But as I get up, my gaze flicks to the mirror. I remember Sunglasses Girl. The cafeteria.
And what little resolve I woke up with shatters. What if I’m never accepted here? What if, no matter what I do, I’ll never be allowed to do my own thing, be my own person, without hundreds of greedy eyes dissecting my every move? I’ll be doomed to star in their gossip. Not Miss Grady. Not even Koda Rose. This wad of communal gum that’s passed from mouth to mouth.
The bell rings. A hot nail through my skull.
Nurse knocks on the door. “Koda Rose?”
“What?” I croak. “I’m still going.”
“Well, you need to hurry up. I can’t keep writing you late passes.”
“Okay.” But I don’t stand up, or flush the toilet, to convince her I’m not faking. I cram my hair in my mouth and sob.
* * *
My photographs leak the next day. I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, it’s been almost a week since I sat on Photographer’s stool and pouted for him. One week for—Clipboard Girl? Makeup Lady?—to fire the proofs off to every last scoop-starved gossip blog out there. For that, a week feels pretty standard.
Mom sees it differently.
The bellowing starts as I’m getting dressed, rooting for the head hole of my JV swim sweatshirt. Lately I’ve worn it every day. It’s cozy, a dark navy even Mom would deem flattering, the back covered in names: my old school’s, and my own name, and Lindsay’s, and all the other friends I made on the team. Inside it, I feel protected. Untouchable. Say somebody tries to speak to me in the halls, gives me one of those looks? No problem. I wrap my arms around my waist and scurry away. A hermit crab. The world’s gangliest.
The adjectives Mom’s chosen for this particular indiscretion are ones she hasn’t resorted to for a while—not since she fired a journalist back in LA for making up quotes. Ludicrous! Unconscionable! Finally, I find the hole and push through, gasping. My hair crackles around me. I get zapped twice just wadding it into a bun.
In the car on the way to school I hug my backpack, debating what would happen if I surrender completely to impulse and barf all over myself. We pass a corner where kids have already gathered, Sunglasses Girl included, and their necks torque to follow the car. Any hope that they haven’t seen my photos evaporates. As we approach the drop-off point, the kids congeal into a seething, pointing mass. Sunglasses Girl elbows to the front. She dyed her hair. Pink, but like certain sea anemones are pink. To remind people they’re poisonous.
Pro: barf, and Driver might U-turn to dump me back home.
“All righty, Miss Grady,” he says. “You have a nice day now.”
Reaching for the door handle, I take a shaky breath. My mouth floods on cue.
Con: I really need this sweatshirt.
* * *
Mom’s on a conference call when Driver drops me off after school. Surprise. I’ve barely stepped into her office before she’s waving her hands, hustling me back out into The Magazine’s chrome-accented hall. Picture frames, this time. My reflection stares back at me from cover after meticulously preserved, glass-encased cover—every issue from 1961 until now. Interns must draw straws to figure out who’ll get stuck polishing them each morning.
“… repulsive… to insert herself into…”
Startled, I spin around. I accidentally left the door cracked.
“Yes, but why would—you have to call her right this instant. Call that woman and tell her she can antagonize me whenever, however she wants, as long as she stays away from my daughter!”
My heart starts to thump. Not a work call.
Something with our lawyer.
Something about me.
I push the door a little wider.
“… good question.” Mom sighs. “I haven’t had a working number for her since 2011. That’s Sadie for you.”
Wait. Like… Sadie? Guitarist Sadie? What would my father’s ex, that ragged girl from the ROCK cover, have to say about me?
Mr. Todd crackles over the speaker. “This is what Sadie does, Mariah. She makes noise. She makes noise about something totally inconsequential and then vanishes for another decade, so I still suggest that we—”
Mom detonates. “But why torment us? Why now? Because I had the audacity to move to New York? Because commenting on Koda’s pictures in a video clip is that little has-been’s only means of reminding people she still exists? Half the world thinks she choked to death on her own vomit fifteen fucking years ago.”
