by Kayley Cole
"No," I say. "I mean it. I'm not being overdramatic or whatever else you think is happening. Your career always had more power behind it. You shouldn't throw it away for me."
"Ellie, you've always been the more talented one," he says, his voice soft enough to break me. "I swear, if I could think of a way to get Anya to retract what she said, and if I thought it would help, I'd do it."
"Can you please just leave?" I indicate toward the door with the wine. "I know you just took all that time to sneak in, but I just want to be alone. I need to be alone right now."
He takes a step toward me, but I turn away from him. I listen to his footsteps and the door softly shut. I set the wine down and sit on the couch. I lie my head on the armrest and stare up at the black TV screen. It reflects my apartment and all the glamour I had gained in the last year.
I just want to write songs again without anyone breathing down my neck. I want Jake without any lies or charades between us or other people. I want to go back in time to when Jake and I first started dating, but once the public knows your name, it's carved in the concrete. We will never be able to go back to who we used to be.
I don't need Jake's permission to hurt Anya. I don't need him to defend or attack for me.
Chapter Ten
Jake
At the airport, Andrew sticks out like a pale-legged polar bear in the jungle. It doesn't help that he's wearing black clothes which don’t fit in with the rainbow of colors everyone else is wearing, making him look even paler.
"How are you doing?" I ask, tugging down on my ball cap as he walks up to me. I turn, and we walk side by side.
"Do you mean, am I still categorically crazy?" he asks. "Or do you mean, am I still fired from the Saffron Police Department because you and Ellie made it seem like I was crazy? Or are you asking if it's gotten better since you let it leak in a small town that you thought I was crazy? You know small towns and their acceptance of crazy people."
"We tried to keep it low-key," I say. "But you kept on trying to control Ellie's life."
"And I was right, wasn't I? She went to LA, and her life is crumbling before everyone's eyes. Good job, Jake. You did an awesome job of protecting her. They should give you a gold star. You could get one of those sheriff stars and become the sheriff of Saffron."
I spin around, blocking him from walking any farther. I'm only a half-inch taller than him, but the effect of having a full-blown gym in my house is evident. "You sent her threatening messages and had a criminal attack her, Andrew. I wouldn't start talking shit about who can and can't protect her."
He shrugs, but his hands clasp in front of his groin like I've taken a cheap shot at him. "You're the boss here, Jake.“
"Did you bring what I asked for?"
"I don't think it will help you that much. It's sixteen-years-old." He pulls a photograph out of his black jeans. I take it from him.
The photo shows Ellie— maybe six or seven years old— and Andrew, nine or ten years old, with an overweight man with a big beard. Their father. Andrew is right— it's impossible to tell if this is the same man. Too much time has passed, the beard obstructs his lower facial features, and he could have lost all the weight.
"One day, I might turn this into a film," I mutter.
"Can Leonardo DiCaprio play me?"
"You won't be in it."
Andrew snatches the photo back from me, shoving it in his pocket. "It's one of the only photos I have of my father, so thanks for smudging it with your finger. Why don't I just meet this guy you think is an imposter? I'll be able to tell if it's him."
"That's what you're here for. You think you'll be able to recognize your father after sixteen years?"
"He'll look like me, but older. How hard can it be?"
His words remind me why we had been friends. He was always ready to try anything and never saw any possible consequences for his actions. It made it easy to convince him to commit vandalism or slip some things from the store shelf into his pockets. He was the perfect partner in crime, but I should have seen that his leniency about the rules wasn't because he loved the adrenaline rush or the idea of outsmarting other people. It was because he didn't think the rules applied to him.
Also, he's crazy.
"Fine," I say. "But you can't let Ellie find out."
"Buddy, if I intended to hurt Ellie, like you always think I do, I would have told her already. She would think you were the scum of the earth and this whole thing would be done. But I love Ellie, and I like that you're going to pay for a nice hotel room for me. When do we get to go to the beach?"
We step out of the airport. The sun pours down, but I keep my eyes on the sidewalk. I can't risk being recognized, and I already have a sinking feeling that everything is about to come crashing down on my head.
Chapter Eleven
Ellie
When I call Isabella Rollins, Jake's private investigator, all I hear is metal music blaring for the first ten seconds.
"One minute," she says. I listen to the music slowly turn down until there's only a soft grumble and a deep bass left. "What's up, cupcake?"
"Why do you call me that?" I ask.
"Because you're so sweet on top, and so dry under your wrapping."
I close my eyes, rubbing my temple. "Well, for once you're part of the popular crowd now because you hate me like everyone else."
"I know," she says. "It weirds me out. And it makes me like you, which weirds me out even more."
I stare into my bathroom. I've never spent so much time in my apartment since I've gotten it and I've resorted to just wandering around, hoping a fairy godmother will come down and turn me into someone in a better situation. "I need your help."
"By help, I hope you mean a job because I only help people when I get paid.”a
"Yeah. I'll pay you. I'll put burlesque dance on the invoice."
