Toronto Collection Volume 2 (Toronto Series #6-9)

by Heather Wardell

  I didn't want to give too much detail on the friend, though, since I wasn't sure that she would want me discussing her marriage. "She didn't say," I hedged, "but she told me how much the song touched her. That really touched me, and it made me think. So I decided to go ahead and—" Ack. I wasn't supposed to talk about the CD. But how could I finish that sentence?

  Evelyn's eyes widened. "Go ahead and sign with Jo?"

  Bless you for remembering I'm not allowed to discuss it. "Yes, exactly."

  She smiled and mercifully changed the subject. "So what's next for Misty Will?"

  I put as much enthusiasm as I could into my voice while explaining we'd be releasing my new song, "Prom Night Promise", on Friday. Amy didn't love the song but Misty had to so her fans would too.

  "This is awfully fast, isn't it? Didn't you just sign with Jo last week?"

  "That's right. Jo has a new model for the industry and we're giving it our best shot."

  "So what does that mean to you and your fans?"

  To me, it had meant a weekend of utter insanity, with constant rehearsals and recording sessions for both songs and the "Prom Night Promise" video shoot that started Sunday at ten o'clock at night and had dragged on until four this morning. I'd been hyped up after, of course, so I'd barely managed three hours of sleep before my makeup artist and dresser arrived to make Misty ready to meet Evelyn at her home recording studio.

  I doubted Jo wanted me spilling all that, since she'd warned me my fans were no doubt jealous of my newly glamorous life so I shouldn't sound like I was complaining, so I said, "Well, for me it means a lot of hard work and really tight deadlines, but I have great people working with me so it's all going really well. For my fans, it means a steady stream of new songs. 'Prom Night Promise' will be out this Friday and the re-release of 'Out Loud' is the Friday after that, and then we're planning to release a new one every week or two, at least until mid-June."

  "What happens then?"

  I smiled. "I'll be on tour, which I'm thrilled about." I was thrilled, but disappointed that I'd be the opening act for Angel Dove and not headlining my own show. Jo had said, frankly but not viciously, that I simply didn't have enough name recognition yet for that to work. Still, I'd be on tour, and maybe someday... "We start in Vegas, and then we'll be all over the United States, and back to Canada in time for July first."

  Evelyn smiled. "Perfect. A nice Canadian girl doing a concert for Canada Day."

  "I'm looking forward to it."

  "Of course, pink and white isn't quite right for Canada Day."

  I blinked. I wasn't wearing either color at the moment. Why would she say that?

  "For the tour, I mean. Hot pink for you and white for Angel. I must say, I've never heard of a concert tour basically requiring the audience to wear certain colors."

  I hadn't either, and I definitely hadn't known this was happening for my show. My face must have given that away, because Evelyn reddened. "But I don't mean to suggest it's a bad thing. It'll be cute, all those young girls dancing to your music wearing your favorite color. You and Angel's favorites. Right?"

  My favorite color was blue. "Yes. Definitely. And of course it's just a suggestion, not a requirement." I assumed. Thinking frantically about why they might have done this, I said, "It'll just make the audience even more a part of the show since they'll match our costumes."

  Evelyn smiled. "That's wonderful. Well, Misty, it's been great talking to you but I'm sure you have work to do."

  I'd be back in bed as soon as I got home, but I knew enough not to admit that. "Definitely. Lots of rehearsals and songwriting and general craziness. But I love it." I didn't sound passionate enough for my liking, so I said again, "I love it," then saw in Evelyn's expression that I now sounded like I was trying to convince her and her audience.

  Which, basically, I was. Them, and me.

  *****

  After saying goodbye to Evelyn I went home and straight to bed still in full Misty attire. When the fancy new cell phone I'd bought to go with my new phone number woke me from sleep, I groaned and checked my alarm clock. I'd been in bed fifteen minutes, and probably asleep for fourteen of them. Not nearly enough. I considered ignoring the phone but one glance at the screen made me clear my throat a few times and answer.

  "I need you here. Now."

