by Lisa Suzanne
I didn’t know if anything was going to come of it, but I had to choose my future over some stupid high school girl. Drumming was my first and only true love. It was paradoxically the calm in the storm and the storm in the quiet, the very essence of what gave my life meaning. Hope. If I could have a real shot at playing professionally, I couldn’t risk fucking that up because some chick gave me a boner. There’d be plenty of those hanging around if we caught a real break, anyway.
It was probably more complicated than that, but it was easy enough to simplify it down to that very equation in my mind. Life in general didn’t look kindly upon the Fullers, and I had to grasp onto whatever lucky break I could find.
Mark seemed to think this talent agent guy was trying to scam us out of money, but to me, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was someone was interested in us, and I wasn’t about to let anything—or anyone—hold me back from the ultimate dream.
So rather than find sweet little Dani Mayne and kiss her like I did in the hallway that day at school, kiss her good and long and hard like she deserved to be kissed, I looked around for Isabelle Martin. She’d spread her legs for me more than once under the bleachers at school, and I knew she’d do it again if I shot her the smoldering look I’d practiced in the mirror at home.
She was drunk on Jello shots, which made for an easy target. She’d help me forget about the sweet girl with the angelic voice who somehow managed to steal my heart when I wasn’t paying attention.
I’d pay better attention now, though. She couldn’t have my heart when it belonged to my drum kit. I’d ignore her presence, forget about her, and dedicate my entire being to my craft.
After I blew my load, of course.
We were in the basement of my childhood home. My mother was staying the night at some boyfriend’s house, and the only reason we even had a decent size house with a nice basement was because of my dad’s fucking drug money. Setting my mom and us up in this house was the one good thing he did before his stupid ass got locked up for good.
“Come up to my bedroom with me,” I said. I figured I’d fuck someone in there tonight, so I straightened up. I tossed a pile of dirty clothes into my closet, pulled the old tattered blanket I used as a comforter off the bed and hid it on the top shelf of my closet, and cleared off every item from the top of my dresser except for a pair of drumsticks. My stash of weed was hidden right next to my lucky sticks under my mattress, and I thought for a split second Isabelle and I could get high.
But then I realized I didn’t really want to share anything more than just sex with her.
She didn’t respond by nodding or speaking. Instead, her mouth covered mine. She wasn’t who I wanted her to be. I shouldn’t be doing this with her—I should be running after the one my brain was telling me to find. My brain typically had decent instincts, and I wasn’t a listen to your heart kind of guy. But instead of listening to my brain or my heart, I allowed my dick to lead the way up the stairs, through the house, up another set of stairs, and finally into my bedroom.
CHAPTER THREE
DANI
I decided to walk home, admittedly not the smartest choice I ever made. Ethan Fuller’s house was a full two miles from my own home in the outskirts of Chicago, and I didn’t know the way. I wasn’t driving yet, didn’t even have my permit, and I didn’t pay attention to the streets and the roads because I was still at the age where I didn’t have to.
In that moment, though, I wished I had paid attention.
It was dangerous. I didn’t know where I was going, and I’d been so upset by what I’d overheard that I bolted without even telling Joss. I was sure she’d be angry I left without telling her, but I couldn’t stay in that suffocating house a second longer as the words pressed against my chest and threatened to crush me into tiny specks of dust.
I should’ve used the phone at the Fuller’s house to call my parents to come pick me up, should’ve done a million things differently, but I didn’t. Instead, I was a defeated child walking in the dark in a direction I hoped was toward home, tears streaming down my face as his words replayed over and over in my mind. I was too young and too stupid to be scared.
I’d told my parents I was going to Zoey’s house. I hadn’t lied, but I also left out the fact that Zoey was having a huge party. They knew I harbored a crush on Zoey’s brother, knew I wasn’t that close with her, but in my school, everyone sort of knew everyone. My parents trusted I’d be fine.
When I’d been walking for a half hour and didn’t recognize any of the street names, that’s when it hit me how stupid I’d been to leave alone…to leave before I confronted him and admitted I’d overheard him.
I didn’t have the guts to do that, though. Instead, I wished I was strong enough and mature enough to face him. I had the thoughts in my head of what I should do and how things should have played out, but acting like that just wasn’t me.
It hit me as I walked into a deserted gas station to use the payphone.
The only way I could even compete on Ethan’s level was to completely change who I was. He didn’t want some cute little sophomore. He wanted a woman.
I’d pack up sweet Dani Mayne and put her on a shelf.
I’d start over as someone different. Someone wild, someone who kissed boys and used curse words and drank beer at parties before leaving to have sex under the bleachers with the bad boy, and he wouldn’t even be the bad boy to me anymore because I’d be the bad girl. I’d be the one corrupting people without a care in the world. I wouldn’t be scared, wouldn’t waste my time studying advanced placement novels and mathematical formulas in order to get ahead. I’d focus on me, on the things I loved, on the things I wanted to do.
And it started right the heck now.
Scratch that.
It started right the fuck now.
After I called my parents to come pick me up, of course.
*
“I’m serious,” I told my parents. They stared at me like I had two heads.
