Sam leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Look. It’s your band. You’re adults. Run things however you want. But you want to keep being successful, and I’m telling you how we can make that happen.”
“How’s the single doing?” Beckett asked.
“It’s climbing,” Sam said. “We keep getting more adds. The rock station here is promoting the show, so they put you on heavy rotation.”
“If it’s still building, why are we rushing the second single?” Pem asked.
“We’re not. We just want to have the video ready to go, and that’s the only time you can get a few days away from the tour.”
“I can’t believe we have to spend the Fourth of July in LA,” Malcolm said. “That place has no gravity, no appreciation for historical significance.”
“Complain, complain, complain,” Beckett said. Malcolm laughed.
“Actually, we got an offer to play a private party in Vegas on the Fourth,” Sam said.
“Vegas? Sign me up,” Malcolm said.
“LA has no sense of history, but Vegas would meet with the Founding Fathers’ approval?” Pem asked.
Sam ignored them both. “It’s good money, but you’ll have to use backline gear. We’re not flying in crew and equipment for a private.”
“We can handle that,” Beckett said.
“Chelsea. What’ve you been wearing onstage?” Sam asked.
I looked down at my plaid leggings, boots, and neon-yellow T-shirt tunic with the short sleeves rolled up. “This.”
“Yeah. That’s not good. It’s time for you to have a look,” he said.
“What’s wrong with this?” I thought I looked like a rock girl should.
“It’s not sexy,” Sam said.
“They don’t have to look sexy,” I said, tilting my head toward the guys.
That met with a chorus of protests. “I resent that,” Malcolm said.
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“What they have to do is look uniform,” Sam said.
“Except for Malcolm,” I replied.
“You’re the front woman. They’re not.” Sam looked at me until he was sure I understood.
I groaned inwardly. “That stuff just doesn’t feel like me.”
After going over a few more things about shows and scheduling, we wrapped up the meeting and went to sound check with our new marching orders to take it seriously fresh in our minds.
Pem studied a poster advertising an upcoming show and frowned. “Ryder Hart’s playing here next week.” He glared at me like it was my fault. Ryder was the winner of my season of American Pop Star.
Feeling emboldened by our meeting (Sam hadn’t told me to quit my signing frenzy, after all), I asked, “How can you possibly hate all pop music?”
“It’s not music,” he said. “It’s drivel. Mass-produced, spoon-fed drivel.”
Okay then. “There’s not one single pop song that you like? In the history of pop songs?”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course I like some stuff. I’m talking about the culture of Auto-Tune. The whole army of ‘I can’t sing, but I look good’ that assaults our airwaves.”
“Actually, Ryder can sing.” Why I felt the need to be stubborn about this at this particular moment, I had no idea.
“He can sing, but so what? He doesn’t write any of his own songs. If you sing but don’t write, then you’re not the artist; you’re just the docent.” Pem stared at the poster like he wanted to rip it down. I made a mental note to look up the word docent later.
I wasn’t sure if this was supposed to be (yet another) dig at me, but I now felt like a complete loser for never having written a song. “Well. Hopefully he can do something to save himself from becoming washed up and irrelevant before he turns twenty.”
Walking out into the main room, I was struck by how gorgeous the Tabernacle was. Like the Ryman, it was a converted church with the same high ceilings, stained-glass windows, and raised balconies, but the colorfully painted ceiling and wall panels made it less subdued. It was like being inside a fancy box of candy.
By far the best part of that night’s show was watching Sam rock out at the soundboard. Of course he knew all the songs by heart, and a few drinks in he was an air-drumming, air-guitar-playing fool. His enthusiasm put even the most die-hard fans’ to shame, and it was fun to play off his energy.
I didn’t expect to love the South, but the little I’d seen of it was totally charming. I enjoyed the pace, the accents, and especially the food, and I wanted to leave feeling like I had an invitation to come back. As we in Melbourne liked to say, I left it all on the stage.
