by Piper Lawson
But there was only one place I wanted to go.
New York.
Last winter, after I finished a local theater production of Avenue Q and before the start of Oakwood’s spring musical, I decided I didn’t need permission.
I’m following my dreams. When he sees me succeed, he’ll understand. I know he will.
I just need a little time to figure out how to show him I’m right.
“How’s Sophie?” I ask as I reach the sixth floor, panting, and make my way down the hall to my room. “And Haley?”
“Sophie’s a monster. Haley’s not much better.”
“Heard that.”
I smile at the sound of my stepmom’s voice as I stop in front of my closed door.
“House is quiet without you,” he says after a minute.
“You’re not even in the house. I thought you were lobbying in Washington this week.”
“We are. But it’ll be quiet when we get home. What do you need? Money? Clothes?”
“I’m fine. Thanks.” I slide my key into the lock and turn the handle.
“Okay. Guess I’ll let you go. Oh, and don’t forget about that awards dinner.”
“What awards dinner?”
“We talked about it months ago. The flight’s booked. I sent you an email about it this morning.”
Shit. I almost forgot my dad was being honored at this big thing in LA Friday night and having a smaller friends and family thing at home Saturday. “Right. I’m sorry. I really want to come, but school’s just started. It’s hard to leave.”
“Annie. It’s two days. You won’t miss any classes. The band’s planning to come down, plus Lita and Nina if they’re around.”
I squeeze my eyes shut at the thought of all his crew, basically my adopted family. “All right. Sure.”
“Good. We love you, kid.”
“Love you too, Dad. And tell Sophie I miss her.” My throat works as I hang up.
Before I can push my door in, the door next to mine opens.
“That sounded strained.” Elle leans against the doorjamb, nodding at my phone. “Your parents?”
“My dad,” I admit. “I need a way to show him coming to Vanier was the right decision.”
As I say the words, a lightbulb goes off.
There’s no sign of Rae as I go to my computer and print something off.
“Fall showcase?” Elle scoffs when I stick the poster over my bed.
“I’m going to get in. No,” I decide, “I’m going to close.”
Her brows hit her hairline. “You have any idea how you’re going to execute this coup?”
“Not yet,” I admit. “But I’ll figure it out. I didn’t come all this way for nothing.”
I glance at Rae’s bed, the shelf over the headboard. “Wait, weren’t there more of those dolls?”
Elle crosses the room, inspecting the shelf. “You’re right. There was one with hair just like yours. She asked to borrow my scissors too…”
I stare her down. “Okay, you’re shitting me.”
With the exception of Leo’s last night, when Rae disappeared and was still gone when Elle and I returned to the dorms, I’ve barely seen her.
“I don’t think she’s planning to voodoo you in your sleep.”
“Ugh. I’m not so sure.” I drop onto my bed and clutch the stuffed Flounder Haley got me after The Little Mermaid. It’s a bittersweet reminder of home.
Elle’s face appears over mine. “You’ve never had someone not like you before?”
“Yes, but…” I’d always figured it was because I was Jax Jamieson’s daughter and I didn’t meet what they expected of me. “Not someone who shares my towel rack.”
Elle laughs, dropping down onto the bed next to me.
“What’s so funny?” I demand.
“You think people liking you or not is about you? It’s about them. Let me guess—you have a lot of damage.”
“A lifetime’s worth in eighteen years,” I confirm.
She nods. “Now imagine everyone in this entire place is walking around with the same damage.” My brows shoot up, but she holds up a hand. “For every scar you’ve got, every mean girl story, every ‘daddy hates me’ and ‘I’m not enough’ and ‘it should’ve been different’”—my chest tightens at how scarily accurate she is—“they have one too. So does Rae. I promise you.”
I turn that over. “You seem reasonably unscathed.”
Elle smiles, pointing to her face. “It’s the brows. You keep your eyebrow game on point, the world thinks you have your shit together.”
I huff out a breath as I stroke Flounder’s blue-and-yellow fur, thinking of Oakwood. “I’m not the best at making new friends.”
“Because you’re into voodoo too?”
I throw the fish at her head, and she catches it, laughing.
She looks between the stuffed fish and the goldfish bowl on the corner of my desk. “I’ve heard of a foot fetish. A fish fetish is new. I might have to use that.”
“That’s Heath.”
“Heath,” she echoes.
“Heathcliff. As in Wuthering Heights.” My chest warms a little as I watch him blow his introspective little bubbles. “He’s from my friend Pen. She’s at Columbia.”
“Ahh. So, you do have friends.”
I roll my eyes. “Some.”
“Well, I’ve got your back. Rae can do what she wants.”
A smile tugs at my lips. “Thanks.”
My gaze settles on the trunk at the foot of Rae’s bed, which I’ve yet to see her open. “Is it wrong to want a hint of her damage?”
We look at the trunk, then each other.
Elle runs her hand over the surface of the trunk, landing on the lock at the front. “Until last night when you stripped off all your clothes to get on stage, I had you pegged as a good girl.”
“I was. I grew up.”
She lifts a brow. “Doesn’t that mean the end of childish ways?”
