No More Confessions

by Louise Rozett

  Chapter 11

  Holly, Steph, Tracy and I are standing behind a velvet rope on the lower east side, waiting to see if our fake IDs will actually work. They’re super confident, but then, they haven’t tried to use them before, so they’re not familiar with the special form of humiliation that goes along with getting turned away and having your ID confiscated.

  Tracy assures me that she got my new ID at a totally different place, and it’s way better than that first one. I’m looking at the bouncer who already has his eye on Steph, and I’m thinking that if we do get in, it won’t be because of our fake IDs.

  I haven’t been to New York City since freshman year when my mother took me to see La Bohème at the Met for my birthday. As much as I love the city, I didn’t want to leave my mother and get on the train this morning after what happened last night. But she insisted. She wanted Holly and me out of the house in case reporters came by after Dirk sent out his statement to the press. Since Peter was heading back to school this morning, he drove us to the station on his way, leaving Mom with Dirk and Dirk’s publicist, who had taken a red-eye flight from LA.

  By the time we left, Dirk was rehearsing his statement and things were getting crazy. I was grateful to my mom for wanting to get us out of there, especially after I heard the publicist trying to convince Dirk that “having kids around” would look great if he ended up on camera. My mother turned to me and said, “Go. Forget all about this, at least for the weekend.”

  She had Peter take us out the back door.

  On the train to the city, Holly and I sat next to each other while Steph was sleeping across the aisle, and we tried to figure out how all this affected the LA plan. We came up with two scenarios. If Dirk could get my mother through this, then there was a good chance that we’d move; if he couldn’t, then I’d get to stay in Union for my senior year.

  The thought of spending my senior year in a city I don’t know, with people I’ve never met before—without Jamie—is just wrong. Senior year is supposed to be the culmination of everything, and you’re supposed to spend it with people who’ve grown up with you over the last few years.

  But on the flipside, I might need to move in order to spend senior year at a school where not everyone has seen the video. I’m still hoping Dirk’s lawyers can stop whichever sleazy media outfit is trying to air it, or post it, or whatever it is they want to do with it. But if they can’t, everyone at school will have seen it by Monday.

  I know this thing isn’t Dirk’s fault—if anyone’s to blame, it’s Gabriel Ortiz, the Smartphone Jackass—but the only thing that’s stopping me from hating on Dirk right now is the fact that his daughter is sitting next to me. This celebrity stuff is crap. I don’t see how my mother could possibly sign up for a lifetime of it.

  I asked Holly about her friends in LA, and about the school I’d be going to. She said it’s a pretty swanky performing arts school that’s hard to get into, but that her dad could help because of all the money he’s donated and the fact that he went there himself. She told me there’s a vocal performance program, and all sorts of singing groups and bands. And then she said something that blew my mind. She said, “You know, Rose, if you do end up moving to LA, Jamie could come with you.”

  It hadn’t even occurred to me that this was a possibility, because I keep forgetting that my boyfriend isn’t in high school anymore, that he’s free to live his life as an adult anywhere.

  Would Jamie follow me across the country?

  I’m afraid to ask.

  If I tell him I might be moving to LA, I feel like I’ll lose him. Not right away but piece by piece, he’d just start disappearing. By the time I had to go, there’d be nothing left of us to say goodbye to.

  I guess that means I think he’ll say no.

  I’ve been watching Jamie closely since Peter said—without saying it—that he’s worried about Jamie’s drinking. I can’t tell if I’m not worried, or I just don’t want to be worried.

  It’s the same result, either way—I haven’t been saying anything about it.

  The bouncer waves us forward, and Tracy and I let Holly and Stephanie go first. I glance at the other people in line—they don’t look that much older than us but their clothes are different. Even something about Tracy’s outfit suddenly seems a little wrong, though way less wrong than mine. The bouncer is young, and he definitely likes Steph. Then he looks down at her ID and starts to laugh.

  “You’re kidding with this, right?”

  “What?” Steph asks, giving him her best smile-and-hair-flip combo.

