A&b

by J. C. Lillis

  I sit with grave concentration on a folding beach chair, ripping stitches from the jacket I’m transforming for my costume. Rosalinda waits on the work bench in front of me. My bracelet is on and I’m listening to Tera’s darkest song from Thirteen Black Umbrellas, “Can’t See the Sun.” I’m so into it, wailing with the chorus and stretching my voice to hit the high A in the bridge, that when Ava calls I almost don’t hear my ringtone: Tera roaring love, love LOOOVVVVVE! in her Grammy performance twelve years ago.

  I stand so fast my head bumps the ceiling.

  A phone call was not expected.

  “FARG?”

  Hearing Ava’s burnt-sugar voice so close to my ear feels intimate, and that is a bothersome thing to think about your nemesis.

  “I’m here,” I say.

  “You have what I need?”

  “Yes. Do you?”

  “I think you’ll be pleased.”

  There’s a torturous pause. Then Ava’s like, “Who’s going first?”

  “Umm…you?”

  “Like hell. How do I know I can trust you?”

  I text a blurry photo of the lyrics.

  “Yeah, those could be anything. A grocery list. An ancient curse.”

  “Look, I’ll trade you: one painful detail for one line of the chorus.”

  “Fair enough,” she says. “You ready?”

  I take a deep breath, empty my mind.

  “Ready.”

  She clears her throat and puts on this dreamy soap-star voice. “Tera told me a joke in Spanish on the way to Delicto last night, and we laughed like old friends, and in that moment? It felt like we were the only two people in the limo.”

  Oof. Gut-punch. I can practically see them, their beautiful heads leaning together, whispering lovely-sounding words I can’t understand. I got a C-minus in Spanish last year.

  My skin tingles under the bracelet.

  “Now you,” says Ava.

  I prop my phone against a can of turpentine that looks a hundred years old, fire up Rosalinda, and play Ava a teaser from my chorus.

  She’s quiet.

  Then she says, “That’s all?”

  “We said one line for one detail.”

  “‘I’m up in a tree, I’m up in the air’?”

  “You have to hear it in context!” My face burns.

  “Guess it had potential, but—”

  “Fine, fine, I’ll send you the whole thing now. Just wait.”

  I tap END, wishing I had a heavy old-fashioned receiver to slam down. Franny slinks in and jumps up on the work bench.

  “I’m really more of a dog person, but okay.” I stroke the white patch on her throat. “Tell me what you think.”

  I hit record. In the green glow of Franny’s stare I lay down the chorus, playing slower and faster versions to showcase its versatility. Franny approves; I can tell by the way she chins Rosalinda. I send the vid to Ava and wait.

  A hundred years tick by, disguised as eight minutes. I trace phantom Xs and Os on Abel’s folded-up ping-pong table like a football coach mapping out plays, if that’s even the right term because man, I don’t get football. Nine minutes. Ten. Could she have scammed me? I need to stop being so trusting. You’d think I’d have learned after last year, when I bought a new amp from that Izzy guy on Craigslist without opening the box and it turned out to be a busted stereo speaker with an anarchy symbol carved on one side.

  Ma, crunching cheese curls in front of a Real Housewives rerun, says: What do you expect? People are shits.

  Dad, running from an angry bear in Camp Creekbottom II, says: AHHHHHHHH! I DID NOT EXPECT THIIIISSSSSS!

  My phone says: Bzzzzzzt.

  I open her email.

  FARG,

  Good chorus, yeah. Catchy for sure. I can work with it.

  Oh, can you? Can you really? (That’s all I think, because I am not good at comebacks.)

  Anyway, here you go. Juicy details from my first days at Pop U. I picked the events that’ll probably be most envy-inducing to you, as a Tera obsessive and longtime devotee of this silly show.

  Silly! My toes curl in my boots, which I spray-painted green this afternoon.

  First up: I tell you all about yesterday’s tour of a room called the Golden Underground, which meant nothing to me but I’m guessing is significant to you.

