Sing

by Vivi Greene

“What?” I prod. They both look like they want to say more, but don’t.

  “It’s no big deal,” Tess finally huffs, waving her hand in the air between us. “We can stay.” She unpeels the wrapper from an ice cream sandwich and licks slowly around the dripping edges. “Summer in the city is delightful.”

  I look out at the puzzle of inching cars and shuffling pedestrians. I moved to New York because I thought it would be a fresh start. After Caleb, LA was feeling claustrophobic, like it already knew me too well. I loved the way New York made me feel off-balance. I wanted the city to swallow me up, to consume me. And it did, for about a week.

  Then I met Jed. I wasn’t looking for another relationship so soon, but it was almost a foregone conclusion. Our lives fit so perfectly together. We were so alike. And everything he was, I wanted to be. Successful, established, respected, grown-up. Right away, people loved us together. We were supposed to make it.

  I wasn’t supposed to be here, again.

  Suddenly, there’s an overwhelming rumbling in my chest. I turn on my heel and walk to Sammy’s chaise, standing over the shoebox. I hold out one hand and without saying a word, Tess is there with the matches. I strike one and Sam passes me the photo booth strip. I tilt the flame until it licks the photo’s glossy edge.

  “It was fun, but now it’s done,” I say, the silly rhyme I stole from Sammy, the one she used to chant to get over high school breakups, back before I had any boyfriends of my own. I hold on to the burning photo, watching as Jed’s face contorts, melting into mine, until the whole thing goes up in an orange burst of flame.

  3

  91 Days Until Tour

  June 13th

  RAY IS WAITING beside one of two black Escalades parked at the back entrance of Equinox. Despite the urge to stay cocooned in my bed for weeks on end, I dragged myself to my so-early-it-should-be-illegal private session with Leon this morning, intense interval training that consistently liquefies the lower half of my body. It was typically brutal, but it felt good to be distracted, and as I approach the car I even manage something that resembles a smile.

  “Nice guns,” Ray teases. I lift the sleeve of my retro silk blouse to flex my wiry muscles, our post-gym comedy routine. Of the entire security team, Ray has been around the longest and is my favorite. He’s sort of like an older brother, if your older brother were an ex-Navy SEAL with biceps the size of watermelons. He holds the door open and I climb in, tossing my tote on the seat beside me.

  “Hey, K2.” I nod at Kevin, the same driver I’ve had since moving to New York. Ray has another Kevin on the security team, so now we call this one K2.

  “M’lady.” K2 fake-bows. Even though he’s from the Bronx, he has a habit of slipping into a phony British accent and calling my apartment “The Manor.”

  My phone buzzes and I look down to see an e-mail from Terry. The studio time has officially been booked for this afternoon. I wince. I’m supposed to be putting the final touches on my new album. But that was before yesterday, before the breakup. Now the idea of spending time with those songs, songs I’ve been working on for the last six months, seems impossible. Twelve songs, each one about Jed, my missing puzzle piece, all my dreams come true.

  The album is titled, unbelievably, Forever.

  “I need a fix,” I tell K2, code for If there isn’t a cup of coffee in my immediate future, we’ll be approaching DEFCON red.

  K2 nods and seamlessly navigates the chaos of the road. I watch his eyes flicker in the mirror, searching for the nearest Starbucks. I catch a glimpse of my own reflection. It’s not as bad as I’d imagined, but there are shallow dark circles under my eyes, and my skin looks dry and dull, despite the full face of makeup I applied after getting out of the gym shower. I look like somebody who hasn’t slept, which, aside from a few, fitful hours full of punishing dreams—dreams about Jed, about us together, as if nothing had happened—is true.

  I tuck my phone back in my bag as K2 wedges us into an illegal spot on Thirty-third Street. Ray hops out to the curb and for a moment I consider sending him in with my order. I just don’t know if I have it in me to pull it together for my fans. But getting my own coffee is a thing I do, a deal I made with myself when my world started to really change, when I started hearing my own voice on every radio station: Don’t stop doing normal things.

