Fireworks

by Katie Cotugno

  What? Ashley and Kristin? For a moment I honestly thought I’d heard him wrong. Next to me, Olivia let out a sound that wasn’t quite a whimper, but other than that nobody said anything; the four of us stared at him, shocked and cowlike.

  “I mean it,” Guy said, sounding puzzled by our stunned reaction, addressing Ash and Kristin directly now. “Go talk to Juliet. She’s going to book your flights home. You’re both lovely young ladies, and it’s been a pleasure for me to get to know you, but you’ve had your opportunity, and now it’s over.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Kristin demanded, puncturing the silence. She looked furious and simultaneously like she’d been gut punched. “You’re cutting us?” Ashley had begun crying openly, tears rolling down her face. Kristin turned around to gesture at me incredulously. “And she’s what, she’s staying? You’re keeping her over us?”

  “Girls,” Guy said calmly, “I’m not fucking around here. I mean it. Thank you very much.”

  “This is a joke,” Kristin said, shoving her chair back so hard it squealed against the tiles; Ashley jumped out of the way. “Seriously, this whole thing is bullshit.” She yanked the door open so hard I was half afraid she was going to rip it off its hinges, her ponytail swishing wildly. After a moment, Ashley followed her out.

  Olivia and I made frantic eye contact, our fight momentarily forgotten. What the fuck, I mouthed.

  “Now, you two,” Guy said, sitting back in his seat once Ash and Kristin had gone, the door shutting with a finality that made me think I’d never see them again. He crossed his arms, looked at us shrewdly. “You two, I’ll be honest, I haven’t quite figured out what the hell to do with. You’re not going to be a duo, that’s for sure. Sit down, Dana, you look like you’re about to run out the door.”

  I sat just like he told me to, taking the chair Kristin had vacated, the plastic still warm with her body heat.

  “I could keep you both as solo acts,” Guy said thoughtfully, “but it feels like shooting myself in the foot to be pushing two products in direct competition with each other at the exact same time. It’s bad business.” Products? Was that how he saw us? Was that what we were? “But that’s the problem,” he continued, like we weren’t even sitting in the room with him. “Which one of you do I keep?”

  “Keep me,” Olivia said immediately, and I whipped my head around to stare at her. She didn’t look at me once as she continued, “I’ve got more training, I’ve got the better voice, I’m more reliable onstage. Keep me.”

  Guy smiled at that, looking genuinely fond of her. “Well, somebody learned something yesterday, huh? Very nice, Olivia. You’re right, that how much you want it is going to be a big part of this. But it’s not gonna be quite that easy.” Guy sighed. “I think what I’m going to do is keep you both on for now. You’ll rehearse separately. We’ll try you out as solo artists. And we’ll see which one of you earns a spot on the tour.”

  I gawked at him openly, my brain slow to make sense of what he was telling us here. “So, what?” I asked, unable to help myself. Twenty-four hours ago, the tour had been a sure thing for Daisy Chain, the light at the end of a tunnel lined with hard work and dedication. Now, suddenly, it was the prize in some kind of twisted popularity contest between me and Olivia? Just like that, all the rules had changed. “You’re just pitting us against each other?”

  “I wouldn’t look at it like that,” Guy said. “But a little healthy competition never hurt anyone, I don’t think. My guess is that it’ll make you both better, sharper performers.”

  Yeah, at what price? I thought of how excited I’d been to come down here at the beginning of the summer, how it felt like this gift Olivia and I had been given, a way to keep us together even as the universe was conspiring to split us apart. Coming here was supposed to mean I didn’t have to lose her. But when I glanced in her direction, she didn’t look like anyone I knew.

  “I’ll show you what I can do,” she promised, now leaning forward eagerly, like Guy was a coach in some corny sports movie and not what he actually was: a businessman who looked at us and saw dollar signs and nothing more.

  “Me too,” I heard myself say, then felt immediately embarrassed. It didn’t sound like me at all. But I did want to show him, I realized suddenly. In spite of everything, I wanted to prove myself now more than ever. “I’ll show you, too.”