  My breath catches. It really exists. The Golden Underground is the stuff of legend. It’s the dazzling lair where Tera wrote her last three albums—apparently every inch of the walls is covered with rare memorabilia, including props from all her videos. No one’s even seen a good picture of it, for crap’s sake, and Ava Alvarez was trodding its floor in her ugly boots, as if she were at Target buying dental floss.

  GO ON, says Evil B. READ.

  I tap Ava’s attachment. My phone, a vintage model that frequently requires patience, thinks for a minute and opens it up.

  The document is seven pages long, and I bet she wrote it in half an hour. Ava is a master of poetic description. What happens during downtime at the Pop U mansion has always been shrouded in secrecy, but she confirms the rumors—campfire sing-alongs with the judges and celebrity mentors, pajama parties and impromptu dances in the Great Room, Wednesday-night pizza feasts and heart-to-hearts with Tera, who makes her own whole-wheat crust and special sauce. Basically all my dreams coming true for someone who, as Ava admits on page six, never saw Pop U until last season and thinks Tera is more a marketer than a musician.

  My stomach churns. My whole body heats up. Under the bracelet, my skin itches madly. I imagine Evil Barrie before me, glowering in a floor-length cape of iridescent green feathers.

  I crack my knuckles. I want to lock her back in her brain-basement, dash inside and blast 1 Poptopia Drive on my happyface earbuds. Instead I take out my songwriting journal and uncap my new green fine-point marker.

  Why does this sting so hard? I ask her, and she tells the truth.

  Because I believed Tera in Chapter Two of You Do You, when she said natural talent mattered less than determination. Because hard work will never give me what Ava’s got: her effortless fingers, her once-a-half-century gift of a voice. Because I want to use my talents to put good in the world, and I was dumb enough to think that noble intentions would somehow lead to brilliance, a smile from Destini, a shot at the big stage.

  I’m straight-up not good enough for that.

  BORN FOR MEDIOCRITY, Evil B taunts. BRED FOR THE B-LIST.

  I write it all down. I write truth till my fingers are sore. I write till words click together and a holy monster chorus wells inside me: the start of a bitter duet between me and Evil Barrie, the soon-to-be signature number of the Sour Grapes Cabaret.

  When the draft is done, I stand on shaky legs. In the quiet dark of the shed, I shut my eyes and sing…

  Chapter Eleven

  Jealousy!

  When you lose and your stomach’s a twist and your heart is a fist

  Jealousy!

  Of the people who get what you want, kiss the lips you can’t kiss

  On opening night, I sing to myself. My mannequin self, in her cherry-red shag and superhero colors. I face her down on my Sour Grapes stage, tall and proud behind Rosalinda, invincible now in my glittering green cutaway coat and grapevine choker and villainous bob that will never slide off, no matter how hot the lights get.

  My audience is seventeen strong.

  They tell you to swallow it, turn tail and run from it

  Snap it right off like a light—

  “Isn’t that right?” I play a B minor broken chord with my right hand, raise my left to my new friends in the folding chairs. “The whole world telling us envy is the worst four-letter word!”

  “Yeah!” someone shouts.

  “Something to stuff inside, deny and hide, suffocate until it’s died—”

  “Booooooo!” someone else lows.

  Well we’re here to wallow and wring out some fun from
it

  Just for one night…

  I scoot out from behind Rosalinda and throw an arm around Mannequin Barrie. I belt the last Just for toniiiiiight a cappella and then bash my former self in her sunny hopeful face; she falls back and hits the floor with a satisfying clunk. I fling my arms in the air. The bracelet sings on my skin, glows in the sickly green stage lights Brandon’s hung.

  Applause washes over me.

  Five songs in and I’m on fire. I love this audience with my whole being. They listen to every word and call out like this is a real church and I’m their preacher. They whistle and hoot when I intro each number and clap along to the choruses. Between songs I’ve strolled between the small round tables, to the people sipping Haterades and spooning Bitter Chocolate Mousse from green glass goblets, and they’ve spoken their stories into my sympathetic mic.

  I’m helping them, I tell myself. I can feel it.