  The bouncer leans toward her. “I’m supposed to call the cops. Trust me, you don’t want that, Red. Go get some hot cocoa at Serendipity.”

  He shoos us away, and as we go, I look at the people in line, expecting them to be enjoying our little humiliation show, but they don’t even notice us. No one cares that we just got turned away.

  I bet if I stood on top of a taxi and announced that my mother is dating Dirk Taylor and because of him, a video of my father’s death might become national news, no one would even look at me twice.

  I love New York.

  We head down the street. I’m a little unsteady in the killer boots and tight zip-up dress that Tracy picked out for me—she raided the clothes closet at the Fashion Institute. The boots are high, and the walking is precarious. Real New York women are tottering around in their heels in the snow and ice, too, but they don’t look like they’re about to wipe out like I do. The crazy thing about women in New York is, even though it’s a walking city, they still wear high heels. Tracy says it’s a point of pride.

  “All right, y’all, let’s try another club,” Steph suggests, ever the optimist. “We’re bound to get in somewhere.”

  “Let’s go get something to eat,” I counter.

  “But we only have two hours before we have to be back at my aunt’s—I don’t want spend all of that waiting in line,” Tracy says.

  Holly catches my eye. I don’t care about going to a club, and I know she doesn’t either. Tracy sees this glance between us and I can tell it makes her feel weird. It makes me feel weird too.

  In a way, Holly and I are better friends than Tracy and I are now, but it wasn’t by choice, it just happened. Tracy’s halfway out of Union already and living between two worlds—she left me behind in more ways than one. Was I just supposed to not have a best friend anymore?

  “I have an idea,” I say. “Let’s go to Katz’s Deli for knishes. It’s right up the street. And it’s kind of a cool scene.” I direct this last part to Tracy.

  Stephanie and Holly look at me, impressed, although the truth is, Katz’s is the only restaurant in the city that I know by name. My dad loved the knishes at Katz’s, so every time we were in New York, we’d make a special trip.

  “I don’t want to waste this outfit on a deli,” Tracy says, indicating her clothes with a hint of indignation.

  “It’s not really a deli—it’s a super-famous place. I’ve seen guys in tuxedos sitting next to construction workers there—it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing. It’s all about the knish,” I say, quoting my dad.

  “I have no idea what a knish is, but I’m in.” Holly says.

  Holly’s always game for anything—I love that about her.

  I’m thinking about how being Holly’s friend would probably make life in LA pretty interesting as we round the corner onto Houston Street. When I see the big red neon sign in the window at Katz’s, I realize that the last time I was here was, of course, with my dad. A jolt of panic streaks through me at the thought of leaving Union, and my house. I feel like my dad is still there—if we leave, what happens to him? How will he know where we went?

  Katz’s is packed at 9 o’clock on a Saturday night—the line for the counter is longer than the line we were just waiting in at the club. It occurs to me that Dad loved this place as much as he loved Union, so maybe he’s here, too. In which case, he doesn’t need me to stay in one place so he can “find” me. Not that I even
know what that means.

  Just embrace the crazy and eat a knish, I tell myself.

  We get our deli-counter numbers, check out the different knishes in the case, order and then we find a place to sit right in the middle of everything, waiting for our food to come up. Holly and I make eye contact again, and she gives me a little nod.

  Before I can say anything, Tracy is pissed. “All right, what’s going on?” she asks.

  I guess now is as good a time as any. “Something kind of weird happened last night during dinner at Dirk’s place.”

  “Juicy!” Steph says. When neither Holly nor I say anything, she turns bright red. “Sorry. I thought y’all were heading in a different direction with that.”

  “My dad wants Rose and her mom to move to LA at the end of the school year,” Holly says.

  Tracy looks at me uncomprehendingly. “But what about senior year?”

  “Exactly,” I say. “But I don’t know if we’re going, because the other crazy thing that happened is that some ‘reporter’ saw the video of my dad and figured out he’s the dead husband of Dirk Taylor’s new girlfriend, and Dirk had to make a statement and there was a publicist at my house today…”

  I trail off as Tracy grabs her phone and starts scrolling for information. When she finds something, she looks up at me—her face says it all.