15
From Atlanta we headed to Florida, which really doesn’t count as the south anymore. Especially when your first stop is Orlando.
The venue was great but it was a little bit like performing a rock show in a theme park. “I feel like I didn’t get to experience the real Orlando,” I said to Rob after the show.
“What are you talking about?” he asked. “This is the real Orlando.”
When we arrived in Miami the next morning, Lauren accosted me before I could make it to my hotel room. She wore leggings and swam in one of Beckett’s hoodies. “Did he tell you that I’m flying home today?”
I shook my head. “You’re not even staying for the day off?”
“No. He didn’t say anything? It seems like you’re the only one he talks to around here. You and Dave.”
“And I told you I’m not getting in the middle,” Dave said as he passed us on his way into the hotel.
“I thought you only planned to stay for a few days anyway,” I said.
“But I wanted him to ask me to stay longer.”
“And he didn’t?”
“Oh my God!” Lauren dropped her head back and looked to the sky for help.
“Sorry. I’m a little out of it.” It was, after all, butt-early in the morning. “Maybe he thinks you’re bored.”
“Are you kidding? I love being on tour. I have fun hanging out with you, and I really want to go to LA.” Lauren went on with a lengthy list of reasons she wanted to stay, but none of them was to be with Beckett. Call me crazy, but maybe he picked up on that. It made me feel protective of him and resentful of her.
I felt cornered and annoyed and like I was over this conversation. “I don’t know. You should probably just ask him.”
“Okay, since you’ve never had a boyfriend before, I’m not going to totally laugh in your face—”
“Who told you I’ve never had a boyfriend?”
“It’s no big deal, but let me just spare you the pain of learning this the hard way. You don’t just come out and ask a boy why he’s not begging to be around you more. Act like you don’t care and like you have tons of stuff going on.”
That advice sounded suspect, but what did I know? Lauren bit her lip and stuffed her hands into the pockets of Beckett’s sweatshirt. I felt bad for her, even though she was driving me up a wall. “Beckett probably likes you because you have a life,” I said.
She glanced at me with a weak smile. “You really are sweet.” She said sweet in the way people use it when they really mean dim-witted. “Yeah, maybe. I guess. But compared to their life? I mean, yours too—my life is as boring and vanilla as they come.”
“You get to go to Yale.”
“You get to be a rock star.”
At the moment all that meant to me was that I got to be sleep-deprived, claustrophobic, and malnourished.
—
I’d collapsed onto the bed, when Mandy came in looking annoyingly well rested. “What do you want to do today? Beach?” she asked. Since we were from the middle of the country, frolicking in an actual ocean was a rare treat for us. So rather than argue for twenty minutes and lose anyway, I put on my bikini and threw on a pair of cut-off shorts and a T-shirt. Mandy wore a cute caftan and a floppy canvas hat.
Pem and Malcolm were in the lobby when we got downstairs. “Where are you guys going?” Malcolm
asked.
“To the beach!” Mandy said.
“What about you? Undercover stakeout?” I asked. Malcolm looked the way he always did, but Pem wore khakis and a checkered button-down with long sleeves covering his tattoos even though it had to be ninety-five degrees. His hair was flattened and parted. Nobody would ever recognize him.
“We’re going to see my grandmother in Palm Beach,” Pem said.
“Yeah. Third has to kiss the ring. And for some reason he thought bringing his minority friend along would be a good idea,” Malcolm said.
“What’s third?” I asked.
“His nickname. For Pemberton Fuller the Third. The entire family calls him that.”
“Well…that’s…” I tried to think of something to say.
“The word you’re looking for is dismissive,” Malcolm said.
Pem stared at Malcolm. “Don’t ask me why, but my grandmother actually likes him.”
“It’s ’cause my parents are doctors. Old ladies love anyone associated with doctors. Plus my mom does all her friends’ neck lifts,” Malcolm said. “You guys should ride with us. Pem’s grandma has a beach.”