  That’s when it happens: BAM. Right there onstage, my soul does a giant belly-flop into a swirly sparkly pink-and-gold vat of undiluted joy. I float there, stunned and dazzled. My face smiles and smiles and smiles. All the words to my next four envy anthems bob away on golden waves of delight. On my wrist, the bracelet goes heavy and cold.

  I lower my arms. Panic crosses my face. My new fans knit their brows in unison.

  Crap crap crap, what do I do? Evil B is like RECHARGE YOURSELF and I’m like How? and she’s like BABY. GET REAL. YOU KNOW.

  So I take a deep bow. And I announce an intermission.

  When I duck behind the folding screens I run smack into Brandon and Abel, who are overseeing the whole show like two proud papas and Lord, I hope that’s an omen for the future.

  “What the hell?” Abel’s eyes go so wide his eyeliner disappears. He’s wearing his green crushed-velvet emcee tux and a golden-grapes earring repurposed as a brooch. “Why’re you intermission-ing?”

  “It’s going great,” Brandon whispers.

  “They’re eating you up with a spoon.” Abel grasps my pointy shoulders. “What do you need, a bathroom break? Leave by the back stairwell; they don’t want to think about you peeing.”

  “Can you stall them for…” I check the clock. “…seven minutes?”

  “Really? You want me to do more patter?”

  “Yes! You’re an excellent patterer.”

  “Can I do some magic tricks?”

  “Ah…”

  “No, gross. Bad idea. What if I did a bit about people I’m jealous of? Pixar animators, ice cream tasters, people who own infinity pools…”

  “Maybe?”

  “OR I could do ‘You Oughta Know’ a cappella; it’s my go-to karaoke song. I should mention that I can’t, in a technical sense, ‘sing,’ but—”

  “I’ve got this,” says Brandon.

  His guitar’s strapped on all of a sudden. He left it backstage yesterday—he was messing around, he’d said, testing acoustics. Before we can ask questions, he’s out there in front of the muttering audience, tuning up with trembling fingers.

  We peep through the crack in the folding screen.

  Abel grips my arm. “What. Is he doing.”

  I grin. “Being a superhero.”

  “He gets stage fright so bad. He normally needs like, half a beer beforehand, at least.”

  “Hey guys,” says Brandon. His voice wavers. “I’m the, ah, intermission entertainment here at the Sour Grapes Cabaret. My name is Brandon Page—”

  “Hi, Brandon!” yells the tipsy redhead lady with the leopard-print scarf.

  “—Hi. And last month…” He takes a breath and releases it. “…my fiancé dumped me for a sexy proctologist with a summer home in the Hamptons. So I know a lot about jealousy.”

  The crowd awwwws and titters. Abel bites his thumbnail.

  “So before, ah, Evil Barrie comes back, I’m gonna play you guys a little cover song I’ve been working on.” He clears his throat three times in a row. “It’s called ‘Don’t Bother’ so if you don’t like it, um…don’t bother clapping.”

  Abel facepalms.

  Brandon digs into a dorkily sinister gender-flipped version of that old Shakira song and oh yes sir, he’s got this. Time to recharge myself, and fast.

  I dash into the back stairwell and jam my earbuds in. My thumbs fly frantically, calling up that video of last night’s Pop U. I slide to the final ten minutes: the last performance slot of the show, always earmarked for people who’ll be watercooler chatter the next day.

  Ava stands center stage in a pale blue spotlight, radiant in jeans and a floaty top the color of a cloudless spring sky. Melancholy chords rain gently from her strings—like I can’t even tell what they are, they’re these visionary barre chords she probably invented with an alternate tuning sprung from her own genius brain. Her letter-A pin glints in her hair as she kills the crowd dead with my chorus:

  I’m up a tree, I’m up in the air

  I’m in the branches watching you leave me bare

  I’m in a treehouse, baby, can’t you see

  I’m in your treehouse, come up and rescue me…

  She made some lyrical tweaks. Like she changed my “leave me there” to “leave me bare,” and I get why—it mirrors the branch image, gives the line a sweet sting of vulnerability. She took my words and made them hers, gave them smart little twists I never would have thought of on my own.

