Katie Cox Goes Viral

by Marianne Levy

  Like I said, though, Saturday did eventually put in an appearance. It began, as all Saturdays did, around the kitchen table, with Mom cleaning up mouse droppings from the floor and saying, “I’m going straight from the hospital to karaoke…if that’s all right?”

  We all said it was.

  “Anyone doing anything fun today?”

  “Well,” said Amanda. “I am going to run the store. Adrian’s store. I will be running it.”

  “Good for you, my love,” said Mom. “So you’re not working today, Ade?”

  “Thought I’d take Katie out for the day,” said Adrian. “Get to know each other a little. Yeah. Mmm.” He was such a bad liar. I had to take over.

  “We decided we’d do some bonding,” I said. “Go for a drive, maybe get some lunch or something.”

  Mom looked from me to him and then back again. Of course she didn’t believe us. We were so blatantly lying. I braced myself…

  “Finally!” said Mom. “Two of my favorite people in the world have started to get along.”

  “Er,” I said. “Kind of.”

  “What are you going to do?” Mom said. “Tell me. I want to be able to picture you together.”

  “Just go into town,” I said.

  “Town!” said Mom.

  “Eat a pizza?”

  “Pizza!” She went to her wallet and dug out a twenty. “Spend it all.”

  “It’s really not that big a deal,” I said.

  “It is,” said Mom. “If I could’ve had one wish in the world, it would have been for the two of you to be friends. Now, I’m going to have a shower. If anyone touches the hot water faucet, I will personally come and drown them.”

  She went, humming the chorus of “Natural Woman,” and, after a moment, Adrian followed.

  “If they are getting in there together…” I began, my hand heading toward the kitchen sink.

  Amanda’s nails dug into my arm.

  “You have to stop this.”

  “The shower? I know!”

  “The lies to Mom.”

  “I told Tony yes,” I said.

  “So tell him you’ve changed your mind. Or tell her. Tell her right now and see what she says.”

  “You know what she’ll say. She’ll say no. And…” I was surprised to find I was on the verge of crying into my Pop-Tart. “I want to see what happens. It’s exciting. It’s the most exciting thing that’ll ever happen to me, and if I pull out now, that’s it. Over. Finished. Just the whole rest of my life with nothing to look forward to. Just like everyone else.”

  “That is a really unhealthy way of looking at it,” said Amanda. “Honestly, Katie, you can’t pretend your life is already over. You haven’t even finished school.”

  “Fine.” And now I wasn’t sad anymore, just angry. “I want to do this because it will be cool. All right? I want to sound amazing and look amazing and for people to buy my album and listen to my songs and think, ‘These are amazing.’ Because I am a selfish, horrible person. And maybe you think I ought to be content with riding the bus to school every day and having my best friend ignore me and my bra strap pinged and egg mashed into my hair and listening to Savannah’s party plans. But honestly, I think I might be happier at least taking a chance on something else.”

  Amanda put down her mug and left. But I knew she wouldn’t tell Mom. So I guess I should have felt good about our little talk.

  Somehow, I didn’t.

  • • •

  “I’m a star,” I said to myself. “I am an artist. I am going to record my single. Like Prince and Rihanna and Jessie J. I’m doing this. It is real. This is me, on my way to London. To sing.”

  I kept this up in my head all the way there, and I was so hyped by the time I got to Liverpool Street that I could feel my fingers trailing fairy dust all over the turnstiles.

  Adrian, on the other hand, seemed edgy, and every time he opened his mouth, a downer dropped out.

  “There’ll be a lot of people from the label there,” he said. “I know you liked Tony, and he seemed laid-back, but take it from me, the studio’s very different from the office.”

  “Huh,” I said, not really knowing what he meant and not much wanting to think about it.

  “See, they’ll have their own ideas,” said Adrian. “And sometimes that’s great! A collaboration!”

  “Okay,” I said, navigating my way past a woman with a suitcase who was completely blocking the way onto the Central Line.

  “Sometimes, though, it’s not so good. You don’t want them to overcommercialize your sound. I mean, a little smoothing out, that’s all well and good. But…”

  “But what?”

  “You’re you, Katie. And that’s not very Top Music.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “You’re special. Don’t let them make you into something you’re not.”

  “Which is?”

  “Slick. Auto-tuned. You know.”

  “Maybe I’m Okay with that,” I said. “Seriously, what is it with people thinking I don’t deserve the full treatment?”

  He stopped. “Is that what you think? That you don’t deserve it? The point is that you don’t need it. Katie, maybe you don’t know it, but there’s no one out there right now even half as good as you. You know why people keep clicking on the video? Because you’re Katie Cox! So enough with trying to be someone else, all right?”

  “Oh,” I said, swinging my guitar straight into a living statue. Living statues, it turns out, can be really grumpy.

  After a few minutes of apologizing, which didn’t work, and some cash from Adrian, which did, we got far enough away for me to say, “Look, I get that you’re worried. But let’s just see how it goes, Okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But…”—and I had to glance down at the sidewalk because it was difficult to say—“I appreciate that you care.”

