Identity Crisis

by Melissa Schorr

  “Is she going to be all right?”

  “I’m not sure.” Cooper’s brow is creased in concern for her. I can feel his anguish. Because he’s always going to care about her, I realize, first and foremost, even though he doesn’t know it yet.

  I think back on all the heart to hearts we’d had, personal stuff, when she’d told me about her dad losing his job and her parents’ argument. Was any of it real? Or like she said, was all of it real—except for who she was?

  Viggo launches into the band’s trademark song, but then, before the first chorus ends, Noelle seems to snap out of her trance. I watch as she rises unsteadily off her stool.

  What is she doing?

  His eyes squeezed shut with emotion, Viggo doesn’t seem to notice her, or at least, he pretends not to. He continues to sing as she inches closer to him.

  “Stop,” she mouths, and now he gives his head a small, almost imperceptible shake and a frown, as if to say, don’t upstage me, psycho chick. “Please,” she mouths again, and then, incredibly, she yanks the microphone right out of his hands.

  Cooper and I exchange a look. Has she gone mad?

  The crowd starts mumbling and grumbling and the music is still playing, and I can’t tell what is going on. Until I hear my name. And I realize that Noelle is speaking into microphone about me. Or to me.

  “Annalise Bradley,” she says, her hand shielding her eyes from the spotlights as she scans the front rows. Finally, she locates me in the fourth row, pointing at me and repeating my name. “She’s the one who should really be up here. Not me. This is her dream, not mine. And it’s all I have left, to make it up to her, for what I’ve done. To show her that I’m truly sorry. To show her that I meant what I said. Every word.”

  I am stunned.

  That she would do this. That she would offer this. That this is really happening. That she is making this happen. If I step forward, I can take her place up there on the stool, and Viggo Witts will sing to me, and I will sing to him. All I have to do is forgive her. I think back to Elena, and why she said she forgave our father. “Because he got swept up in something he wasn’t strong enough to stop. He was weak, I know. But also I know he didn’t want to hurt us.”

  Noelle looks me in the eye. “I know I lied about who I was. I regret it. But everything else about our friendship was true. And all I want is for it to survive.” Then she goes on to say she hopes I give Cooper a chance because he really likes me and she’s known forever that he’s the most amazing guy she knows, but she doesn’t deserve him and maybe I do and she hopes we’ll be happy together.

  Cooper doesn’t know exactly what she’s babbling about, and gives me a quizzical glance, but it doesn’t seem to matter. When she finishes speaking, with a slight crack in her voice, I feel him freeze and gaze at Noelle, like he was seeing her for the first time ever. I can literally feel his crush on me draining away, like a soul leaving a dead body, and rematerializing in a halo of light around her, and although part of me is sad to see it go, another part thinks maybe it is only right.

  The audience seems mesmerized, too, staring at Noelle on the Jumbotron, and down on center stage, drinking in every word she is saying, rubbernecking like they are watching a ten-car pile up come to life. They all crane their necks to see who she’s talking to, and who this Cooper guy is.

  But here’s the weird thing: The whole time she’s talking, even though the microphone is in her hand, even though Viggo Witts is standing right there, gaping at her like a goldfish, you can hear his silken voice, still oozing from the speakers, loud and clear. And it feels like all of sudden, the entire stadium’s attention shifts back from Noelle to Viggo and collectively notices that pesky little detail.

  And that’s when the proverbial you-know-what really hits the fan.

  Chapter 42

  NOELLE

  Everyone—and I mean everyone—is staring at me, but for this brief, exceptional moment, I totally don’t care. I have put it all out there. What I did. How I feel. What I want. The only one I am watching now is Annalise, sitting there next to Cooper in the fourth row. Viggo just stands there, dumbly, when I finish talking. The music is about to launch into the final verse of “Identity Crisis,” the one he and I are supposed to sing together. Annalise still hasn’t made a move. I can’t tell if what I said has made a difference. Not knowing what else to do, I plead, “Come on, Annalise,” and I start singing along. Well, singing would be generous. Wailing badly is more like it. I manage to remember the words to the final verse.

  “You see me, and I see you

  But perception can be so untrue

  I’m having an identity crisis

  Why’d you have to leave me to my own devices?”

  And then I see her whisper something to Cooper—will she?—and she leaves her seat and clambers tentatively up onstage to stand beside me.