  The tension in Jo's voice woke me up. "What's wrong?"

  "That interview, that's what's wrong. You sing beautifully but you can barely speak. You brought up the CD, and that costume thing was a nightmare."

  "I know, I'm sorry. I got tongue-tied."

  Obviously I hadn't quite woken up enough yet. Why was I agreeing with her? If she'd told me about the color requirements I wouldn't have sounded like such a fool.

  "We can't have that. Evelyn took it easy on you, but there'll be interviewers who rip you to shreds. We need to get you trained."

  I had a fitness trainer, two bitchy wardrobe trainers, and Tim who was training me to write songs Jo's way. I needed more training? I hadn't thought I was that pathetic. "How?"

  "Ned Kress. He's the best media consultant I know. He'll teach you how to speak and get your message across."

  Wasn't my message "be fun and wild"? Did I really need a consultant to make that clear, especially given that "Prom Night Promise" seemed to be doing the job all by itself?

  When I didn't speak, Jo said, "Don't fall apart on me, kiddo. I know this is a lot of work and time, but it's so important. These early days will make or break your career. And we want them to make it. Don't we?"

  "Of course, but... Jo, I'm exhausted. The video shoot ran so late and I couldn't sleep after, and then this interview... I just need a rest."

  She paused, and I wondered if she was trying to decide how to fire me. Frankly, I couldn't work up the energy to care. Then she said, "Okay. I'll book Ned for tomorrow. You've got the morning off. But you do have to be here this afternoon."

  "Don't worry, I will. I want to." More rehearsals for the tour. I'd adored singing on stage at my launch party, and anything that brought me closer to doing that again was high on my list of priorities.

  "Good. Now get some sleep and I'll see you here at one ready to go. Remember, a lot of people are relying on you. A lot of careers depend on how you do."

  Is it any wonder, after her parting comment, that I lay staring at my ceiling instead of getting the sleep I so desperately needed?

  *****

  Rehearsal began at one o'clock that afternoon. Steven let us go at eight, after a cheerful pep talk about how well we'd worked and how much more we needed to work tomorrow. My backup dancers and most of the band left with good-hearted groans, but Jez stayed with Steven, sitting beside him with her head on his shoulder, clearly half-asleep.

  I so envied her physical ease with him. I'd never felt that kind of comfort with a man. Even Jason's hugs left me a little stiff and nervous, and while I'd been disappointed he'd left that morning for yet another trip, this time just to New York, I'd also been relieved I wouldn't be pressured. I simply wasn't the touchy-feely type.

  "Great job today, and on the weekend too." Steven smiled at me through his own fatigue. "Is all this anything like you'd expected?"

  "I didn't know what to expect. But no."

  "Well, I think you'll be a huge success. Don't you, honey?" He squeezed Jez.

  "Mom knows how to pick 'em," she said without opening her eyes.

  A thought made its way to the top of my exhausted brain. "Is Jez short for something?"

  She looked at me, her head on sideways because it still rested on Steven's shoulder. "Jezebel. The last person who called me that is still bleeding, so don't try it."

  The dubious pleasures of a rock star mother. "Never."

  She smiled. "Good. I'd rather not kill you."

  "I'm glad. And you wrote 'Prom Night Promise', right?"

  "The music, anyhow. You've met Tim?"

  "Yup. Nice guy."

  "Yup. Has he saluted you yet?"

  Steven laughe
d and I said, "Has he... what?"

  "He hasn't. He will. He does it all the time."

  "Weird."

  "Yup."

  The three of us sat there without speaking, slowly collapsing into sleep, until Steven said, "We'd better go. Come on, ladies, on your feet."

  We muttered but did as he said. As we walked slowly down the hall one of Jo's many assistants appeared in her office doorway. "Misty? This just came through on the fax machine for you. I'm not sure what to do with it and Jo's not here so..."

  I took the sheet because she was working herself up, and she smiled with relief and headed back to her desk.

  "She's still working?"

  Jez snorted. "The night shift's just getting started. They monitor stuff in Europe and Asia and when Mom gets in tomorrow at the buttcrack of dawn she'll get a full report on the industry."