  “Nice one, Katie,” said Adrian, looking like he might be about to go for some kind of hug, and then, thank the Lord, we reached a small doorway with a line of buzzers, one of which said “SQ Studios.” The conversation was over.

  • • •

  Despite what Adrian had said, it was just Tony who was there to meet us, rising up out of a chair shaped like an egg to grab my hand and tell me how excited he was.

  The whole place was smaller than I’d thought it would be. Down at the end of a long flight of steps, there was this strange sealed-in world without windows, sort of shabby and worn with things stacked up against other things and peeling-back carpets. And while I could mainly smell Tony’s aftershave, there was just the faintest tang of mold like dark clouds lurking on the horizon at the end of a sunny afternoon.

  Just nerves, I told myself, noticing how dry my mouth had become and giving my throat a very subtle clear—and then another one and another until Adrian handed me a bottle of water.

  “Takes me back,” he was saying, nostrils flared as though he was sort of inhaling the scene. “Hey, Tone, maybe it’s my mind playing tricks, but isn’t this where we recorded back in the day?”

  “It is,” said Tony. “The very same studio. I thought it would be…poetic.”

  Which explained why everything was so dark and dingy when I’d been expecting more of a Top Music reflective-surfaces vibe.

  “What sort of stuff were you planning?” I asked. “Because I don’t want fifteen backing singers or a violin quartet or anything.” I could see Adrian nodding.

  “Right now, it’s just you and your guitar,” said Tony, motioning me down yet another set of stairs. “We can always put more on later.”

  “Or not,” I said. “If it doesn’t need it.”

  “It’s entirely your call.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you, Tony,” said Adrian, but I guess his words got lost in a bunch of doors opening and closin
g because he didn’t get a reply.

  Then, we were in a room with a glass wall where a man sat at a desk covered in knobs and dials and lights and sliding things.

  “How does it feel, Katie?” Tony’s smile split his face in two. “How does it feel to be recording your first single?”

  “It feels…” I tried to put into words the electricity sparking down into my fingertips, the way my stomach felt as though I was just getting to the top of a roller coaster, the smile that kept tugging at the corners of my mouth.

  “Don’t tell me. Tell Adrian. He’s the one responsible for all this.”

  I turned wordlessly to Adrian, and Tony said, “Look at her, Ade. Remember that feeling?”

  “I do.”

  “I have to take a selfie,” I said, getting my phone out. “The girls at school will lose it when they see me in here.” Then I remembered my stupid phone didn’t have a camera. “Adrian…your phone…can you?”

  “What’s a selfie?” said Adrian, and I decided to leave it.

  “Never mind.” I looked around for somewhere to put my water bottle and settled with the top of a speaker.

  “Careful,” said the guy sitting at the desk in a quiet way that suggested he was trying very hard to be polite while actually being quite worried.

  It was a voice I recognized well. Mom used it pretty much every time I borrowed anything of hers, even though the incident with the skirt and the nail polish remover was years ago. I’d said I was sorry about a million times, and I’d have bought her another one if the store hadn’t stopped making them.

  “Katie?” said the desk guy, while simultaneously pressing some of the buttons on his desk. “I’m Moe. Want to go tune up? It’s through there.”

  I unzipped my guitar case. Having it in my arms felt easier. I can do this, I told myself. Moe came in and started fiddling around, putting headphones over my ears and making the microphone stand higher and lower and then higher again.

  “Happy?” He looked at me like he felt sorry for me. Like how Savannah looked at me, only his eyes were kind.

  “Yes, thank you, Moe.”

  He looked surprised.

  “What?” I said, thinking that my big, flappy mouth must’ve gone and offended him.

  “Not usual for the artist to remember my name,” he said.

  “What artists have you had?” I asked.

  “Recording here? A few biggies. Kylie did some things. Elbow, they were a laugh. Lorde, we loved her…” He touched my shoulder. “Relax. You’re going to be fine.”

  He was gone, shutting the door behind him. The room was now very, very quiet. Not the deep silence of the countryside at night or the scratchy hush of exams. This silence was flat and complete. As if someone had turned off my ears.

  Through the glass Moe mouthed something at me. I thought that maybe this was what it was like to be one of Lacey’s mom’s tropical fish.

  “Katie? Can you hear me?”

  This time the words came through the headphones, but honestly, it was as though they had been injected straight into my brain.

  “Yup.”

  My voice had never been so clear. I could hear every last part of it, all the little creaks and clicks, the slight wet noise my tongue made against the roof of my mouth. I’d always thought of it as smooth, something that flowed, but now, close up, it was like wood—grainy and knotted and full of splinters.

  “Katie, hi?” Tony this time. “Ready to try it?”

  I strummed a quick chord and then another.

  “Let’s do a quick run, see how it works out, Okay?”

  Then my fingers were moving of their own accord, scattering notes this way and that as the tune rose up in my throat.

  “I got mad skin,

  I got mad hair…”

  When Adele had started out, she’d have been just the same as I was now—standing in a studio, full of music.

