by Emma Savant
“Of course,” he said. “Dior, it was my pleasure.”
“Mine, too,” I stammered. Before the words were out of my mouth, August had taken my hands and was delicately leading me in a dance.
He raised an eyebrow at me, like he knew exactly what had been going on in my head the second before.
“I didn’t mean to ruin your evening,” he said.
“Oh, no, it’s fine,” I said, lying through my teeth to be polite. “You didn’t ruin anything.”
“I wouldn’t have intruded, but you’d been with the same person for a while, and I thought I’d come help you move along. This evening is supposed to be about networking.”
I’d thought it was supposed to be about getting to know my new choreographer and his interesting friends. Maybe friendships and networking were the same thing in August’s world.
“I’ve already met several people,” I said.
“Did you get a chance to talk to Claire Dunaway?” he said.
“Um, no, I don’t think so.”
“Joshua Nguyen?”
“Nope.”
He shook his head slightly at me, disapproval apparent in only the subtlest lines of his barely-lined face. “We’d better make some introductions, hm? Come on.”
He stopped dancing and led me by the hand across the room. I looked over my shoulder at Clarence, who was watching us with an impatient look on his face that matched mine.
Sorry, I mouthed. He shrugged, as if to say Can’t be helped, and I turned back to keep from running into anyone on the way to whomever August thought I simply had to meet. The idea crossed my mind to just say no and go back to Clarence and the increasingly pleasant moment we’d been having, but August’s hand was insistent on mine and somehow, I couldn’t find the will to disobey him.
I was thrown into conversation with person after person until their names and faces began to blend together. By the time Dad found us and asked if I was ready to head home, I was itching with the desire to get away from August’s charismatic grip. But when I looked across the room, not quite as full as it had been earlier in the evening, Clarence was gone.
Chapter 6
“Angle away from the camera, Dior, and then snap back and make direct eye contact,” the director, Emilio, said, hovering behind one of the two cameramen who were poised at the edges of our jungle set.
Emilio pointed at the lens of one of the cameras. “Look right in here for me,” he said. “You can even lean in a little toward it. We’ll do this a bunch of times and then take the best one.”
I knew that. I knew how filming things worked, I knew how dancing worked, and most of all, I knew how my song worked.
And yet, no one on this video seemed to think I was capable of taking two steps without hearing their helpful input.
The music started up again, just enough to help me find my mark, and I snapped back into character. I was wild, a cavewoman with an absolute crowd of oil-slicked cavemen all licking their lips behind me, and I was apparently meant to direct all that raw, primitive energy directly into the lens of a camera as if that would save this stupid, tacky, ridiculous music video.
I snapped my head forward, made sharp eye contact with the black center of the lens, and held the pose until Emilio gave me the thumbs-up. We ran through the sequence several more times, until he was satisfied.
August had come in while we were filming. He was in a crisp white button-up with the collar loosened and the sleeves rolled up. He spent a while talking quietly to someone through his pocket mirror, then stood well behind the cameramen with his head tilted, surveying me and the whole scene. I tried to send a tendril of energy out to him, hoping he’d pick up on it and come in here and rescue me already.
Surely this mess of cheetah print and fake plants wasn’t what he’d had in mind.
“How’s it going?” he asked, as soon as Emilio called for the next sequence. “Do you need a break?”
Everyone froze and looked to me. As the talent, I had the power to stop this entire room in its tracks while I got a drink of water. And yet, mysteriously, I had been unable to talk the makeup lady out of rimming my eyes with enough liner to pave a highway, or to convince the dresser that my cheetah-print minidress did not actually need to be adjusted until my breasts were on the verge of making a run for it.
“Yes,” I said. “I need a break.”
“Take five, everybody,” Emilio said, waving off the cameramen. I set down the vaguely phallic club I’d been forced to shake around and marched over to August.
I gave him a long, wide-eyed, eyebrows-up look that, I hoped, would convey more of my current desire to scream than any words could.
“How are you doing?” August said.
His voice was kind, gentle, and altogether the opposite of everything I was feeling.
“Not great,” I said. I yanked the neckline of my minidress back up to where a neckline should be, which only resulted in my butt getting a nice breeze. “August, this is stupid.”
“You look beautiful,” he said.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
I stared at him. Was I, perhaps, the only rational person left on the planet? I marched over to my folding chair, threw on the hoodie that had been crumpled in the seat, and plopped down. A long drink of water wasn’t enough to calm me, so I took another one and wondered how long I’d have to sit there and stew before the urge to throw things at people went away.
I took a deep breath.
“August,” I said, trying to do my best impression of a calm adult. “This is stupid.” His face did not immediately light up with agreement, so I repeated, emphasizing each word, “Everything about this is stupid.”
“Dior,” he said. He pressed a hand to his temple and smiled, as though I were a troublesome but amusing child. “This is the work of many brilliant professionals. You’re tired. You’ve had a long morning.”
“I’ve had a stupid morning.”
“What’s wrong?” He sat down in the folding chair next to me. “Tell me all about it.”