Holy crap. Mr. Todd doesn’t answer, but I can feel his eyebrow rising, feel him thinking the same as me, which is, Holy crap. I mean, Mom sends flowers with cease and desist letters to bloggers who make stuff up about her, and now she’s going to badmouth somebody she hardly knows? That swear alone was headline-worthy. My hand jerks to the doorknob, but something stops me from barging in. A silence that stretches years.
Softly, Mom says, “I didn’t watch the clip, no. I assume she’s the same.”
At school this morning, as I struggled out of the car, Sunglasses Girl shoved her phone in my face. The photo on the screen was of me. Or a girl who used to be me, awkwardness radically transformed by eyeliner and tentacles of smoke. Sadie made a video commenting on… that?
I creep to the side of Mom’s desk, deliberately out of sight. My hand trembles as I touch her shoulder. “Mom? What’s wrong?”
Her face is coming apart like a wet tissue. In a single motion she kills the call, pushes her ultra-sleek desk phone away. “Everything’s fine, honey. And you? How was school?”
“Enlightening,” I manage.
Her eyes narrow—but it’s the truth. We’re halfway home, bundled into the backseat, before I work out that Mom doesn’t realize what I overheard. “It’s nothing, honey, really,” she says when I ask what’s wrong for the thousandth time. “I just wish…” She watches traffic, rigidly nibbling a fingertip. “What was that photographer thinking, giving you a cigarette?”
Normally, I don’t mind her nostrils flaring when she lies to me. Tonight, I’m torn between calling her out and admitting, The kids at school like the cigarette pictures, though. Sunglasses Girl shoving her phone at me was just the beginning. For the rest of our drive up Fifth Avenue, I imagine Mom liking those pictures too, frowning the appraising frown she brings to film screenings, spring previews.
At school I forded throngs just to lock myself in a bathroom stall. It was too much attention. Too much Hey, Koda Rose! and sleeve-grabbing. My first day all over again. Except instead of bolting to the nurse’s office, I huddled on a toilet with my feet tucked up so nobody would recognize my sneakers. I chewed my hair and listened to what girls said about me as they applied mascara, washed hands. Well, I think the resemblance is totally obvious. Why doesn’t she come to school looking like that? Doesn’t she realize people might actually start to like her? In a way, it was worse than my first day, because at least then I had nothing to offer them. No definitive proof besides my last name that would legitimize me and satisfy their hunger. Now there is, apparently, something. And I still ran away.
I decide not to tell Mom any of this when I confront her later. She’s at the kitchen breakfast bar, legs so endless that her feet are pressed flat against the marble. Taking all this in, I let myself think what I wish were happening actually is: Mom’s cooking. Not cooking like she does now, mixing low-fat yogurt with whatever’s sufficiently spreadable to last us through the week, but cooking. The way she used to. The way she still could be, if she’d allowed The Magazine’s offer to be just that: an opportunity. Anyway, I’m good at pretending. So good that as I approach, arms crossed—count on Mom to notice when I’m not wearing a bra—I never quite stop hoping. Even as I reach her elbow, and see she’s got her notebook spread before her. A pen between her teeth. Listing. Even then, I rise on tiptoe, checking for clues about what she’s making. Dmge contrl, she’s scribbled. Call w/ Todd 8:30. A recipe for getting us through the week.
“Koda!” Mom slaps her arms over the notebook. “Don’t c
reep up on me like that!”
The kitchen is a chrome wasteland. No wonder The Magazine wanted us to live here. Tonight, it seems darker than usual, even with the city’s lights. I can hardly see Mom’s face as I slide onto the stool next to her, muttering, “Sorry.”
She laughs limply. “You’re too good at it. It’s terrifying.”
Terrifyingly sneaky? Or terrifyingly adept at terrifying her? I pull the notebook out from under her arms. ????? it says. Then, SADIE. Ferociously underlined. Mom stares at me, staring at the page. A feeling—the same I felt hearing her utter Sadie’s name at the office—begins to rise. I can’t name it. But it crashes into me like waves.
“Can we talk?” I ask.
“Talk?” She gnaws a fingertip. “About what?”
Good question. There is so much I want to ask. So much I need to know. Understanding why she trashed Quixote’s guitarist should be the least urgent. “You didn’t really know my father’s ex, did you?”
