So Lyrical

by Trish Cook

  It didn’t take long for Zander to put his plan into action once we got to Times Square. He stepped in front of Grandpa in line at the discount-ticket place and valiantly said, “Mr. Tillingham, please allow me. My parents let me visit only with the promise that I would treat everyone to a special day out.”

  Grandpa harrumphed and hemmed and hawed, but finally gave into the Z-man’s pressure. He actually looked secretly pleased he wasn’t going to have to shell out hundreds of dollars for our afternoon in Manhattan. “Are you sure that young man’s family can afford such a thing?” Grandpa asked me as Zander crawled slowly to the front of the queue.

  “Never fear—the guy’s got mad flow,” I told him, busting out the rapper lingo again to throw him off the track that things might be getting a little fishy, and not due to the repulsive meals Grandma had been feeding us. “Tons of dead presidents.”

  Grandma reached for her ever-trusty Rappin’ with the Younger Generation pamphlet and scoured it. “Everything’s chilly, bra,” she told my grandfather a second later.

  When Zander rejoined our group, his face was full of regret. “The good news is that you and Mr. Tillingham are going to the show,” he told Grandma. “The bad news is they didn’t have enough tickets for all of us.”

  “That’s the wacky,” Grandma said, right back to her misquoting ways.

  “Well, just sell them back, son,” Grandpa told Zander. “We are most definitely not going to the play without you.”

  “No reason you should miss out on the fun because of us,” replied Zander, giving me a discreet wink. “Anyway, I have a thought. Maybe us kids could get some homework done while you two attend the show. I noticed there’s a branch of the New York City library right over there—”

  “Where?” Grandma said, squinting around at the surrounding buildings.

  “Right there,” Zander said, gesturing randomly. “We can camp out there and get a lot accomplished in the time you’ll be gone.”

  Grandpa narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out if there was a catch somewhere. “I thought you kids were on vacation.”

  “Seniors never get to relax until we have our college acceptances in hand,” I told my grandparents. They nodded, and I was suddenly very hopeful they just might agree to this crazy little plan.

  “Well . . . ,” Grandma said, looking at Grandpa for approval. “I have been dying to see this show for so long. . . .”

  “You stay put in that library and promise not to go anywhere else,” Grandpa said gruffly, caving under all our pressure. “We’ll meet you in front of the theater at four o’clock, no later.”

  “Have a marvelous time, Mr. and Mrs. Tillingham,” Brina added for good measure. She sounded so fake, I thought we’d be caught for sure, but no. My grandparents were already hailing a cab.

  “I hope I have time to run to the potty before the curtain goes up,” I heard Grandma say as she disappeared inside the taxi. That lady obviously had mad flow, too—though hers had nothing to do with money.

  We ran across the street to MTV’s offices, and my heart sank as I realized the crowd of kids we’d been eyeing were already lined up for TRL. I knew from Bebe that studio audiences are usually much smaller than they appear on television, and if the same held true for TRL, I guessed only a quarter of us, if that, would actually get in to see the show.

  We plunked ourselves down at the end of the line behind a skanky girl who couldn’t have been older than fifteen. She was treating everyone to her very own private walk down TRL memory lane.

  “And that’s me with Carson,” she was saying, flipping to the first page of a fake-fur-covered photo album. “Since then, I’ve come back when OutKast was here, and the White Stripes, too.”

  “How did you do it?” someone asked the skank.

  “Looks, brains, courage,” she said, clearly loving the attention her veteran status was bringing her on these streets. “You’ve got to impress Courtney, the girl who decides who gets in and who doesn’t. She’ll ask you trivia questions, have you do a trial shout-out, see if you have anything interesting or out of the ordinary to say. You have to ace it on all levels to be chosen.”

  Just then, a collective gasp rippled through the crowd. The blond and beautiful Courtney had just appeared outside and was separating us into two groups: people with advance reservations and those of us without them. She corralled the lucky ones inside, then came back to make a disheartening speech to the rest of us. “We’ve got a capacity crowd, I’m afraid. Probably only three more of you will get chosen to participate in today’s taping.”

