.
.
If being a natural meant fumbling lyrics, tripping on dance steps, and laughing hysterically every time James encouraged me to croon/wail/whisper the words "yeah" and/or "baby" in a song, then I was a natural-born superstar.
I often suspected the only reason James kept working with me after our first session was that I kept him amused as he juggled endless pages and cell phone calls from his divorce lawyer, Neo and other artists, and record company execs.
Because school was let out for that week in September, I spent my afternoons at James's house, at his invitation. I don't imagine I ever thought our work would actually lead to a singing career for me, but it made my mom so happy to drop me off and to look into my eyes with hope instead of sadness. And excuse me, but the scene at James's—with the huge flat-screen TV to take in Achilles Nikos on Handsome's Pete while James answered phone calls every two seconds—was way better than the scene back home. If I had spent the week at home, I would have been stuck hovering over a black-and-white TV with bad reception to catch my soaps while hordes of townie kids reclaimed the beach outside our windows, and I would have passed that time hoping and praying that Mom and Dad didn't start a fight that would send Whitley and me hiding out in my room and eating cold pizza for dinner.
A surprise awaited me at James's house on the second day. When I walked to the back of the house toward the studio, Penny Polendina was sitting on a lawn chair. "Weiss!" she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. She ran to me and gave me a giant hug.
She was wearing her Atlas University tank top with side-button workout pants that swamped her tiny body. Penny Polendina was a petite girl—maybe five feet tall on tippy toes—but with a giant singing voice that could tear the church down. Just because James was her father's nephew did not mean it was nepotism that had almost landed Lycoris a record deal—the girl was a powerhouse singer, Adele plus Beyonce times a million. She had the most beautiful voice I'd ever heard. I had never understood why B-Kidz fan mail always favored Neo. To me, Penny had always been the coolest-looking and the best singer, and Winter the nicest and most genuine.
Penny held me tight. We hadn't seen each other since shortly after Winter's death. I was glad Mom wasn't present. The sight of Penny—and the remembrance of Penny wailing out "Amazing Grace" at the church funeral and the entire congregation shuddering in awestruck tears—would likely have caused Mom to break down on the spot.
When Penny let go of me, we sat down on the lawn chairs, a luscious summer ocean breeze filling the air. Penny said, "So, you gonna be an idol too?"
I laughed. "Yeah, right! Nah, James just keeps me here for his entertainment, and I just need to get the hell outta my house! Once that divorce of his is final, James'll go back to his fancy Vale life and get lost in Neo-ness and forget all about ole Weiss Schnee singing customers' orders in the drive-thru at Mister Donut and failing Algebra 2 at Signal High School on Patch."
Penny said, "If that were true he wouldn't have asked me to come out here today to work with you. He wants me to work on some harmonizing and vocal exercises with you, and check out your dance moves."
This was a shock. Having Penny as voice coach was like getting Michael Jordan for a basketball teacher.
"You're so lying," I told Penny.
"I'm so not," she said. "C'mon, let's go get some lunch, and when we come back I am going to put you through some serious paces. James had to go into Vale for the day to sign some papers, but he'll be back later to check our progress."
We hopped into her cute little Honda. I recommended the local pizza place—just guess why. Hint: a cergain guy with golden eyes. On the drive over, Penny told me about life in college. Penny was a sophomore at Atlas University, a music major, and when she fulfilled her promise to her mom to get her college degree, she was going to go after that record deal for real—only she didn't want to be a pop singer, or a rock singer. She wanted to be a country singer.
"Shut up!" I said when she dropped that bomb.
"Watch my dust, girl, I am going to be the first female country singing superstar this town has ever known. I'm gonna be Memphis Minnie and Aretha Franklin, Patsy Cline and Ella Fitzgerald all in one."
"Who?"
Penny had always been like a walking encyclopedia of music history. She knew every obscure song from every important singer imaginable. Beacon Kidz was produced at a local public television station and did not, contrary to rumor, make any of its kid performers any kind of real dough, but Penny had invested what little B-Kidz money she earned to fund an incredible CD collection back when she was her little high school honor student self.