  I’m fully aware that being trailed by bodyguards and getting mobbed at every stop is nowhere in the neighborhood of normal, but for some reason it feels better than the alternative. No matter how surreal everything else gets, it’s important to believe I can still do things for myself, even if it takes an absurdly long time to do them.

  I slide out after Ray and we walk into the coffee shop together. Behind us, the rest of the security team is assembling, a handful of beefy guys in sunglasses trying to blend in with the hordes of pedestrians swarming the midtown sidewalk.

  Ray holds the door open and I duck inside. As always, there are a few quiet moments before the phones start flashing and the crowd descends. Sometimes, I like to imagine that I can live in these moments. Freeze them and drag them out. Today, I use them to take a few steadying breaths. I make sure that all traces of sadness are buried deep beneath an easy, carefree facade.

  As I start toward the back of the line, a trio of squealing girls shuffles over from the window. Their moms follow, iPhones at the ready, and I smile and ask their names. One of them is wearing a T-shirt that says GREELEY GYMNASTICS and I tell her I used to dream of going to the Olympics. “Now I can’t do a cartwheel,” I admit, and they giggle. Their moms gently guide them away after we’ve selfied in a variety of formations, and I inch my way closer to the counter.

  Twenty minutes, twelve photo ops, and half an iced Americano later, I give Ray the sign—a tug on one earring—and a path is cleared toward the door. I’ve almost made it out of the frosty AC and into the sticky city heat when a girl, maybe college-age, maybe older, pops up by the counter and yells my name.

  I turn to her with a warm smile, ready to sign whatever she thrusts at me, and then I see the expensive camera in her hands. She could easily be a college student studying photography, but I recognize the focused, calculating look in her eyes. Paparazzi.

  “Where’s Jed?” she calls out, once, and then again. “Where’s Jed?” By now she’s practically clawing Ray’s elbow to keep me in her sight.

  My skin starts to prickle and I hurry toward the door, but the girl scoots around Ray, camera thrust outward. “I heard you guys broke up! Is it true? What happened to Forever?”

  There’s a pounding in my chest and the smile on my face turns stale. Confused whispers travel through the crowd and there’s a subtle change in the energy around me, like the charge in the air before a storm.

  I reach out for the door but somehow misjudge the distance and lean into space, my legs still weak from this morning’s workout. I stumble against the corner of a trash can, and before I know it, Ray is at my elbow. But it’s too late: I’m going down.

  The whispers turn to frenzied panic as I splay across the linoleum floor, and I feel the crowd closing in. I shut my eyes, take a deep breath, and hear the unmistakable snap of a shutter going off. I know I should get up. I know I should laugh, make a joke about being the world’s biggest klutz, but I can’t. I lean into Ray’s shoulder as he helps me to my feet, and keep my head down as I finally duck through the door and out onto the sidewalk, tumbling into the car.

  K2 peels away from the curb. He makes a series of quick turns and soon we’re careening down the West Side Highway. I look out at the river on one side, the towering clump of high-rise buildings on the other. My breathing has started to return to normal, but I still feel trapped.

  This isn’t the way it was supposed to happen. Usually after a breakup, I crave contact with the outside world. Being around my fans, talking to them, feeling their energy . . . it’s what gets me through. It’s what inspires me to get back to writing, to mine the heartache and make it my own. To wrestle it down and wring it out: a new
song, a new album, a new experience.

  But now it feels like I’m the one being wrung out.

  I need a change of scenery. I need to be alone. I need to hear myself think.

  I take out my phone and scroll through my messages, searching for a recent group text. Changed my mind, I type furiously to Tess and Sammy. Need a vacation. Who’s in?

  4

  90 Days Until Tour

  June 14th

  “WHERE ARE WE?”

  I open my eyes and stare blurrily through the backseat window. I fell asleep somewhere around Portland, Maine, when Ray and the guys in the car ahead insisted on stopping for snacks. Now Tess is turning into a long, narrow parking lot and steering us toward the ocean. It feels like we could keep driving onto the rickety dock, over the water, and straight into the pale blue horizon. Wait until I tell Jed about this, I think, and then instantly feel the pain of losing him again. I wish I could erase him—his name, his face, his existence—from my memory.