  “I’m sure you will. In the meantime, take the rest of the day,” Guy told us. “Come back tomorrow ready to work.”

  Kristin and Ashley were gone by the time we made it out into the hallway; the studio was quiet and abandoned. Olivia and I stood at the top of the concrete stairs that led to the parking lot, waiting for Charla. It was raining, the pavement giving off a wet, smoky smell. Drops collected on our shoulders and in our hair, but neither one of us moved.

  “Tulsa was part of a group at the beginning,” Olivia said finally, staring straight ahead at the parking lot and not at me. It was the first thing she’d said to me directly in days. “I forgot that until just now. There were five of them, like there are in Hurricane State, but Tulsa was the only one Guy kept.”

  “What happened to the rest of them?” I couldn’t resist asking.

  Olivia shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. Olivia crossed her arms. We stood there for a long time, not talking, waiting for Charla to come and take us home.

  TWENTY-THREE

  We rode back to the apartment in silence, fast-food joints and nail salons blurring by outside the window. The sky was low with dreary, polluted-looking clouds. As soon as we got upstairs, Olivia stalked into our bedroom and slammed the door behind her, leaving Charla and me alone in the living room. We stared at each other for a moment. I felt like I’d fallen down a flight of steps.

  “So,” Charla said finally, clapping her hands together, “want some lunch?”

  She was kidding, trying to make a joke out of this whole absurd, horrifying situation, and I cackled one insane-sounding laugh before the shock wore off all at once and I realized how totally, enormously angry I was. I was livid—at Olivia, at Guy, at Charla maybe most of all. She’d spent the last month painting herself as our ally, as basically one of us: fixing our snacks, listening to our secrets, learning our stupid sleepover dances. But apparently she’d been double-agenting for Guy all along.

  “Where are Ash and Kristin?” I asked, looking around the apartment with my arms crossed. “Already hitchhiking home, or what?”

  Charla rolled her eyes at me. “Juliet’s going to bring them back to pack up in a bit,” she told me. “They’re signing some papers, getting their travel home sorted.” Then, more gently, “This is a business, Dana. People get cut. It happens.”

  “Oh yeah?” I asked. “How long did you know it was going to happen?”

  Charla exhaled and sat down on the sofa, motioned for me to sit down with her. I stayed exactly where I was. “I knew—” she began, then stopped abruptly as music came blasting from the stereo in our room, where Olivia had turned the volume on her Mariah Carey tape up as high as it would go. The doors and walls were wafer-thin in this apartment, and I thought Charla was going to tell Olivia to pipe down, but instead she just ignored the noise. “I knew he’d been thinking about it,” she told me, raising her voice a bit so I could hear her over the music. “But we just got the final word last night.”

  “And you didn’t tell us?”

  “What was the point?” Charla asked. “What could you have done? And there was always the chance that he’d change his mind. Guy’s mercurial that way. He might have woken up this morning and decided he wanted to keep everyone after all.”

  “This is fucked up.” I glanced at Olivia’s shut door, figured there was no way she could hear me over the music. “In case you haven’t noticed, things are bad enough between me and her already.”

  “Oh, I’ve noticed,” Charla said.

  I made a face. “So you think the solution is to make us fight
it out like Lord of the freaking Flies?”

  “I know this is hard for you to believe, Dana, but there’s more at stake here than just your feelings. We’re talking about a lot of money, first of all. We’re talking about people’s jobs.”

  “Like yours?” I asked snottily.

  Charla ignored me. “Look, it was obviously not working the way it was,” she pointed out. “Can we agree on that much, at least?”

  I shrugged. It wasn’t like I had any great love for Ash and Kristin, and it certainly wasn’t like they had any great love for me; still, the idea that they were so disposable—that we all were—made my skin crawl. “Isn’t it Guy’s job to make it work?” I countered.