"Read some history sometime, Weiss. The Neos of today couldn't be around if not for the Petula Clarks of yesterday."
"Who?" I repeated.
Penny rolled her eyes and said, "Never you mind. Dig this. I am moving to Austin, Texas, when I finish college. Gonna hang out with the real songwriters, quality artists, see? None of that Nashville sellout bid'ness for me."
"I'll buy your records," I said. I would, too. "Looks like I might be buying yours first!"
As we walked inside the restaurant, I muttered, "Check out the guy at the counter, Penn," using Winter and my old nickname for her. "Major crush."
"Wow, that's hella handsome boy you've got there, Weiss." Penny winked.
"Hi, Blake!" I said when we got to the counter. I tried to act all casual but my voice had that annoying enthusiasm I seem incapable of squashing. I had a T-shirt on over my bikini top, but he was on instant guy cam—his eyes went right to my chest. Mine went right to his bicep-muscle.
"Yeah—Wiz is it?" he mumbled.
A group of girls were giggling at a nearby table. I turned my head and saw Ilia Amitola, the new bane of my existence. My first week at my new school had been made miserable by her. For some random reason, Ilia and her clique of popular girls had targeted me as their victim for the new school year. That I had been a B-Kid was apparently the bug up Ilia's ass.
Every kid from Vale to Vacuo has seen Beacon Kidz at least once, probably a lot more. I wasn't particularly great on the show—Neo, Penny, and Winter were the real standouts—but I was known as "the cute one" so I got lots of letters and one marriage proposal when I turn eighteen from a movie star who's originally from Vale whom I won't name because I thought the whole proposal was somewhat disgusting and inappropriate. But since I had grown up and moved away from the Vale area, people rarely recognized me anymore, for which I was grateful. Unfortunately for me, Ilia was not one of those people. Furthermore, she seemed stuck in some B-Kidz backlash that looked to severely infect my junior year at Signal High School.
Worse, Ilia and I shared a crush. According to Yang, who knew every coupling in the town of Patch dating back to Spruce Willis movie days, Ilia had been hot for Blake during the last school year and had even hooked up with him at a couple of parties. These groping sessions had never turned into an actual boyfriend-girlfriend thing, but Ilia was always making a play for him. That Ilia had the major hots for Blake could be seen every day the past summer when she trounced from the beach to the pizza joint and suggestively slurped Diet Cokes and ogled Blake with her buds while Blake tried to work. She must not have realized Ms. Right—that would be me—had a history with Blake going back further than freshman year. Marco. POLO.
"Nope, not Wiz—Weiss, that's me," I babbled to Blake. I had known him since fourth grade! Why did he always pretend not to remember my name? "So can I have two slices of pizza, extra cheese and pepperoni?"
He started to write down my order but Penny interrupted. "Wrong. She'll have a turkey grinder with lettuce, tomato, and very light mayo… ."
"A Coke," I interrupted, but Penny plowed on. "With two mineral waters and …"
"Fries?" Blake said, scribbling.
"We'll split a bag of baked potato chips. A Caesar salad for me, dressing on the side. Thanks, bub."
Penny laid a twenty spot on the counter and walked over to a table without so much as a glance back to Blake.
"Hey," I said, following her. "I don't like sandwiches. I wanted pizza."
"We're doing some serious dancing this afternoon, Weiss. You gotta treat your body with more respect."
I didn't have a chance to protest. Ilia sauntered over to our table. "What, is this a B-Kidz reunion?" she asked.
Ilia was a pretty young woman with long brown hair tied back in a ponytail that curls at the end, her eyes were a light gray with a faintly bluish tint. She like to wore one of those size-zero girls that always had to wear cutoff shorts and tube tops to let everyone know how skinny and cute they were. Underneath the table, my hands nervously tugged at the T- shirt covering my flabby abs, the result of a summer spent eating pizza for lunch and banana boat sundaes on my breaks at Mister Donut.
Penny shot back her vintage I'm-not-taking-your-shit look. She stared Ilia squarely in the eyes and said, "If it is, I don't remember the invitation that went out to you."