The gnawing stops. “Were you eavesdropping earlier?”
“No. But…” I falter, confused. “You didn’t know her well, right? You’ve never said anything about her. How come you didn’t tell me that you knew her?”
“Why would I? That was a lifetime ago.”
“You mean his lifetime?” I’m not sure why this distinction matters suddenly, only that Mom seems thrown by it too, her twisting mouth making me sorry I asked. But: “What’s it matter if she has something to say about me? Do you really hate her that much?” Because maybe I don’t follow Quixote stuff as closely as I should, but I’m positive Mom wouldn’t have stayed with my father even if he hadn’t gotten back together with Sadie, or lived. Probably he would’ve been awarded holidays. Thanksgiving. Every other Christmas. I’d fly out to New York for occasional long weekends, and we’d do touristy stuff. Times Square, and Central Park carriage rides, ice skating at Rockefeller Center. Midtown’s greatest hits.
At least, that’s what I’ve worked out. The thing about my father—or my mother’s thing about my father, which is more or less the same—is that she won’t talk about him. I’ve sort of made my peace with that. Or been forced to. I’ve always told myself her reluctance makes sense. My father hurt her. Before tonight, I never considered that she was deliberately hiding details from me. Info that barely concerns him, but this strange third person. A woman I know only from her smirk on a magazine. Who commented on my pictures…
Mom smooths her palms across the counter’s shiny finish, avoiding my eye. “I don’t hate her, Koda. That would be childish.”
“What did Sadie say about me, then?” I demand.
Her face hardens—an expression I’ve rarely seen outside of YouTube, video after grainy video of pazzos hounding her when my father was still alive. No comment. “She’s just being an instigator, Koda. This is what Sadie does, so—let me handle it, all right? Frankly, I don’t see why any of this matters.”
Realistically, it doesn’t. I don’t care about Sadie. Not really. Except. “The kids at school like her a lot.” I wait a beat, then go for it. “Would I like her?”
Mom works quietly on a cuticle. “I’m sorry you had to hear me getting heated with Mr. Todd. There’s just so much going on right now with work, and this trouble with school, and now the leaks, and… if I had known coming to New York would be such hell, I would’ve thought twice about…” She stops herself, probably not wanting to get my hopes up about moving back home. Or else just coming to terms with how to answer my question. “Sadie is… of course people still like her, she was very famous. Twenty years ago, but…” The logic starts meandering. One of those answers. “But you should trust me when I say she’s… well…”
Whatever Sadie said about me could’ve been really nice, or it could’ve been really mean. I try to envision it either way. I try to envision what it’d be like to hear from somebody who knew my father and might know me because of him. Somebody whose authority on this issue means she would never join the ravenous mobs at school, or—the other extreme—treat me like I am fatherless. Like I sprang from Mom’s forehead, a god in some weird old story.
“Sadie can be very…”
Wise. That’s what Sadie must be. Incredibly, unendingly wise.
Mom shakes her head, looking exhausted. “Unreliable. Sloppy.”
“Sloppy?” That’s a new one.
Mom pushes my hair back. “Let’s forget about her. Unlike Sadie, I don’t revel in the past.” She smiles. “Not when there’s so much to look forward to in the future.” The hopeful twinge in her voice makes me want to believe this. My curiosity withers. And then comes the guilt.
Mom’s right. The past is over. Unreachable by definition, but I did okay enough on the SAT that I’ll have my pick of marine bio programs in California, even applied early decision to one. That’s what I should be obsessing over, instead of this mess. Saving whales. Not letting myself be eclipsed by a Mack-shaped sun.
“Okay,” I relent. “Sadie forgotten. Done.”
Mom strokes my cheek, her hand uncharacteristically sweaty.
