But I did. Didn't I? Tim thought I should want more. But I didn't know what I wanted any more.
At that thought the back of my throat tightened. I did know one thing.
I wanted Tim.
Acknowledging it to myself flooded my eyes with tears. I hadn't realized how much I cared about him, how important he'd become to me, but I realized it now. Now that he was gone. My stupid behavior had driven him away and I might never see him again.
I didn't think I could make it through my interviews without breaking down, so instead I took a deep breath and threw a little diva fit. Trying to copy how I'd seen Angel act, I told the nervous girl working as my assistant at the venue, who'd been hovering around as I drank my water, that I absolutely would not be photographed without a shower and fresh clothes. She went off to make the reporters wait, and I discarded Misty's wig and clothes and makeup then pulled the shower curtain closed and let the water pound down on me so I could cry without being overheard.
I'd told him about Shawn and he'd supported me and soothed me, and I'd never once feared he would expose my secret. I wrote so much better songs when we worked together, at least I did back before I let myself get too focused on Bart and the glamorous lifestyle he represented, and when Tim touched me I felt warm and protected instead of numb and distant.
I'd lost that. I'd lost him because I couldn't be more than Misty.
I spent ages in the shower, crying in great sobs that shocked me. The numbness was gone, and I missed it because the pain felt strong enough to kill me. I couldn't think, could barely breathe. All I could do was cry.
When the water began to cool, though, I knew I had to pull myself together. There were still reporters waiting for me. I'd learned from Angel that they'd wait for hours past their scheduled time but I didn't want to make them wait any more. They'd say bad things about Misty if I did.
I'd lost Tim. I couldn't lose Misty too. She was all I had left.
Chapter Thirty-One
The rest of the tour passed in a blur of hotel rooms and stadiums and Bart. He came to visit me a few times a week, always for sex and then a night on the town where we were photographed over and over.
We still barely talked, at least not about anything that mattered. I tried, once, to tell him how I felt about Tim's departure but he just said, "But this Phil guy is okay, right?"
He was, actually. He was perfect. He'd given me three songs and I hadn't changed a single word. They fit Misty's image so perfectly that there was nothing to change.
"So don't worry about it." He pulled me close and kissed me as cameras flashed all around us.
Then he tapped me lightly on the nose and smiled down into my eyes, like he'd done to his costar in his latest movie's trailer, and I knew right through me that Tim had been right. Bart didn't like me. He and Misty were a mutual promotional scheme, like when Angel began advertising the white shoes she always wore on stage. Every one of Bart's actions with me had been for the cameras. For the cameras or for his sexual satisfaction.
Realizing this didn't bother me as much as it might have. My numbness had returned a few days after Tim's departure, and I'd welcomed it. So much better than the pain. Misty was barreling ahead like a tour bus, and there was no way to stop her, so why bother trying? I had become Misty, like Jo had told me to do. I hadn't heard my real name since Tim left.
I finished the tour, and if the reviews were a little disappointing the fans had still loved it. Now that it was over I'd never been busier with interviews and fan meetings and rehearsals with Jez and Steven and sessions with Phil. The busier the better, frankly. I liked having no time to think.
Unfortunately, the week after the tour ended Phil's kid caught a vicious cold at her daycare. Since getting sick would be disastrous to my tight recording schedule, I couldn't meet with Phil until his possible infective time had passed. He emailed me his latest song and we chatted about it over the phone while I listlessly roamed the Internet. I didn't much care what he said. The song was fine. All of his songs had been fine.
As I browsed, I wandered over to Evelyn's blog, to the site that had started everything, and to my surprise found it gone. I did a search, while murmuring my agreement to Phil's proposed change to the song, and soon found several articles about it.
Evelyn had decided to quit. She'd been interviewed, since having a top music blogger suddenly walk away wasn't a usual occurrence, and had simply said, "I don't love it any more. And I want to do what I love. I'll be back once I know what that is."
