A&b

by J. C. Lillis

  We’ve both made sure of that.

  The lights dim and “Goin’ Back Home” by Season 7’s Hoyt MacLane starts up. As they roll the first hometown clip package (Caleb’s rambunctious five-brother family), Ava looks like she wants to lift the hatch on the Elimination Tunnel and escape. She picks at the hem of tonight’s stage costume: a billowy tank top with long ragged spirals of orangey-yellow chiffon, which she’s wearing with skinny jeans and tall brown boots. She’s dressed like a campfire. It hits me with such sweetness that my throat makes one of those poignant whimpers, the kind you hear at romcoms when the person behind you in the theater really loved the dude’s don’t-get-on-that-plane speech.

  Abel’s investigating my face. I back up and hightail it out of there, before I can blurt the words buzzing in my throat:

  Tell me when she’s on, okay?

  ***

  I wait on three more tables, latch my mind on what matters.

  My eighth cabaret show.

  The new song I’m testing.

  The sixty-three people counting on me to validate and/or exorcise their demons tomorrow night.

  Holy hellfire, I can’t stop thinking about her.

  END THIS NOW, Evil B butts in. DON’T WATCH HER TONIGHT. PUT YOUR BRACELET ON.

  I stop in the restroom with my bag, push up my sleeve, and assess the half-healed sores on my wrist. There’s a crusty blistery thing right over the D in my tattoo, so it looks like IT’S ALL GOO. Accurate. My brain is goo. My heart is goo. I have to stop this.

  I dig the bracelet out and unlock it.

  Knock knock on the restroom door.

  “Barbie Girl?” Abel says. “She’s next.”

  I pause, my thumb stroking one of the tiny angry faces etched on the bracelet. Then I nestle my magic charm back in my bag and head for the bar.

  ***

  The Captain James Cadmus Memorial Bar is empty except for a ponytailed guy in the corner nursing a beer and reading High Fidelity. I slide onto a stool across from Abel, wipe my palms on my jeans.

  “When it comes to our contestants’ families, we’re used to expecting the unexpected.” Jaz is all cheer, but her Disney-villainess purple lipstick gives me an odd little chill. “However, our crew had a one-of-a-kind experience when they visited Ava’s home in Westsilver, Texas.”

  The segment opens on a crackling campfire and my mouth twitches into a smile, because I guess campfires will always make me smile now. Then the camera angle widens to show the people sitting cross-legged around the big stone pit. About twenty-five, thirty of them, young and old. They’re singing along to a peppy guitar played by a middle-aged woman in braids.

  Everyone is equal

  Everyone shares all

  What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine

  Together we stand and fall…

  The campfire shot fades; the camera pans across a large wooden sign hung on a tree. The letters are mosaics made from bottle caps, buttons, broken glass, bits of stone and scrap metal.

  HYLAND HOLLOW

  Equality * Community * Peace

  Voiceover, a woman’s alto lilt: “This is our community. Thirty-six of us right now: living together, respecting the land and each other.”

  “Sweet. Fancy. Moses.” Abel leans over the bar and grabs my arm. “Did she tell you she lived in a commune?”

  I shake my head. That word scares me because a certain demographic of Pop U viewers are…well, not the most open to contestants with countercultural families. But I’m sure the segment will treat Ava’s home with open-minded respect.

  A jokey mystical sitar kicks in.

  Uh-oh.

  Here’s a guy with a bushy graying beard and a sunburned face and a wide, kind smile. BROTHER FRANCIS, COMMUNITY ELDER. “Hyland Hollow was founded by my father in 1973 as a utopian alternative society,” he explains as he chops gnarled carrots on a rough wooden table.

  “Hello, hot hippie dad,” says Abel.

  “Everyone’s equal here,” Brother Francis says softly. “No one owns anything, because everyone owns everything. No one ever wins or loses.” He chuckles, dropping the carrots in a lopsided bowl. “So, ah, I can’t say we approve of Ava’s competitive streak, but gosh, we do respect her talent.”