CHAPTER 6
ONCE I START GOOGLING, I can’t stop. That’s all I’m doing, though. Googling. Not skipping English to hide out in the bathroom. Definitely not disobeying Mom. One simple, harmless google, to see what she thinks I can’t handle and move on. I don’t want to upset her. Just for the clammy feeling in my gut to go away. I find the reaction article to my photos that Sadie supposedly commented on—a handful of sentences devoted to establishing me as nearly legal rock spawn. The first paragraph alludes to previous exploits, aka the smoothie photos, followed by speculation about why, with this feature in the pipeline, I would be so upfront about my scientific ambitions. Start a band, Koda Rose!!!! one commenter demands. Take over the world! We have all been waiting for you!!!! Others concur. I scroll past them, my cheeks blazing, to the very end of the stream. A link posted by somebody calling themselves RIPMACK. The comment reads: Check out this video lol Sadie P is wild. It’s actually re that news story about KR and the whales but hopefully a statement on the photos is forthcoming?? Regardless, is this her first public statement EVER about our Koda?!?? So Sadie didn’t comment on my photos. I lower my phone into my lap, disappointed. Maybe there’s no point watching after all.
The bell rings to signal first-wave lunch, forcing my attention back onto the screen: first public statement EVER. Either I face Sadie’s opinion of me, or the cafeteria’s.
The video hardly qualifies as such, one of those pazzo-ambush, iPhone-in-your-face deals that most celebrities probably breeze right past. Still, you’d think these people would have better equipment. When the clip finally loads, it’s a pixelated mess. Like the phone it got recorded on was recently dropped in a toilet. But as fuzzy as the background is—some kind of storefront, bricks and a smooth sweep of glass—I recognize her immediately. Even with the bandanna. The sunglasses that eclipse half her face.
“Sadie,” the pazzo pants. “Sadie, have you seen the news about Koda?”
Her brow puckers, like, Who? My chest seizes. Does she seriously not—but as he hurries to clarify, “Koda Rose? Mack’s daughter?” the pixels shift. Sadie smirks.
She knows exactly who I am.
“Yeah.” She nods repeatedly. “Oh yeah. Big fan. Though I’ve always been more partial to her experimental stuff.”
A pause. The pazzo seems stumped. Sadie keeps walking, and as he hustles to catch up, she flips him off over her shoulder. I giggle. I can’t help it. This is what Mom was so mad about? The screen goes black. I’m about to hit replay when I spot the geotag: Fazes Café, Astoria, Queens.
Queens.
That’s part of the city. A fringey part, but still, I had no idea she lived so close. I zip to her Wikipedia page. It’s true. Born: Troy, New York. Same as my father. Lives: Queens, New York City. And she’s only five feet tall. Five feet and three-quarters in Doc Martens. The P stands for Pasquale.
My stumbling fingers open another tab. I google Sadie Quixote, but it
’s the same things you always read about her and Mack Grady being high school sweethearts, running away to the city to start their band. When they got discovered, they were eighteen and homeless. Scrawny nobodies with guitars strapped to their backs. I keep tapping. Pictures flood my phone like the u ok??? texts from Lindsay I can’t bring myself to answer. Old pictures, because they have my father in them. His face is a singing face and Sadie has a guitar on her knee, hair everywhere, the background a haze of smoke and lights. And then there are the interviews I’m too impatient to reread. An eight-second clip of Sadie shouting she’d crowd-surf more if people quit grabbing her junk. Apparently, she gave a spectacularly incoherent press conference the day my father died. I don’t watch that.
But I keep going back to the ambush video throughout the day. I don’t know why. It’s not even interesting. Just my father’s ex, walking out of an ordinary café, on an ordinary street. Bandanna and sunglasses and some kind of leather jacket. The skinniest skinny jeans. It’s just that… in a way, I was right. Sadie doesn’t seem to care about me the way other people do here. My experimental stuff. What does that mean? I scour the video for clues. Zooming in as far as my phone will zoom, scrutinizing every ragged edge of this woman who everybody agrees knew my father better than he did, and when I get sick of that, I return to the caption. Queens. Queens, Queens, Queens… until my sweaty palms pulse the words.
CHAPTER 7
DRIVER MATERIALIZES AT EXACTLY 3:15, much appreciated on this frosty afternoon. I set my backpack where Mom usually sits and stuff my penguin beanie over my hair. Wait for his eyes to appear in the mirror.
The Mythic Koda Rose Page 4