I considered contacting my cousin Blake to see if he had more details about his girlfriend's decision but instead shut down my computer and said, "Phil? I have to go, okay? But that all sounds fine. Do what you want."
He cheerfully wished me a good day and got off the phone. He didn't know I hadn't always let Tim do what he wanted with my songs. Phil wasn't as good a songwriter as Tim. He was far more formulaic and cookie-cutter in his approach. But that seemed to work right now.
Evelyn would be back once she knew what she loved.
I knew what I loved. Performing. Being on stage, feeling the audience's happiness and energy pouring into me. I enjoyed writing songs too, especially with Tim, but the performances were the best part for me.
But they weren't nearly enough. What about the center? Helping people? My dream with Giselle? I couldn't do it the way we'd planned and be Misty too. Or even my songs as Amy, the depth and darkness some of them had incorporated. They'd changed the life of that woman at the wedding, which had driven me to make the CD. And Cindy had been drawing strength from them. I didn't know how she'd been doing with the landlord but I knew she'd found the drive to try by listening to Amy's music. Misty wasn't the same.
But Misty's songs had changed lives too. That beautiful girl who'd stopped cutting after hearing 'Don't Weight'. All the fans who wrote and told me how much they loved me and how happy the songs made them and how they used my music to make themselves stronger.
I couldn't be Misty and sing as Amy and run the center too. But I also couldn't imagine how I'd choose which one mattered the most to me.
*****
The next day, I waited until Cindy and I had finished with the mail I needed to see and then said, "So, how're things with the landlord?"
She looked up, startled. "Um, about the same."
My heart sank. "I thought you were going to make him fix the machines." I thought my music was going to help her.
No to both, as it turned out. She sighed. "I did talk to him, but it didn't work."
"Why not?"
She rubbed her forehead. "He didn't listen. He just said I could go to the laundromat."
"But you have the machines there so you don't have to."
She turned her hands palm-up helplessly. "Don't tell me, tell him."
"But why didn't you tell him?"
I'd spoken louder than I meant to, and she flushed.
"Sorry. I know it's not easy."
She began explaining how she'd tried to talk to him and how he'd overridden her, and I sat half-listening and miserable. I'd thought listening to Amy's music had helped her. If those songs couldn't even help someone I knew personally, what was the point of them?
No point, clearly. Misty, with her miniskirts and wigs, was having a far greater impact on the world. My cartoonish alter-ego was succeeding where I couldn't.
Cindy sighed. "I know you're disappointed in me."
I leaned back in my chair. "No, in me. I thought I could help more."
"If I weren't so pathetic you could."
"You're not. You're great."
She sighed. "Oh, Amy. I just feel so lost."
I should have responded to that, but instead I said, "Nobody calls me Amy any more."
"Sorry, I won't—"
"No, I love it," I said, surprising us both with my vehemence. "I'm glad someone remembers I'm not just Misty."
She gave me a sad smile and didn't say what I knew we were both thinking.
Tim had remembere
d it too.
I hadn't spoken to him since his departure. I hadn't known what to say, especially after finding out that he'd gone not to work on his novel as I'd expected but to write songs with Annika, the latest one-name sensation, who'd built her career on being dark and soulful with deep and impenetrable lyrics. He'd obviously given up on me and moved to someone who could appreciate his songwriting skill. That hurt more than I could have imagined.
"Amy, why'd Tim leave?"
She'd never asked me before but I'd seen several times that she wanted to, and though I didn't want to answer I had to be impressed that she'd found the nerve to ask. I knew it was hard for her. So I told her the truth. "He wanted me to give up the Misty thing and go back to being Amy. I couldn't do it."
She shook her head. "No. You'd lose everything, wouldn't you?" She gestured around the room. "All this, all Jo's support. And all those fans too."
"Yeah." I didn't want to discuss it any more so I went back to what she'd said before. "Why do you feel lost?"