“No. It means accepting that we all do bad things for good reasons.”
6
New York produces the kind of cold that gets into your bones and won’t leave.
Today, New Yorkers brace against the fall wind with flipped collars on coats.
I’m one of them as I get my motorcycle from the tiny spot I sublet for cheap in a parking garage around the corner.
Then I head to a studio in Brooklyn to win my contract back.
“Zeke around?” I ask at the front desk.
“Not today,” the woman informs me with a half smile. “You’re in studio two.”
I brush off my disappointment as I head to the assigned studio. Inside, I shake hands with the band. As I get out my guitar and take a seat on the stool to tune it, the singer approaches me.
“We made some changes to the first track and added a couple new ones since we reached out to you.” He passes me his notes. “You need a minute to take a look?”
I scan the sheet. “No.”
“You sure?”
I calmly look at him, then play the section with the changes. “We can do it like that. Or—” I redo it with some flourishes that elevate it. “Like that.”
He claps a hand on my shoulder, grinning. “Let’s keep it simple.”
When I came to New York last summer and signed with Zeke, I had a chance to be the one calling the shots. I fucked it up.
Jax wanted me to walk away from Annie and from Dallas so I could do something great.
I tried to throw myself into it, but right when I thought I was done with my father, he played one last card that pulled me away from the city and from my new gig for two weeks.
By the time I got back to New York, I’d missed deadlines, messed with schedules, and generally had Zeke cursing out my name loudly enough to be heard in Jersey.
He put me out on my ass.
Getting into Vanier through a connection was grace in the highest sense.
The throng of students who were all like me—I’d never been around people w
ho wanted so fucking much—grounded me. Piece by piece, I rebuilt myself and tried to put it behind me.
Beck helped, and so did my music.
Even though I’m not where I expected, I’m a better musician than I was last year.
But it wasn’t until a girl who looked like Annie Jamieson walked through the halls last April—of course it was her, but at the time, I swore I was hallucinating—that I pounded on Zeke’s door again, demanding he revisit our arrangement.
He “declined.” A nice way of saying “Fuck off.” I didn’t stop calling, and within weeks, I was offered my first session gig.
Today, we spend four hours running the tracks on the list. I do as I’m told, even lose myself in it once or twice.
Before I can leave, the producer calls me over. “Appreciate the help with this. I have another gig for you next week. You interested?”
Yes, I’m interested, but I want to say, This isn’t the work I pictured. I want more. I’m better than this.
“I’ll check my calendar,” I say at last.
After heading back to our place and making my way back to our building from the parking garage, I come across my roommate smoking a joint outside.
“Guy never came to fix the fridge,” he says tonelessly.
“I’ll call him. How was the audition?”
Beck holds out the joint, and I shake my head. “I’m not getting a callback. I was fucking De Niro in there,” he says with a wry grin. “But when I left, there were a dozen guys who looked exactly like me lining the hall. Stopped at the lobby vending machine for a Coke, and there was a guy who just had his change eaten who was shaking it. He even sounded like me. If that’s all there is to look forward to, what’re we even doing this for?”
As I take in his expression, I feel a pang of empathy.
Beck’s good at what he does, and it’s still an uphill climb every day just to get a chance at a dream.
If I was smart, I’d line up session jobs, string ‘em together to make for enough paydays, but it’s not enough.
The life I once told myself I wanted is within my grasp, but I’m restless. Maybe the thing Vanier’s helped me realize is that I want to create something that’s mine, that no one can take from me.
“It’s almost your birthday,” I remind him. “Twenty’ll be good, Beck. More auditions, more gigs, more pretty boys giving you pretty blowjobs.”
“Fuck it. I’m gonna curl up under the covers until someone notices I’m gone.”
“I’ll notice.”
He gives me side-eye. “Not once the fridge is fixed.”
I bark out a laugh, and he offers me the joint again. This time, I take it, but mostly for an excuse to stay with him.
“You heard from your parents since the party last weekend?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Nah. We always used to go to this restaurant for my birthday. Get a private room. Hell, last year I even started to think my parents were coming around to the acting thing. My mom beamed when I told her about my Shakespeare in the Park gig. My dad told me about this guy he replaced two valves on who was a big ex-producer from Hollywood.” His eyes glaze. “Between the entrée and dessert, the prettiest waiter showed me his cock in the bathroom. It was a good birthday, man.”
Something tells me that’s not happening this year. Beck’s always been a good friend, but with coming out to his family and his upcoming birthday and this bad audition news…
I need to up my roommate game.
Normally, I’m a hundred percent confident walking around Vanier. But sometime between my genius idea yesterday and this morning, I’ve realized this is a terrible idea.
Fuck it. This is for Beck.
I take the elevator at Vanier and knock on the cracked-open door of six-oh-six at the end of the hall.
There’s no answer, but I slowly push it open to reveal a girl with straw-blond hair and alert eyes perched in a chair by one of the two desks.
“I’m looking for Annie,” I say.
“She’s in the bathroom.”
