Tittle: To the Stars and Us
Genres: AU, AR, Romance, Drama, Comedy, Music, High School, Slice of Life, Gender Bender.
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My life as an Idol began at Mister Donut.
I could tell you that at the time, I was just your average fourteen-year-old girl with slacker grades, dysfunctional family, bad hair days, and a love for singing out loud to every song on the radio. But that was the Weiss Schnee who appeared doomed to live out her junior year as a social oddity at her new high school on Patch.
The other Weiss Schnee, the one who slaved away at Mister Donut every afternoon, she sang aloud to every song on the radio in order to drown out customers' voices so her mind could focus on her real ambition: escape. Sing-aloud Weiss dreamed of escape from Patch, escape from high school, escape to somewhere, anywhere (okay, preferably New York or L.A., though Tokyo or Paris would probably do, as would any dark steamy Latin American beach metropolis like in the telenovelas on the Spanish language channel). She also longed for escape from parents whose marriage was on nuclear meltdown, escape from the sorrow that had overwhelmed our household since my sister's death. In whatever glam city happened to be somewhere, anywhere, the other Weiss Schnee would go and reinvent herself, become a sophisticated emancipated teen with a cute face and ridiculous confidence. She could be like some Presidential Fitness teen ambassador; she'd have a kick-ass designer wardrobe and a smile that could light the world on fire. That chick would know how to make new friends like that and she would have guys lining up to date her, instead of the regular old Weiss Schnee, who you could tell guys thought was kinda not bad-looking but why's she always by herself staring out into space, and anyway isn't she the girl who used to be on TV, what's her deal, how'd she get stranded here?
The regular old Weiss Schnee had two years of high school left to go, two more years trapped in sleepy town Patch. Escape for now would have to come from singing aloud at her job at Mister Donut, passing the time in her own reverie.
And so it happened that I was discovered by Mr. Ironwood, the powerful talent manager, at a chance meeting at said Mister Donut. James (as he was known) walked into Mister Donut at the end of my shift late one Saturday evening. I was mopping the floor, using the mop as a pretend microphone as I strutted across the wet floor, a Discman on my ears as I sang "Smells Like Teen Spirit" out loud—very loudly. My rendition of Kurt Cobain was closer to down-home gospel than to grunge wail. I had no idea a customer was lurking until Yang, my one friend in my family's new hometown and also my Mister Donut coworker, practically knocked me over, sprung the headphones from my ears, and shouted, "Weiss! The guy's trying to talk to you!"
I looked up. Labor Day had passed, taking the Mister Donut's late night customers with it. Yet here was one standing before me at 10 P.M., clutching a chocolate-dipped soft-serve cone, his teeth flashing so bright in the flickering strobe lighting I thought I saw my reflection in them. He said, "Don't I know you? You look familiar."
Of course I recognized him. Who could forget those killer-shark eyes and the fine Italian tailored suits he wore even during 99 percent humidity? I told him, "Think a little harder."
He did, and then he knew. The killer eyes turned sad when he made the connection. "You're Winter's kid sister."
"That's me." My big sister had been dead almost two years, yet it seemed I would always be known as "Winter's kid sister." I wouldn't have minded having my name legally changed to "Winter's Kid Sister" if it had meant I could have even one more day with her.
"I didn't know you sang too." He paused, as if he was seeing me for the first time, even though I must have met him several times before, with Winter. His eyes looked me up and down, slowly, as if he was appraising me, not in a scamming way, but more like I was a piece of fruit. "You were a B-Kid also, right?"
I nodded, embarrassed. That was my old life, when we still lived in Vale, when my parents still liked each other. Back then, my sister and I trekked every Saturday to a television studio in Vale to tape Beacon Kidz, or B-Kidz as it became known, a kids' variety show that developed a cult following throughout Vale. In the time since the show's cancellation, several B-Kidz had emerged to become major film, television, and music stars. My sister Winter had been slated to become one of those B-Kidz alums.
"Do you have a demo tape?" Musicians and singers struggle for years to hear a major talent scout ask them that question. I got it over a mop and pail with no desire for it whatsoever.
"Oh sure," I said. "I made one while I was singing in the shower this morning. Let me just have my people FedEx it over to you." Yang, who had been watching the whole scene, busted out laughing. Everyone in the small town on Patch where my family had recently moved knew that our house was one in chaos—and on a downward monetary slide.