She grimaced. "I'm nearly forty and I just can't get it together. My landlord pushes me around, my ex-husband pushes me around, yesterday I tried to buy meat at the grocery store and the butcher pushed me around. The butcher! I can't take control anywhere. I hate it."
Though I knew it wasn't the point, I had to say, "What did the butcher do?"
"I wanted a steak to cut up for a stir-fry and he insisted on cutting it for me. I said I didn't want him to but he just said, 'You'll be glad when it's done' and did it anyhow. I didn't stop him. I couldn't figure out how."
I sighed. "Well, if you ever figure it out, let me know, okay?"
She frowned. "But you're totally in charge here."
"Misty is in charge. Actually, Jo is, but Misty's the reason everything's happening to me."
"But it's good, right? The fame and all that? Having people buy your songs? You're not drinking so much to get away from it, are you? You like dating Bart, all the parties and night clubs. Right?"
I looked at her anxious face and realized she needed me to say yes. She had been working hard for months to get me where I was, and she wanted to know I liked it. "Well, yeah, of course," I said, feeling faintly sick. "That part's amazing. And I'm not drinking 'so much', whatever that means. It's just... I had the goal of the CD, way back. And it exploded into all this. I can't get my head around it. And I still have the goal of the center." She'd seen the correspondence course's files on the network drive we shared and I'd explained the center and my dreams. "I have the resources now to make it happen but I don't have the time. Not with everything it takes to be Misty."
She nodded. "No progress on that course?"
"Not a drop. I don't have even a second to make it happen. Not enough control over my schedule."
Cindy looked like she had something to say but she kept it to herself. Eventually I said, "What?"
Her cheeks reddened. "Oh, nothing. I just thought of something."
I smiled. "Then it's not nothing, is it?"
She smiled too. "It's no big deal. It's about control." Her smile faded. "I'm scared this will come out wrong, but you don't have any control now."
"Right." She shouldn't have been afraid of saying that, since I'd just said the same thing.
She went on, though. "Well, when your friend Giselle died, it was the same thing, right? No control then either."
Tears tightened the back of my throat immediately. No control, all right. I hadn't been able to control Giselle's death, and after Shawn I'd felt even less in charge of my life. I took a deep breath to relax myself before I said, "That's probably true. But what do I do about it?"
She glanced at the computer. "You have no meetings for the next two hours. Go hide in the conference room and work on your course. If anyone needs you, I'll stall them."
Why not? Two full hours to move forward on the dream. "You know what? I will."
She smiled, and on impulse I stood up and hugged her. She squeezed me tight then said, "Get out of here. Take back that control!"
I laughed and headed out with her laptop since I hadn't brought my own with me. I made it to the conference room without incident and sealed myself inside. I even opened the files.
Then I spent the two hours playing computer solitaire instead.
*****
Later that night, I sat on my couch in a funk. Why had I wasted that time? Throughout the two hours I'd kept trying to get myself to do the course but it simply hadn't happened. I knew I wasn't lazy, so why the huge block? I spent a good hour of my rare night off abusing myself for it, then felt worse when I realized I could have spent that hour, oh, working on the course. Yet another chunk of free time wasted.
Not able to stand being in my apartment another minute, I contemplated going to the private coffee shop but didn't want to hang out with my friends there. All my friends now were famous people or people helping me stay famous. I didn't want to see any of them at the moment.
So I dressed down, carefully hiding every element of Misty and making myself into Amy by wearing no makeup and sunglasses with my oldest scruffiest jeans and a big hooded sweatshirt Jason had left behind, and headed to the Starbucks I'd frequented in my previous life.
Luckily, the sun hadn't yet gone down so my sunglasses didn't attract attention, and I had no trouble getting my drink, and a cookie though Marcus would have killed me if he'd known. I even got my favorite table outside with a nice view of the crowds bustling past.
My shoulders relaxed, releasing tension I hadn't known they were holding, as I sat and sipped and watched the world go by. I could be me again, even if only for a short time, and it felt good.
