by Nikki Godwin
“I’m going back for the shirt,” he says. “It’s not fair to me that I can’t even shop like a normal human being just because some girls can’t keep their composure in public.”
Noah slides over to the open door and looks at his brother. “Big Tony’s going with you then,” he says. “Make it quick, please.”
Nat gasps and covers his mouth with one hand. Then he resumes his prissy hand-on-the-hip pose.
“Oh, no, bro,” he says. “That is not going to work. I want Tank to go with me. I don’t really care for big muscles, but when I do, I prefer them Cuban.”
He bats his eyes and strokes Tank’s bicep. The ‘Cuban muscle’ laughs, but Noah interjects, saying that Tank is too noticeable and it’s Big Tony or no shirt.
Nat folds his arms over his chest. “Fine,” he says through his teeth. “I’ll take ‘Big Tony’ with me. Although if you were really worried about my safety, you’d send Tank. But whatever.”
Tank gets into the car next to Benji, who is too concerned with whatever magazine he’s flipping through to even care about what’s happening with the diva outside. Nat says something to Big Tony about not standing too close to him because someone may try to take his picture. Tank closes the door as Nat stomps away with Big Tony in tow.
Noah studies his shoes, and we sit in an awkward moment when I finally decide to ask what the hell was going on in there. I should’ve volunteered to go with Nat. At least I could’ve scoped out the action.
But before I can speak, I hear it.
“Oh my God,” I spit out before I realize it. “What the hell is that?”
Benji glances up. “What the hell is what?”
“That song,” I say. “Is that the radio? Can you turn it?”
It’s that stupid boyband that Erin likes, the one I had to listen to the entire freaking drive to Crescent Cove. Satellites of Saturn or something?
Benji laughs like he did when Nat found the gaydar shirt. He closes his magazine and pulls it to his chest, smiling all too happily at me.
“You’re not a Spaceships Around Saturn fan?” he asks.
“You are?” I counter.
“I like some of their music,” he says, shrugging. “I just figured you liked them, at least to some extent.”
I’m slightly offended. I fold my arms over my chest and lean back against the seat. “Why? Because I’m a girl? Because I’m clearly not into the punk or goth scene, so I had to be into gimmicky boybands?” I ask.
Benji studies me, this time a bit more seriously. His over-the-top smile and happy attitude are gone. His shakes his messy blonde hair out of his eyes, really staring into me now.
“You really don’t know anything about them?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“Well,” he says, “maybe you should check them out.”
He leans forward and hands me the magazine he’s been hugging to his shirt. I snatch it from his hand and look down at the cover. Benji and Noah both smile back at me from the magazine’s cover shot of Spaceships Around Saturn.
Chapter Four
There are some things in life that are easy to wrap your brain around. Like, you dress for your body shape, not your size. Or how colored bottoms always increase your outfit possibilities. And black really does go with everything. However, boyband magazines don’t come with a guide like fashion magazines do. If there is one, I wish a Saturnite would hand it over because the magazine Benji handed me in the car has no survival guide to hanging out with some of the most famous dudes in the world.
“It’s really not that complicated,” Noah explains. He leans back against the headboard of his bed in room 413 while I thumb through this magazine again, waiting for my shock to wear off.
“You’re a terrible liar,” Benji says. He stares at the ceiling, stretched out on Nat’s bed. “This entire floor is unavailable because we’re staying on it. The hotel staff is on a need-to-know basis about who is staying up here. Everywhere we go – even in stupid tiny towns like this – we can’t hide. It is always complicated.”
Benji flips over on his stomach and buries his face into a pillow. Nat crawls over next to him and rubs his hand over Benji’s back, but Benji swats it away. Nat stretches out next to Benji and pokes him in the side.
“Stop being all dramatic, Baccarini,” he says. “That’s my job.”
Benji groans and pushes himself up. “I’m going back to my room,” he says. He stands over Noah. “If you actually plan on doing something worthwhile later, hit me up. And keep your touchy-feely diva on a leash.”
The pretty boy blonde leaves the room, and Nat jumps up immediately after.
