Accidental Superstar

by Marianne Levy

  ‘She did. Until I fell into it.’

  ‘God.’ Then: ‘It was an accident, I hope?’

  ‘OF COURSE it was an accident!’

  ‘It’s just . . .’

  I felt the tears start coming. ‘Not you as well.’

  ‘All right, all right, I’m not saying you did it on purpose. Don’t go off on one while I’m driving, please.’

  I had a go at pulling myself together, which meant singing Shania Twain lyrics in my head. I had to do the whole of Man! I Feel Like a Woman and half of That Don’t Impress Me Much before I was calm enough to say:

  ‘They didn’t believe me. About all the Top Music stuff. They think I’m making it up.’

  ‘Really? Even Lacey?’

  ‘Even Lacey,’ I said.

  ‘But you’ve got all those hits!’

  ‘Apparently that’s not enough.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it’s understandable,’ said Amanda, finally, after we’d got through a particularly scary one-way system. ‘I mean, it doesn’t seem very likely, does it?’

  ‘Why does everyone think it’s so crazy that I could finally make something of my life?’

  There was a long bit where we just drove in silence. By which I mean Amanda did the actual driving, but I did quite a lot of pretend steering in my head, especially when we had to go down the narrow bit at the end of the high street. Then, finally:

  ‘You are making something of your life,’ said Amanda. ‘This is your life. Here and now. Your family and mates and school and home. We’re not . . . some waiting room that you have to sit in until you finally get called into this amazing place where you think you deserve to be.’

  We drove a bit more.

  ‘They’ll see when the single comes out,’ I said. ‘I just wish Tony would tell me when that will be. And when are we shooting the video? Or will they use the one we recorded?’

  Amanda made a noise that somehow told me she didn’t know and also didn’t care. She was probably still wrapped up in all that shop stuff.

  Finally, we were at the house. I opened the car door and there was that fresh, outside smell that I’d never had with a house before, blowing in from the trees and the fields and the sky.

  And as we went up the drive I saw that the curtains weren’t quite shut. There was a slice of light, and in it, I caught a glimpse of Mum and Adrian curled up on the sofa. Their faces were lit gold by whatever was on the TV, and Mum was smiling at something.

  And I thought, at least I’m safe now.

  I’m home.

  ‘Katie, hey.’ Adrian got up the second he saw me. ‘Glad you’re back early. I was just about to have some nachos. Fancy sharing?’

  ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I’m going to bed.’

  ‘You sure?’ he said. ‘I’ll put extra cheese on. Just the way you like them. It’ll be a one-to-one ratio of cheddar to crisp.’

  My stomach sent me a message to say that a load of squashed icing didn’t exactly constitute dinner, so I nodded, and followed him into the kitchen. Where he shut the door with an expression that said this hadn’t been about triangular crisps.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I’ve had Tony on the phone. Asking about this tour.’

  Bubbles, bright and sparkly, came fizzing through my chest and out of my mouth in a giddy laugh. The timing could not have been more perfect!

  I saw myself unrolling a poster, maybe in registration, Savannah and co. being nice, Lacey begging to be my friend again, and Jaz . . . well, I wasn’t sure what Jaz would do. Hopefully something good.

  ‘Oh my God. Oh my God! Because he talked about it at our meeting but then I didn’t hear anything and I was starting to worry but this means it’s all about to kick off, doesn’t it? Oh my God!’

  He put his finger between his eyes. ‘You can’t go, Katie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s everything we said you wouldn’t do. Foreign travel. Term-time dates.’

  ‘So? I don’t care if I miss a bit of school. I can catch up easily enough.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can’t they send a tutor or something?’

  ‘Oh, and you think you’ll be able to concentrate on quadratic equations in the back of some bus?’

  ‘I can’t concentrate on them when I am at school,’ I said truthfully. ‘So maybe a change of venue would be helpful. Worth exploring, anyway.’

  ‘No,’ said Adrian.

