Spin

by Lamar Giles

  “Naw. I make party music. Nobody trying to turn up on mommy and daddy issues.”

  He didn’t ask another question. I focused on the board but didn’t fill the silence with music. “I mean, okay, I knew I didn’t want to be like my parents. I didn’t want to—poof!—vanish like him, or slowly fade away without having left a mark like her. I wanted to exist. Loud and proud. So, yeah. Maybe something in that drove me. I’m not dwelling, though.” I perked up, mashed the play button. “I’m excelling!”

  The bass dropped on my latest project. Working title: “Quasars.”

  “Ohhhh, is that track for me?” Lil’ Redu and crew filed into the studio, loud and raucous. They bounced to the beat. Party up in here. Redu said, “That better be for me.”

  It wasn’t. My no—a word he didn’t like and never took graciously—plus the sudden silencing of the beat that he’d never rhyme on, cut him like a knife. His crew laughed, likely knew what it was. This beat was too good for his barely mediocre rhymes. The way his eyes narrowed and jaw set made me think he knew too.

  Bad blood now flowed between us. It didn’t stop.

  We made it back to Fuse’s house—past the fancy gate guard, up the winding hill bordered by manicured lawns and expensive landscaping, into her cobblestone driveway. Evening traffic slowed us down, getting us dangerously close to blowing our one-hour deadline. So close, Fuse didn’t bother taking me to her room. We entered a foyer that was three stories high and detoured into her dad’s home office, where she snatched the drive from my hand and got the file cued up as an email attachment.

  She said, “Yo. Demands?”

  “You really think they’re going to do what we say?”

  “If we threaten to wipe this drive”—she spun the chair, faced me—“they gotta give us some room to work. This is an arrangement that can make everyone happy. So tell me what you want.”

  “No more kidnapping.”

  She typed it up. Along with “stop hacking our phones” and “no visits to Paris’s apartment in the Savant.” Satisfied, Fuse clicked send, and the email disappeared with a whooshing sound effect.

  “What song did you send them?” I asked.

  “The one you played in the car.”

  I leapt forward, bug-eyed. “What? Why? I played that for you. Can we recall that email?”

  “Uh, no. Plus, we’re out of time. That song was fire, and a dope song will probably satisfy them more than some unfinished beat. What’s the problem here?”

  “There’s no problem. I guess.” I tried settling the butterflies in my stomach. It’s not like they’d know it was me singing. I’d done a good job putting all that behind me.

  With our end of the bargain met, Fuse pressed into her dad’s chair, eyes squeezed shut. And I took in the opulence of the room, preferring to catalog my environment than think any more about my voice, or how I’d almost gotten some minor surgery without anesthesia.

  The room had custom cabinetry throughout and bookshelves packed with everything from cracked-spine paperbacks to leather-bound, gold-lettered volumes. Mr. Fallon’s desk was translucent black glass, his machine an iMac Pro—the most expensive kind. Even the pens protruding from the decorative TED Talks coffee mug seemed made of fine wood and precious metal. This was what money was like.

  Fuse opened her eyes, her thoughts in a totally different place than mine. “I cannot believe you’ve got pipes like that!”

  I shrugged.

  “You’re always so quiet. I mean, you sound like—” She popped from the chair and flung herself to a floor-level polished walnut cabinet running the length of the back wall. Crammed inside were cardboard sleeves protecting actual vinyl records. Not the hipster rereleases you could buy in drugstores now, but original pressings. I recognized the smell from Mama’s much less impressive collection, stored in a single box at the back of her closet.

  Fuse pulled a specific album, dropped it on the desk next to her dad’s computer. “You sound like her.”

  Whitney. The album title and the name of the legendary R&B diva. May she rest in peace.

  “You know her stuff?” Fuse said.

  A slow nod. “From the time I was strong enough to hold a mic, it was drilled into me. I sung her songs at parties, in pageants, in studios, at parks, on day cruises. I could sing this album end to end without you even dropping a needle.”