  “Yeah,” Charla said, nodding. “And part of what’s made Guy so successful in this business is that he can recognize when making it work means he needs to cut his losses.” She made a face, like, what are you going to do? “For you girls, I know it’s love—it’s love for me, too, believe me, or I wouldn’t be here. But for him it’s money, at the end of the day. That’s all.”

  “That’s disgusting,” I said.

  “Is it?” Charla asked.

  “Yes,” I said, flopping onto the couch with my arms crossed. “All that talk about being a product? Who would want to be a part of that?”

  “Plenty of people want to be a part of it,” Charla fired back. “And frankly, I’d be careful who I said that in front of, if I were you. Because I’ll tell you, Dana, that’s a thing that’s come up more than once among the other coaches and me. Whether you’re actually willing to put the work in. If you actually want this or not.”

  “Or if I’m just here to steal it from her?” I asked angrily, jerking my head toward the door to my and Olivia’s bedroom. All of a sudden, I felt like I was going to cry, and I grimaced: I hadn’t been a crier before I came here. It was like the last few weeks had stripped away all my protective layers so that everything left was the new skin under a scab, too vulnerable; the feeling of constantly being looked at, the feeling of never once measuring up. I stared hard at the ceiling, willing myself to keep it together.

  “Hey,” Charla said, reaching over and laying a hand on my elbow; I jerked it away, and she sighed. “Nobody thinks you’re here to steal anything from anybody, Dana. Okay? Let’s be clear about that. But it’s demanding, what we’re doing here. It’s not a secret that you didn’t grow up wanting this. The others have been rehearsing and performing their whole lives. They understand the sacrifices. Olivia understands the sacrifices. That’s all I’m trying to say.”

  “Well,” I said, raising my chin and swallowing down the crack in my voice, feeling my spine straighten with steel and resolve. If they wanted commitment, I’d give it to them. If this was a contest, I’d win. “I’ll just have to prove myself, won’t I?”

  Charla nodded seriously. “Yeah, Dana,” she said as the song ended, a few seconds of blissful silence before the next one started up. “You will.”

  “I’m an asshole,” I said, standing at the door of Alex’s apartment that evening. “And I’m staying. I’m an asshole who’s staying.”

  Alex’s lips twitched, tilting his head at me in the doorway. His hair was wet from the shower; he smelled like soap and shampoo. “Which part of that would you like me to respond to first?” he asked.

  I wrinkled my nose at him, shoved my hands in my pockets. “Whichever you’d like.”

  “Okay.” Alex nodded. “I know this is important to you in a whole different way than it’s important to me,” he said, leaning against the doorjamb. “I think maybe I didn’t entirely get that before, but I get it now, and I’m sorry. But it’s still not fair to get freaked out and pissed off and pick a fight with me, okay?”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  Alex shrugged. “I’m pulling for you, okay? I think you’re amazing.”

  “I know,” I said, blushing, reaching down and grazing the tips of his fingers with my own. “I’m pulling for you, too.”

  “I’m gonna respond to the other part now.” Alex’s whole face broke open in a grin then; he scooped me clear off the floor. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “I knew it. Of course he’s keeping you. He’d have to be an idiot not to. And Guy is a lot of things, but an idiot isn’t one of them.”

  I laughed at that, enjoying the feeling of his warm arms around me. “I’m not a sure thing yet,” I told him. “I have to beat Olivia for a spot on the tour.”

  Alex shook his head. “That’s tomorrow’s problem. Tonight we should celebrate. Do we have beers?” he called to Trevor, who was back in the kitchen.

  “We have, like, one possibly skunky Corona,” Trevor called back.

  “Sounds like a party to me.”

  The three of us sat out on the tiny balcony and split it, toasting with coffee mugs as the sun dropped behind the palm trees to the west. It felt nice, being out here with the two of them; for the first time I let myself enjoy it a little, the fact that I’d made it this far. Still, I couldn’t help but think that the person I really wanted to talk to about everything was Olivia. I wasn’t used to combing through my emotions without her around to help me get the tangles out.

  “Solo star, huh?” Alex said, curly smile and his blue eyes sparkling with the promise of it. “Dana Cartwright.”