James raised his eyebrow at me, then he laughed too. "Wanna make one?" he said.
"What, do you have a karaoke machine handy?" I asked. Ours was a small town made up of rich people's summer homes and working-class people's regular homes. Lights, camera, action was not what you would expect to find in Patch.
James said, "No, but I've got a little recording studio setup in my summer house on the beach, and I've got a soon-to-be ex-wife back in Mistral that my lawyer has advised me to avoid for the next couple weeks by just laying low, so what better way to hide out than by discovering a new pop sensation during the off-season? C'mon, it'd be fun; help an old guy have some fun in this beautiful boring town."
The conversation would have ended there, with the "You must be crazy" I was about to offer James, had my mother not arrived at exactly that moment to pick me up at the end of my shift. "James!" she cried out, which was funny—my mom, the ex-law librarian, frumpy dresser with the bad perm, getting down with the hep nicknames. "How long has it been? What are you doing in this godforsaken town? Do you summer here?"
When my mom is nervous, she babbles. When she is intimidated and nervous, she babbles moronically.
"Ah, Willow," James said. His shoulders appeared to slump and the sheen cast off his glossy teeth smile dimmed, like maybe now he was remembering the other side of dealing with Winter's family. "Long time." He gestured toward me. "I was just thinking your other daughter here should make a demo tape. Looks to me like she's got the same qualities Wint—" He stopped himself from saying her name. I was used to that by now. People around me acted like they couldn't use the words "Winter," "death," "die," or "accident" in a sentence for fear I would fall apart in hysterics on the spot.
"Weiss would love to!" my mom blurted out. "Our Weiss has a lovely voice. She used to be an incredible dancer." Mom stopped herself, and I knew what she might have liked to add: Weiss had been an incredible dancer back when we lived in Vale, until… you know… and since then Weiss has let her body go to hell and she's stopped caring about her God-given talents. Weiss was a B-Kid too, you know! James, can you save her?
James looked at me like I was a puppet whose strings my mother would pull and I would dance on command. Not. I couldn't imagine how Mom could possibly embarrass me more. I did not want to find out. I whined, "Mom, I thought you were going to wait outside for me after my shift." Please, I thought, please don't let anyone from Signal High School walk in right now and witness this scene. It was bad enough that Yang was seeing it.
James scribbled a phone number on a napkin. He started to hand it to me, then appeared to think better of it and handed the napkin to Mom instead. "Let's talk," he said. "I'll be in town through the end of September." He walked outside, and we heard the beep of his Mercedes' car alarm turning off.
My mother's eyes were bright and her cheeks flushed. Since Winter's death, the day didn't pass that Mom's complexion didn't appear gray and her eyes dead. Seeing Mom liven up, I knew it would be hard not to let her persuade me to take James up on his offer. On the plus side, perhaps I could score a few days out of school over it.
Mom patted the top of my head, then reached behind me to loosen my hair from the Mister Donut hair net. My snow white hair fell around my shoulders. Mom touched the bottom of my chin gently. As she gazed into my eyes I knew she was looking through me, trying to see Winter.
She said, "I knew you could be a star, too. Like, you know …"
"I'm not Winter," I whispered to her.
"James thinks you could be," she whispered back. "He would know."
(◕ω◕✿)
In my list of ambitions, tripping into a popular idol career did not register. That had been Winter's deal, not mine. When I wasn't plotting fantasy escape from Patch and I was dealing in reality land, my ranking of ambitions went like this: (1) save enough money to get my own car (please a Acura, please), which would allow for (2) a better-paying job at a mall in larger city, which in turn would lead to (3) a major cash stash that would finance a post-high-school yearlong trek to like Norway or Madagascar or Tasmania or some place way far Far FAR from Patch, an ultimate adventure from which I would emerge (4) totally in love with some hot foreign guy and then maybe one day, I would (5) have a career as, like, a veterinarian or a travel book writer or a professional chocolate taster. Easy.
First I had to survive high school. Two years down, two to go.