  Jerk.

  I skip to the worst parts. They only happened last night but I know them by heart:

  C King: “That was MAS. TER. FUL. She was hiding that chorus from us.”

  Luke Dalton: “Sneaky girl. Like a rattlesnake in slippers.”

  Tera: “I wish you’d pared back those verses more, but you did exactly what I wanted you to do with that chorus. And I gotta eat my words…” Beside her, C King mimes reeling words back in his mouth. “’Cause earlier this week I didn’t think you had all that in you.”

  SHE DOESN’T.

  “And that funky breakdown with the la-la-las?” says C King. “Whoo!”

  THOSE WERE MINE! MY LA LA LAs.

  “You’re blooming before our eyes.” Tera smiles so hard the dimple appears in her left cheek, which happens like twice a season. “I’m gonna make a prediction right now. Dark horse, schmark horse—Ava, this season, you’re the one to beat!”

  “Hashtag #schmarkhorse,” Luke Dalton chortles.

  Abel pokes his head in the stairwell. “You done, Evil B? Bran can’t hold ’em much longer.”

  “One more minute.”

  I scroll past Ava winning the challenge. I need the credits. I need the last terrible, horrible moment: Tera jumps onstage to chat up the contestants, but Ava’s the only one she really wants to talk to. Her heart-shaped lips make the word “amazing” and then it happens. They hug. Not a polite side hug. A full-on, spontaneous, chest-to-chest, so-proud-of-you-it-hurts hug.

  Bitter longing shoots through my veins; the bracelet is a living thing coiled on my wrist. A hug from Tera Rivera has been at the top of every mental Christmas list I’ve made since I was nine. Right after I watched this last night on the St. C’s bar TV, I snitched the baseball bat from behind the cash register, took a coffee cup from a tray outside the kitchen, and went upstairs to the Church of Abandon, where I set the mug dead center on my stage and smashed it into sixteen pieces.

  Which gives me an idea.

  I dig my songwriting journal out of my bag and flip to “Smash,” the song I started writing on Wednesday but couldn’t decide how to finish. Then I fly down the stairwell and smack into Kira and her pushbroom.

  “Jesus!”

  “Sorry.”

  “You look like a nightmare.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Whatcha need?”

  “The bat. Don’t ask.”

  “Like I would.” She goes back to her broom, muttering sometimes a girl needs a bat.

  I grab my weapon. On my way past the kitchen I make a don’t-worry gestur
e to Don, whom I sheepishly paid three dollars and seventy-nine cents for the broken mug this morning, because I must maintain accountability for Evil B’s messes.

  “What’s with the bat?” Abel whispers when I reappear.

  “Minor setlist change. Trust me.”

  Brandon bops backstage on a wave of applause, shoving damp hair off his forehead. Abel goes in for a hug, but Brandon ducks it and fist-bumps me instead.

  “Ready?” Brandon says.

  I nod, playing the Ava/Tera hug on a loop in my head. Evil B and I are ready. As long as we have Ava Alvarez to make us feel this bad, there’s no limit to what we can do on that stage.

  We will smash the world open.

  ***

  There’s nothing sweet about being bitter

  There’s nothing easy ‘bout being green

  Castaways and runners-up, you losers and quitters

  Take a seat beside me if you know what I mean…

  I sing a cappella into my mic, twirling the bat in my right hand. Beside me, the green-grape piñatas sway from a crossbeam.

  When a smash is all you ever wanted to be

  But your dreams drip down the drain and they drown

  Change up your grammar and set yourself free

  ’Cause SMASH is so much better as a verb than a noun…

  I let go of the mic, grip the bat with both hands, and take a crack at the lowermost piñata. A giddy ooohhh travels the room and goosebumps prickle down my back, because I can tell my instinct was right. They’ll be into this.

  “The first Smash Session is now in session,” I say, dangling the bat in front of me. “Who’s next?”

  “Me!” A skinny blondish guy in a cowboy shirt stands up, as if he were a marionette and someone yanked his strings.