Look at this.” I showed her the song lyrics. Maya’s eyes slid over them, and when she looked at me, her eyebrows shot up to her forehead.
“Is this for real?”
“Yeah. Dad had it tucked in the envelope. She sounds sad, don’t you think?”
“Or guilty.” Maya held up the birth certificate and shook her head. “So, what are you going to do with all of it?”
I shrugged. The “what next” was a daunting thought.
The lights on the baby monitor flickered as one of the twins whimpered in her sleep. I glanced at the screen. The girls lay in their cribs with arms and legs stretched out, tiny hands half-balled into fists. Georgia had left me when I was even younger. Maya was right. No matter what the song lyrics said, or how much regret could be read into the words she’d written, she’d still done it and never looked back.
With icy resolve, I knew I’d done the right thing.
- 41 -
Ray
Woke up to Lou hammering on the door like the house was on fire. Shit, maybe it was. The whole night had been a blur. Georgia’s concert. Dizzy. The records. I got a sharp pain in my chest thinking about things I’d said and done. “Dad! Wake up!” he hollered. “It’s important!”
Taking a deep breath, I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “Yeah, coming.” I opened the door in my boxers. “What’s up?” I yawned.
“You need to see this.” He held his phone up, the screen too close to my eyes. I leaned back to get a better look at it. There was talking, tinny and distant. The voice sounded familiar, like Dizzy. Lou turned the volume up and there she was. I didn’t catch all of it, but enough. “What is this?”
“Dizzy made it. She posted it last night.”
I stared at him, not sure I’d heard right.
“It’s everywhere. On Twitter, the store’s website, Facebook, Instagram.” He shook his head.
“Take it down.”
“I can’t. I mean, I can, on the stuff I control, but it’s been shared. A lot. It’s not like a computer file, I can’t delete it.”
“Where is she?”
“Sleeping, I think. I haven’t seen her yet.”
Didn’t knock, just burst into her room. My temper flared. First, the broken records, now this. The sheets were spun together in a knot at the bottom of her bed. Her empty bed. I looked at Lou. “Is she downstairs?”
He shrugged. I went to the top of the stairs. “Dizzy!” No answer. “Dizzy!” I tried again. “Call her cell. She must’ve gone to Maya’s.”
The landline upstairs rang. I jumped for it. “Hello?” I said, breathless, thinking it was Dizzy. But a man started talking, his voice too polite, cajoling. Wouldn’t let me get a word in.
“Morning, Mr. Doucette. Sorry to call so early, sir. This is Wayne Sigurdson here, Free Press, wondering if I can ask you a few questions about a video that was released last night. Have you seen it?”
I swallowed, but my mouth was chalky. Went to the front window. On the street, a couple cars. A photographer was taking a picture of the building. It wouldn’t be a story yet, not until it was verified, but goddammit, they’d be looking into it. Digging into the past to see if it was possible: Had Georgia Waters had two kids and kept them a secret?
My whole body started to sweat. I hung up on Sigurdson without saying a word.
The landline rang again. I pulled the cord out of the wall. It was going to be like that all day. “Call the guys. We need ’em.” Tried to keep my voice steady, but the tremble that started down deep made its way up into my chest. Another sharp pain. Stabbing on the left side. I tried to take a breath, but it was like someone was stepping on my throat. “Oh Jesus —” came out like a sob. My arm went numb, just hung there. “Lou —” was all I could get out before I went down on my knees, grabbing for something to hold on to. It can’t end like this.
“Dad?” Lou’s voice got fuzzy. Distant. Things went black.
- 42 -
Lou
Dad’s knees buckled. He went down, hard, on the floor. His face had gone pale, eyes bulging like he was trying to tell me something. “Dad?” I thought he was joking at first, but then his face … it was like he was begging but couldn’t speak. I caught him before he hit the ground. His eyes rolled back into his head, lids fluttering. I looked around for help, but there was no one else. I panicked, forgot what to do, froze for a second. “Dad!” I shook him, but he didn’t wake up.
I pulled out my phone. My hands were shaking so bad, I couldn’t dial the right numbers.
“Hello, 911. What’s your emergency?” the operator’s voice sounded in my ear.
“My dad, he passed out. Like had a heart attack or something. He’s lying on the ground.”
“What’s your address?” I heard computer keys clicking in the background.
I couldn’t remember my address. My mind blanked. Come on, I coached myself. “We’re at 3459 St. Charles Place. It’s a record store, but we’re upstairs, in our apartment.”
“Is your dad conscious?”
“No.”
“Is he breathing?”
I looked at his chest. He was sinewy, hardly any fat coated his bones. I should be able to see if he’s breathing or not. I put the phone on speaker and lay it beside me. “Yeah, but it’s like all shaky.”
“An ambulance is on the way. C
an you find a blanket to cover him?” I looked around.
“I don’t want to leave him.”
“Roll him onto his side, put one arm under his head. Can you do that?”
I started to sweat. What if this was it? What if Dad died right here, in our apartment, and it was just me and him? How would I tell Dizzy? “Are you there?” the operator asked. Her voice jolted me back to what I was supposed to be doing. I picked up his arm. It was limp. He gave a shallow cough when I rolled him over. His skin felt clammy and cold. Instead of a blanket, I pulled off my T-shirt and covered him with it.
“The ambulance will be there soon. Stay with him. Don’t leave him.”
She kept talking to me, asking me questions until I heard the sirens pull up on the street. “They’re here,” I said relieved.
“Is the door open?”
“No.”
“Open the door.” She said this patiently, but part of me wanted to let them bust it down. I didn’t want to leave Dad. I ran down the stairs as fast as I could, slipping, almost wiping out at the bottom. I got to the front door just as the paramedics were pulling their kits and a gurney out of the ambulance. I wanted to cry with relief.
“He’s upstairs,” I said, breathlessly. I was still shaking, sweaty and nervous.
“What’s his name?” one asked.
“Ray Doucette,” I said.
“How old is he?”
I didn’t know. Dizzy was the one who remembered things like that. What birthday had we celebrated last? Fifty-five? Fifty-six? “I don’t know. Fifty-five, I think. No, fifty-eight.” I was eighteen. He’d been forty when he had me. God. Dad was fifty-eight?
They followed me up the stairs and to the living room. It was crowded with all of us in that little space. I pushed a couch over. Harder than I needed to, but it felt good to use my body and get out some of the adrenalin that coursed through me. The EMTs pulled up his eyelids, listened to his heart, and tested his blood pressure.
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