Pem made a face. “We get along now, but we all know that bands tear themselves up over stuff like this, and I’m telling you, I can’t handle it again.”
“Beckett and Chelsea do seem to understand what you’re saying and are agreeing to keep their whole situation in check,” Sam said.
“We’re not just agreeing. It’s what we want too.” Beckett didn’t look at me, but I heard bitterness in his voice. I couldn’t tell if it was about me or about getting hammered for his mistake with Hollis all over again. I was dying to talk to him alone.
Pem groaned. We waited. “It’s not a simple fix, okay? That’s not even the whole problem. I can’t deal with Chelsea’s visibility. That isn’t the right look for this band.”
“But now that she’s broken up with the d-bag, that should all go away. Right?” Malcolm looked to Sam for confirmation.
“Chelsea has definitely gained her own following, different from Melbourne’s, but I don’t think that has to be a bad thing. We can choose her projects with a more discerning eye,” Sam said.
“Or I don’t need to do any.” I knew I sounded desperate, but the more Pem talked, the more I felt like this was on me. “I’m happy being in this band. That’s enough for me.”
Beckett’s eyes dropped to the floor. He thought this was how I felt about him too, that giving him up would be as easy as giving up one of my deals. It wasn’t that way at all, but it seemed counterproductive to say so now.
“We have a week before we need to decide on Europe. Let’s take this week completely off, and then I’ll check in,” Sam said.
Malcolm went to the door but stopped suddenly and came back. “You’re awesome. Bye for now, girl.” He swept me up and held me for several seconds. He didn’t say anything to the others.
No one else made a move, so I guessed it was my turn. I stood by the door. “Thanks for a great tour, and I’ll talk to you in a week.” I kept it light, like I was confident that I’d be seeing them again soon. I wanted to see Beckett before my morning flight but knew that he wouldn’t initiate meeting up. Anyway, when he finally let himself look at me, his expression stayed blank. So I left.
37
I didn’t get out of bed for days. The only Melbourne person I spoke to was Sam. He called the day after I got home. “Pem hasn’t been the same about anything since Hollis. He says he’s over her, but I’m not so sure,” Sam said, trying to make me feel better.
“I don’t think he’s over that her rebound happened with Beckett.”
Sam paused. “Yeah. That definitely didn’t help.”
“He loves this band. I can’t believe he’d really end it.”
“It’s a little bit throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But it’s not over yet.”
I couldn’t help comparing Pem and Beckett’s situation to mine and Mandy’s. It wasn’t the same thing—with Beckett’s screwup the boundaries had been blurry, whereas the lines Mandy crossed would have been completely unmissable from outer space. But I saw how much Pem hurt himself by continuing to punish Beckett.
Mandy understood me and my summer in a way that no one else ever could. When I felt the urge to say something about tour or the people I grew close to on it, my parents would pause whatever police drama they were watching, listen politely, then resume it like I hadn’t said a thing.
Still, when Mandy finally came by one night, I wasn’t ready to let bygones be bygones. We sat outside, even though the air was thick and unpleasant and I was still in the same pj’s I’d put on days before.
“I can’t believe I did that to you,” she said.
“I can’t believe it was Lucas who told me.”
She looked at me. “I knew you didn’t care about him,” she said, sounding small.
“Is that your idea of an apology?” I asked. “We were about to break up, but until then and probably even for a while after, he was off-limits.”
She was quiet for a minute. “I’m not saying what I did was right. But your life was so amazing, and all you could think about was this place.” She gestured around us. “It was like you didn’t fully appreciate what was happening.”
“So you thought at least one of us should have fun and it might as well be you?”
“No. Maybe? In a way?” Mandy seemed just as lost as I felt.
“There was nothing I could do,” I said. “Even if I’d threatened to quit, I doubt Pem would have budged.”
“I believe you now that I heard about Melbourne breaking up.”
“You what?”
She slid back on the step. “Oh, I mean, that’s what I read online.”
Of course. Why should I ever find out about anything in a direct way?
—
I’d tried to stay offline since I got home. The few times I did venture on, I was bombarded by news about Lucas and Nina. If I was ever going to brave it, this seemed like the time. I ignored a link to a photo spread of Lucas and Nina’s newly redone Hollywood Hills love nest. Sure enough, dozens of blogs had posts speculating about the end of Melbourne. I read a few but stopped when some of the theories landed a little too close to home. No one knew the Hollis piece, of course, but there was a lot about me falling for Beckett. Naturally they made it sound like I chased him, propositioned him, did everything short of jump him, all because I was licking my wounds from Lucas’s rejection. It was all so disgustingly familiar.
When I called Sam he said, “Ignore that noise. Pem hasn’t said a thing. But since I have you, Bombshell and Kicks put your contracts on hold.”
I crawled back into bed and gave myself another blackout period. I missed my GED test. Not that it even mattered now.