  ‘Let me just speak to Tony,’ I said. ‘I’m sure there’s a way . . .’

  ‘There’s no point,’ said Adrian. ‘I told him that it wasn’t going to happen.’

  ‘You did what?’ I said, and if it had been a film the music would have gone frightening and slow.

  ‘I told him no can do.’ His voice was completely certain, but his eyes, they were looking at the floor, the microwave, the unopened bag of nachos – anywhere, except me. ‘We agreed that you would be responsible.’

  I hated him, this bloke, this nobody that Mum had picked up in the pub and who was now ruining my life.

  ‘We did not agree,’ I said.

  If it hadn’t been for Adrian, I’d be walking into school along the canal instead of sitting on that manky bus, I’d still be friends with Lacey, I’d have a house that wasn’t on the verge of falling down, my sister wouldn’t be in ultimate depression mode. And most of all, I’d be going on tour with Top Music. Instead of being stuck here, trapped, in this stupid house going to stupid school surrounded by people who hated me, basically just waiting to die.

  ‘We had a conversation, Katie, don’t say you don’t remember because you do.’

  ‘You had the conversation and you told me that I wasn’t taking time off school. I don’t remember getting a say in it.’

  ‘You can’t just go jaunting off.’ His mouth had little white blobs of spit in the corners.

  ‘You can’t go telling Top Music what I will and won’t do. It’s not your place, OK?’

  ‘It is exactly my place,’ said Adrian. ‘I’m your manager, it’s what I’m here for. I’m the one looking out for you here, you’ve got to see that. I’m in your corner! Record labels, they pretend they’re your friends, but –’

  ‘Just because your career was a complete failure, you think mine’s going to be too! Well, it’s not, OK? And you are not on my side. If you were, then you’d have actually asked my opinion before you said no.’ The words came tearing out of my mouth before I could stop them. ‘If you were on my side, then we would have broadband! If you were on my side, then you wouldn’t have dragged my sister into your pathetic failure of a so-called shop! If you were on my side, then you would leave us all alone!’

  ‘I –’

  I must have been pretty loud as in came Mum.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  He glanced at me, a sad, hopeless kind of a glance.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Are you giving Adrian cheek?’ said Mum.

  ‘No,’ said Adrian. ‘Katie’s OK. It’s all OK.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I was just . . . upset about the party.’

  ‘Why?’

  Honestly, can’t a girl suffer in peace?

  ‘I fell into a cake,’ I said. Which was enough to send Mum back into the lounge.

  ‘Katie,’ said Adrian. ‘Katie.’

  ‘I am going to bed,’ I said. ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Can we talk tomorrow? We’ll talk about this tomorrow!’ His words followed me up the stairs, floating on a cloud of ‘We’re still friends, aren’t we?’-ness, so I shut my bedroom door and left them bobbing about on the landing.

  There had to be a way of undoing this.

  If I really did have an actual tour lined up and ready, and Adrian had only spoken to Tony a couple of hours ago, then maybe there was still time.

  I got my phone out, ready for a text from Lacey, maybe, or Jaz. Or anyone.

  Nothing.

  Fine fine fine fine, I said to myself. I
do not need them. I do not need anyone. If . . .

  Hi Tony. Heard you spoke to Adrian earlier.

  I hesitated.

  Ignore him! He’s just a stupid

  Not ever so professional. I deleted and tried again.

  He does not have the authority to decide my schedule

  A bit too professional. Delete.

  We got the dates muddled up. I can totally do the tour. Excited!!! Kx

  I put my phone on to charge and then lay on my rug, noticing, in a sort of vague way that I had stopped noticing the water stains on my ceiling.

  There was something hard just under my head, its corner poking into my skull. So I reached back and flicked whatever it was across the floor.

  My lyric book.

  I hadn’t looked at it in days. It was like seeing an old friend. By which I mean a genuine one, not a two-faced canal-buddy accuser-toad.