Point score: our girl Penny.
Ilia flipped her ponytail and turned away. Her posse followed her out of the restaurant. As she left, Ilia turned to face me at the door. She pointed at me, but said nothing. I was warned.
I wondered if Penny's coaching duties would extend to her becoming my five-foot-tall female country-music-singer-wanna-be bodyguard at Signal High School.
(◕ω◕✿)
On the drive back to James's, I asked Penny, "Do you stay in touch with Neo?"
She shook her head. "Nope." I took the silence that followed for: Don't go there.
I wondered how she felt, seeing her fellow girl group member and friend go on to superstardom. From what I could see, Penny seemed genuinely happy and excited about her future. I wondered if the same was true of Neo. You'd think so, since she had become so famous, but in the few days I'd spent with James, he'd spent half his time on the phone reassuring Neo how great she was, how beautiful, how popular—as if she didn't know.
I did venture this question to Penny: "Do you think about her?" We both knew I meant Winter, not Neo.
"Every day," Penny said.
"Sometimes it feels like half of me is gone without her, and like I don't know what I'm supposed to do with the half that's left."
Penny said, "I miss her so much still it literally hurts. When songs she loved come on the radio, my stomach just turns over and I have to run to the bathroom. I bet Neo feels the same."
I told Penny about the last year back in Vale, when Dad was forgetting to show up at the university and could be found wandering along the Emeral Forest, Mom had been placed on disability leave from her law firm job because she couldn't make it through the day without falling apart, and my little brother had been caught spray-painting graffiti at the 7-Eleven.
"Sounds like this move to Patch was what your family needed, Weiss," Penny said. "You'll get used to living here, trust me." Penny had such confidence that when she said those words—"trust me"—I believed.
For such a sweet-looking girl, Penny was a taskmaster. We spent the afternoon singing songs with mathematical precision, then drawing the songs out for depth and feeling. Penny's vocal stamina never wavered, but after a while my voice hurt from all the exercises, so Penny said, "Let's chug some Gatorade and then dance a while."
We went into James's living room and without speaking started clearing the furniture to the sides of the room, just like Penny, Winter, and Neo used to do when they rehearsed in the basement of our old house in Vale. Their determination had awed me back then. When I came home from school, I munched on junk food and watched Handsome's Pete and Oprah. Those girls came home and went straight to the basement, set up the speakers and microphones, and practiced singing and dancing for hours, with a precision that was fierce. People think that most idols come out of nowhere and are just folks who got Winter to be born good-looking and with a decent singing voice. The truth is, if you look at the careers of most idols, even the really young ones, you will see that years of hard work, talent shows, failure, blind faith, and practice practice practice went into creating them.
That Penny could get me to dance at all was totally, simply, because I didn't want her to see that I couldn't do it. I had taken years of ballet, tap, and modern as a kid—I loved it, and was pretty good—but had stopped cold after Winter died. In the time since, my muscles had turned to mush and I had to lie down on my bed to button my favorite pair of jeans. Feeling my body move again with fire and spirit might have been a welcome release if my body hadn't gotten so out of shape. And if anyone else besides Penny had been training me, I probably would have given up after the first misstep and said, "Hey, let's go see what's playing at the Cineplex instead." But because it was Penny, and I wanted to earn her respect and show her I could be talented and hardworking like Winter, I stayed in the game.
I was sweating buckets and longing for a bubble bath and a really long nap when Penny said, "You know, you've got a great sense of rhythm. That's pretty hard to develop without having it to begin with. A couple weeks of rehearsing is all it would take to whip your slagging behind into shape."
I thought that backhanded compliment meant I was excused from working out after the hour of dancing she had just put me through. Wrong. Because I was so good, Penny turned on the music video channel and we danced through another hour of pop music videos, repeating the routines during commercials and stopping only for sips of Gatorade. Penny probably could have gone on all night if the Neo video hadn't come on, silencing her instructions and—finally—getting her to zap the TV off and flop onto the couch.