  “Yup,” I said, watching the last of the twilight. “Just me on my own.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Walking into my first rehearsal as a solo act was like jumping into a shark tank with an open wound. The coaches had flipped my schedule so that it was the opposite of Olivia’s, voice in the morning now, and even the studio felt different to me: bigger and more cavernous, quieter somehow, even though the boys were rehearsing right next door just like always. “You got this,” Alex had promised last night down by the vending machines. I wasn’t so sure.

  “Here’s our star,” Guy said when I came into the voice room. He was standing at the piano with Lucas, a half-unwrapped granola bar clutched in one beefy hand. “You ready for everything to change?”

  “It already has changed, hasn’t it?” I asked. Kristin and Ash had left first thing yesterday morning, Juliet driving them both to the airport before it was even light out. I’d gotten up early to say good-bye, for all the good it had done me. Ash was concentrating so hard on not crying that she could barely string together a sentence. Kristin slammed the van door so hard it almost took my fingers clean off. I’d glanced over at Olivia a couple of times, searching for some trace of the person I knew behind her sharp, stony expression. She hadn’t looked back at me once.

  Now Guy nodded approvingly. “You’re right,” he said, finishing his granola bar in one big, hungry bite and crumpling up the wrapper inside his hand. “Let’s get to work.”

  By the time I got back to the apartment that night, Olivia had moved all her stuff into Ashley and Kristin’s old room, her mattress and dresser naked and unsettling, her arty black-and-white posters pulled down off the walls. The message was as clear as if she’d written FUCK YOU in red lipstick on the mirror. “Fine, Olivia,” I muttered, pulling off my sneakers and chucking them on top of her old bed like a five-year-old, the springs squealing as they bounced right back off again. “Be like that.”

  We ate dinner in silence, went back to our rooms without a word; Charla was making a point of ignoring us, flipping through a magazine on the sofa, but it felt like the tension was actually pushing at the walls of the apartment, like the space ought to expand to compensate. Even the potted plants seemed to wilt.

  I sprawled on the bed and flipped through my lyrics binder, turning the pages so hard I ripped one out by accident and had to stick it back together with a Band-Aid when I couldn’t find any tape. I wanted to go talk to Alex, but the boys had a performance that night and wouldn’t be back until late. Finally, I figured I might as well just go to sleep, or try to, but when I opened the door that connected my room to the bathroom, Olivia was opening hers at the same time. We stood there for a second, stared at each
other with contempt.

  “You can have it,” I said finally, shrugging in a way I hoped looked careless. “I can wait.”

  “No, go ahead,” Olivia said, her voice high and brittle. “I mean, you’ll probably butt in and take it anyway, so.”

  “Oh, shut up, Olivia.” I shook my head, stung. “Jesus Christ, stop being such a princess about everything. You didn’t actually get cut, in case you somehow haven’t noticed. You’re still here.”

  “No thanks to you,” Olivia replied nastily. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail so tight it had to have been uncomfortable; I could see a tendon sticking out in her neck. “You’ve been sabotaging everybody else since you got here.”

  “Sabotaging you?” I gaped at her. “What is this, a Lifetime movie? You’re being ridiculous.”

  “And you’re being a backstabbing bitch!”

  I blanched at that. Olivia and I had never name-called, not ever; it wasn’t something we’d needed to do, until now. “I’m a bitch?” I repeated, shaking my head slightly. I hated her in that moment. I blamed her for everything that had gone wrong. I wanted to slap her, and I actually might have if Charla hadn’t come into the room.

  “What the hell is going on in here?” she demanded, looking at us like we’d lost our minds entirely. “They can probably hear you down in the parking lot. You sound like infants, both of you.”

  “Ask her,” we both said in unison, like a couple of idiots. I huffed a furious breath out, shook my head. “Just stay the hell away from me,” I told Olivia, then spun around and slammed the bathroom door.

  I heard the shower go on a moment later, then the sound of Charla knocking on my bedroom door. “Dana,” she began, easing it open, but I held my hand out to stop her.