  More sitar. More scenes. Two scruffy young men feed some pigs and a brood of roaming chickens. Artists paint and weave baskets on the stoops of small solar-paneled houses, labeled Communal Cabins at the bottom of the TV screen. Men and women and children harvest greens from garden beds made of huge recycled tires. A boy throws a grimy pink ball through a basketball net made from a wooden apple basket, and the other kids he’s playing with all cheer for him.

  “Groovy,” says Abel.

  “Shh,” I say.

  A new person appears onscreen. A stout freckled girl in a ripped black t-shirt. Short brown slicked-back hair, huge gorgeous hazel eyes, a delicate silver ring in her nose. The caption chills me. DANI, AVA’S BEST FRIEND.

  “Ava and I moved here like three years ago. She’s my heart, you know? The sister I never had.” Dani keeps her eyes down, strips the bark off a thick branch with a small sharp knife. “Our families—they suck, basically. Didn’t accept us for who we were. It was like constant emotional torture and invalidation and it got so bad we were just like, [*bleep*] it. My aunt’s lived here since she was twenty. We hitched here from Boston and they took us in.”

  Cut to two women—a curly-haired barefoot brunette in faded jeans and a frizzy redhead in a loose blue tunic—sitting on a bench in what looks like an art room. The table behind them is filled with clay statues of graceful nude figures, wrapped around each other in various poses and combinations. The caption says DANI’S AUNT & HER WIFE.

  “We were so glad to give those girls somewhere to settle, like the Hollow did for us,” says Dani’s aunt. “It’s been great, giving Ava a safe place to let her art flourish.”

  “Ava’s a wonderful talent,” says the wife. “Very, ah, intense? But the universe needs her gifts.”

  Back to Dani. “Ava’s real family—she doesn’t talk to them anymore,” she says. “They think we like, joined a cult.”

  Cut to a bunch of folks around the table, clasping hands and chanting something in unison. Not cool, Pop U.

  “They think she’s a sinner, you know?” Dani rakes a hand through her hair. A tinkly sad piano starts up. “They’ve caused her so much pain. And I want her to win this because at school, winning stuff was…”

  A producer’s voice: “Go ahead. It’s okay.”

  “Uh, it was like…the only thing that made her feel like she was worth anything.” Dani gets this coy I’ve-said-too-much look that makes me kind of hate her.

  Producer: “What would you say to Ava if she was in front of you?”

  “Umm, I guess just—kill it, girl. Keep killing it every week. We’re on your side and we’re watching, even if your folks aren’t.” She twists the plain metal ring on her left hand, biting her lip, and then slowly holds the hand up. “And also? I, ah, just got engaged. So when you win, Ava, don’t forget the little people, ‘kay? I need my maid of honor.”

  The scene shifts to the whole motley crew of Hyland Hollow residents, standing under a pole that flies a rainbow flag under the American flag. “GOOD LUCK, AVA!” they all shout. “WE HOPE YOU WIN!”

  Brother Francis pops up and waves a goofy hand. “Or not! Winning doesn’t matter!”

  The segment ends with a lightning-fast montage of Ava’s Pop U performances and a photo of her smiling face. It is a horrible contrast to her actual face: now frozen in helpless horror, like she’s watching a fireball roar toward her and she knows there’s not a thing she can do.

  “That was heavy,” Abel murmurs.

  “They just outed her.” I shake my head. “I mean—they didn’t, but they did. Oh my God.”

  “She’s not out?”

  “In life, yeah. Not on the show. She didn’t want to be.”


  “Oh, shit.”

  “And that Dani girl.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Ava’s in love with her. Was. Is. I don’t know.”

  “Ughhhhh.” Abel drops his face in his hands. “Does Dani know, or—?”

  I wave him away. I can’t do questions. Only one thing exists in the universe right now: my flatscreen window into Ava’s world as she steps up on the Pop U stage.

  Tera’s clapping hard as Ava finds her spotlight, all motherly concern and encouragement, and I let out a breath. There’s no way she signed off on that Hyland Hollow segment. It was probably a shock to her too—I have to believe that. I have to.

  Closeup on Ava. Her eyes shine with tears. She straps on Fernando.