  So much for Dirk’s lawyers being able to keep the video offline.

  After a long pause during which no one knows what to say, Steph asks, “Can I come to LA too?”

  When I start laughing, Holly decides it’s okay for her to laugh too. “We’ll drive cross-country—it’ll be awesome!” she says.

  “Angelo would be totally into it. He wants to check out the music scene there—”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Tracy interrupts, sounding annoyed. “Rosie, you don’t actually want to go, do you?” Tracy asks.

  She seems upset by the idea of my leaving—I feel bad for enjoying that. “No, but, I mean, everything’s different now. You’ve already left, in a way, and Peter’s at college…I don’t know if it matters whether I stay or not.”

  “It totally matters! What about Jamie?” she says, though I wonder if she’s thinking, Who’s going to drive me to the station on Fridays?

  “I haven’t told him yet,” I answer.

  As I say this, I suddenly wonder why I’m not talking to people about things again—not just Jamie, but I haven’t said anything to my friends about Peter being worried about Jamie’s drinking, or mine, for that matter. Isn’t that exactly the kind of thing I should be talking to them about?

  “I think Rose should ask Jamie to come with us,” Holly says. “He’s out of school—he can do what he wants, right?”

  “Are your parents gonna get married? Ohmygosh, that wedding would be, like, unreal. Who would be there?” Steph asks Holly. “Lots of celebs?”

  “Holly, what about Cal?” Tracy isn’t ready to let this go yet. She lifts an eyebrow. “And Robert?”

  Holly freezes. This is a classic Tracy move—she’s obviously seen Holly and Robert together since the New Year’s party and has been waiting to spring that information at a strategic moment. Like now, when she’s feeling blindsided by what we just told her.

  “Wait, Robert?!” Steph shrieks. I look around, waiting for someone to yell at us to be quiet, but again, no one cares.

  “There’s nothing going on with Robert, you guys,” Holly insists. “We’re friends again. We put all the bad stuff behind us, and now we hang out sometimes. That’s all.”

  I have to stop myself from texting Robert right then to tell him that Holly just admitted they’re hanging out. He’ll lose his mind with joy.

  Steph starts bombarding Holly with questions, and I’m relieved to have the focus off the LA situation. Just as our food comes up, my phone rings and it’s Vicky. It’s too loud in the restaurant to answer so I let it go to voicemail. She calls me twice more before leaving a message, and I wonder if I should go outside to take her call. But I’m sure it has something to do with the video and Dirk’s statement and Gabe, and I don’t want to hear about it. My mother told me to forget the madness this weekend, and that’s what I’m going to do.

  Later, after we’ve downed our knishes and agreed we’re not going to talk anymore about Los Angeles, as we’re walking the beautifully grimy, slushy streets of New York and passing by lines outside clubs having abandoned the idea of getting in, I let my friends go ahead of me while I listen to Vicky’s message.

  She’s crying as she tells me that Gabriel Ortiz has been taken into custody after getting into a fight in a bar with military police who were there to question him about the video.

  Vicky and I always call each other back, no matter what time of day or night. But I don’t care about Gabriel Ortiz, and I think he deserves to be in custody after what he did without thinking about how it might affect other people.

  For the first time since my mother declared that my relationship with Vicky was not good for me, I wonder if she’s right.

  I don’t call Vicky back.

  Instead, I stop walking and look up at the night sky, which is full of planes and helicopters and stars. I can smell the cold in the air, and maybe more snow on the way. I listen as cabs rush by, their tires crunching the sand and salt that was poured on the street by snowplows to keep them from sliding. I hear music—it’s a live band.

  The sound reminds me that my life is not just about this Gabe guy, or the video that people all across the country now know about, or Dirk and my mom, or leaving Union, or my dad being gone. It is also about the Valentine’s Day gig, and Jamie, and my friends, who I love and who love me, and holding onto moments of happiness when I feel them.

  And that’s what I promise myself I will do for the rest of the weekend.