"What do you think of Neo's new appearance?" she asked.
Since becoming top idol, Neo's had dyed her black hair in tri-color, half pink and half brown, with white streaks on the pink side. There were a pair of contact lenses in her eyes, so her eyes were brown and pink. Her thick eyebrows reshaped to appear longer, slimmer, and arched, and her body had turned lean and taut, scary skinny, especially in comparison with her ample bosom, which I can assure you were not the real deal. Half the boys' lockers at Signal High School had posters of Neo hanging inside.
I thought Neo had been prettier when she looked like a real person.
James walked through the door, cell phone to his ear. "Yes, Neo," he said, sighing. "The magazine is giving you a cover, not a feature. You know it's only covers or nothing now. Right. Out." He snapped the phone shut.
James looked at Penny and me flopped on the couch. "Well?" he said to Penny.
Penny said, "Girl's got what it takes, if she wants to take it."
No discussion. Penny's opinion was law. He said to me, "Can you spend Saturday and Sunday here? We'll make the demo then. Penny, can you come back for the weekend to do some harmony with Weiss and choreograph some moves for a video demo?"
The whole deal felt like one big joke, but I was confident that ultimately nothing would ever come of it, so what did I have to lose? Plus, I liked hanging out with Penny again.
"I'm in," I said.
"Let's do this," Penny said.
Glamour? No. Excitement? No. Just business. And the business completed, this prospective idol hit the shower to get ready for her evening shift at the Mister Donut.
(◕ω◕✿)
That night, I was so exhausted from the workouts with Penny it was a miracle I stayed awake on the job. I wanted to go straight to bed and pass out. Fortunately for me and the Mister Donut, I was perked up by the arrival of a select group of customers: Blake and his band members.
When I saw them outside getting out of their trucks I made a beeline to the bathroom for a quick lip gloss and mascara touch-up. Customers waiting on me? What customers? I made it back to the register just as Blake came to the counter.
"You again," he said. He was wearing denim jean shorts cut off at the knees and flip-flops. His upper body was lean, but muscular, absolutely perfect. The fire coming from his golden eyes seemed to be calling to me personally: C'mon, Weiss, make a complete fool of yourself for us. Wouldn't be the first time, right?
"Me again," I said with a sigh. I hoped drool wasn't falling from my mouth onto the counter. I heard Yang laughing her ass off from the kitchen. "What can I getcha?"
His buddies all looked stoned. The Mister Donut experience must have been a munchie run for the band. "Couple brownie sundaes and a strawberry soft-serve with jimmies on top and one fat-free chocolate froze yogurt," Blake said.
"Who's the froze for?" I asked, and flashed my glossed grin.
"Me," he stated, deadpan. "Gotta watch my girlish figure." It was not my imagination—he actually winked at me.
"Coming right up!" I said. I think I might have yelled.
"He's totally flirting with you," Yang whispered to me as we prepared the group's order.
"Haah," I said.
"Tell him how you know Neo! He'll totally want to go out with you then." I shuddered at the thought. I would never name-drop like that.
I took Blake's order to his group's table outside and asked, "So, are you guys really playing at the Homecoming Dance?"
Blake looked embarrassed. "Yeah."
"Cool!" I said. Cool? Lame answer, Weiss. I wished I had on a short skirt so he could get a good rear view as I trounced back to my register, but no, I had on supersexy polyester uniform pants. Maybe my butt muscles had improved since that day's workouts with Penny. As I walked away, the guys were talking low and mumbling, but I caught these words: "new girl," "junior," and "B-Kid."
I returned to the register and, blissfully uninterrupted by more customers, watched them eat their ice cream for ten minutes. Gotta love the off-season. Just townies and the occasional James to populate the glorious Mister Donut.
My bliss was interrupted by the ninth circle of hell: Ilia Amitola—again—and her posse—again—this time arriving minutes before the store closed. I tried to pull my uniform visor over my eyes so she would not recognize me, but no such luck.
"Look, everybody, it's Patch's own B-Kid, slumming it for minimum wage at Mister Donut," Ilia announced.