“I’ll wait.” I realize she’s the girl who was with Annie at the opening assembly, the one who said she was in six-oh-four. “Elle, right? This isn’t your room.”
“Not yours either.”
She’s got me there.
But Elle returns to a notebook computer, and I step inside.
I know immediately which half of the room is Annie’s. The cover on the bed is purple, and there’s a stuffed fish on the pillow.
Fish on the desk, too. Huh.
“Working on something for class?” I ask, mostly to make small talk.
“New bits for a set. I’m a comic.”
I shoot her an admiring look. “That’s thankless.”
“I get off on being laughed at. Tried eight years of therapy and learned this is cheaper.”
A standard-issue dresser draws my gaze. There are photos on top and a frame turned down. I lift it to find a picture of Annie with Jax, though he’s wearing sunglasses and a grin and is almost unrecognizable.
I set the picture right-side up.
Under it is a stack of Polaroids.
It takes me a second to realize what they are. Words in black ink on an organic canvas.
My tongue wets my lip, and I glance over my shoulder to where Elle’s typing on her keyboard.
I read the lines on the first picture, absorb them into my soul before turning carefully to the next. There’re a couple of dozen photos. I get through half before a sound drifts into my brain.
“What are you doing?”
The sharp voice has me turning.
Annie’s standing at the door, and my gaze drags down her body—her toes, painted the same purple as her bed; long, curvy legs; the dip between her breasts just above the top of a knotted towel; the long hair, darkened and piled on top of her head, a few strands dripping on her bare shoulders; that oval face, full lips and amber eyes brimming with accusation.
Desire slams into me, but I manage to slide the photos behind my back.
“Elle?” Annie demands before I can respond, but Elle looks between us, eyes narrowing in fascination.
“You have a gentleman caller,” she drawls.
Annie folds her arms over her chest. “Tyler’s no gentleman. Why are you here?”
I force my attention to her face. “I need your help. The other night you… asked me for something.” From the way Annie sucks in a breath, she gets I’m talking about keeping her secrets. “I want something from you, too.”
“Elle—” Annie starts, and I hold up a hand.
“It’s fine,” I say. “She can stay.”
“Why, thank you.” Elle grins, shifting back in her seat to study us as if we’re two different species trying to mate.
I turn back to Annie. “Beck had this audition he’s been psyched for all week. It didn’t go well. He’s also had some shit going on, and it’s his birthday this weekend. Maybe we can do a little party or a cake? The kind that doesn’t need refrigerating,” I amend.
Her suspicion is replaced by concern, and if I wasn’t sure she cared about him, I am now.
Annie sits on the bed, crossing her legs. The towel rides up, and I press my tongue against the floor of my mouth to keep from swallowing it.
“Beck needs a party,” she says.
“We could take him to a club,” Elle volunteers.
“Like Leo’s?” I ask.
Annie shakes her head slowly. “No. Somewhere you can dance.”
Elle leaps up and snaps her laptop closed. “I’m in. I want to dance my ass off. Hell, I bet even Rae would come. Sure, she’d cross the street to avoid us, but the girl likes to party.”
Annie cocks her head at Elle. “Where’re you going?”
“Funeral. I don’t know the guy,” she says as she reaches for the door. “They’re the only place to witness the full range of human emotions. And they usually have snacks.”
In a moment, Elle’s gone, leaving Annie and me in a room that somehow feels
smaller than it did with three of us in it.
“Your neighbor goes to strangers’ funerals and your roommate avoids you,” I say. “Nice girls.”
“I’m pretty sure Rae’s going to voodoo me out of Vanier.”
I cross to the bed with the little figures along the back and bend to look at them. “They don’t look sinister.”
We exchange a smile that’s gone as fast as it appears, as if we’ve both realized it’s an old habit, and a bad one at that.
“I need to get dressed,” she says, watching me with an unreadable expression. “I have class.”
She’s already opening a drawer, pulling out clothes. I turn away, the photos still in my hands.
The unmistakeable whoosh of a towel dropping has my head jerking upright.
Is she naked right now?
“I’m auditioning for the fall showcase,” Annie says from behind me, forcing me to focus on her words instead of wondering what color panties she’s pulling on. “Beck says I shouldn’t because you need it more.”
The rise and fall of her voice says she’s moving, but I can’t hear any clothes.
“You didn’t need it last year. You had an offer to work for Zeke. So, how’d you end up at Vanier?”
My chest tightens. I’d rather be tortured by her undressing behind me than talk about this, but I force out a response. “The contract didn’t work out.”
“Why not?”
I thumb through the photos in my hands, a dull ache in my chest. “It doesn’t matter. Life is hard. We have to go after what we want.”
“Like you did.”
Pain rips through my gut. “I thought I was doing the right thing. For everyone, Six.”
I didn’t mean to blurt out the nickname, but I can’t take it back.
In that instant, I’m remembering the time I went to see her, two months after I left Dallas.
It was after the shit with my dad and with Zeke.
I rode all night to get to there because I needed to see her, to know something in this world made sense.
She had no idea I was there, sitting on my bike, the ache of weeks of not sleeping and hours of riding heavy in my bones.