  Not just her album either. Karyn White. Jody Watley. Evelyn “Champagne” King. Lisa Fischer. Some En Vogue from Mama’s failed attempt at starting a girl group. She had me learning the music of her childhood, her classics, before I knew my ABCs. When I got old enough to pick my own performance pieces, it was Beyoncé, Ciara, Keyshia Cole, even a little Carrie Underwood if the crowd seemed into it—that country girl could go. Mama stayed stuck on power ballads of the ’80s, but she conceded on modern tunes because the freedom of choice kept me a willing participant in my own torture, if only for a hot second. By the time I was twelve, I’d grown tired of the weekend shows, the long drives to singing competitions, music that preceded me by twenty years. Mama didn’t like it, but I was getting too old and big to force.

  Fuse didn’t ask about all that. I wasn’t volunteering it. Singing was a thing I used to do.

  I sat at the desk, checking the files on my drive in the Finder window. “We can ration the music to the Dark Nation. A song a week if they leave us alone, stop tapping our phones, stay away from Paris’s apartment.”

  “Why don’t you sing more? What you did on that track was like a superpower.”

  I fought a groan. Maybe it was a mistake letting her know about my past, and how Paris and I collaborated before “Calm Down, Turn Up!” Fuse, apparently, wasn’t going to let this go. “Focus. There are more important things to worry about.”

  “Agreed”—her voice high and hopeful—“but I want to focus on this right now. It’s been a rough day.”

  “Fuse— You know what, fine, here it is: Performing sucks. Maybe not for everyone, but it did for me. I hated it. Every time. But Mama was a singer who never made it, and my voice was better than hers ever was, so for me to not do the thing I hated—get up in front of all those strangers, dancing and crooning even if it meant I needed to vomit in a bucket backstage right before my cue—I was somehow betraying her and every little girl in the world who wished for a special talent. It was like that until I was big enough to say no, and when no didn’t work, I’d go out onstage and just wouldn’t sing. When you feel like I felt up there, cheers and boos were the same. I could take the shame of flubbing performances just to make a point. Mama couldn’t, though, and finally the forced show-dog routine stopped. So there. Happy now?”

  Fuse’s head bobbed a bit, processing it. “I wouldn’t say happy.”

  I nearly growled at her.

  “You said that track, or your singing, or whatever, was the reason you and ParSec weren’t vibing. Why? I mean if you weren’t performing, what did you have to do with the music?”

  “Paris had been a writer since I could remember. It took her longer to develop the ability to make songs. You know what I mean? I knew what sounded good, because, well, I sound good. I helped record the words she wrote. We made a bunch of demos together. Thus, this.” I motioned to the files on-screen. “She’s a good learner, so her voice got stronger. Her style is more like talking on the track than singing, but every so often you hear—”

  “Her get singsongy,” Fuse interjected.

  “Not exactly a technical term, but yes. We worked on that. That little bit of vibrato that comes through, it took time, but she got it.”

  “Wait.” Fuse frowned. “She was mad at you for helping her become a better singer? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Because that wasn’t the reason. “I took our music. I wouldn’t give it back.”

  “Why?”

  Someone should throw you away.

  I didn’t know if I would tell her. Or could. That conversation with Paris was still my greatest regret and might be for the rest of my
life. I deflected, maybe in a mean way. “How about you tell me what went down with you and Shameik first. I still don’t have that whole story.”

  She flinched. “Wow. You go hard when cornered, huh?”

  “Seems like we’d both rather keep some things to ourselves.”

  Whether or not we’d drag those skeletons out of the closet became a moot point when the robotic voice of the Fallons’ alarm system announced: “FRONT DOOR OPEN.”

  Fuse panicked. “Get that drive out.”

  I ejected it, tugged it from the USB port, and reattached it to my necklace a second before Mr. Fallon rounded the corner, his face tight, his eyes scanning. “Fatima, what are you doing in my office? Who is this?”

  “Dad, this is Kya. From school.”

  His expression became more suspicious. I felt compelled to say something studious. “We were working on coding an app for our CS class, and Fatima said your machine was better equipped for the work.”