“Sit!” Noah demands, pointing to the bed. “You are not going after him. You’re like a creepy, stalkery fanboy. If you piss him off, you’re not going on tour with us.”
Nat folds his arms over his chest, stares his brother down, and then promptly stomps toward the door. Noah jumps up from his lounged position.
“Where the hell are you going?” Noah asks.
“Not after Benji,” Nat says from the doorway. “But definitely away from you.”
Nat slams the door for dramatic effect, and Noah twists his fist into his other hand. His eyes simmer, like a pine tree on fire, trying to decide if it’ll contain itself for the forest crew or spread like wildfire.
Fortunately, Noah resumes his place on his bed, allowing the fiery anger to die. I toss the magazine aside and wait for answers or explanations or something.
“I’m sorry you had to be here for that,” he says, shaking his head. “Nat graduated early so he could come on tour with us. He’s part of our entourage, I guess you could say. And he’s got a rock solid boner for Benji and doesn’t bother to hide it.”
Well, obviously. I toy around with the idea of Benji and Nat, but I don’t know any of these guys well enough to contemplate their sexual choices. Then again, you don’t have to know the first thing about Nat to know which way he swings. He broadcasts it.
But I decide to question it anyway. “Is Benji…? You know, available?” I ask, leaving it open-ended.
Noah cracks a smile. “He’s single, and I don’t think he’s interested in my brother, or any other guy for that matter,” he says. “He’s not allowed to date anyone anyway. Management’s rule.”
“So the whole boyband persona is true then?” I ask. I take interest in my chipped nail polish so I won’t have to actually look at him while I speak. “No girlfriends, staying single so your fans think they stand a chance? The whole thing?”
“Oh, no,” Noah says. “Just Benji. He’s the heart-throb, the face of the band, the symbol of all things Saturn. He has to stay single. The rest of us have a little more wiggle room.”
Since I’ve apparently been living in the Earth’s core – because even people under rocks know more about Spaceships Around Saturn than I do – Noah gives me a crash course. Tank is head of their security. Axel, Cannon, and Big Tony are the other SAS bodyguards, each assigned to their own guy. Tank, however, watches over Benji and Milo because he’s employed by the Branson family as well as SAS.
The Branson family is another story in itself. How did I miss the whole “someone shot at the famous boyband and they had to go into hiding for three weeks” episode last summer? Maybe it happened while I was perfecting my technique at making dresses out of Skittles packages. That was my masterpiece last summer. While I was stitching candy packages, the Saturn guys were hanging out with the Branson family on a top secret lockdown that shook the world of the Saturnites – aka their fandom.
“Sounds like some sort of reality TV show,” I say. “Band is threatened. Band goes into hiding with family who has teenage daughters. Romance ensues. Someone should write a book about it.”
“Do not put ideas in Chloe’s head,” he says, pointing at me. “I mean it. Some things just need to stay on lockdown.”
“Ohhh, tell me more,” I say. I lean forward, raise my eyebrows, and attempt seductive eyes. “Are you afraid all your dirty
little lockdown secrets might get leaked? Like what you’re really like before you’ve had your strawberry milk in the mornings?”
He counters my movements, leaning in toward me. “Are you trying to provoke me?” he asks.
I can’t believe I’m flirting with a guy in a BOYBAND. Or that I’m thinking in all caps. Before this morning, he was just the awesome, hot tattooed guy from the elevator who had equally hot friends. Now he’s one of the richest people in the world with a fan base that could easily make my brain explode. Earth is hard enough. I’m not sure I can do this whole Saturn thing.
“Well, you know what?” Noah asks. “You can provoke me tonight. Or you know, give it your best shot. We’re going to this club, Lights Out, and you’ll get to meet everyone, except Darby and Tate. You’ll get to see the inside of our world, realistically.”
“Who is Darby?” I ask. My brain is in my luggage, wondering what I’ll wear tonight, but I don’t want Noah to think I’m not interested in what he has to say.