My freshman year, the year Winter died, had flown by in a haze of C-minus grades from teachers who felt sorry for me, and crying jags in the bathroom between class periods. I had no real friends; I didn't think I knew how to make good friends. Winter had been my best friend, and our friends had been other B-Kidz or girls from our dance classes. Those friends had either graduated or were in private school. Money was getting tight in our family, so I went to public school. I wouldn't be making friends through performing either: Beacon Kidz had just been canceled, and I stopped going to dance class, the one area where I actually excelled. Performing was out that year, anyway. It hurt too much without Winter. I'd only been a B-Kid because I wanted to do whatever my big sister did. As for the grades, the parentals let the issue slide that year. I'd never been a star student like Winter, and nobody expected me to start now.
On Labor Day before sophomore year Dad sat me down for The Talk, the "You're such a smart girl, if you'd only apply yourself" speech. I responded that while I didn't aspire to be some airhead twit, I really didn't care if anybody thought I was smart and a good student so would it be okay if I just dropped out of school and got a job? The big fat answer was NO.
My GPA improved to a staggering C-plus average that year, which didn't impress my parents at all, but what really sent them over the top was the new gang of girls who let me hang with them, more because I had been a B-Kid than because they actually liked me. With these girls, I was caught drinking in the bathroom; with them, I got busted for skipping school and hanging out in local cafes, flirting with college guys and pretending we were college girls highly in need of invites to their keg parties.
Mom said, "We're moving; I won't tolerate this behavior!" To Mom, it didn't matter if I explained it was just one drink—my first—and I didn't even like it, didn't matter when I said I was just skipping school because it was all one big bore, I never actually went to one of those keg parties. Mom said, "My therapist is worried that you're a follower, you just go where the wind blows. You need direction. Winter had motivation and drive—don't you want that for yourself?"
Dad said, "We're broke. We can't afford to live in Vale anymore. We're moving to a quiet, safe place where my children will have nothing better to do than study."
Bye-bye big city, hello small town with the sea breeze and fresh-cut grass and white lace curtains at every house. Yawn. Whatever.
No one said what we all knew: No move could bring Winter back, and no change of scenery was going to make us forget our loss.
We'd been living in, Patch, for three months now and the most exciting thing that had happened was Mr. Ironwood coming into Mister Donut.
I had been planning to remind Mom that a music career was not an ambition of mine, when the morning after our encounter with James, I walked into the kitchen and found her telling Dad and Whitley about it.
"Weiss could have a record deal within a month, with James!"
Dad's face had not adopted the newfound glow on Mom's. He sat at the kitchen table, not looking up from his newspaper, his fork absently moving around pieces of scrambled eggs he likely would not finish. In the two years since Winter died, he'd lost a lot of weight, and now stood tall and skinny as a rail, his hair is also balding. I think Mom ate for him: Her wardrobe had graduated from black career suits to poly-stretch pants from Target.
Dad said, "Unless those grades go up, Weiss can forget about it. The agreement with Winter was a 3.5 or higher GPA if she wanted to pursue the music career. Weiss clocked in at, what, 2.5 last year? As it is, unless there's a marked grade improvement at this new school, she can kiss the Mister Donut job good-bye."
That comment really pissed me off. I could feel my disinterest in James's offer turning into Just try and tell me I can't make a demo, Dad.
Our dog, Archy, was wagging his tail at Dad's feet, waiting for the leftovers Archy knew Dad would be discreetly discarding. The condition of us getting a dog had been that Dad got to name it. He named the dog after a gangster character form his favorite movie. Archy was my man in black, the cutest hovawart you ever saw.
Whitley said, "Stupid fucking record people. Don't do it, Weiss." To Whitley, "record deal" equaled "death." On that terrible day, Winter and I had been walking down our street in Vale and Winter was giddy: She and her two best friends, Neo and Penny, were close to signing a major label record deal for their girl group, Lycoris. Mom and Whitley were across the street waiting on the porch for us to return with the groceries she'd sent us out to buy for a celebration dinner. Mom waved, Winter waved back. Winter was all Lycoris this, record deal that, and in her excitement, she stepped out into the street without looking. A speeding truck ran a red light and hit her. Fucking drunk driver.
Two years later, our family was just starting to get on with our lives, but we were all going through the motions, as if we expected that at any moment our lives could again change in a random instant: irrevocably, horribly. The two years of litigation with the family of the driver of the truck that killed Winter had ended with the driver in jail, but that brought us no satisfaction. Winter was still gone, and my parents' love for each other seemed to have gone along with her. The expense of the court costs had drained their finances until they finally gave up the lawsuit, sold our house in Vale, and moved us to Patch for a fresh start. The custody battle over their marriage ended in a dead heat, with the two backing off into separate corners: Dad took permanent custody of the living room, with his computer; Mom took the bedroom, with her TV; and the kitchen was the open arena reserved for occasional sparring.