  Her fingers pause on the strings.

  Come on. I cross my own fingers for her, squeeze my eyes shut, run through all the lyrics to “Campfire Kiss” like I’m uploading a backup to her brain. You’ve got this, lady. We’ve got this.

  You know how sometimes singers channel their personal heartbreak into a song, and maybe they miss a note or two or fumble a chord here and there but the flaws are the best, most honest parts of an epic performance?

  That is not what happens tonight.

  Ava’s voice cracks and wobbles—not in a poetic way, in a cringey please-make-it-stop way. She looks at the ceiling, at the floor, anywhere but the camera. She blanks on the part she fought for, the you dreamed my mind line, and it takes three full bars of stupefied strumming before she snaps back on track and limps to the end of our song.

  When her spotlight shuts off, it’s like she’s extinguished too.

  ***

  Screw the pact.

  The second the show ends, I duck in the restroom and get out my phone.

  I’m so sorry, Ava. Let’s talk.

  I hover my thumb above the text, because I feel in my bones that this move is a big deal. Then I hit send.

  And I wait.

  Chapter Nineteen

  An hour later, I’m still waiting.

  I finish my St. C’s shift in good faith because no matter how much public trauma my musical partner has just endured, the two-top in Section 1 still needs its Sour-Grape Gazpacho and Bittergreen House Salad. At 11 sharp, I shrug off my canvas apron with the aqua rocket, fold it into a neat square, and poke my head in the bar.

  “Hey.” I give Abel a casual wave. He’s elbow-deep in a giant pumpkin. “Headed upstairs for a while.”

  “You hear from Ava?”

  “Nah. I didn’t expect to, really.” He lifts an eyebrow and I can’t deal with scrutiny so I barrel on: “I’ll be up there till the bar closes, probably. I’ve got tons of cabaret work. Maybe I’ll crash there tonight.”

  Abel nods slowly. “Godspeed, Barbarella.” He extracts a heap of pumpkin guts and chucks them in the trash.

  It’s not a lie, really. I do have tons of cabaret work. My scruffy new song is begging for rehearsal and seven new messages from Sour Rangers await replies and I told Raina from Redondo Beach that I’d make a papier-mâché surfboard for her to annihilate in this week’s Smash Session. But all that feels alien, unconnected to me, like a to-do list I’ve glimpsed over someone’s shoulder on the bus.

  I don’t go near my stage, not tonight. I sit at one of the small round tables and open three tabs on my phone.

  Every season I get super-invested in the fate of at least a few Pop U contestants, so I know precisely where to go to assess Ava’s odds of survival. I start at the Pop U subforum of Fanspot; the more conservative fans post there and it’s a good barometer of which way half the audience will vote. Uh-oh. Not good. I see a long thread speculating about Ava’s sexuality, along with a post calling Hyland Hollow a “gay cult” and a thread about power-voting for Julia Scott because her love song “Water and Light” was supposedly also a God metaphor. I zip over to the recap sites next—Reality Rot, TV Tantrum. They’ve all run some variation on the Frontrunner Takes a Fall, Lives Someplace Weird headline, and two of three informal polls have Ava in the danger zone. Then I check Anonymous Al’s, the reality-TV insider blog, and find this in the comments section of tonight’s Pop U post:

  I know exactly why it was done. Heard it straight from the top. Alvarez was peaking at the wrong time and Barclay hates a foregone conclusion, especially with ratings at an all-time low this year. So they figure they air the segment, create watercooler buzz, throw AA a curveball and knock off her pedestal, and then (hopefully) set up a redemption arc.

  I shudder. If that’s true, poor Ava, and poor Tera. I know she’d never want her show to come to this. Of course it was Bryan Barclay—ever since he was thrust on them as co-exec producer last season, he’s been pushing to exploit backstories, grub for ratings in the show’s time of need.

  Redemption arcs, though. They’re powerful. You can’t deny that. We could pull one off together, I know we could. If she’d only answer my text.

  I tap my text app again, wait for those three pulsing dots that tell me she’s okay, and she’s writing me back. Come on, dots. Please, dots.

  Nothing.