Noah shakes his head. “Someone you won’t get along with,” he says. “She’s Tate’s girlfriend. She has a YouTube channel about us, and she’s been a hardcore Saturnite since the beginning. But she’s more concerned about making her friends in the fandom happy than anything else, and it causes some problems. None worth talking about, though. I just avoid her.”
“And she doesn’t want to be seen out with the band? Sounds to me like she’d be all over that,” I say.
“Oh, she would be,” he says. “But her parents won’t let her. They’re here too this week, so she and Tate are going out to dinner with them tonight, thank God.”
My curiosity wants to dig in and ask why in the hell parents are here for spring break, but I feel like Noah will just repeat the same things he’s already told me. There is another way to dig up dirt, though.
“Well, I’m going back to 322 so I can get ready for tonight,” I say, getting up from his bed. “I figure you guys run into a lot of photographers, and I don’t want to be labeled as ‘hot mess’ in any paparazzi pictures that may hit the internet.”
Noah grabs the spare pillow on the bed and throws it over his face. I’m sure Nat’s probably used that same line on him more times than I realize.
“Fine then. Go,” he says, his words muffled. Then he peeks out from behind the pillow. “Not that you could ever look like an actual hot mess or anything, but I get it. I live with Nat. I’ll come to your room around seven, if that’s cool with you.”
“Perfect,” I say. “See you then.”
Once I’m secure in my hotel room, I flip open my laptop and immediately search the guys online. I haven’t had a chance to do my proper internet research since the big reveal. I honestly didn’t think I’d turn my laptop on even once during this week. Funny how things turn out.
I begin with Tate’s girlfriend, Darby McMillon. Noah wasn’t kidding about her YouTube channel. She has over two million followers on Darby’s Daily Dose of Drama. She looks like a pastel sundress kind of girl – the kind of girl whose mom has to approve what she’s wearing before she leaves home and never wants to break curfew, if she even has one. She looks wholesome and sweet and maybe a bit young. She’s probably not someone I’d hang out with, but she doesn’t appear nearly as vicious as Noah made her sound.
I decide to forgo watching her actual videos and move on to Googling the Branson family. The amount of fan sites that appear on the first page of results alone overwhelms me. It’s like the Kardashian sisters – famous for existing. A boyband secretly hangs out in your house for a few weeks and BOOM – you’re famous. Their youngest sister, Emery, seems to be the fan favorite, and although everyone says Aralie and Chloe are night and day, they seem to stick together in the Saturn circus.
My better judgment isn’t so sure about this all of a sudden. I mean, yeah, Noah’s cool and I can’t even deny that he’s completely hot in that punk rock, tattooed, dreamy guy kind of way, but scrolling through these pages and seeing the Branson sisters’ lives flipped upside down right in front of me is scary. Fandoms aren’t always so welcoming of outsiders, especially some newbie who didn’t even know Benji and Noah when she saw them. They might as well feed me to the sharks.
But then this little voice slips in and it’s definitely not my conscious. “I hope you don’t mind. I was just a bit inspired.” It makes my teeth hurt. Actually, it does a hell of a lot more than just make my teeth hurt. It feels like bird talons ripping away at my skin, trying to rip my heart from my chest, snapping bones to get through my ribcage.
This is one week of my life. And I may fail at this stupid bucket list. My ‘friends’ may not speak to me from now until after graduation and beyond. They can have Los Angeles. For this week, I’m having Saturn.
Chapter Five
Normally, I have no problem picking out what to wear. It’s usually narrowed down to three or four choices, but tonight, I’d give anything for three or four choices. I can’t even think straight to figure out what my options are, and that’s after unpacking the half of my closet I brought with me. I believe in dressing to impress no matter where you go, but this whole ‘hanging with famous guys’ thing is over my head.
“Night club, Marisol,” I say. “Dress like you’re going to a night club. Pretend you’re in LA right now. What would you wear?”
I skim the ‘short and sexy’ section of my clothes and mentally tell myself to stop talking to myself…out loud, anyway. I grab the slinky black dress with a plunging neckline, add bright pink earrings for a splash of color, and dig through my shoes until I find heels that are stylish but still decent for dancing. Then I force myself to get dressed before I can change my mind, which is always an option.