“That’s not a good idea,” Pem interrupted. “She’s really ornery and doesn’t like unexpected guests. But there’s public access to the same beach just down the block.”
Mandy and I looked at each other and shrugged. We didn’t know where to go, and any beach was going to be amazing as far as we were concerned. And I certainly didn’t need to meet anyone cranky enough to be identified by Pem as ornery.
We piled into a cab and rolled out of the city, leaving behind the concentration of white high-rises. I was fascinated with reading street signs. So many of the street names had the word sea in them, like Sea Foam or Seaspray. I felt like I was on a tropical vacation.
“Listen to that bass line,” Pem said, indicating the taxi radio.
Malcolm was quiet for a few seconds. “Sick, dude. You wrote something like that on ‘Game Over.’ ”
“Kind of. This is way better.” Pem turned to look at me. “Have you listened to those albums I loaded on your iPod?”
I nodded. He’d given me Patti Smith’s Horses, the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. “I have listened to the Beatles before, you know. I didn’t just time-travel to this century.”
“Yeah, but have you listened to them listened to them?”
I decided to quit while I was ahead. Pem liked to work everything out long-division-style, and I just didn’t have it in me. “I liked them all except Horses.”
He stared at me for a long minute. “Listen to it ten times all the way through.” He turned back around. He was lucky he was brilliant, because he was definitely a little short on charm.
The drive to Palm Beach took over an hour, and after listening to Pem and Malcolm’s banter for half the ride, I think Mandy and I wished we’d stayed closer to our hotel.
“Where’s Beckett?” I asked.
“He took Lauren to the airport. That guy is such a sucker. Who goes to the airport on their day off?” Malcolm asked.
“That doesn’t make him a sucker. He’s a good guy,” I said.
Pem snorted.
Our single “Hard Words” came on the radio. The driver started humming it, oblivious to the fact that most of the band members were in his taxi. We all stayed quiet. The feeling I had of essentially spying on someone enjoying music that I had a part in creating was so surreal, I felt like I should ask him to stop before we both died of embarrassment. But following Pem and Malcolm’s lead, I didn’t say a word.
We crossed over the bridge into Palm Beach, a wealthy neighborhood with beautiful buildings and houses awash in pastels. The town center was one fancy designer shop after another, like a mini satellite version of Beverly Hills.
The cab drove past gently rolling golf courses and a few sprawling, upscale resorts, then turned onto a road with some of the biggest houses I’d ever seen. I think they were what you’d call estates. Lydon had rich neighborhoods, but they were nothing like this.
“Dude, can’t you stash these two in the pool house or something? It’s like a mile from the main house,” Malcolm said to Pem.
Pem looked seriously stressed out at the prospect. Clearly his grandmother scared the bejesus out of him.
“Don’t sweat it. We’ll go to the beach and then find our own way back to the hotel,” I said.
“Maybe we’ll walk down and hang out a little later,” Pem said. I wasn’t going to hold my breath.
—
The beach was comfortably crowded. Families played in the shallow waves while bigger kids either bodysurfed or boogie-boarded. Older couples walked briskly up and down the shoreline. I made a mental note to live near a beach one day if I could afford it. Soaking in the bright sunshine, watching the swells build up so high, then that breath-holding moment right before they crashed down, I felt weeks of tension slip away.
“You look skinny,” Mandy said.
I shrugged. I’d noticed my clothes fitting differently, which I attributed to jumping around onstage for two hours every night and not being able to eat for hours leading up to the shows. No one besides my best friend would ever refer to me as skinny, but I was glad I still had my curves. I liked that I filled out my bikini.
Mandy had bought trashy magazines from the hotel shop. She held up a photo of Lucas Rivers leaving a restaurant in LA with a buddy. He wore dark glasses, a baseball cap, and a giant smile, like he’d just heard the best joke in the world. I still couldn’t believe I’d kissed him. It had been less than a month but seemed like a lifetime ago. I could barely remember what it felt like. It was like trying to hang on to the details from a really great dream.