  “We’re here!” Tess announces, turning off the engine of her beloved Prius—or “the Pree” as she affectionately calls it. Tess is the only one of us who drives regularly, which is ironic given that she’s also the only one who has lived in the city her entire life. The Pree was the first big purchase Tess ever made and I’m pretty sure she’s more attached to it than she’s ever been to an actual human being.

  “We are?” Sammy looks up from her phone distractedly, taking in the sleepy dock and the deserted parking lot around us. A car door slams and I see Ray loping across the pavement, looking very fish-out-of-water in his reflective Ray-Bans, black polo, and pleated khakis. He grips the inside of the passenger-side window and peers in to see me sprawled out across the backseat. “You good?”

  “Just woke up.” I yawn. After years of shuttling from hotel rooms to buses to planes, I can pretty much sleep anywhere. It was hard at first, but I got the hang of it: contorting my body into compact positions, tossing a sweatshirt or hat over my face, and dozing off within seconds. I stretch and sit up, noticing a smudge of orangey powder on the collar of Ray’s shirt. “Cheese puffs?” I guess.

  “Crap.” He sighs, patting the crumbs away with one enormous thumb.

  I smile. “I’m telling Lori.” Ray’s wife is a nutritionist and runs a tight ship. Cheese puffs are not on the meal plan.

  Ray rolls his eyes before squinting into the sun. “Where’s the boat?” The island is a forty-five minute ferry ride off the coast, which at first made me anxious. What will it feel like to be stranded in the middle of the ocean, with no team of stylists, no schedule, no events?

  Now it doesn’t feel far enough.

  “Guess it’s late,” Tess says, fiddling with the radio. She leaves the battery running but pushes the door open with one foot. “Gives us time to get lunch,” she says and climbs out. “This place has the best chicken salad on the planet.”

  Sammy pockets her phone and gets out of the car, pulling her hair into a messy bun at the top of her head.

  Tess nods toward a quiet café at the top of a small hill. “What do you think, Ray? Gluten-free bun? Hold the mayo?”

  Ray crosses his arms over his broad chest and leans against the bumper, which dips perceptibly beneath his weight. “Coffee,” he grunts. “Black.”

  I press my forehead against the window and look out across the water. A cluster of gulls hovers above the ocean, squawking and diving in a sort of dance. I can’t remember the last time I was this close to the sea. The beach was just a short drive from my house in LA, but the only time I ever spent there was the week we shot the “California Christmas” special for MTV. Otherwise, it was just the scenic blur of my daily commute to and from my house.

  Choppy DJ chatter bursts from the car speakers and suddenly “You Are Here” comes on. It’s a song I wrote about getting lost while driving around LA with Caleb. I still feel a little jolt every time I hear the opening bars of one of my tracks on the radio. Usually, it’s a happy, heart-pumping thrill. But today it’s more of a guilty pang, like I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t.

  Aside from my parents, I didn’t tell anyone I was leaving the city. I thought about texting Terry, but I knew he’d try to talk me out of it. I’ve decided to call him when I get to the island, explain that getting away is the only option right now. There are three months until tour, and I have to relax before then. I can’t risk another scene like yesterday. Terry won’t be thrilled to hear that I’ve temporarily relocated to an isolated island hours and a boat ride away from any trappings of civilization, but he’ll come around . . . eventually.

  Out of habit, I pull my phone from the front pocket of my bag and scroll through old texts with Jed. I see my usual gushy, long-winded messages, full of kissy-face emojis and exclamation points, and his quick replies: Yup; You too; Night. I guess if I’d really been looking for it I would have noticed that he was distracted and curt. But why would I be looking for it? Just last week we’d done an all-day event together in Central Park. He was by my side through the whole thing, his arm hooked easily around my waist. I’d never felt so supported.

  I stare off across the still water, willing the boat to appear and magically transport me to someplace where I can pretend to be somebody else.

  “Welcome home!”

  Tess lugs our bags out of the trunk and plops them down on the grass beside her. I peel my legs from the sticky seat and climb out of the car as Sammy bounds up to the screen door like a dopey golden retriever.