After a hair and makeup fix, I settle back onto the bed and dig a little deeper to see who exactly I’m going to be meeting tonight. I type Chloe Branson’s name into the search bar, and the autofill suggestion surprises me. “Chloe Branson cheating scandal Isaac Torrey” seems to be a seriously popular search topic.
I know not to believe what I read on gossip sites, but the top three articles were published this week. With Chloe’s angelic reputation (or at least, that’s what I gathered earlier), I can’t help but click on the top link, which directs me to a Spaceships Around Saturn gossip page – The Saturn Sleaze.
“Oh my God,” I whisper as the page loads on my screen. I can’t believe people actually dedicate their time and energy to this crap. Or worse, that I’m reading it.
Longtime girlfriend of Milo Grayson and one-half of SAS’s most famous power couple may not be circling around Saturn much longer! Chloe Branson, one of three sisters made famous by the band’s lockdown last summer, has never hidden her love for rock band Sebastian’s Shadow, and even more so, she’s always vocalized her admiration of lead guitarist Isaac Torrey.
“They’ve been my favorite band since the first time I heard them,” Branson said in a post-lockdown interview. “Their lyrics speak volumes, and no one can touch Isaac when it comes to chords.”
Saturnites were leery of the Branson sisters once their relationships went public last summer (Aralie Branson is in a relationship with Jules Rossi), but over time, the Bransons won the hearts of most Saturnites across the fandom. Still, a few remained suspicious of the sisters’ motives, and recently, rumors sparked again.
When Chloe was absent from a red carpet event due to her work on album art for Sebastian’s Shadow’s upcoming album, fans began to question her loyalty to SAS and to her relationship with Milo. While many fans defended Branson and went as far as to say they don’t blame her for taking a chance to work with her favorite band, the news of Isaac Torrey’s recent divorce shook even the most faithful Chloe fans.
A knock on the door makes me jump. My earrings sling around as I frantically rush to hide Saturn’s sleaze. I hibernate the laptop and silently curse Noah for arriving before I could finish the article. I ready myself with a deep breath before I open the door.
“Damn,” Noah says, looking me up
and down. “For once, I actually hope there are paparazzi outside just so they can snap you on my arm.”
He steps into the room while I gather my things and tuck them into a small clutch. I’m definitely ditching the purse tonight. I slide my room key into the hidden zipper inside and glance up to see Noah smiling too slyly for my comfort level.
“What? Is the dress too short?” I ask, re-examining my outfit.
“No, no, no,” he says, walking toward me. “I’m just never the guy with the hot date.”
“So you normally go for the hot mess kind of girls then?” I ask.
He shakes his head and scrunches his nose. “I haven’t had a date since I got in this band,” he says. “It’s always Saturn, all the time. And really, I could have a girlfriend if I wanted one, but with this job, you never know who is here for you and who is here for the perks.”
I link my arm around his and lead him to the door. “Just so you know,” I say, pulling 322’s door shut, “I’m here for the perks.”
Noah laughs and mutters a “yeah right” as we walk down the hallway. Big Tony stands near the elevator, steadily glancing around like a creeper. He doesn’t seem very thrilled to be here. Maybe it’s part of the job description – look angry and bored, simultaneously, while constantly scoping out the scenery.
As the elevator drops from the third floor to the lobby, I find myself a bit nervous. Night life and the city thing are nothing new to me. I’ve had my fair share of dates and wild nights, but this is on a whole new level. I’m actually not sure how to behave.
The elevator door dings, and Big Tony steps out first. He then signals us to follow. Noah wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me closer to him. That’s when I get my first taste of Saturn – someone gasps in the lobby. It’s one of those excited, breath-stopping sort of gasps. It’s the kind of gasp that says you’ve just spotted your favorite celebrity.
I cut my eyes across the lobby where I see two teenage girls, a bit younger than me, pointing our way. One is wide-eyed, jaw-dropped, and unsure if she wants to smile or scream or possibly cry. The other stares through me like daggers will spit from her eyes any moment. So this is what it’s like to be insta-hated by association.