"No cursing at breakfast," Dad mumbled after Whitley's use of the F-word. Whitley kicked at his skateboard under the table. Archy growled at Whitley.
"But it's okay at dinner?" I asked.
Dad looked up at me. He almost smiled. "Only on alternating Tuesdays in leap years," he said.
Just then we heard a crash in the living room. Archy barked and ran to the door, tail wagging. We ventured into the living room to find that a small piece of the ceiling had cracked and fallen, knocking over an antique lamp and spreading debris over the shabby, worn-out wooden floors. Our home was on prime oceanfront property, but the house, built by Dad's grandfather, was falling apart everywhere, and we had no money to fix it.
Since Dad, a college dean, had been placed on "sabbatical" by the university in Vale, and the only job Mom had been able to get in town was as a cashier at the grocery store, my parents had barely enough money to pay for our move from Vale to this ancient rickety house my father had inherited. Dad was supposedly going to use the profit from the sale of the Vale house to support our family while he used the peace and quiet of the Patch house to write a great novel that would make us rich beyond our wildest dreams. I think Archy was the only family member who believed Dad could do it. Archy sat at Dad's feet every day while Dad stared at the blank computer screen, usually playing solitaire or watching the Kadarshiasn on Youtube when he thought we weren't looking.
"Please let me call James, Weiss," Mom said in my ear. "Please."
"Sure," I muttered. I was glad I hadn't blown my summer savings from Mister Donut on a new stereo for my room. Looking at the plaster falling from the ceiling, I knew I would have to use that money for school clothes.
(◕ω◕✿)
I went upstairs to my room for Sunday sanctuary. It was still weird to go inside my bedroom and not see two beds. Winter and I had shared a room in the house where we'd grown up in Vale, and we'd shared a room in this house on Patch when we spent summers here. Now that we lived permanently at Patch, I had moved into the guest bedroom. Winter's and my old room was locked and nobody ever asked Mom for the key. My new room had a great view, though. I could wake up in the morning and lie in bed, watching the blue ocean rolling right outside the window, the ocean's rocking motions making me feel as if my bed were moving to its rhythm. The roar of the ocean and the waves breaking below the window helped drown out the silence that had existed in our family home since Winter had gone. Sometimes it felt like we had become a family of ghosts.
There was a knock on my door and I snapped, "I said I'd do it!" thinking Mom was at the door wanting to talk about James again, but instead Yang and her brother, Ruby, aka Science Project, walked in. Ruby and Yang lived next door. I'd been hanging out with them every summer since we were babies.
Yang flopped on my bed. "Guess what! Mom told us at church this morning. Only the second week of school and school's going to be canceled this week! They found asbestos somewhere so the whole school has to shut down to get it cleaned up so we don't all like die during homeroom."
I did a gospel Messiah jig around my room, singing, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" My initial week at Signal High School had been beyond painful. A summer becoming a permanent townie? Who does she think she is?
The kids my age in town were forever separated by whether they were townies or summers. Townies lived in Patch year-round, and had families that could not afford vacation homes. Townies had jobs working at the fish stands that the summers frequented, and the townies' parents often had side jobs looking out for the summers' houses during the winter. Summers, the group I had been part of before, were only in attendance on Patch in July and August, refugees from the heat and humidity in Vale, Mistral, and Atlas. They drove expensive cars, went to fancy private schools, and did not spend their school vacations slaving for minimum wage. Our family had been a summer one, but we were never rich, just Winter to have inherited a house on awesome oceanfront property. I no longer belonged to either group. I was glad to have spent the past summer buried inside Mister Donut with a uniform visor half-covering my face.
"I'm so excited you live here year-round now!" Yang chirped. She threw what I referred to as her Popularity Kit—beauty and celeb mags, makeup samples, and hair accessories—onto my bed: her idea of Sunday entertainment.
Yang tossed me a soap opera magazine. "Check out the cover—I brought this one special for you." The my-reason-for-living gorgeous face of Achilles Nikos, the hottest actor on daytime television, stared back at me, all green eyes and chiseled cheekbones, athletic body and long red hair. Achilles Nikos, star of Handsome's Pete, the one soap I never missed, the reason I took the five-to-ten rather than the three-to-eight shift two nights a week at Mister Donut, since our family VCR was on the blitz and no way could I miss my daily dose of Achilles. I smacked my lips onto Achilles's picture.