  “What kind of app?” He wasn’t letting us off that easy. Fair enough.

  I logged into my cloud account and opened up earlier versions of SoundChek code. “It’s an audio management platform.”

  Mr. Fallon rounded the desk, examined my work. “Elegant.”

  Fuse went bug-eyed. “It is?”

  Mr. Fallon said to me, “Obviously, you’re the architect of this particular technical marvel.”

  “Obviously.” There was more than a little chill in Fuse’s voice. “Is it okay if we get back to it, Dad?”

  “Forty-five more minutes. I’ll need the room for a conference call after. Good to meet you, Kya. Thanks for helping Fatima with a useful skill.”

  He closed the door, and Fuse mockingly mouthed, Thanks for helping Fatima with a useful skill.

  I felt embarrassed. For her. For myself. Mama was a lot of things, but she never ever praised anyone else’s kid over me, as far as I knew. “I’m sorry,” I said, apologizing for being a weapon used against her.

  “For what? Showing him you’re a better student than me was genius. He might’ve kicked you out if you hadn’t. I’m glad you made that play.”

  Though the dullness in her tone suggested otherwise.

  We perpetrated the coding-for-class fraud for another half hour just to cover our bases, before I ushered Kya to my car to drive her home and finish our real discussion. We didn’t start talking until we cleared the neighborhood gate, as if we secretly suspected anything spoken inside my community’s walls was susceptible to my dad’s eavesdropping.

  Once on main roads, I said, “Okay, next steps.”

  Kya didn’t answer, twisting in her seat. “Should we talk about that? Back there.”

  “What?”

  “Whatever that was with your father. I’m pretty good at reading tension.”

  “You’d have to be emotionally illiterate not to read the tension between me and my dad. It’s all good, though. We’re good.”

  “Seems like a contradiction to me. When things are tense between Mama and me, there’s definitely nothing good about it.”

  I tapped my steering wheel, thinking on the best, most succinct way to approach this and move on. “My dad’s a sellout. Eighty percent of our conversations are him telling me why I need to be a sellout too. So there.”

  “What does that even mean, Fuse?”

  “Look, my parents have money. I guess that’s obvious.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mom has always been science girl. Art and music and movies, none of it registers with her beyond a background aesthetic for wine tasting. And that’s cool. Do you, Mom. Dad wasn’t like that. I got my love of music from him. You saw all that vinyl in his office, right?”

  She nodded, that puzzled look still on her face.

  “He used to be down. Black music, black movies, street gear. I remember sticking my little kid feet in his big, old Tims and stomping around the house. I remember when he first started his digital marketing and branding company, he’d leave for work in jeans and a basketball jersey. He’d go pitch to clients like that. He was a cool dad.

  “Then, the more successful he got, the more he started looking down on stuff he’d loved—stuff he got me to love. It was weird. He’d go to some dinner with Mom and her medical colleagues, the next day he’s bringing a tailor by the house to measure him for custom suits and the jerseys were on their way to the Goodwill. He’d go to some retreat with other local business owners, then have us listening to self-help books whenever we were in the car. No more music.

  “He made it seem like it was all about self-improvement. Personal presentation. Respectability. Naw, though. He got shamed out of his roots. Everything we loved was bad now. He got so different so fast, I felt like we were in Get Out.”

  Kya tread carefully. “As you said, your family has money.”

  “Yeah but—”

  “And you have your dad. Some people would consider that lucky.”

  Some people. “Is your dad—the situation—like ParSec’s, er, situation?”

  “No. I know exactly who and where my dad is. Raleigh, North Carolina. With his new wife, and his other daughter. He sends me Applebee’s gift cards on my birthday.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “The ribs are actually pretty good at Applebee’s.”

  I laughed and felt horrible about it until Kya laughed too. “I’m okay with it,” she said. “Maybe it’s one of those grass-is-always-greener things. A sellout dad sounds better than a gift-card dad. To me.”