  Our eyes connect. But before we can say a thing, the audience’s murmurings have turned into outright boos and yells of outrage. For a minute, I am confused. Why is the crowd so angry? Did I mess up the song that badly? Did my stunt ruin the concert? Then I realize what everyone else has already figured out: Viggo Witts’s voice is still wailing alongside mine, even though I am the only one holding the microphone.

  Viggo Witts isn’t singing live at all.

  Viggo Witts is a big, fat, lip-synching fake.

  I turn to see Viggo staring at us in disbelief. For a second, I wonder if this has all been some mistake. If the silver-tongued singer will come up with some excuse, sweet talk the hostile crowd into loving him once more, and start the song all over again, this time serenading Annalise exactly as she has always dreamed.

  Instead, he glares hot lava at the two of us and bolts off the stage.

  Annalise and I look at each other, like, did he just do that? And holy crap, what now? And if you thought the crowd was crazy mad before, you should really hear them now. They are Tahrir Square pissed, and hostile cries of “faker” and “poser” and “loser” fly through the air. Even though we are not technically the object of the anger, I’m scared we’re going to be pelted with empty Pepsi cups and nacho cheese if we stay up here much longer. The rest of the band doesn’t seem to know what to do; they just start playing a long riff over and over again.

  Annalise stands slack-jawed; her stunned gaze follows Viggo as he disappears into the wings. I feel sorry for her––it’s like she has finally grabbed the brass ring on the carousel, only to find it made of rust, crumbling in her hands. And it’s partly my fault.

  She turns back to me, the only one left. “I can’t believe it. Can you?”

  But I can. Because I know how Viggo feels. I have been a faker, too. And I’m not alone. It seems everyone has something they are covering up—an aging face or a crumbling career, a secret crush or a true identity. We’re all just a bunch of glamour shots and Facebook brags and auto-tunes. What feels real can turn out to be fake, but also, what feels fake can sometimes turn into something real. All that flashy gadgetry—our handles and avatars and screen names—can let us scrape away the surface and connect somewhere true, somewhere deep inside. At least, it did for me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I tell her, hoping she has found a way to forgive. For what I did to her. For what Amos did. For what Viggo did. For everything.

  I watch her face carefully, to see whether she will nod and accept my apology, or shake her head and refuse it. But before she can do either, the lights in the arena are suddenly snuffed out. We gasp and blink as a blanket of darkness envelops us. For a moment, it is pitch black. A voice comes on the sound system, asking the crowd to remain calm, assuring us they are experiencing “minor technical difficulties” and the show will resume “as soon as possible”—all words everyone knows are a blatant lie.

  For a moment, I am freaked, standing there feeling so small, so alone, even in a packed stadium. I know Annalise is standing right next to me, and though I can’t see her, I can feel her presence. Then a few emergency exit signs pop on, shining
like lighthouse beacons in the far distance. People in the audience start pulling out their cell phones, to text or chat or just illuminate the blackness, and soon, it’s as if a thousand tiny stars flicker all around us, pointing the way. Annalise’s fingers reach out in the dark, seeking mine, and then our hands clasp tightly. She leans in, gently takes the microphone out of my other hand and whispers in my ear, “ready for an encore?” I squeeze her hand back, hard, the tension flowing out of me, and tell her I am. Our connection is strong and true and real, and for the first time in a long time, I no longer feel alone in a crowd.

  EPILOGUE

  ANNALISE

  “Hurry up,” I tell Noelle, as I practically drag her down the stairs of the musty Harvard Square coffeehouse. “Colin swore we wouldn’t want to miss this.” We feel our way down a dimly lit hallway where we are stopped by a burly bouncer wearing a black T-shirt. “Ten bucks,” he demands, holding out his hand.

  I pay the cover charge for both of us and we slip inside the room, past a poster advertising tonight’s performer: “Drew Tangier”—an ugly, aging hipster gripping an acoustic guitar. I’d gotten a cryptic text from Colin Dirge a few days ago, tipping me off that I might be interested in catching a show by this no-name up-and-comer.

  I’ve learned not to ignore these tips.

  “You swear the lights aren’t going to go out this time, right?” Noelle asks, teasingly.

  Things did get freaky-scary that night of the concert, when the Agganis Arena lost power and the rest of the Brass Knuckles’ show was abruptly canceled. Luckily, Noelle’s dad was waiting right outside in the parking lot and gave all of us a ride home, especially since my mom was still out on her date with Gerald. Who knows if they’d still be together if I’d screwed up their big romantic dinner that night?