I wish I could say I had a sudden dose of Penny empowerment, but I didn't. Truthfully, I was scared. Ilia was someone who had the power to make my life miserable at my new school. So I pretended I didn't hear her and I focused on that Employee of the Month award I was coveting. Cheerfully, I said, "Welcome to Mister Donut. May I take your order?" May I shove hot fudge sauce up your big fat nose, bitch?
Blake distracted her from whatever form of torture she was devising to spring on me. He poked his head inside the store and called to her, "Hey Ilia, come join us." He gestured to Ilia and her gang to join him and his crew. Was he trying to save me, or score with Ilia?
She squealed, "Coming~~!"
Ilia snarled at me quickly, then strutted outside. Through the glass windows I saw her smush herself onto the bench next to Blake.
I went to the supply closet to pull out the old mop and pail. What would Winter do? I wondered. Grace under pressure—that was Winter. Not someone to jump into a fight if provoked, like Penny, nor someone to enlist a group of love-struck guys to fight her battles for her, like Neo. My heart pounded extra hard for missing my sister. Winter would have figured out a way for me to make friends with the girl and get the guy.
The restaurant was empty and the outside benches cleared when I came out of the supply closet to close the joint. I had only waited inside there, chasing back tears over missing my sister and hating my new life, for fifteen whole minutes.
(◕ω◕✿)
Dad and Whitley picked me up from work. Whitley said, "Mom made the worst meat loaf for dinner. Even Archy wouldn't eat it. Dad and I need to stop at Mickey D's on the way home. We're starving."
I was so seriously tired, but I said, "Okay." We had to use the drive-thru because the restaurant was about to close. Since they didn't want Mom to know they were sneaking food after her disastrous meal, Dad parked on the street and he and Whitley ate in the car.
I leaned over from the backseat and reached into Whitley's bag for a handful of fries. "Order your own!" Whitley barked. I stuck my tongue out at him. Whitley said, "That's not a pretty face for an idol."
We both laughed, but Dad got on his stern face. Dad said, "Weiss, you're not really serious about this business with James, right? I said okay to get Willow off my back, but I'm assuming you're too smart to really take this seriously."
I lied and said, "We're just fooling around. Nothing will come of it—I don't have the kind of look or voice James works with. I can't sing like, you know, Winter." I said her name low and soft, as had become our family custom, and then I diverted their attention from the name I had just spoken. "Guess who came to rehearse with me today. Penny Polendina!"
Dad and Whitley both brightened up over their Big Macs. Penny had been practically a member of our family during the years she, Winter, and Neo had been like the Three Musketeers.
Dad said, "Doesn't sound like Mr. Ironwood is 'just fooling around' if he asked Penny to drive all the way from Atlas for a day to work with you. How is she doing in school, anyway? Still a straight-A student?"
"She's good. Sassy and smart as ever. She's gonna be a country singer!"
This revelation prompted Whitley to tune the car radio from the pop station playing Neo's latest hit to the country station playing a lame sugary hit by a flaxen-haired, dull-voiced country queen. "Ewww," Whitley cried out. "Penny's too good for this."
"I'm sure if Penny sets her mind to country music it will be a lot more original than this pabulum," Dad said.
Whitley and I both asked, " 'Pabulum'?"
Dad said, "Find a dictionary." From the backseat, I reached over and tousled the back of Dad's hair. He did have occasional moments of cuteness.
Later that night in bed, I tossed and turned. It had become habit that I had a hard time falling asleep. When I did sleep, it was only for a couple hours at a time, never for a whole night. Nightmares—Winter bolting across the street, the sound of screeching brakes, me standing mute and shocked, Mom screaming— regularly struck me during sleep, so that I would wake up shaking and sweating, staring into the night, fearful of falling back asleep. Some nights when the lap of the ocean outside my windows was calm and quiet, I could hear Dad's fingers tapping a keyboard downstairs, or Mom's TV broadcasting Conan upstairs, and I knew they were struck sleepless too.