  The pages were semi-transparent, some of them grooved by the nib of my biro, lines of ink running this way and that as the words crossed and scribbled and sometimes fought with each other and sometimes flowed, up the margins and down into corners, around the staples and jumping between lines like when me and Lacey played Ironic Hopscotch.

  There were the lyrics to Just Me, in three different colours of pen.

  And then, a blank page.

  There were so many things to write about: horrible parties, renegade managers, so-called friends, miserable sisters. A billion songs’ worth of stuff.

  I sat up, took a pen from my desk and began . . .

  Then stopped.

  I tried again, the tip of my pen sitting on the paper, pouring out an inky blob. More and more blue, until the paper was wet. Until the point of the pen went straight through the page.

  And still, no song.

  It was all there, inside me, waiting, but for some reason, it wouldn’t come out. Couldn’t come through. Like I could hear the words, in the distance, but whenever I tried to get close to them I smacked my face into a wall.

  My phone buzzed.

  Hi Katie. That’s great news but are you sure? Adrian sounded pretty certain.

  Tony was there.

  Am sure.

  I shut the book, so those blank pages would stop staring at me.

  Can we have a quick chat? Sorry, I know it’s late

  I’d barely finished reading his message before I was typing:

  Not 2 late.

  The screen began to flash. I took a breath, leaned out the window and cleared my throat. Which seemed to just dislodge a hidden bit of something, meaning I had to clear it again, harder, and again, before I finally gave up and answered.

  ‘Tony, hi!’

  ‘Oh dear, have you got a cold?’

  ‘No,’ I said, giving my throat another small scrape and half-choking. ‘I’m completely healthy. And really, I mean it about the tour. It was just a mix-up.’

  ‘So, it’s fine for you to miss school?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘This is an issue, though,’ said Tony. ‘Adrian clearly doesn’t want you to go. And he is your manager.’

  ‘Seriously? Me saying this to you on the phone now about my life and my time doesn’t count as much as something that Nose – I mean, Adrian says?’

  ‘He’s your official point of contact with us. If he says one thing and you say another . . . well, you can see that it presents us with a difficulty.’

  ‘He shouldn’t have said anything to you without talking to me first,’ I said. ‘In fact, I sort of think he shouldn’t say anything to you at all. I didn’t choose for him to be my manager. He chose himself.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Tony. ‘I see. I wonder . . .’ I listened to him breathing for a few moments. ‘I wonder whether he’s what you need, right now. You and he clearly have different ideas about the direction you need to be going in.’ He paused. ‘Creative differences.’

  Of course.

  Of course!

  It was so obvious.

  How come I’d not seen it until now?

  ‘I’ll get rid of him,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t have to be my manager. Does he?’

  ‘That’s not what I was suggesting,’ said Tony. ‘Adrian’s a mate. An old mate.’ His voice crackled, and I leaned out further into the night.

  ‘No, but that will solve this. Won’t it?’

  ‘I want to be very clear. I’m not asking you to part ways with Adrian. I just thought you could sit down and have a discussion about what you want.’

  ‘Or, I could get rid of him and just get someone who wants what I want. And what you want. What we want!’ It occurred to me that I had literally no clue how you find a manager. ‘Do you know anyone?’

  ‘We can always get you a manager, if that’s what you decide.’

  ‘Then let’s do that!’

  ‘You don’t want to talk things through with him? I’m sure he has some good ideas.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘Please. Can we get him out the picture and then I’ll go on tour and everything will be like it’s supposed to?’

  ‘And we’ll find someone to look after you. Good stuff, Katie. You’ll tell him?’

  ‘I will,’ I said.

  ‘Then how about you come in tomorrow for a chat?’

  Which would mean skiving off. And on a guitar lesson day, too. Then again, without Adrian in the picture, it hardly mattered. ‘Great,’ I said. ‘Around lunchtime?’

  ‘As soon as you can get here,’ said Tony, his voice so eager it was like he was reaching down the phone and pulling me on to the train. ‘We have so much to talk about.’