"You know me so well! Only took you a year." She purrs— literally— with a sharp edge that reminds me more of a tiger than a kitten. "If this is about your father, I'm working on it right now. You're distracting me."
"What? Why would I be talking about my father? You're the second person to bring him up recently." I stop. "Isabella..."
"Fuck," she says, so softly that it sounds like she's saying fox.
"Isabella, why would you be working on something concerning my father?" I ask.
"I'm not," she says, her voice resembling a purr again, but it's less confident. "I got confused. Jake wanted me to look into something concerning his father— you know, he's a surgeon. There was an issue with someone he worked on, and this client wanted to sue his father for malpractice. He just wanted me to check it out. What did you want, Ellie? You're boring me and you’re disrupting my process, so spit it out."
"Isabella, you're a terrible liar."
"And you call other women prostitutes. At least I get paid to be shitty. Spit it out. I've got shit to do, and none of it involves talking to you."
"Isabella..."
"If you stopped saying my name, we'd probably save about five minutes of this conversation."
I shake my head. "You know what?"
"Please, for the love of God and all that is holy, tell me that you're ending this conversation."
"No. I still need your help. For a job. I need you to get me something to hold over Anya Bowline."
"But she's even worse than you, Ellie. If you're a cupcake, she's a wedding cake. Overpriced, overrated, and it symbolizes a lie. You know how much P.I. work I've had to do at weddings? Shitty celebration, shitty people, shitty cake."
"I don't think I've ever liked you so much, Isabella. I don't think I've ever liked you, but there's a small spark that's bordering on fondness now that we both think Anya is a terrible person."
"Ew," she mutters. "Anyway, since you're definitely going to pay me or else I'm gonna fuck up your life, I already did a job for Anya."
"You did a job for her? How do you even know Anya?" I take a deep breath. "Right. Through Jake. Apparently, he tells
all his girlfriends about you."
"Yeah. Quit your bitching and let me finish my story. It's a good one," she says. "So, this one time, I went to her house to deliver some information and get my final payment. First, her security guy wouldn't let me through the door, so I caused a minor distraction to get in. I was ready to rip a new one into her after this because it was a huge waste of my time, so I just walked into her house. And you know what she was doing? She was fucking Daniel Nagel."
"I don't know who that is," I say.
"Neither did I," she says. "But I figured if I was desperate for money, I could use this kind of information against her. So, after scooting my way out of sight, I found the guy's pants with his driver's license, I found out his name and I looked up who he is. He's the brother of one of the committee members of that dumbass music award show that's happening next month."
"The Devotee Awards?"
"Yeah. Sure. Maybe," she says. "At the very least, it would raise some questions about whether she actually won some of those awards over merit or not. If you want my services, I could track her for a while, see if Daniel is sticking it up her like she has that stick up her ass. But it'd have to wait a few days. You know. Because of Jake's dad."
"She'd shrug a scandal like that off," I say. "It's the brother of a committee that has twelve people in it. It could only have an effect on one of the twelve members."
"It would give everyone a reason to doubt her though, and that's what you need."
"I don't know. It seems flimsy and if I'm connected to this..."
"Time's up," she cuts me off. "You can do the job yourself if you don't want my help. I gotta track down a man, and you gotta find a shrink to listen to your problems. Buh-bye, cupcake."
She hangs up. Even the people I reach out to for help and I'm willing to pay are blowing me off.
I walk into my bedroom and walk over to my closet. Inside, I keep three wigs. One of them is from a music video, one of them was from when I played an extra in one of the music videos Jake directed, and one of them— long, straggly black hair— I bought to help disguise myself. I grab the last one, pulling it over my own hair.
Isabella is right about one thing— I need to stop complaining. I need to take control of this situation, and the only way to do that is to catch Anya doing something that will mess with her reputation far more than she messed with mine.
I look at myself in the mirror, my face shape distorted by the hair. I'll have to ask Jake about what Isabella meant when she mentioned my father. It will not be a good conversation— and I'm nearly tempted in avoiding it altogether— but it's not a small lie, and it's not something I'd ever be able to forget that he hid from me.
I'm burning so many bridges at this point that it feels like I'm on an island, and maybe it's better that way.
Chapter Twelve
Jake
"Why couldn't we meet him at a bar?" Andrew asks. "At least we could have gotten drunk there while we waited, and drunk after he left with his tail behind his legs."
"He's a paranoid guy," I say. "He thinks the government is going to use his blood against him. I figured a bar would be too chaotic. This place is just fine. Eat your fries and stop talking to me. I don't want him to notice you until you've figured out if he's your father or not."
I wouldn't tell Andrew, but I wish we were at a bar too. This restaurant is clearly aimed for families with young kids because the floor is sticky, there's trash on every third table, and a baby has been staring at my wolf skull tattoo for the last four minutes while his mother glares daggers into the side of my head like she thinks her child is going to grow up to become a necromancer from seeing the tattoo. The burger is also so overcooked that it's crumbling apart. It hasn't stopped Andrew from eating his second one though, so I guess some people have standards and some people have psychopathy.