“Dan, you can’t just leave in the middle of the school year,” my dad said. “At least finish it out and then you can transfer for your junior year.”
I shook my head as I used the tactics about argumentation I’d just learned in my pre-AP English class the month before.
“You don’t understand, Dad. They have auditions for advanced choir at the end of sophomore year. If I want to try to get into a performing arts college, I need to start ticking things off the list now. I need to meet the teachers and study under the experts.”
It was less than a week until Christmas, and I thought about asking for that as my gift, but then I realized how childish it sounded. Instead of giving me presents, just let me switch schools. So I came up with a sound reason my dad wouldn’t be able to refute.
“She’s thinking ahead to college, Quentin,” my mom said. “We can’t fault her for that.”
I was impressed with her reaction. Most parents whose kids wanted to major in music in college didn’t give them the sort of support my parents gave me. Most would tell them to choose something else just in case music didn’t work out.
But my parents supported me one hundred percent. They wanted what was best for me, of course, but they also wanted me to be happy. They were willing to do whatever it took to put a smile on my face, and I’d just been about to pull out the NCHS is making me sad card when my mom said to my dad, “Let’s talk about it tonight. Maybe we can do a one semester trial and revisit in the summer.”
I looked to her gratefully. I felt guilty keeping the truth from her since we shared almost everything, but I was scared the words of one boy might play on repeat for the rest of my life. I couldn’t do that to her, too. I couldn’t put those words in her head and let them push her down the valley of depression I found myself facing five days after he’d said them.
Running away, leaving, getting the heck out of there. That was a plan. I’d leave those words behind me in the past and focus forward.
If I was a talentless pig, I wa
nted to do something about it. I wanted to work on my talent. I wanted to be something other than a pig. I didn’t even know what he meant by those words. Was I fat? Was I a slob? Ugly? I’d never seen myself that way, but I’d been built up by the people around me my entire life. It’s always easier to believe the negative. Give me ninety-nine compliments, but I’d believe the one insult.
His words preyed on every insecurity I ever had. They magnified those insecurities, gave them sharp, pointy edges, and twisted their way into my guts. They became words I believed, too, and I couldn’t wait to get started on my new identity. I couldn’t wait to leave his words behind me, to show I was worth more than what a snide remark made me out to be.
He made me want to be something other than exactly who I was, and the first step was to get away from Ethan Fuller and everything that would remind me of him at NCHS.
The next step would be to start over, to reinvent myself. To find my talent and to prove him wrong.
I knew of Chicago Valley Music School, but I’d never considered leaving the school I loved where the boy I liked also went. But now it was my mission to go there. I just had to get my parents on board.
They never had to know the real reason I wanted to leave was a blue-eyed monster named Ethan.
CHAPTER FOUR
DANI
It was the first Christmas morning where I didn’t feel like a little kid anymore.
Usually I tore into my presents, paper flying around me in a tornado as I opened gift after gift, so many gifts since my parents went overboard every year and bought me all the things I had requested on my wish list. This year, though, I unwrapped them quietly and without enthusiasm.
There was only one thing I really wanted, and my dad had already said no.
I just couldn’t muster up the act that I was happy this year because I simply wasn’t. Each day of Christmas break that passed brought me closer and closer to the time when school would start again, when I’d have to face the boy who said the words. I’d relive those words every single day in every corner of the school. They’d dig at me and pinch me and cut me until I’d bleed out.
This was more than a bad mood, or PMS, or teenage drama. This was more than just a bout of sadness, too. I was losing myself at the hands of a boy whose opinion meant more to me than anything in the world, and I didn’t know how to climb out of it. I couldn’t stop thinking I just wasn’t good enough, and all I wanted to do was become good enough.
I nodded my thanks and shot my parents small smiles after each box I opened. I caught them exchanging glances, and I was sure their silent discussion was about why I was like this on Christmas morning.
All the presents were unwrapped and my parents sipped coffee on the couch behind me while I fiddled with the Beanie Babies I was too old for but my mom loved collecting. “I think there’s one left,” my dad said.
I glanced up at him, and he had a twinkle in his eye.
“It’s empty,” I muttered, jerking my head in the direction of the tree.
“Underneath is, but I see something up there.” He tilted his chin toward the tree and I followed his gaze to a green envelope. The color blended in so well with the pine needles I hadn’t even seen it.
I stood and walked toward it. The outside of the envelope had my name in my dad’s familiar scrawl.
My heart pounded as I tore it open. I had a feeling whatever was inside was going to be life-changing. I pulled out a small stack of papers.
Dear Daniella,
We want your happiness above all else. Let’s give it a try for six months.
Love,
Mom & Dad
I flipped to the next page, and there it was. My registration for Chicago Valley Music School.
I looked up at them as I forced a smile onto my lips. “Thank you. I’m so happy,” I whispered, pretending to be so overcome with emotion I couldn’t get the words out.
It was the first time I ever lied to my parents.
*
I arrived a full hour early on the first day of school so I could make the rounds and introduce myself to my teachers. It was out of my comfort zone, but if I was starting over and reinventing myself, reaching out to people rather than being the shy girl in the back of the room was one of the first steps.