As I lay in bed wide awake that night, restless, I thought about the potential opportunity James was offering me, and the confidence he seemed to have in me. On the one hand, I didn't think for a sec that I had the kind of talent that could sell a million records; on the other hand, if someone of James's skills and experience thought I did have that talent, didn't I owe it to Winter to give it my best shot? To complete what she had started?
I turned on the lamp and pulled Winter's scrapbook out from under my bed, where I had it hidden from Mom. I flipped through the pages of first-place ribbons from talent competitions, honor roll reports, Girl Scout commendations, chuckling at the contrast between Winter's roster of accomplishments and her handwritten notes. Winter had the worst handwriting ever, an intense scribble that would have made you think she was a space case. Kindergartners who had written B-Kidz fan letters that Winter had taped down throughout her scrapbook had better penmanship than she did.
She had a couple of full pages devoted to pictures of just the two of us: as little kids in the bathtub surrounded by rubber duckies and plastic toys; wearing identical sailor suits at the beach one summer; playing dress-up with Mom's makeup and nice clothes; Halloween with Winter as Dorothy and me as the Wicked Witch; and the two of us making faces at the photographer from local newsparer during makeup on the B-Kidz set. There was a shot of me performing a hip-hop dance on Beacon Kidz that Winter had framed with silver star stickers, under which she had written, "Weiss Schnee can be an annoying brat , but the girl can dance!"
On one B-Kidz taping when I had been singing backup for Winter, she had looked at me funny afterward, and I thought she was angry that my voice had been too loud behind her. Instead, Winter said, "You know, you're the real singer in the family." I laughed because I thought she was kidding, but she wasn't. "Tell Mom you should take singing lessons with me," she added, but I said nah. I thought I had all the time in the world with my sister.
I turned on my side in bed, so awake I felt like my eyelids were bolted wide open. My front bedroom windows offered the beautiful ocean views, but my side windows, with the bird's-eye view into Ruby's bedroom next door, offered occasional sideshow entertainment. Sadly for my insomnia, Ruby's light was out, so tonight I wouldn't get to smile and laugh into my pillow while Ruby jumped on his bed and performed air guitar; nor would I be treated to one of his exclusive performances for my benefit, during which he played opera on his stereo and made wild operatic hand gestures out the window as he mouthed the arias, looking like Adam Sandler's "Opera Man."
My stomach grumbled. I tucked the scrapbook back under my bed and went downstairs for a snack.
Dad was sitting at his computer. The computer monitor and the moonlight reflecting off the ocean outside the living room windows provided the only light. I could hear Archy's tail wagging at Dad's feet.
I flipped on the kitchen light. Dad said, "It's three in the morning. What are you doing awake?" I heard the ring of an IM coming through on Dad's computer. His hand turned the volume down.
Mom must have heard me trudge downstairs, because she was right behind me. "Sweetie, what are you doing up?"
"Geez, I'm just hungry. Why all the interrogation?" The chocolate emergency at hand was making me grumpy.
I walked into the kitchen and pulled some stale Chips Ahoy! from the pantry. Mom and Dad followed me and sat down at the kitchen table, where Mom opened a bag of Doritos and Dad lit his pipe. Somehow I had stumbled into a family powwow.
Mom said, "How did things go with James today?" She had been asleep when I got home from my Mister Donut shift. These days, when Mom wasn't eating, she was usually sleeping.
"Good. Penny came. She's gonna, like, coach me."
"Fantastic!" Mom said. Dad's eyes hardened but he didn't say anything. Mom looked at him and said, "Our baby is going to be a star!"
Dad said, "So long as she keeps her grades up. I expect an improvement over last year, Weiss. I'm not kidding."
"Sure, Dad."
Mom said, "Who cares about grades! Weiss has the chance to be the next Neo!"
Mom was laughing, and I knew she was joking and I think Dad did too, but he shouted, "GOD-DAMMIT, Willow!" He got up from his chair and went outside to the beach, slamming the screen door so hard behind him that it broke off its top hinges. Poor Archy whimpered under Dad's computer table.
Mom burst into tears. Again. I patted her hands to let her know everything would be okay.
.
.