  I shut my phone off.

  “Fell on Black Days,” Songbook, Chris Cornell

  _______________________

  Chapter 12

  Valentine’s Day has never done me any favors. I don’t hate it—mostly because I love chocolate so much that Valentine’s Day is more about that for me than anything else—but I think it’s fair to say that V-Day and I have an uneasy relationship. Nothing has ever gone quite right for me on Valentine’s Day.

  But that could change this year.

  We’re downtown getting ready for the showcase at the Rat & Monkey—in other words, we’re getting ready for a real gig. It’s so real that my mother had to come with me, because I’m not allowed to be in the bar without her, legally. Neither is Steph—her mother, Carli, who looks like she’s Steph’s older sister, is here, too.

  My mom was able to get Jamie in, but the sound guy said he could only watch from backstage and wasn’t allowed in the bar area. Jamie found that amusing. Angelo, my mother and Steph’s mom are the only people in our little entourage who can legally be here.

  Aside from Carli, who’s in the bar waiting for her boyfriend, we’re all in the greenroom, where the bands hang out before going on. Jamie is sitting with my mother, keeping her company. She’s been kind of a mess these last few weeks, since the video ended up on an entertainment-news show and was a big deal for a minute. Dirk’s statement was good—I guess that publicist knows what she’s doing, even if she’s not above trying to use kids to smooth over her clients’ interactions with the press. He kept it short and asked for privacy for his “girlfriend and her children, who are still recovering from the loss of a man they loved deeply and who shouldn’t be forced to relive their loss through the exposure of this video.”

  I was hoping he’d slam Gabriel Ortiz, but he kept it classy, which was probably the right choice. A scandal broke later that night with some other celebrity and it knocked us out of the news cycle pretty quickly. Or maybe there are just some decent people out there who decided to leave us alone. Either way, Mom and I had a self-imposed news blackout—she even canceled delivery of the local paper—and that helped. People at school were weird for a few days, and teachers gave me their “sy
mpathy” smiles, but I just ignored all of it.

  I glance at my mom and Jamie again—I like that he’s looking after her—before stepping out of the greenroom to sneak a peak from backstage at the crowd. Above them, jagged black hearts hang from the ceiling by thick silver wire that wraps around their centers a bunch of times, holding them hostage. The crowd looks nice enough, but I wonder if they really want to see a band fronted by a 16-year-old.

  I guess it doesn’t matter—we’re just the opening band, and no one ever goes to see the opening band unless they know someone in it. There are three other bands playing tonight, and they all get a full set, but we only get three songs. Normally that would piss Angelo off, but tonight he doesn’t care because of the label guy. This label guy saw Angelo’s band on the road last year and thought Angelo’s songs were good. The tour was ultimately sucky—that was when the lead singer got signed and went off to front someone else’s band. I don’t blame the singer—it was too good an opportunity to pass up—but no one is allowed to even say his name in Angelo’s presence.

  So this is a big night for Angelo. The label guy wants to check out the band as well as the songs—he thinks he can get Angelo a publishing deal as a songwriter. Angelo would rather get the band signed, but he’ll take what he can get.

  In the greenroom backstage, he’s driving me insane. “Sweater, why are you wearin’ jeans without holes? And what the hell happened to the blue in your hair? It’s all faded and shit—I thought you were puttin’ more in for tonight! Hey, did you practice the bridge in—”

  “Angelo, babe,” Steph says, pulling me over to the mirror and away from his bad juju. “I’ll give Rosie some more eyeliner, okay? Now leave her alone—you shouldn’t be freaking out your star before the show.”

  Angelo is staring at me suspiciously, as if he can read in my eyes just how much I’ve practiced outside of rehearsal in the last few months. Suddenly I realize if I mess this up for me, I mess it up for him too.

  Steph sits me down and leans in close with black eyeliner. “Sorry. He’s losing his mind. He thinks we’re, like, gonna get signed tonight and go on tour with Jack White or something.” Steph looks at Jamie on the couch with my mother and whispers, “Have you told him yet?”