I started at my new voice teacher’s classroom, the first period on my schedule. I found the teacher looking bleary-eyed on the first Monday morning back to school after Christmas break.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m a new student in your first period class and just wanted to introduce myself.”
She nodded at me and gave me a welcoming smile. “Mrs. Jackson.” She picked up a sheet of paper on her desk. “Daniella Mayne?” she asked.
“Yes, that’s my legal name,” I said. This was it. My chance to be someone new. Daniella was a sweet, timid girl. I needed a strong name to fit my new identity, but I didn’t have time to think. In fact, I couldn’t think of a single name. My eyes shot down to a picture of a little girl hugging a big Great Dane on Mrs. Jackson’s desk. Four letters decorated the bottom of the frame. Without the time to think, the words tumbled out of my mouth. “But I go by Maci.”
“Maci?” she repeated.
“Yes. No one calls me Daniella.” I make a face of disdain at my old name. “Please call me Maci.”
“That’s my daughter’s name,” she said with a grin.
“Is that her?” I asked, nodding toward the frame.
She held it up and nodded. “She’s four and she’s a little firecracker.”
A little firecracker.
Perfect.
“My legal last name is Mayne,” I said, thinking how stupid Maci Mayne sounded, “but please use Dane as my last name.”
“Maci Dane?” she asked.
I didn’t think about how close it was to Dani Mayne, how just a few letters transposed and changed created a rhyming name, but I didn’t care.
It was the start of someone totally new, and I couldn’t wait to get to know her.
CHAPTER FIVE
ETHAN
Mark had been right. The talent agent was notorious for finding talented kids who he could basically steal money from. The going rate was anywhere from ten to twenty percent, and he was trying to fuck us over at thirty percent. There were actual laws against that, but he found a loophole. Mark’s dad stepped in and saved us from signing with the first guy who looked our way.
The last half of my senior year was full of change.
Toward the end of our senior year, Mark and I had a real talk with the third member of our band, which we called Fultoner, a combination of our last names: Ethan Fuller, Mark Ashton, and Toby Hacker. He was going to college in Iowa and told us he was planning to quit the band.
But it wasn’t just our band that was changing.
That saying about not knowing what you have until it’s gone never rang more true for me than with Daniella Mayne. One day I was listening to her sing, and the next day—or rather when we returned to school after Christmas break—she was gone. It was a full week that she was gone before I almost got up the nerve to ask around. Anyone know where she went? Did you hear about her?
I couldn’t do it, though. I listened carefully as I walked by her deserted locker, strained my ears to find the answers, to try to hang on to any detail whatsoever, but she’d simply vanished, and not one iota of rumored information landed in my ears.
Her family had moved or she’d switched schools. Things like that happened all the time in high school. I shouldn’t care, shouldn’t have this burning need to know.
I pushed her into the far recesses of my mind, right where she belonged, though a part of me worried something had happened to her—maybe she was in an accident, or maybe she’d gotten sick. I had no idea, and with the last half of my senior year upon me, gigs every weekend keeping me busy and trying to keep my grades decent so I could get the fuck out of this place, I barely had time to think straight let alone come up with theories where she might’ve disappeared. I couldn�
�t be the one to start asking around. Why do you want to know? they’d ask. And what would my answer be? Because I think I love her?
It was too stupid, too risky, and too foolish.
I took the coward’s way out. I didn’t ask, and so I never knew.
At the end of June, Mark and I went to Summerfest in Milwaukee. We met the two guys who would make up the rest of our band. It was our last hurrah before college started. I didn’t want to go to college; I just wanted to bang on my drums, but Mark’s parents were making him go, and he urged me to go, too. I finally registered for classes at the local community college, and he was attending U of I Chicago.
Steve and James were the two missing pieces we needed. They moved to Chicago from Virginia on a whim. We renamed Fultoner to Vail since they were from Virginia and we lived in Illinois. It was Mark’s idea. We played a ton of local places all summer long, none more than Sevens, and as much as I tried to forget about the angel who seemingly vanished into thin air, I couldn’t.
I threw my entire being into music. When I wasn’t at class or working my part-time job at Home Depot, I wrote with Mark and practiced until the blisters on my fingers bled. I fucked around with girls who stopped me after a gig, but I knew none of them would ever create the sort of buzz in my chest that the girl who disappeared did.
Mark and I got a place together near Sevens with Steve and James. Between the four of us, we could afford rent since we were playing gigs nearly every night. It wasn’t easy juggling gigs with school work and part time jobs, but Mark’s dad would’ve kicked both our asses if we didn’t finish school.
It took me two years to get an associate’s degree in marketing and management, and then I transferred to the same college as Mark to get a bachelor’s. I wasn’t all that interested in marketing, but I was learning skills every single day that could translate to getting our name out there, and that was what mattered.
It was about midway through my first year at UIC when we were approached by a Sony executive after one of our shows. Mark’s dad looked over the offer, brought it to a lawyer, and paid all the fees to ensure it was legit. It was, and we signed our lives away to the company that would make us our first million dollars.