—
My mother eventually forced me out into the world. “Can’t I be homeschooled?” I asked.
“If you don’t mind a curriculum of accounts payable, inventory management, and display creation, we’d be thrilled to homeschool you,” she said.
“You’ll see. Things will be a little weird at first, but everyone will move on, get back to normal,” my dad said. But that was actually what I was afraid of.
I ran into Mike Malloy while shopping for back-to-school supplies. “I was hoping to see you,” he said. “I feel bad about what Caryn did to you at your show with the dumb signs. I know she put her sophomore lackeys up to it, and I called her out. Now she won’t talk to me.”
I gave him a disgusted smirk. “She did that because of you. You’re the one who convinced everyone that I was trying to trap you.”
Mike looked down, to the side, anywhere but my face. “I know,” he said finally. “It was my first time too, you know. I was fifteen and I flipped out. It was shitty, okay? I can see that now. I told Caryn the truth.”
“You’ve had years to come clean.” I didn’t know why I was picking at this particular scab, but I couldn’t seem to leave it alone.
He shrugged, helpless. “I didn’t think there was any way everyone still believed that.”
“No? You thought I was a social outcast for some other reason?”
“I figured maybe you hated everyone and didn’t want to be back in the mix.”
I sighed. He would never get any less clueless.
“I heard about Melbourne breaking up,” he said. Awesome. Yet another person who seemed to know my fate before I did. “For what it’s worth, I thought you were incredible as their singer.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Like many things, it was fun while it lasted.”
—
In the days leading up to school, I worked on my song, mostly because I had nothing better to do. I started with the words I’d written that morning in Boston, after everything happened. I used the program on my laptop the way Beckett had showed me and recorded my vocals on top of the music. When I was done, I sent it to Pem with a note:
This marks my official retirement from docenting.
My return to Lydon High for senior year had the expected hiccups, as well as some unexpected ones. When I walked into calculus, Mrs. Carlson was tellin
g the story of meeting Beckett and Malcolm at Ford’s Fast Five. She stopped midsentence. “Chelsea! What a surprise. I didn’t know you’d be back this semester.”
Busted, I thought. “Yeah. Plans are still up in the air.” From the way everyone shifted in their seats, I could tell that the breakup rumor had spread. I started toward an empty desk in the back.
“Is Lucas Rivers going to visit?” a kid with thick glasses asked.
“Dude,” someone else said.
A few people told me they’d caught the Detroit show and enjoyed it. People still stayed away from me, but now it seemed like they were afraid to bother me. I could have felt flattered, but it didn’t make eating lunch alone any less awkward. When I passed Mandy in the hall, we said hi, but I didn’t rush to her side like I once would have. It was tolerable enough that I could almost imagine this being my life again.
My phone rang in the middle of seventh period. After silencing it, I checked the name. Sam. I called him back as soon as school let out. “I have good news and bad news. The bad news is, Melbourne’s done.”
I sat down on the curb and covered my eyes. I didn’t care if I looked weird. “Doesn’t the recipient of the news usually get to choose whether she wants the good or bad first?”
“You make a good point. Here’s the positive: Pacific wants to use the last year of your contract. They want you to come out and record a solo album.”
After I asked a few bewildered questions, we hung up. My head reeled. I thought I’d feel relief when I knew for sure, but I didn’t. I only felt overwhelming sadness and the fear that everything I’d experienced with Melbourne, including my growth as a performer and a musician, was now null and void.
I took a day to call Sam back. “I don’t want to be turned into a bubblegum pop singer. I want to work with another band and write songs.” I didn’t know what I expected him to say. It wasn’t like bands were looking for replacement female leads every day.
But to my surprise, he said, “Let me run it up the flagpole.” I sent him the song, even though I wasn’t sure if it would help my cause or hurt it.
—
A week later, I was packing for Los Angeles. Pacific had agreed to the band and found a producer who would cowrite with me. I was flying out to sit in on band auditions.
“But what about school?” my mom had asked when I told her the plan.
“You can’t miss this much school and still graduate. Can’t they schedule this over winter break like last time?” my dad asked.
“It won’t wait that long. Sam says that we have to move now, while I’m still relevant.”
“What does that mean? Nobody’s going to forget you in a few months,” he said.
“I’ll take the GED out in LA. Sam already registered me.” I watched their silent exchange. “How is this any different than if I was going back on tour with Melbourne?”
My dad sighed. “Melbourne was an established thing. This feels more fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants. But if this is what’s going to make you happy, then you owe it to yourself to try.”
It wasn’t a total vote of confidence, but I leaped up and hugged them both on the way back to my room. “Thank you. I’ll be back in a couple of months. I’ll even go to school just for the social stimulation.”
My mom swatted me on the arm. “I’m sure the teachers will love that.”
In the middle of the chaos, Mandy called. “Congratulations. I knew you’d get a second act.”