Mandy sighed. “I wish I got to see more of the shows. Rob wants me at the merch booth the entire night.”
“Have you met any cute boys, at least?” A group of guys playing football had come into my field of vision.
She made a face. “Yeah. Tons. But I don’t want some random who only cares about going backstage and getting free stuff.”
“Yuck. Is that really what they’re all like?”
“I have no idea. But I don’t have enough time to find out. Also I’m probably paranoid after what happened to you.”
Thankfully, the dramas of Lydon High seemed far away. I couldn’t even replicate that feeling I had each time I stepped through the doors of my school of wanting to shrink into the shadows. Not that I wanted to. Still, I felt bad about Mandy internalizing so much of my problems. “You should take a leap of faith,” I said. “Not every boy out there is a sociopath.”
“Maybe,” she said, sighing. “Life would be so much easier if I could hook up with someone on tour.”
“Who would you pick?” I rolled over and peered at her over the top of my sunglasses.
“Probably Malcolm.”
“Why? Because you want an STD?”
She swatted me with a magazine. “Because there’d be no pressure. And at least I know it would be fun.” She grinned suggestively and I laughed. “And then there’s that.”
Malcolm was walking toward us, wearing long board shorts and no shirt. We both watched him as he approached. Staring at him out in the open seemed less egregious than ogling him on the bus. “I completely see your point,” I said.
“You’ve been landlocked your entire lives,” Malcolm said as he spotted us. “It’s time to get in the water.”
“You know, Michigan does have beaches,” I said. “The Great Lakes are actually huge.”
“Gimme a break. Those things are like big puddles. Do you get waves like this?”
I couldn’t argue there. “What happened to Third?”
“He’s sitting through some boring meeting with Grandma’s estate lawyer, talking about changes to his trust fund. Come on. I’ll race you.”
Mandy and I stood up. I didn’t wait for anyone to say go. I just took off running down to the water.
“You c
heat!” Malcolm shouted. I could hear him right behind me.
I hit the water first, an icy-cold shock to the system. But after I submerged myself and bobbed around for a minute, the water temperature began to feel as warm as end-of-summer lake water.
The three of us had so much fun, diving under waves, getting in splash fights. I didn’t want the day to end. Almost an hour passed before people recognized Malcolm. To be fair, there wasn’t a whole lot of long hair and tattoos going on in Palm Beach. Hell, there weren’t a lot of Asians. So naturally, curious stares turned into recognition.
He was a lot more gracious about talking with fans away from the shows. Maybe he couldn’t bear to give up any of his precious groupie time. And that was interacting with fans. Of a sort.
Malcolm ended up tossing the football with those boys I’d seen earlier. He was naturally athletic and also hyperactive, so he looked pretty good. I leaned over to Mandy. “Since you can’t hook up with Malcolm, maybe you should ask him to be your wingman.”
Mandy’s eyes lit up. “That’s a great idea! Especially since you suck at it.”
I had to give the girl credit. She got up and worked her way into the game. She caught everything and even threw decently. Before the fun was over, we had plans.
Mandy brought over one of the football players, who was apparently supposed to be my date for the night. His name was Corey, and he seemed fine but didn’t quite do it for me. His swim trunks had whales on them. The things I did for friendship. Mandy mouthed, “Thank you,” behind his back.
“We want to go to a club!” Mandy smiled at her date, Nathan, a tall, lanky guy with dark eyes, dark hair, and a charming smile.
“We know a good one in Miami on a hotel rooftop. It’s pretty easy to sneak into because the pool’s up there and they have to let hotel guests up,” Corey said.
In the cab ride on the way back to our hotel, Malcolm praised Mandy on her fast work.
“You’re coming, right?” she asked.
“Hell no. What do I want to do that for?” Malcolm said.
—
After an hour at the club, Malcolm looked like he wanted to gnaw off his own arm, despite the fact that every single girl there was supermodel beautiful and wearing next to nothing. Corey—my date—wouldn’t leave him alone.
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