Ruby said, "You seriously think that guy's hot?"
"Quite!" I said back.
Ruby made a blech face. In the last year, he had grown very tall, but way gawky. His neck-length, black hair with red tips had turned lighter from the summer's rays, and his usually pale skin was pink and healthy. He almost looked cute, except for his pants always looking like they would fall right down off of his skinny white ass. Ruby/Science Project looked like both his name and his nickname: he had that aw shucks thing going with a pleasant puppy dog face, but he also had perpetually wrinkled brows and intense stares because his head was always computing computing computing. He had this habit of coming into my room with Yang for no reason; like today, he'd seen Yang carry the Popularity Kit to my house and there was no way he planned to do girly stuff with us, yet here he was in my room.
"You two are not honestly going to spend the day slobbering over pictures of that guy and putting on makeup, are you?" Ruby asked.
"You bet we are," Yang said.
"Yang, I thought you said you would help me build the new computer for Dad's birthday today."
"No, Science Project, that's your project, not mine!" Yang said. "Weiss and I want to do something fun!" She wrinkled her eyebrows, then asked me, "Hey, did you ever call that James guy?"
I shrugged, and Yang let the subject drop. She said, "I know! Let's prank-call Blake!"
That idea interested me. I told Ruby, "Whitley is gonna go hang out with his pseudocool skater dudes if you wanna go hang with him." I did not need Science Project's geek karma infiltrating my room if I was going to prank-call my crush. Achilles Nikos may have been the man I intended to marry, but Blake was the for-real guy I was seriously lusting over.
Ruby squinted up at the sun beaming into my bedroom through the window. "Gimme pseudocool skater dudes over Blake any day," he mumbled, then got up from the window seat and left my room.
I had been drooling over Blake all summer, though really I had been crushing on him since the summer after fourth grade when he caught me in a game of Marco Polo at the community pool. He had golden eyes and long-black hair, and he was practically a rock star in Patch— everyone had heard his band the White Fang play at the Fourth of July Patch town festival. Even though he was like one of the most popular boys at Signal High School, even though I had about as much of a shot with Blake as I did with the president of France, I couldn't help fantasizing about him.
Now that we lived in backwater Patch, dreaming about kissing Blake was my only entertainment besides dreaming about kissing Achilles Nikos from Handsome's Pete.
I was just shy of my fifteenth birthday, and I still hadn't kissed—I mean really kissed—a guy. I didn't count the awkward and random encounter in the B-Kidz dressing room when I was twelve with Jaune Arc a fellow B-Kid who went on to become a member in a monster popular boy band.
The Schnee family had moved to the Patch to start our lives over. My resolution was that I would have a boyfriend as part of my new life by the ocean, and that boyfriend would be Blake.
Winter always said I knew how to dream big.
(◕ω◕✿)
James's summer home was less than a mile from ours. Mom stepped out of our beat-up Volvo on Monday morning and admired the new shingles on the two- story house with the spotless windows. "Wouldn't it be nice to have a house like this?" she asked.
"You mean not falling apart?" I said.
James came outside to greet us. The wind flapped his white suit against his tan skin. The guy was the smartest dresser I have ever seen. He had a angular face that would have appeared youthfully innocent and kind were it not for those shark blue eyes. He said, "Thanks for dropping her off, Willow. Great seeing you. We'll call you later when she's ready to come home." He flashed the killer smile and put his arm around my shoulders before Mom had a chance to protest. She had definitely expected to stay with me, not drop me off.
James's house was decorated with frilly, flowery patterns, New England quilts on the walls, and awful lace curtains, and it smelled like carpet cleaner. I guess James could see the look of confusion on my face because he said, "The soon-to-be ex decorated the house. Sucks, doesn't it?"
"Kind of! I guess I woulda thought you'd have like gold records lining the walls and big leather couches and electronic equipment everywhere."
"Soon as those divorce papers are signed next month this house will be fully de-Martha Stewartized. Tell your friends they can come over and spray-paint the walls over this effin Laura Ashley wallpaper if they want."
I noted the walls' spray-painting potential and made a mental note to myself: Make friends.
We walked through to the back of the house and outside to the backyard. James led me to a large garage and punched a code into a security system.