“This video is absurd. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, I know it was all your idea, but the whole thing is just so over the top and ridiculous. I feel like I’m in the opening scenes of some Tarzan porno. This isn’t my song.”
“Dior,” he said, like saying my name was magically going to soothe me.
On second thought, it did, a little. I kind of hoped he’d say it a dozen more times just to remind me that he was here and he wasn’t going to let me run my career headlong off a jungle cliff.
“I’m a little frustrated,” I said, in a more measured voice.
“I can tell,” he said. “Dior, I feel like you’re insecure about showing this side of yourself. Now, that surprises me. This song is all about wildness and embracing the more sensual parts of yourself, and yet you’re experiencing resistance to showing yourself off as the beautiful, empowered woman you are. Why the disconnect?”
I shrugged. I wanted help, not psychoanalysis.
“I think there’s a block here,” he said. He put a hand on my knee. The touch should have annoyed me, but instead I felt my heartbeat begin to slow. “I think you’re uncomfortable sharing yourself.”
“I’m a performer,” I said. “All I do is share myself.”
“There’s always something between you and your audience,” he said. “There’s a microphone and the stage and a security team in case anyone gets too close. Here, it’s just you and the camera. You’re having to be braver than you’ve ever had to be before.”
I wrapped my arms around me. The hoodie felt like a shield; inside it, I was warm and safe from prying eyes.
Maybe he was right. Maybe I’d gotten used to only getting a hint of my fans from behind the blinding lights of a stage. It was weird, being here and performing for such a small room, with cameras closer than any audience had ever been before. I knew looking into that lens was like looking directly at whoever ended up watching this. Maybe I was uncomfortable with that. Maybe I was
worried they’d judge me.
Maybe I was just a coward.
“You need to be brave, Dior,” he said. “I know it’s hard, but pulling away like you’re doing right now is an insult to your audience.”
“I’m not insulting anyone,” I said, bristling.
“And it’s an insult to the hard work of the wonderful people supporting you,” he added gently. “The work of wonderful people like Starling. Do you really want to waste his hard work by not giving this performance your everything?”
Of course not. I adored Starling. He deserved my best. He deserved a show so good people looked at this video and immediately demanded to know who my choreographer was. I had to do this for him.
“You’re an artist, Dior. You have a responsibility to people now. As your career grows, that responsibility is only going to grow with it. Are you sure you’re ready for that?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I think you are,” he said. He squeezed my knee. “I believe in you and I think you can do this. But you have to be courageous, and you have to remember it’s not all about you anymore. People are depending on you.”
I felt like shit. It was a familiar feeling, one that reminded me of the time I’d forgotten to get Mom a birthday present, back when she was still around. She’d spent half the day locked in her room, crying about how unappreciated she was. I knew it wasn’t my fault that she’d eventually left, but still, the feeling of knowing I’d let her down that day was enough that just the memory of it could make my stomach turn over.
I was being selfish and ridiculous. August had managed the careers of half the vocalists I idolized, and he and Starling and Emilio and all the others were willing to risk their reputations on me. The least I could do was bring my best to the table, the same way they brought theirs.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re right, I think I’m just nervous. I just really want this to be about the music. I want to share my song, not just sell it with sex.”
He chuckled. “That’s the last thing you’re doing,” he said. “You’re capturing the essence of your song. It just requires a little bit more wildness than you’re used to.”
He gave my knee one final pat. “You’re a professional,” he said. “I know it, you know it, and we’re about to show this whole crew. Go back up there and give it your best.”
I did. I had to.
I lasted all of two and a half takes before I cracked.
“Make it sexier,” Emilio said. “When you bend over and do that shake, I want you to really get into it. Ethan, come up closer behind her and run your hand down her back as she bends over.”
I stood straight up.
“Absolutely not,” I said firmly.
August held up a hand. “Just go with it, Dior,” he said.
My irritation faded. I nodded at Emilio, and we kept going.
“I’m going to hit someone with this club if I have to keep dancing with it,” I said a few minutes later.
“Dior,” August said.
I closed my mouth and nodded at Emilio to continue the take.
And then, right after my next costume change, Emilio asked me to grind on the lap of one of the dancers.
“I’m not comfortable with that,” I said. “That’s not my vision.”
“We talked about this, Dior,” August said. “It’s a shared vision. Trust the director and follow his instructions, please.”
As if I were watching myself, I did.
I danced, and August watched me, his dark eyes sharp and taking every movement in.
Chapter 7
I slammed the apartment door shut behind me and leaned against it, waiting for my heart to stop racing. Standing here wasn’t enough. I locked the door, then checked the latch to the sliding glass doors that led to our tiny balcony, and then touched my wand in my jacket pocket and threw up a quick home defense spell.
It almost felt like enough.
I sank onto the futon and pulled a worn fleece blanket up over my lap. I wanted to be covered, by clothes and blankets and security spells—covered long enough to let me buy myself some privacy so I could figure out what the hell had happened.