"Excuse me?"
I turned, startled and afraid, to the young teenage girl sitting next to me.
She gestured to her table, where a frozen pink drink sat next to a book of Robert Frost's poems. "Would you watch my stuff for me? I'll be right back."
No hint of recognition on her face, but I didn't want to risk it so I nodded and smiled instead of speaking.
She'd been wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a cartoon polar bear. When she returned, she wore a black spandex dress that clung to her skinny body and nearly as much makeup as I wore on stage.
She gave me a quick smile, said, "Thanks," then settled back into her seat.
"You're welcome," I murmured, feeling sick. What was she up to? If she was fifteen years old I'd be surprised, and the costume change in a Starbucks bathroom suggested she was going somewhere her parents wouldn't like. I didn't like it either, but I couldn't think of anything to do about it.
She picked up her book, then set it down again. Swirled her straw through the whipped cream on her frosty drink and licked it off like a child. Shifted in her seat and tugged at the hem of her dress. Her nervousness flowed from her in waves, soaking into me and making my heart race. I couldn't imagine how bad she felt as the source of that emotion. She looked so much like she was heading into something she couldn't handle, and I longed to stop her. But how?
As I pondered, her phone rang. "Hello?" The fear in that single word made my stomach twist. "Yeah, I'm here. Oh, the other one? Oh, God. Okay, I'll be right there. No, don't. I'll be there in five minutes. Sorry. I'll be—"
She pulled the phone from her ear and looked at the screen, but it was obvious to me that her caller had hung up. Probably in anger.
She stuffed her book into her backpack then picked up her drink and headed out, wobbling on black spike heels. As she passed a garbage can, she tossed the drink into it. Must have lost her appetite.
So had I.
Every line of her body said she was terrified of what she was doing. I'd probably looked exactly the same walking into that alley with Shawn, knowing I was making a mistake but doing it anyhow. Why? Because it broke through the numbness. Maybe she was numb too.
She was exactly the kind of girl the center had been intended to help. Smart, sweet, and heading down the wrong path.
The songs I'd written with Tim had been intended
to help with that too. "Don't Weight" in particular had generated so much "I like myself better because of your song" mail that Cindy had been overwhelmed by it. But my songs now didn't have that sort of message. Phil, while a nice guy, clearly didn't see past the Misty image, so all my songs were flirty and cute and forgettable.
I didn't want to be any of those things any more.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Cindy had left early for a dentist appointment so I hid in her office to call Mac and waited there until he brought the car around for me. Once I settled into it I put on my headphones right away with an apologetic "Have to work" so he wouldn't talk to me. I didn't play any music, though, and I wasn't trying to work. I needed to be alone. I'd never wanted to be alone this much in my life, since I'd always enjoyed having people around me, but Misty's life was nothing but people and I couldn't socialize right now.
I had to think about what I'd learned.
I'd tried to hold myself together for the day's interviews but I couldn't focus. The girl I'd seen at Starbucks the night before had made me think about the center and my career and how I could handle them both at once. The course I wasn't doing kept coming to mind too, and eventually I realized I should find out whether I actually needed it. If I didn't, why bother?
Not that I'd bothered so far.
A last-minute interviewer cancellation left me with an unexpected half hour off, and I'd decided to use that time to get the answers I needed. I briefly considered calling Tim to see what he thought, but since we hadn't spoken since his departure I was afraid he'd refuse to talk to me. Instead, after some thought I called the University of Toronto's social work department. They should know what I'd need to get the center running.
The receptionist didn't want any part of me at first, insisting I should make an appointment in a few weeks, so in desperation I said, "Listen, I didn't want to do this, but I'm Misty Will. The singer?"
She gasped. "Really?"
"I'm looking at founding a center for teenage girls. I have time now and I probably won't in a few weeks, and I'd really like to know what qualifications I'd need. Is there nobody who could help?"
Toronto Collection Volume 2 (Toronto Series #6-9) Page 15