"My sanctuary," he announced.
The garage door opened to reveal a recording booth with a glass wall separating it from a recording console room, and a small separate room with a big TV and stereo, a La-Z-Boy recliner, a long futon on a wooden frame, and a bookcase full of CDs.
"Cool!" I said.
James shrugged. "Eh, this is really just a PlayStation for a guy who thought he could be a record producer but turned out to be better at managing talent. Strictly juvenile, this spread." As we walked inside, James turned to me and asked, "Weiss, before we start this, you need to tell me now: Are you in this?"
I thought of Winter and answered for her. "Sure am!" I sat down on the stool below the microphone.
"Got a favorite song you want to try out?" James asked.
I so closely associated James with Winter that I didn't think before suggesting, " 'I'm Ready,' " the last song my sister had written.
James looked at me funny. "You're sure?" I nodded. He sounded skeptical, but he said, "That's maybe not the strongest song of hers but, okay. I don't have music on it so why don't you just sing straight out."
James gestured GO to me from the other side of the glass window in the studio. I sang,
When you think "The best", you have to feel "the moment", and "now"
Every one was born to make these things!? To have a heart!
I thought my voice was confident and sounded good, but James stopped me. "Do you know how you sound?" he asked through the headset.
I said, "Pretty damn good?"
"Nope. You're singing like Winter. Sweet and innocent, nice. Sing like Weiss."
I wanted to tell him, But Weiss always sang backup for Winter. Weiss doesn't know how Weiss sings. Weiss was the dancer! Didn't you watch Beacon Kidz?
I tried again, but this time was worse. I saw my sister's face on the other side of the microphone, holding the headset to her ear with one hand. Her white curls hung down her shoulders, and her cheeks were rosy and happy with the joy she found in singing. She was such a pretty girl, especially when she sang.
James announced, "I see your feet tapping and your hips rocking, Weiss. I know you have more in you."
One more time I started,
When you think "The best",
James shook his head, frowning. I'd blown it. Now he knew me for the fraud I was, a pretender to my dead sister's throne.
Before I could apologize to James for wasting his time, I heard the music to a familiar, and favorite, song coming through the headset. James nodded to me and without thinking I just started singing. The song was "When I Look at You."
James must have remembered that Winter hated Miley Cyrus songs. Winter's face and voice effectively blocked, I started to wail the song. As I got more into it, I felt my body relax and my voice strengthen. There was an extraterrestrial cool quality coming from my voice that I hadn't known existed.
"You're showing off now, Weiss," James said into my headset, but I kept singing anyway, and I saw him smiling—and smiling big, like his random instinct to bet on a dollar and a dream had just won him the lottery.
He had me sing the song several different times, trying out different beats: slow, fast, R & B, gospel style, pop cute, and finally, however the hell I wanted.
On that last take he said, "That was the one. Weiss style. Free and easy, natural."
"I have a style?" I asked.
"Now you do," he said. "Did you ever have vocal training?"
"Yeah, we had voice coaches on the set at B-Kidz. I sang on one of the B-Kidz Xmas albums. A really corny version of 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.' I'm so glad they don't play the record on the radio in Vale anymore."
"You're embarrassed to be on the radio?"
"No, I'm embarrassed to have a sucky song on the radio. It was so cheesy."
"Welcome to the music biz, Weiss." James asked me what female singers I liked. I named the usual suspects: Adele, Ariana Grande, Beyonce and Avril Lavigne. He said, "No, what the recent idol do you like—you know, young ones? All these female idols out there and boy bands, there's gotta be one of them you like."
"I guess I like Neo okay. She's not as bad as most of 'em." When Winter died so suddenly, Neo and Penny had decided they couldn't continue Lycoris anymore, without her. Penny's dad had been against the whole idol singing career anyway, and he was grief-stricken over Winter's death. He forbade Penny to pursue a record deal again until Penny finished college. Penny, I think, was relieved that her father had made the decision for her. Neo, on the other hand, had gone solo and within the last two years had skyrocketed to become the queen of the pop charts, and the skimpiest bikini-wearer the music video channel had ever seen. She was an international sensation.
"You're not gonna go all diva on me, are you, Weiss?" James was Neo's manager. He would know.
"Not if you're nice to me," I said, laughing.
"Girl," he said, "you don't even know what a natural you are, do you?"
.
.