“Thanks.” There was so much I started to say, but I couldn’t make the words come out.
She took a deep breath. “I can’t fix what I did, but I do want you to know that I’m sorry. I got caught up, and it was horrible that I let a job, let alone any boy, be more important than our friendship.” She muffled the phone, but I heard her sniffle. My eyes filled. Neither of us said anything for a few minutes.
“Well…” I cleared my throat. “Do you feel like getting a sandwich?”
“Raspberries?” she asked.
“Meet you there in fifteen.”
It wasn’t that I was able to say more in person. If anything, sitting across from Mandy eating a Jane’s Special made me feel like I didn’t need to express all the things I felt about what happened between her and Lucas.
“So how do you feel about being back?” I asked.
Mandy shrugged. “It’s okay, actually. I almost feel like nothing matters, but in a good way. Our summer was so epic. I mean, we had real jobs with real responsibilities. We saw more cities and met more people in one summer than most people our age have in their entire lives. How much can you come back and worry about people saying stuff about you?”
“I guess. I’m still glad I’m leaving. It hasn’t been so terrible, but I feel like the more things get back to normal, the more it’ll feel like this summer never happened.”
“Well. You don’t have to worry about that now.” Mandy’s smile was a little wobbly, but she hid it by taking a sip of her drink. “Just so you know, I’ll never tell anyone about what happened. Not to protect myself but just to avoid giving the gossipmongers any more material.”
I nodded, unsure what to say. “Thank you” didn’t seem quite right. “Mike apologized.”
Her eyes brightened. “No way!”
I wouldn’t say it was like old times, but somehow it laid the groundwork for us to return to normal when I got back. And that was really what we both needed. We finished our food and even lingered a little longer.
“Be sure to keep in touch. I might need a merch girl next summer,” I said.
“Sweet. I’ll be ready.” She smiled.
When I got home, I checked my inbox and saw “Pem Fuller” at the top and clicked on it.
Just don’t sell out or become a tool. Song’s great. You should use it on your album. Congratulations.
—
Pacific sent a black town car to pick me up at LAX. “I’ve been instructed to bring you straight to the auditions,” the driver said.
“Perfect,” I said.
We pulled up in front of the Roxy. I stared at the building for a long time. It looked so different in the daytime without the neon lights.
Inside I paused by the bathroom, thinking about the last time I’d been here. My nerves, the tour announcement, Lucas. It all came blasting back. I shook it off and headed into the club. Sam was already there along with some Pacific A&R staff.
“You ready?” Sam asked. “This is big.”
“Sure,” I said, not at all sure.
We sat at tables up on a platform, away from the stage.
We all turned toward the door as it opened. My heart stopped. Beckett walked through with his guitar. He grinned when he saw me. “Before I audition, does this band have any stupid rules I should know about?”
SONG LYRICS
PARIETALS
Lyrics by Hollis Carter
Growing up here’s not all it’s meant to be
So for just these moments let’s be wild and free
We have each other and maybe that’s enough
Shouldn’t have to stress about so much crazy stuff
Parietals, you have me acting like a fool
Our parents don’t know what goes on at school
Keeping us apart, it’s pointless and cruel
Parietals, there’s way too many rules
Parietals, there’s way too many rules
I want to see you, come up to my room
Leave right now you can’t get here too soon
Try not to get caught sneakin’ around
When you’re next to me, we won’t make a sound
Maybe we’re being stupid
If you hear footsteps, better run
Parietals, you have me acting like a fool
Our parents don’t know what goes on at school
Keeping us apart, it’s pointless and cruel
Parietals, there’s way too many rules
Parietals, there’s way too many rules
No movie dates, no lon
g walks home
We’re forced into these lies
No parked cars, no empty houses
But when I’m with you time flies
Parietals, you have me acting like a fool
Our parents don’t care what happens at school
Keeping us apart, it’s pointless and cruel
Parietals, there’s way too many rules
Parietals, there’s way too many rules
SMASH CUT
Lyrics by Pem Fuller
(CHELSEA)
I saw you coming
A mile away
If you told me then
That this would be our best day
I never would’ve believed you
I should’ve walked or maybe run
But then I’d have missed out on all our stupid fun
There was the day I said I loved you
Our moment in the sun
I thought we’d just get better
One minute we were everything and the next you were done
Smash cut to now
I don’t know where to find you
I tell myself not to look
But my heart is on the hook
It wasn’t my imagination
We had more than just a spark
Unless you tell me why
I’ll be forever in the dark
(BECKETT)
We had it all, that wasn’t just a dream
You were the sun, the stars
And everything in between
The time I spent with you
Made me who I am
Helped me know the difference
Between being a boy and being a man
I don’t know either why we fell apart
But let me tell you this: you always have my heart
There’s not one thing I can say
There’s nothing we did wrong
We could go our own directions
Because our love’s what made us strong
(BOTH)
Smash cut to now
For the Record Page 23