  And call me crazy, but it was as though they were all there, my idols, lining up just behind me, cheering me on—Kate Bush, her arms wrapped around Amy Winehouse’s teeny-weeny waist; Dolly Parton, all boobs and hair; Joni Mitchell and Taylor Swift; Björk, who was for some reason dressed as a swan…

  Adrian winked at me through the glass, and as he did, I felt my heart leap.

  “I got mad love,

  I got mad hate,

  I’ve got all my life to come, and I just can’t wait

  And here’s the thing, I think you’ll agree,

  We’re all in this together. It’s not just me.”

  Later—much, much later—I was back in my bedroom. My bones were still vibrating with the memory of it all, so much so that I couldn’t quite seem to sit still and kept pinging between my bed and my desk and the window and the floor, around and around and around.

  There was the same tangle of clothes at the end of my bed, the same weird stain on the ceiling, the same old plate of pizza with its ever-increasing mane of green fur. Nothing had changed, but somehow everything had. Which I guess is what it will feel like when I actually have my first kiss, an event so far away that they will probably get a man on Mars before I manage to plant one on my mouth.

  I so wanted to tell Lacey about the day. How Moe had clapped me on the back and said that I’d played brilliantly. How they’d asked me if I was hungry and bought me a chicken wrap when I’d said I was. How they had a big jar of pencils on the desk with SQ Studios all written on the side and how I’d snuck a couple at the end, one for me and one for her.

  But that was old Lacey. It would take more than a pencil to get her to like me again.

  Still, she’d come around. And the pencil would keep.

  How long until a pencil doesn’t work?

  There was at least one person I could tell. One person who was scheduled to talk to me, who would be obliged to ask me how my day had been and listen to the answer.

  I looked at the clock again, and again and again and again until finally, finally, it was time to talk to Dad.

  “Katie!”

  And oh, but it was good to hear his voice. Like buttered toast on a cold Sunday afternoon. Like a hug. Like…Dad.

  “So, my little pop star, I’ve been hearing great things! Let’s all sit down and have a cup of tea!”

  “You’ve seen the video, then?”

  “Have I seen it? It’s all I see! I turn my email on, I get links to you. And people asking about you. Did I know my Katie was all over the Internet? What do I think? Can I get her to sign stuff for the girls at the store?”

  “People are listening to me in California? I can’t believe it.”

  “You’d better believe it.” He inhaled. “And that’s Adrian, huh?”

  “Yup.”

  “Kind of a sloppy pianist, if you ask me.”

  “He’s all right.”

  But Dad was still going. “Nah, he’s rotten. And his fashion sense isn’t much better. I’d have thought your mother might have gone for someone a little more… Well, a little less…”

  The way Dad goes on about his new girlfriend, I couldn’t resist taking the opportunity to getting back at him just a little bit. “He might be doing some session work on the new Karamel album.”

  “No way!” Dad sounded genuinely upset.

  “It’s true.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I worked with anyone under the age of twenty-five.”

  “Come back here, then,” I said. “I’ll talk to Tony, see if he can get you in on it as well. I’m sure you could stay on the sofa.”

  “Ah, you know, I said I’d help Catriona set up her new studio. Seriously, though, that Adrian guy, he’s a piece of work.”

  “But you thought I was all right?” I asked. Which was fishing, I know. But…

  “Katie, you were wonderful.”

  At last, a family member who appr
eciated me. It put me in such a good mood that I even asked, “So how is Catriona?”

  “She’s great! She’s just started two more classes, so she’s incredibly busy but good busy. And she’s been making me these terrific hot chocolates, sweetened with this stevia stuff. It’s like sugar, only it’s not sugar—”

  This went on for a while. And reminded me why I don’t normally ask.

  “So, you should know,” I said, “I’m going to release the song as a single.”

  “One of the girls was saying that’s exactly what you should do. Everyone’s doing it these days. Apparently it’s really easy. Just a few clicks, and maybe I won’t have to send you all that child support money. Joke!”

  Let’s be clear: Dad has always paid his child support on time. But, oh boy, does he go on and on about it.

  “Ha-ha. No, it’s with Top Music. They’re a real record label. We went to London today to record it.” I had this sudden flash of fear, that maybe he wouldn’t be Okay with it. That he’d freak out, break his code of silence with Mom, and—

  “That is fantastic news! Fantastic!”

  “You think so?”

  “Of course! Top Music? They’re huge!”

  “You’re not worried? You don’t think that it’s basically a bad idea?”

  “Of course not. Stop being so negative!”

  “Just, Mom’s been a little, er, funny about it. Mom and Lacey, actually. And Adrian’s been going on and on about how they were going to make me miss school and change my sound and how stressed out I’d be and that the whole thing would be a fight. But it wasn’t like that at all! Tony, he’s the head of the label, he’s been really nice, and he let me record it exactly how I wanted. I did it in three takes. Literally!”

  “Of course you did.”

  “So you’re not going to jump on a plane and ground me or anything?” I said.

  “Katie,” said Dad. “You’re happy, right?”

  “Very.”

  “Why would I mess with that? You go out there, do what you want to do, then make sure you get on the phone and tell your old dad all about it.”