  ‘Yes! Sorry, I know it’s silly, but I was starting to worry that . . . I don’t even know what I was worrying about.’

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ said Tony.

  We said goodbye to each other and as I hung up and pulled myself back inside I thought how much better everything was now. I had my tour, and my single. Two really good things.

  Yes, I’d have to tell Adrian.

  And ideally find a whole load of new friends to make up for the ones I’d lost earlier.

  With my duvet pulled up to my chin, and the light off so that the ceiling stains disappeared into the blackness, it really didn’t seem so bad.

  I’d go to London, first thing tomorrow. Momentum, that’s what Tony had said I had. We’d sit down, make a plan together. Maybe he’d give me a CD to take away.

  I’d come this far. Besides, in case anyone had forgotten, I had over a million hits.

  It was all going to be completely fine.

  It was a weird sort of a night, what with knowing I was about to go on this life-changing mega-tour of amazingness and then have a single come out. Every time I got excited I remembered that I sort of didn’t really have any friends any more, and went a bit flat. And every time I thought about not having any friends any more, I remembered the single, and the tour, and got excited again.

  So, yet another terrible night’s sleep.

  I was already a fingernail picker, a spot popper and a ponytail sucker; insomnia was a habit I could really do without.

  I suppose I must have conked out at some point, because then the light coming through my curtains was grey and there were birds screeching, apparently right next to my head.

  Living in the country is tough.

  And there was a tapping noise, coming from somewhere. A woodpecker, maybe. Or, a rat. Or a horse, or –

  ‘Morning,’ said Adrian. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘All right,’ I said, trying to shake off dreams of crashing cakes and crazy laughter and something that I couldn’t quite remember involving a levitating tractor.

  ‘I’m sorry about last night,’ he said, sitting down on the end of my rumpled bed. ‘I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it. And . . . I just want the best for you, you do know that?’

  ‘I know that,’ I said. Not that it helped.

  ‘So I thought, we’d go back to Top Music and say that you can tour out of term-time, if you want. And if they don’t
like that, we’ll look for another label. And we’ll talk to Zoe, be straight up with her this time, tell her all about it. We’ll make it work, Katie.’

  ‘Adrian –’

  ‘Yeah?’

  I focused on his massive furry feet. ‘I don’t think you should be my manager any more.’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘I just reckon it’ll be better for me to have someone else who’s a bit more in tune with what I need. But, thank you for all your hard work. And everything.’

  He stood up. ‘You’ve decided?’

  ‘I’ve already told Tony,’ I said. ‘So, I suppose, yes. I officially have.’

  What was I expecting? Probably some yelling. Definitely a lecture of some kind.

  Instead, he simply got up and left.

  So I suppose he didn’t care that much, after all.

  An hour later and I was all ready for my secret London mission.

  Remembering the ‘just got out of bed and not in an attractive way’ look I’d been sporting last time I’d gone to Top Music, I made sure to wash and dry and brush my hair. Then I packed my grey boots with the too-high heels, a black top and my good denim skirt. Plus, a lipstick I got free with a magazine, to get the look that Lacey called Big Red Mouth.

  The twenty that Manda kept in her make-up bag would just cover my train fare, and I made sure to eat an especially massive breakfast as clearly there wouldn’t be time for lunch. Mands gave me a bit of a look as I went for Coco Pops bowl number three but I just ignored her.

  Adrian was nowhere to be seen. Since our early morning conversation I’d been braced for the hairdryer treatment from Mum, a whole load of What did you say to him? and How dare you, young lady? In fact, there was nothing. She just got ready for work while we listened to Florence and the Machine on the radio.

  Which gave me a good chance to fine-tune my secret plan. Not that it needed much in the way of fine-tuning, seeing as how it was an awesome plan to begin with. Like all the best plans, it was daring and ambitious, and at the same time really simple and hard to mess up.

  So long as the world left me to myself I’d definitely get away with it.

  Given that my current friend-count was approximately nil, it didn’t seem too unfeasible.