My brain didn’t want to think. It didn’t want to go anywhere near the day, so I reached for the remote and turned on the TV. Beside me on one of the mismatched side tables, a flowering beetlewing cactus fluttered its petals with a soft whispering sound.
It was a relief to be back in my own apartment with my own plants. The vines and trees I’d been surrounded by all day were mostly fakes, plastic monstrosities designed to fool a camera, not a faerie. I hated fake plants, and I propped my elbow on the arm of the futon and leaned in toward the cactus, enjoying its sweet aura.
My tour bus had been full of houseplants, pothos and succulents and a rotating series of orchids I could never manage to keep alive. They’d been a buffer against the desert climates and concrete cities, and I’d been grateful to them, but it was such a relief to be back in my apartment in this beautifully green city.
I watched a rerun of a nineties sitcom, which was interspersed by obnoxious ads for cleaning supplies and tampons that were apparently meant for women who bled Windex and enjoyed laughing while doing yoga. The show’s plot was so basic I didn’t bother to follow it, and instead let my thoughts wander, coming back to the images on the screen as a touch point whenever my mind went somewhere I didn’t want to dwell on.
The day had been so weird. I was exhausted, but my skin still felt jittery and my stomach felt like I’d eaten something off, even though I’d barely touched food all day.
I microwaved a bag of popcorn and kept watching, letting the vapid jokes and repetitive laugh track wash my feelings away.
Dad was at trivia night at the pub. He’d been even more into his hobbies than usual ever since I’d signed with August. No one could ever accuse my dad of adulting too hard, but he’d always done his best to take care of me when I was little and to encourage my career once I’d started performing. Now that he’d handed the responsibility for my career off, though, it was hard to keep track of him between trivia nights, drinks with his friends, sports games, and whatever else he got up to when he wasn’t at work.
I couldn’t blame him. He’d done everything on his own after Mom had left, and he’d never pressured me to get a job or move out. I had gotten jobs when my singing career wasn’t going so well—usually at little Humdrum shops where I wasn’t likely to be recognized—and contributed as much as I could, but it must still be a relief for him to not have to worry about my career and the bills all the time.
I wished he was home, though. I needed someone to talk to. I’d texted Briana, but she was out getting drunk with her sister and her message back had been just unintelligible enough that I knew she wouldn’t be able to hold a serious conversation. And Sadie was inaccessible. She’d turned off her phone and blocked her mirror, which meant she was probably studying for another one of her crazy difficult math exams.
I didn’t really have anyone else. I had a million and one casual friends, but not many I could talk to about something like this.
August had manipulated me. I didn’t know how, and I could only guess as to why, but he’d done something to control me. The version of myself that had been performing for that stupid video was not me.
I couldn’t get a grip on it. It hadn’t felt like any spell I recognized.
Not that I would recognize a coercion spell if I felt one. They were beyond illegal.
The young teenager on the sitcom angsted about her new braces for a few minutes. The father arrived to deliver some advice about beauty being on the inside. I sucked on the fluffy popcorn kernels until they collapsed in my mouth.
What the hell had happened today? Was I really just impressionable and willing to do whatever I was told if it meant I might have a shot at fame? That didn’t sound like me.
My career had always been about the music and the connection with the audience. Sure, I tried to dress in a way that was e
ye-catching and appealing, but that was just me respecting my audience enough to be at my best for them. And sure, I’d be thrilled to be half as famous as Gabriella, but was I really willing to turn myself inside out for it?
If I found enough fans who loved my work enough to support me, I could keep doing this. I could keep writing songs and singing my soul out. I was willing to sacrifice sleep and stability and my social life for that dream. But nowhere in that dream had I been wearing leaf fronds and a loincloth, pursing my lips and beckoning a camera to come closer.
I wanted to crawl inside myself and hide.
The popular girl at school said something catty to the episode’s young protagonist. Instead of cowering, the “brace-face” straightened up and said something kind and generous to her bully. The tension defused.
I curled up with a bright floral pillow, tucked my legs up under me, and pulled the blanket up around my chin.
Chapter 8
My spoon clinked softly against the side of the cup as I stirred my tea. Around me, the hum of the café rose and fell in a gentle lull. August still hadn’t arrived.
I’d heard Pumpkin Spice was one of the best Glimmering cafés in Portland, and my lavender chai was proving the rumors true.
More than that, though, Pumpkin Spice was public, and that was why I had chosen it. I needed to talk to him, but I couldn’t do it alone. I needed to know that if I screamed, someone would look my way.
A chill ran down my spine. I shouldn’t be feeling this way about my manager.
A witch at the next table blinked, and her textbook page turned. She’d been staring at the same page for five minutes and it was almost a relief to see some movement over there. Across the room, a teenage couple flirted awkwardly across their table. It wasn’t even six yet. My foot jiggled.
My phone buzzed on the table. A text had come in from a number I didn’t recognize.
Hey, this is Clarence. Got your number from Starling. Hope you don’t mind.
My stomach fluttered. Finally, one thing was going right.