  I recognized I sounded ungrateful, or spoiled, or something. I wanted her to understand that I didn’t hate my dad, I just wanted him to remember what we used to have. “It hurts to see someone you love change, and then tell you the things you are, and the things you love, should change if you’re ever going to be something in the world. I hate it. I wanted to show him he was wrong. You can be yourself and succeed.”

  Kya lurched forward quickly, stretching her seat belt to the limit, some realization making her spasm. “That’s why you showed up? I always wondered where you came from, and why you were giving Paris all that help with the videos and the social media.”

  “I mean, above all else, I liked ParSec and the music was hot. But, yeah, I saw an opportunity. I knew a lot about marketing because of Dad’s company. I wanted to show him you could do what he does and still be true to self. It was like a philosophical exercise or something.”

  “I thought you were just some kind of bandwagon leech.”

  “That is so flattering, Kya.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m being honest. It’s like you appeared one day and you were her universe.”

  “Then you know part of what I feel. When someone close to you switches up for reasons you can’t understand. And I know some of what you felt, because it was clear my dad loved hearing about your coding and your app. You’re the kind of friend he wants me to have.”

  “Your sellout dad approves of me. Now who’s flattering who?”

  “If honesty feels this great, makes you wonder what’s so bad about lies.”

  We were on the highway, my phone rattled in my cup holder. An incoming text. I said, “Check it.”

  Kya said, “Winston wants an update.”

  Of course he did. “Tell him no news. You and me still have things to discuss.”

  “VenueShowZ.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that a lot too.”

  Kya responded, and he hit us back almost instantly. Kya said, “One word: disappointing.”

  “Tell him his hairline’s disappointing.”

  That should’ve gotten a laugh. Good joke, if I said so myself.

  But Kya was on task, focused. “If VenueShowZ manages artists, and Paris signed some kind of deal with them, where did that leave Paula Klein?”

  “Out on her butt would be my guess.”

  “Yet, she goes in on that weird memorial service. She wants to help Shameik and the Seaside Poets organize a concert. Why?”

  “It’s not altruism, I’ll te
ll you that. I once saw her haggle with a Girl Scout over a box of Thin Mints. She’s still maintaining an online presence for ParSec. The VenueShowZ deal never went public. So she’s trying to stake a claim, probably scheming on a way to keep getting paid off ParSec’s work.”

  “How’s that even possible?”

  I shrugged. “You’d be surprised. Paula helped ParSec get emancipated, meaning she was able to legally sign binding documents. Immediately after that, ParSec signed a bunch of forms that gave Paula control and access to all sorts of stuff. Bank accounts, booking contracts, music ownership, and royalty payments. It went deep. ParSec was never happy with her money once Paula took over.”

  Kya said, “When I was singing, a bunch of people approached Mama about managing me. She always said we had to be very careful about who we dealt with if we didn’t want to get robbed.”

  “That’s real. My dad says signing the wrong piece of paper can cause any businessperson major problems, but nothing’s above being reversed with the proper legal team. I’m thinking VenueShowZ had the players to make Paula irrelevant.” We got off on Kya’s exit, a low buzzing desperation trembling throughout my body.

  Kya said, “Are we saying that … we think Paula—?”

  “I think we’re saying it needs looking into. But how?”

  “Oh, oh.” Reaching around to her back pocket, Kya freed her own phone. In my periphery, I watched her tapping and scrolling. She said, “Shameik emailed everyone about a concert planning meeting Friday. Guess who’s going to be there.”

  “Paula’s coming to the school?”

  “Yep.”

  Possibilities began to churn, I turned into Kya’s neighborhood. “Okay. There’s an opportunity here. Let me think on it a little bit.”

  I wasn’t sure she heard me, her attention was on Paris’s grandma’s place as we coasted by. Kya said, “I should probably get her that key back.”

  “No you won’t.” The Savant apartment had been on my mind quite a bit since our run-in with the Dark Nation.

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. We just might have use for it.” I stopped at her place, my brakes squealing slightly. “Super teams need lairs.”