  A few kids wandered off dejectedly, but most of us stayed riveted to the sidewalk, hoping for one of the coveted spots. “I can see I haven’t scared many of you away,” she said, laughing at her own joke. “I’ll be out in a while to talk to a few of you.” Then she left us again, ignoring the throng of teens trying to bribe her with everything from money to jewelry to baked goods.

  The next half hour passed so slowly I could almost hear the seconds ticking by one at a time. Once, an intern came out and walked up and down the line, examining us and making notes on a clipboard. Brina, Zander, and I took off our coats and froze in the subzero temperature, hoping he’d notice our Blissed-out BeDazzler T-shirts, but he disappeared without so much as speaking a word to anybody.

  “This is a total waste of time,” I complained. “I don’t think they even noticed us.”

  Brina cocked her head toward the front of the line, which Courtney was making her way through once again. “Oh, they noticed us all right,” she said. “It’s totally going to work.”

  Against all odds, Courtney stopped directly in front of us and scrutinized our chests. Brina’s more than anyone else’s, I might add. “What’s with the Bliss thang?” she asked, looking pretty intrigued.

  “Her mom was a groupie. Went by the name Bliss,” Brina said, cocking her head at me. “Never introduced my friend to her dad, so we’re trying to find him. He might be a big star from what we’ve been able to piece together.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Courtney said, rereading the Ts. “We’ll let your friend do a shout-out about it.” She pointed a slender, manicured finger at me and said, “You get one sentence. Make it good.”

  Then Courtney turned back to Brina. “And you’re our lucky fan of the day. Once your friend’s shout-out is taped, c’mon inside,” she said. “We’ll save you a seat in the first row. You’ll get a lot of camera time there.” After sprinkling her very own version of fairy dust on us—exposure on national TV—Courtney spun around and disappeared back into the studios.

  My feet were frozen to the ground in fear. Brina, on the other hand, was so excited she could hardly contain herself. She dug around in her backpack, things landing all over the sidewalk around her. Eventually, she hit pay dirt: her little makeup bag. Brina started taking every beauty product known to man out of it.

  “Did you hear that? I’m going to be in your shout-out and the first row of TRL! My face is gonna be plastered all over the world!” Brina’s version of heaven, my biggest nightmare.

  I was really sweating by this point. I had never actually thought our plan would work, and now I had to face the consequences. “I don’t think I can do this,” I said, my heart palpitating at the thought of not only having to compose the perfect sentence in the next few minutes, but then having to deliver it on TV.

  “Are you saying you’re giving up?” Zander asked, taking my hand. “You’re done with Dad quest?”

  “No way,” I said. “I want to find him more than ever.”

  “Then take a chill pill, Trace,” Brina said as she went back to her million-step beauty regimen.

  “I don’t think I can. You know how I am about being onstage.”

  Zander took my hand and stroked it. “You’re not on a stage, sweet cheeks. You’re on a street. There’s no point in freaking out. Just say, ‘If you knew and loved Bliss way back when, you should get to know and love me—your daughter—now.’ ”

 
I nodded, considering his words. They conveyed about as much as you could in one sentence, and I thought I might be able to get it all out of my mouth without throwing up or stuttering. “OK, thanks,” I told him. “But could you write it all down, so I don’t choke once the camera’s on?”

  “Sure thing,” he said, scratching the words onto a flowery little notepad that had fallen out of Brina’s bag.

  Just then, a couple of scruffy-looking guys walked down the line and stopped right in front of us. One carried a large handheld camera, while the other tried to tame the sea of cords attached to it. “You the groupie chick?” the guy with scraggly black hair and acne asked me, scratching his five o’clock shadow.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I mumbled, not knowing whether I should correct him that it was actually my mom who held that title. I decided against it.

  “Let’s go over your shout-out before we actually get it on tape, OK?” He pointed the camera straight at my face and held up three fingers. “Here’s how we’ll do it: Three, two, one, then I’ll point at you and you’re on. While you’re speaking, I’ll pan across the shirts so everyone gets a good look at each of them. So go ahead.”