  The house is small and boxy, with missing shingles and a screened-in porch that’s patched with electrical tape. But the paint on the trim is new, and a cheery row of peonies lines the stone walkway to the steps.

  “What do you think?” Tess asks. I follow her gaze toward the horizon. The house may be plain, but the setting is something out of a fairy tale. A thick fog snakes between clusters of giant evergreens. A low, grassy marsh opens into a web of tidal pools. And beyond all that is the ocean, flat and still and so blue it’s almost black.

  “It’s gorgeous,” I say. The air smells sweet and salty at the same time, honeysuckle mixed with gusts of a crisp sea breeze. My grandparents live in a place like this. Theirs is a lake house in Wisconsin, but the feeling of being lost in nature is the same.

  “It’s no Four Seasons.” Tess laughs, shouldering her bag and starting for the house.

  Ray leans in to scoop up my luggage, but I wave him off. “I got it,” I say. “You guys go get settled. We’ll call you if we make any plans.”

  Part of the deal I struck with my parents was that the guys had to stay at a B and B in town. I can handle being shadowed when we’re out and about, but there’s no way I’m spending the summer with a security team from dawn until dusk. The whole point of this trip is for me to feel normal again, and there’s nothing normal about three burly bodyguards monitoring my every move.

  After a thorough inspection of the house, Ray insists on rolling my bags to the steps before climbing back into his SUV and reversing down the dusty dirt road.

  I open the screen door and am immediately transported to the summers of my childhood. The windows are covered in dusty plaid curtains, and there’s a wood stove in the far corner of the living room. It even smells like my grandparents’ house, a combination of mothballs and lingering ash from the stove.

  It’s perfect.

  Sam and Tess are getting settled upstairs, the old wooden floorboards groaning beneath their feet. I leave my bags near the bottom step and walk through the kitchen, a bright, narrow room with linoleum tiles and wallpaper trim. Between the kitchen and the living room is a sliding glass door that opens up to a small porch. I leave my sandals on the steps and start down the trail toward the water.

  Strains of Sammy’s laughter float on the breeze. I take a deep breath and feel a sharp twinge of missing home, Madison, my grandparents, and my mom and dad. I talk to them all the time, but it’s not the same. It’s not the same as waking up to the sounds of Mom in the kitchen, mixing ba
tter for pancakes, classical music playing softly from the clock radio beside the stove.

  Ahead of me, the water stretches out in all directions. The trail under my feet turns from rock to tall grass, opening up to a pebbly coast. I bend down to cuff the bottoms of my jeans and burrow my toes into the dark, cool sand. The waves crash into the rocks at intervals, sending up a dramatic spray of white.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket and I jump. I slip it out and stare guiltily at the screen: Terry. I exhale loudly and answer the call, pressing the phone to my ear.

  “Hey,” I greet him, breezy and cheerful.

  “Lil, what the hell?” Terry barks. “I’ve been texting all morning.”

  “I know.” I sigh, backing away from the crashing surf. “I’m sorry.”

  “What was that about yesterday?” he asks. “Are you okay? I’ve already pulled a bunch of stuff down but a few photos got out. Did you fall? What happened?”

  “I’m fine, Terry,” I say. “It’s just . . . Jed and I broke up. He ended it. We’re through.”

  There’s a short pause. I imagine Terry pacing the stretch of carpet in front of his desk, staring through the window of his corner office and tugging at the roots of his slicked-back hair. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says, his voice measured. “I thought you guys were—never mind, not important. What’s important now is that you stay calm. Do the work, right? Nobody processes this stuff better than you do, Lil. You’re the queen of bouncing back.”

  I slump into the sand and pick up a handful of pebbles, sifting them through my fingertips. “That’s the thing,” I say softly. “I don’t know if I can do it this time.”

  “What do you mean?” Terry asks. “Of course you can. We’ll put you right out there. Radio. Events. Whatever it takes to keep you busy and get ready for the fall.”

  I take a deep breath. “Terry. I left,” I say. “I’m taking some time off.”

  Terry laughs. “What are you talking about? Left where?” he asks, panic creeping into his voice. “What about the tour?”