  I said, "Hmm." I couldn't think of anything else, and Jez didn't seem to expect more.

  Once we were on the elevator, I skimmed the paper I'd been given. Then read it again and again.

  "Misty? You okay?"

  "I... no." I stretched out my hand, which I noticed dimly was shaking, and passed the paper to Steven.

  He read it, whistled, then passed it to Jez. She finished as the elevator reached the ground floor then sighed and handed it back to me.

  I didn't want it. I didn't need it either; I couldn't imagine I'd forget the words on it.

  You're going to wish you weren't doing this. Stop now. You don't want to regret what you've done with your short life.

  Chapter Seven

  Though I spent all night worrying about the fax Jo didn't spend even a moment worrying when I showed it to her the next morning.

  "Goes with being famous, I'm afraid. Some idiot wants to think he's got control over you. Ignore it."

  I frowned at the paper in her hand. "It feels... threatening. Doesn't it?"

  Her face softened. "Misty, you need to get used to this. People will be sending you all sorts of notes. Love letters and offers of marriage and yeah, some vaguely threatening ones. Just let your assistant handle them."

  "My..."

  She shook her head in disgust. "I knew I was forgetting something. Our social media people are handling the web site and your Twitter account and all that stuff, but you should have an assistant too, someone to protect you from that crap. I'll get the temp agency to set up some interviews tomorrow and you can pick one. Okay?"

  I'd get to choose? I'd actually have control over something for the first time since all this started? "Yes. Thank you. And thank you for the social media stuff too. I'm glad I don't have to worry about doing it myself." I wouldn't know where to start, or what to say to my fans. Far better to let the professionals handle it.

  "You're welcome." She crumpled the fax and threw it into her recycling box. "Forget that. Moving on." She pressed her intercom button and said, "Send Ned in, please."

  "He's on his way."

  Moments later, the tiniest man I'd ever seen walked into the room. He was nowhere close to my height and seemed barely half my weight. Bones covered in skin covered in a shimmery silver suit, that was him. His pure-black hair was cut in such sharp angles that the stylist probably needed a ruler to get it perfect, and was incredibly glossy. He wore glasses with an equally glossy black rim, through which his green eyes surveyed me like he'd just discovered a new and unappreciated species of bug.

  I didn't like him much either.

  "Misty, this is Ned. Ned, Misty."

  Ned extended a hand up to me and I shook it, surprised at the strength of his grip given his fragile appearance.

  He gave me a frozen smile. "Lesson one. Don't be predictable. You figured I'd have a weak handshake, didn't you?"

  I nodded. Why sugar-coat it for this weird little man?

  "So now you're off-balance. Always keep your interviewers off-balance. Remember, they'll be trying to do it to you."

  What a charming world he lived in.

  Jo waved us to seats and took her own sapphire-blue chair, then said, "So, Ned, Amy needs to learn how to handle herself in scheduled interviews and how to respond to unexpected meetings with fans and so on."

  "Certainly."

  And for the next two hours, in a small conference room down the hall from Jo's office, he taught me exactly that. We went through how to fake humility and embarrassment, how to talk about how well I was doing without bragging, and how to handle criticism of what he called the 'fluffy' nature of my music. He kept using that term as we worked together, and it kept annoying me, so I got lots of practice on handling it.

  By the end I wasn't even sure I was competent to handle a question like "Do you want coffee?" without supervision, but when he led me back to Jo's office and did a mock interview with me Jo was pleased and Ned grudgingly pronounced me 'better'.

  Better at pretending to be Misty. Yay.

  *****

  I spent the afternoon being interviewed and photographed by two print magazines and three online ones. Each interviewer and photographer only had fifteen minutes with me, but since I had to be in a completely different outfit for each, which also necessitated a different wig and a change of makeup, they were scheduled an hour apart and we still ended up keeping them waiting.