As Andrew finishes the last bite of his burger, I hear the bells above the door jingle as someone steps inside. I turn and see the man claiming to be Matthew Rue. He looks too thin to be in this burger restaurant. He's as out-of-place here as Andrew was at the airport.
Andrew hasn't noticed him yet. I whack Andrew in the arm as the man approaches us. As Andrew's eyes flicker toward me, his face scrunched up in annoyance, I look back at the man. The man is looking over at Andrew. I didn't expect the man to recognize him— Andrew wouldn't have hit puberty before Matthew Rue left— but there is a flicker of recognition. I turn to look at Andrew, but Andrew has already launched himself out of his chair, throwing his whole body into the man's arms.
"Christ, Dad, Christ," Andrew blurts, still clinging to his father. His father wraps his arms around Andrew. There's a strange feeling of numbness on the edge of my skin. I didn't think this man was their father. Or I just didn't want it to be because I was a selfish prick that didn't want to give up any more money.
Andrew turns to me. His eyes are glossy. "Jake, it's him. Holy shit. I didn't think it would be. Can you believe it? After all these years. It's like the prodigal son in reverse."
"I didn't believe it would be him either," I admit, standing up. "I should let you guys have some time together. I'll have to go through a whole process with the bank to get the money, so I won't be able to give it to you until tomorrow. We can meet tomorrow night at your father's hotel room."
"Thank you," Andrew says. His father nods in agreement. I turn away from the two of them.
I honestly thought Andrew would have punched his father the first time he saw him, but I suppose this is an era where everything is familiar and amazing at the same time.
Chapter Thirteen
Ellie
I'm not interested in your heart
I'm invested in your words
And when you stabbed me in the back
I was impressed with your nerve
Because now I've got a knife and a grudge
I've got a knife and a grudge.
The paparazzi followed my car for about ten minutes before they fell away, one by one, deciding their time was better spent preying on other celebrities. Since I don't have the ability to write anything while I'm driving, I just repeat the lyrics in my head over and over with a bass drum and a snare drum playing in the corner of my mind.
I park a couple of blocks away from Anya's mansion. As I walk down the sidewalk, lyrics keep sprouting in my head.
I wish I could say I could rise above this
I wish I could say I wish you well.
But I'm not a liar, not a liar.
I'd rather burn than set the fire.
Anya's mansion is larger than most golf courses. From the front, it looks like a tropical hotel, but I've seen aerial photos, and it's infinitely bigger than any hotel. There's an urban legend that a groupie that another singer brought to a summer party got drunk and lost inside it. One of the cleaning staff found her six days later. They say she survived on the water from the various bathrooms, and as they helped her find her way out, she kept talking about how she found Jesus in an electrical outlet.
It's a great story, made even more impressive by the detail that Anya paid for her physical and mental care. Just another selfless story for Anya's saintly, unsinkable image.
There's an ornate iron gate— twisted and turned to resemble vines— and a brick building near the gate's door. I walk up to the building. In a small window, I see a man sitting with a book on his lap. The building is about the size of a classroom, but instead of desks and chairs, there's a kitchenette, a small dining area, and nine large computer screens, surveying various areas outside of the house.
The man flicks over a page from his book, not taking any notice of me.
I knock on the window. He glances at me. His eyes widen and he jerks up, his chair nearly tipping over as he stands up. He yanks the window open.
"Miss Ellie Rue," he says. "My God. It's such an honor to meet you. I love your music."
"It's so nice to meet you too."
After having numerous of these kinds of introductions, I would hav
e thought as a songwriter, I'd be able to come up with something better to say, but it's always the same line. It's not dishonest, but it's not genuine either.
"'Orphaned Emotions' is such a powerful song."
"Thank you. I was wondering..."
"Can I get an autograph for my daughter?"
"Oh, sure," I say. He scrambles to find a piece of paper. I cringe as he grabs onto his book, tearing out the flyleaf.
He holds out the pen and paper for me. I take it.
"What's your daughter's name?" I ask.
"Jasmine."
I carefully write down her name. I pause. I want to write something genuine, but I know nothing about this young woman. I look up at the man, stalling for time.
"I came here to talk to Anya," I say. "I just wanted to apologize to her, face-to-face, for everything."
"Oh, that's great." He nods, a big smile on his face. "Listen, I agree with you. Those other singers should wear more clothes. And I don't think you were manufactured by your music label either."
"I don't have a problem with those other singers," I say. "I never said anything about them."
He stops nodding and his smile fades a little, but his eyes are still sympathetic. "Yeah. That's what Jasmine says. She says that you're always focused on the music, and you don't have time to worry about what other people are doing or saying. She loves you so much. She's really worried that this scandal will make you change who you are."
I nod. "I'm trying to not let that happen."
Jasmine,
I'm so, so thankful for all of your support. Your father says that you're worried that I'll change after what's happened lately and I hope I don't change too much either. I don't ever want to let you or any of my fans down. You sound like a great, compassionate person and I hope we get to meet one day.