  “Uh, OK,” I said, shuffling my feet and clearing my throat. “If you knew Bliss—”

  “No, no, no,” the cord guy reprimanded me. “All shout-outs start with your name and where you’re from, and they all end with a ‘Woo!’ ” He shook his head in disgust at what a TRL reject I was.

  I took a deep breath and tried again. “Hi, I’m Trace from Winnetka, Illinois, and if you knew and loved Bliss way back when, you should get to know and love me—your daughter—now.”

  Both the cameraman and his assistant stared at me. They were really bummed out now. “You forgot the ‘Woo!’ ” said the camera guy. He turned to his assistant. “They always forget to ‘Woo!’ ”

  “I swear I’ll be much better once you start taping,” I pleaded with them. “I perform really well under pressure.”

  “You get one last chance,” said the camera guy. “Screw it up, and you’re done.”

  Zander, Brina, and I lined up in a row. After a three count, I delivered my lines perfectly, along with a halfhearted “woo.” I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Now all we have to do is wait,” Zander whispered in my ear.

  “Ha! Maybe that’s all you have to do, but right now I’m expected inside the studio. Ta-ta, suckers!” Brina bounded away, looking so happy I thought her head might explode. I hoped at least her boobs would.

  Zander and I retreated to a little pizza joint next door. There was no one else in the place, so we asked the guy behind the counter to switch the channel to MTV. “No problem,” he said, sliding a slice and a Coke in front of us both.

  We scarfed down the ’za and watched as Brina’s face showed up again and again on-screen. Yea for her, I thought, this is probably the highlight of her life.

  Just then, TRL went to commercial and my shout-out came on. I cringed at the sound of my voice and the close-up on my face. Zander sat there and beamed at me. “That was awesome!” he said. I was so mortified I put my head on the table and refused to move.

  While I was busy drowning in embarrassment, TRL came back on. Carson was saying, “There are a few people on the line who may know something about this whole Bliss deal. Caller one?”

  I finally lifted my head up. Zander looked at me and laughed. “What?” I asked him.

  “Hot red-pepper flakes on your left cheek,” he said. “Parm on your right.”

  I rubbed my face free of pizza toppings. “Do you think there’s any way it’s Bruce?” I asked.

  Zander was nice enough not to immediately reject the idea, but a moment later any illusions I harbored about Mr. Springsteen actually admitting he was my father on TRL were shattered. Instead, a scratchy male voice told Carson, “I think I’ve found my Bliss—the chick with the long dark hair in the first row.”

  Carson ran over to Brina with the mike. “What do you think of that?” he asked her.

  Brina did her famous hair flip and giggled. “It’s absolutely blissful.” Yuck, I thought, realizing too late she’d never get over being on TRL. And that meant I’d be hearing about it for the rest of my life.

  “Let’s try caller two,” Carson said, as unflappable as ever. “See if she has something more interesting to say.”

  “Yeah, this is Trixie from Winnetka, and I just want to tell Trace her mother is gonna kill her if she sees this.”

  I practically choked on my pizza crust. I never considered that anyone who knew Bliss would actually be at home during the middle of the day watching TRL. The key thing I forgot was that Trixie was in a total midlife crisis, and tuned in every day with her four-year-old.

  “Are you going to narc on her?” Carson asked Trixie.

  “Nope,” she said. “Just a friendly warning. And by the way, Good Charlotte rocks! Bye, Carson.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The next morning, Grandpa had magically turned into an alarm clock. A very loud one. “Get up, you lazy heads,” he bellowed. “I have a big surprise for you today. And it’s a doozy.”

  I rubbed my eyes and rolled over, hoping whatever it was would allow us to sleep at least three or four more hours. “That’s great, Grandpa,” I mumbled.

  Grandpa pulled the covers off of me. “You are meeting a real, live dignitary today. So put on your fanciest clothes and let’s get on the road.”

  I flopped my body out of bed and riffled through my suitcase. A second later, I held up a pair of dark denim Sevens and a sheer black T-shirt for his approval. “This is about as good as it gets.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “Well, OK. I’m sure Father Joe has seen kids wear worse.”