  Of course, the label’s publicity machine went into overdrive, claiming that Viggo was just using his own pre-recorded vocals as filler to preserve his voice in concert, like so many pop stars do. That worked, until rumors began circulating that it wasn’t even his voice at all, and he hadn’t even done his own vocal work on the album. By the end of it all, the head of the music label was forced out, Brass Knuckles had to return their Teen Pick award, and the arena was forced to refund everyone’s money for that night’s show, which meant at least Cooper got the money to buy back his beloved baseball card. Maeve made sure I didn’t miss the cover story in People magazine where Viggo tearfully confessed that spontaneously erupting nodes on his vocal cords were forcing him to retire from the music industry, but he would be pursuing a film career in Hollywood instead.

  I’d assumed Colin would be furious with me for my part in exposing his client as a fraud, but from the comments he made in interviews, he seemed strangely Zen-like about the whole thing. Relieved, almost. In a roundabout way, he’d even tried to warn me that day at the mall not to get too attached to Viggo Witts, hadn’t he?

  I had sent him a one-word text—Sorry—but never heard back and figured that was that, until a few months later he texted me out of the blue, saying he was starting up his own label and inviting me to join a street team of teen music scouts. Our job is to go listen to live performances by artists that he’s considering signing and give him feedback. Sweet! He even pays me a stipend, which is going into my boob-reduction fund, although I’m no longer entirely sure I’ll ever go there. I’ll have to wait and see.

  If I do change my mind, I’ve got an easy way to score the cash: a set of VIP passes for the Brass Knuckles’ final concert are going for, like, seven hundred bucks on eBay. Noelle thinks I’m crazy for hanging on to it, but I like to take it out sometimes and play with the hologram label, just to remind myself of the things that are real, and things that are an illusion. Besides, give it a couple more years, and those puppies could fund my entire college tuition bill.

  “Where’s Cooper?” Noelle asks anxiously.

  “Relax. He’ll be here soon.”

  It wasn’t hard to see the two of them made the perfect couple. Maybe he’d been blinded by my boobs for a while, but it’s clear the two of them are made for each other, and I’m not going to let possessiveness over some guy mess up a friendship again. Noelle’s old posse is gone. Tori’s parents transferred her to some fancy boarding school in Connecticut, and Eva is spending spring semester in Los Angeles, filming a TV pilot. Noelle claims that there is some redeeming value in Eva, that she willingly gave up her shot in the spotlight—but I’m still not convinced Noelle didn’t mistakenly end up on that stage from a random shove. We’ll have to agree to disagree.

  “Is Maeve coming?”

  I sigh. “Don’t ask.” Maeve has been sucked into Declan’s weirdo homeschooling crowd, spending her weekends on citywide scavenger hunts and tromping through graveyard tours. I tried talking them into meeting us here, but they’re off at some Medieval Faire, garbed in authentic period costumes and salivating over turkey legs.

  The waitress comes by and Noelle orders a pair of lattés for us. “On me,” she says as usual, happily pulling out a bill from her wallet. Ever since her dad started up his own private accounting practice, she has been on a serious caffeine high. I feel slightly guilty, considering all the free math tutoring she’s given me, but she insists.

  Cooper finally arrives, sliding into the seat Noelle and I have saved for him. “You’re late, Franklin,” I bark. “Lost your way?”

  He smiles back, knowing I am just messing with him. “I know you said underground, Bradley, but I didn’t realize you literally meant subterranean,” Cooper jokes back, then grabs Noelle’s hand protectively. I roll my eyes, keeping them trained on the stage, as the lights dim and Drew Tangier shuffles out, clutching his acoustic guitar. He is sporting an enormous set of bushy eyebrows, and for a minute, I can’t imagine why Colin insisted I come. Rock star? This guy? The next Viggo Witts? No way.

  Cooper is clearly thinking the same thing. “You sure this is your man?” he asks me, eyebrows raised. “Your taste in musicians is dubious, I think we’ve established.”

  “Don’t start,” I tell him, although I’m wondering the same thing myself. But I’ve learned the hard way to look deeper, to disregard the shiny surface, as tough as that can be. And then, it is clear why Colin has sent me here. As soon as the singer opens his mouth, I know exactly what I’m about to hear: a silken voice so familiar I would recognize it anywhere.