  ***

  WHAT THE $@&$% ARE YOU DOING?

  By 3 p.m. the next day, Evil B is making quite the ruckus. My head’s full of PUT ON YOUR BRACELET and YOU NEED TO REHEARSE and DON’T YOU DARE TEXT AVA AGAIN, and I know I should listen but all I can think of are ways we can fix this, restore Ava’s glory, move her safely into the finals.

  The farther she goes, the better it is for us, I remind Evil B.

  But neither of us believes it today.

  Forty minutes before the tenth show of the Sour Grapes Cabaret, while I’m kneeling on Abel’s back porch putting frantic final touches on a slapdash surfboard for the Smash Session, I text once more:

  Me: I am abuzz with thoughts. Text me back.

  My stomach swoops when she responds:

  Ava: You’ve got a show in thirty-nine minutes. Why the hell are you texting me??

  Me: Are you okay?

  Ava: Uh, no. Not okay. Not in the same zip code, state, or country as okay.

  Me: Can I call you?

  Ava: No

  Me: Why not?

  Ava: Because I’m a wreck? And you need to focus? And we said we wouldn’t talk until tomorrow?

  Me: Ava. These are extenuating circumstances.

  Ava: You’re not going to leave me alone, are you?

  Me: Probably not.

  Ava: Fucking hell.

  Brandon slides the glass door open and pokes his head out. “Leave in two minutes?”

  “Give me three.”

  “Yeah, sure.” He hefts a cardboard box labeled DANCE DECOR. “We’ll drive over, okay? Got the Halloween boxes.”

  Yikes. Completely forgot. After tonight’s show I have a date with Abel, Brandon, Don, and Kira to transform the Church of Abandon into a Halloween wonderland for the Monster Mash tomorrow. I’d hoped to help Ava brainstorm damage control, but I guess it’ll have to wait till morning.

  The phone rings in my hand.

  “Packed my bags,” Ava says.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why not? Did you see the headlines?”

  “They’re not so bad.”

  “Reality Rot calls it the most disastrous night for a Pop U finalist since Alison Voss plagiarized ‘Brass in Pocket’ and then fell off the stage.”

  I shiver, remembering. “Most polls have you bottom three, but safe,” I assure her. “We can totally build you a redemption arc. I’ve seen it happen a bunch of times, honest. This week we return you to form, remind the audience why they fell in love with—”

  I cut myself off there.

  Because Ava Alvarez is crying.

  “Hey. Hey.” It’s a shock when the coolest girl you know starts sobbing, especially when you would like to halt her tears with your lips. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not! Don’t say that.”

  “I didn’t mea
n it’s okay like you shouldn’t be sad. I mean it’s okay to let it out.”

  She cries harder, which makes me sad on principle but also warm inside because she trusts me.

  “Did you know Dani was with someone else?” I say.

  “Yeah, but…whatever. I didn’t think it was serious. She met this Emily girl four months ago.” She sniffles deeply. “At a craft fair!”

  “Oh my.”

  “She makes doorstops out of soda bottles.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “What did she think it would do to me, hearing that on live TV?”

  “Does she not know how you feel…?”

  “Oh, she knows. She knows. She felt the same way once, I know she did, and then—” Something crashes in the background. “Fuck her, you know? First she essentially outs me—I mean, I know she was in like, utter righteous disbelief that I wasn’t waving a rainbow flag onstage every week, but what the actual hell? Now I have to deal with fucking Caleb going ‘man, she’s too hot to be a dyke’ and Julia Scott being all like ‘only God can judge you, not me.’ Like, thanks, Dani! Way to assume we live in a world where no one’s a total shit anymore! And then she runs her mouth about my motherfucking family!” She spits out something in Spanish that I don’t understand but assume is pretty brutal.

  “Do you…want to talk about them?” I venture.

  “Who, my family?”

  “Them. Dani. Caleb. Anyone.”

  She’s quiet for a long minute. I hear her angry-sniffle and I want to hug her so bad.

  “No,” she says. “I can’t. I can’t.”

  “Okay. I get it.”

  “All I want to do is write.”