  Brina popped her head up from her pillow. “We’re going to church? But it’s only Thursday!”

  Grandpa blew a seafood quiche burp her way. “No, even better. We’re going to meet with my Jesuit friend at Fairfield University.”

  I jumped back in bed and pulled the covers over my head. “No need, Grandpa. I hate to break it to you, but I’m going to school in California.”

  “Not once you see my alma mater.”

  I shook my head vigorously. “Even after that, I’m afraid.”

  Grandpa stood his ground. “Care to make a wager?”

  “Nope,” I said. “My New Year’s resolution is to stop stealing money from senior citizens.”

  “Good, Father Joe will love to hear all about your high moral standards. Let’s go, kids. Time’s a-wastin’.”

  We all reluctantly got scrubbed and ready for a supremely dull day with an old priest and my gassy gramps.

  “Yesterday was obviously the high point of this vacation, Trace,” Brina whispered as we got back in the car for yet another road trip. “And today will undoubtedly turn out to be the low one.”

  A couple of hours later, we pulled into the campus and Grandpa proudly pointed out everything there was to see. It took all of about three seconds.

  “Isn’t this place the shizzle?” Grandpa asked, staring at us in the rearview mirror.

  “It’s great, Grandpa,” I said in a flat monotone. I was tired, bored, and achy from sleeping on the crappy bed at my grandparents’ house. And I just wanted to get home and regroup so I could figure out what to do about the picture I’d found. The gears were totally spinning in my head—I had so many ideas I wanted to put into action.

  “So you’ll think about attending next year?” he asked, like a vulture preying on some poor distracted bunny.

  “Not a chance,” I said, snapping back to life before he had a chance to devour my serious reservations and spit back out an honest-to-goodness Fairfield freshman.

  “Just wait until you meet Father Joe,” Grandpa said, as insistent as ever that this rinky-dink school was the place for me. “You’ll for sure be convinced after that.”

  Grandpa parked the car and led us through the heavy oak doors of Bellarmine Hall. Snowflakes swirled around our feet as we stomp
ed our boots on the doormat.

  “These Fairfield people must be really into hunting,” I said, eyeing the large deer head mounted above the fireplace in the reception area.

  “Very funny,” Grandpa said, snorting his disapproval. “That’s actually our mascot.”

  “You’re a Beheaded Fairfield Deer?” I asked, peering back up at the unlucky animal.

  “A deer doesn’t have antlers,” he not-so-patiently explained.

  “So you’re the Fairfield Moose?” It seemed an unlikely candidate for a mascot for a school in Connecticut.

  “No, we’re the Stags.”

  “Fags is more like it,” Brina whispered in my ear.

  I glared at her. Even if I wasn’t coming here next year, that didn’t mean Brina had the right to knock it. Especially since she wasn’t going anywhere farther than the local community college the way things were looking now.

  Before things dissolved into a bitch fight, a dignified-looking man in a priest’s collar ran up to my grandfather and hugged him like mad. Next thing I knew, the guy was hugging the rest of us with the same kind of enthusiasm. “Hey, Joe!” Grandpa kept saying over and over, slapping the guy on the back in great wallops. “How long has it been?”

  “Too long,” Father Joe replied, smiling like an angel and ignoring the fact that he was probably going to have bruises from Grandpa’s overly enthusiastic back pounding. “Far too long.”

  Father Joe turned his attention to me, holding me at an arm’s length and taking a long look before grabbing me in another embrace. “And you must be Tracey,” he finally said. “Your grandfather has told me so much about you. And it’s such a pleasure to meet you.”

  “And you, too,” I said, pulling back and smiling at this sweet man.

  “I hear you may be joining us next year,” Father Joe said, making small talk as he led us to the faculty cafeteria.

  “I just might do that,” I said, wondering if lying to a guy in a priest suit gave me an immediate pass into hell, or if I’d have a chance to explain how I simply hadn’t been able to bring myself to hurt his cute little feelings.