  Ned watched the interviews and gave me tips between them, and though I still didn't like him I had to admit he knew his stuff. I got steadily better and more relaxed as the sessions went on, and the final one, for the second print magazine, felt like I'd been doing interviews forever.

  After, I took a shower and scrubbed off all the makeup, then thankfully slipped back into my jeans and sweatshirt and grabbed a quick Marcus-approved dinner before more recording sessions. "Prom Night Promise" would be out on Friday and "Out Loud" the next Friday, so we needed to get moving.

  The band had already laid down its tracks for both songs, and I'd sung with them, but Steven needed more recordings of me so I stood alone in the studio wearing big headphones and ran through "Prom Night Promise" over and over, making sure I lined up my notes with the band, singing to Steven so I'd feel at least some of the energy of having an audience. He let me switch to "Out Loud" every so often for some variety but mostly I sang "Prom Night Promise", struggling to keep the same level of fake enthusiasm for the song I could barely stand, sipping hot water with honey between takes to keep my throat calm.

  We were still there at two in the morning, but it was worth it, because when Steven played back my last effort combined with the band's recording I liked it more than I'd have expected. "Sounds great." I blushed. "Not just me. I mean everything."

  He smiled and rubbed his eyes, no doubt exhausted from hours of staring at the monitors. "Brag if you want to, I don't mind. This is the best take by far. I'll splice in the second chorus from that other one we liked but the other splices will be pretty minor."

  I tried to get my tired mind to understand this. "Splice?"

  He frowned. "You didn't think we'd just use one of the run-throughs, did you?"

  Since that was how we'd recorded each song on my CD, I had to nod.

  "Nope. Some people's songs are snippets of a few seconds each all spliced together. Yours won't be, for sure, because you don't need that. But I definitely won't use a take all the way through. Bits here and there from everything we've done."

  I was too tired to argue, and his expression and the firmness in his voice made it clear there wasn't any point anyhow. But I didn't like it. The song my fans would download on Friday wouldn't be real. What was the point of that?

  Chapter Eight

  "I asked Jez to work this up for you. It's a little different than your usual sound, but I think you'll like it."

  Tim pressed the play button on Jo's stereo before I could comment. Everyone these days seemed to be trying to change my usual. I didn't dress the same, didn't say the same things thanks to Ned's training, didn't even have the same name any more. Why couldn't I stay the person who'd caught the public's attention?

  I'd c
omplained about that to Jason when he'd come home from New York the night before, and he'd just rolled his eyes. When I questioned this, he said, "The person who caught the attention wasn't you anyhow. All that makeup and the miniskirt and everything? So why would you think it could be the real you now?" Then he'd gone off into the shower before I'd been able to fully process the frustration and anger in his voice.

  When he came out, he'd apologized, but his words had stuck with me. Who was I, really? Misty, Amy, or some weird mix of the two? Did it even matter, since I wouldn't be Misty after I'd made enough money for the center?

  I pushed that question aside for now so I could listen to Tim's recording. The lyrics were from one of my own songs, but the tune was utterly different, deep and dark and haunting. I did like it, but not for me. It required a tall lean woman with long flowing hair and pain in her eyes, swaying as if taken away by the music.

  He'd used the lyrics from one of my deepest songs and yet my words still didn't go deep enough for the new melody. Frankly, I was glad they didn't. I did always try to add emotion and depth to my songs but I wanted them to be fun to listen to as well, and the music he'd brought me was nearly as fun as a funeral procession.

  When the last aching note died away, I shook my head.

  He frowned. "You don't like it?"

  "It's gorgeous. But it's absolutely not my song."

  Jo nodded. "Jez does great work, of course, but I wouldn't let this go out under Misty's name." She turned to me. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're happy with your existing sound, right?"

  "I am. I know it's a little..."

  "Bubble gum?"

  "Light," I said, as if Tim hadn't spoken, trying to hide my annoyance at his words. "But I love listening to lighter music so my songs come out the same way. And it does work for Misty, doesn't it?"

  She nodded. To Tim, she said, "Don't be changing her. She's got the perfect sound for her market and I don't want anything done to that. Got it?"