by Reid, Joseph
I dashed to the bed and wrapped my good arm around her shoulders. “Thank God,” I said.
Opening her eyes, she recognized me and nearly burst off the mattress, throwing her arms around my neck.
“Sh.” I rubbed her back gently. “It’s all right.”
Still clutching herself to me, her breathing grew heavier, and she started shaking. “I tried—I asked—to see you—but they wouldn’t—”
“It’s okay,” I said, keeping my voice as even as I could. “I’m here now. I just had a quick meeting with the police who rescued us.”
Max pulled away slightly, until our faces were inches apart. Lines of fatigue were etched all over her skin; her hair was a knotted jumble. Her eyes were red and bloodshot as tears spilled from them while mucus dripped from her nose. “They don’t—understand—have to—”
I moved my hand to her shoulders and squeezed it. “It’s all right. Let’s take a couple of deep breaths.”
I took them with her, and by the end of the third one, she’d stopped panting, although she still trembled slightly.
“You’re safe,” I said. “We’re safe. There’s police everywhere, including two big guards outside. And I’m gonna stay right here with you. Everything’ll be fine.”
Her head started swinging back and forth. “No, Seth. We—I—”
“I know you’re upset. You’re scared. But they’ve captured or killed most of the gang. Petén got away, but she’s not going to be bothering—”
“It’s not Petén!” After yelling at me, she started sobbing again.
“What do you mean, it’s not Petén?”
Drawing a deep breath in through her nose, Max coughed and sputtered. “That’s not who I’m afraid of. Everyone thinks I’m scared Petén’s gonna come for me, but that’s not it. Not at all!”
“Then what is it, sweetie? Who are you scared of?”
“My father! We have to—”
“Oh, sh. Don’t worry about him. The police are watching him, and we can arrest him whenever we want. I was thinking you’d want me to do it, but I can call them right now—”
Her eyes flared as wide as I’d seen them. “No! No, no, no, you can’t arrest him. You can’t!” Max seemed to lose all muscle tone, sliding slowly from my arms back down onto the mattress, where she curled up into an even tighter ball than before.
“After what he’s done to you, what he tried to do? We have to arrest him. He has to be punished.”
A single sob burst from her mouth, like a belch or a hiccup. But it quickly led to another. And then another.
I tried to soothe her, rubbing her arm and her shoulder. Nothing seemed to work. Crouching down, I got my face as close to hers as I could. “Listen, I know it must be scary. But this isn’t going to all happen overnight. First, we’ll finish getting you clean. After that, we can get you some help. Maybe there’s some relative you like. Or, you’re probably old enough, we could find some sort of guardian to help you live on your own—”
“No,” she said. “You don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“He owns everything. All my music—everything I’ve ever recorded—he made me sign all the rights over. If I leave, he’ll keep everything and I’ll have nothing . . .”
“I’m no lawyer, but after what’s happened, I’ve gotta think you can challenge all that. We can figure that part out. But even if he gets to keep it all, that stuff’s not worth hanging on for. We’re talking about a man who tried to have you—his own daughter—killed. He has to go away for that, Max. He has to.”
She kept shaking her head, mumbling, “Can’t, won’t work,” again and again. I started to worry she was locked in some kind of mental loop when suddenly, the crying stopped. Max’s eyes locked on mine, and for the first time in a long while, they were completely clear. Focused.
“There’s something else. Something no one else knows about. And they can’t . . . they can’t know about it. No one. I’ll tell you, but I can’t trust anybody else.”
I rubbed her shoulder again. “What are you talking about? What else?”
“There’s something I need to do, Seth. Before he gets desperate and knows I’ve turned against him.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s a tape. I have to find it. Please. Please promise me you won’t arrest him until I find the tape.”
My shoulders relaxed a bit, and I slid back onto my heels. “Max, listen. I know he worked you like a dog, but again, you’ve got your whole career ahead of you. You can re-record any song you want . . .”
Max shook her head slowly and deliberately. In a hoarse whisper, she said, “I’m not talking about that kind of tape.”
I squinted at her, still not understanding.
After a long pause, she said, “It’s a videotape. A sex tape.”
CHAPTER 28
“What did you just say?”
Max squeezed her eyes shut, and I noticed tiny droplets leaking out the corners. “It’s a sex tape,” she whispered.
“But you’re only . . . how does he . . . ?”
“He’s got it, and he’s threatened me with it. He said if I ever left him, he’d put it on the Internet, and now if he gets desperate, I know that’s what he’ll do. I know it!” Her face contorted, every muscle beneath it seeming to contract. And then she shuddered, letting out a low wail that droned on even after I pulled her in close.
Although questions were still swirling through my mind, I didn’t even try to speak for a while. I just held her and let her cry: pure pain, pouring out of her in a torrent.
When it finally seemed like she might be slowing down, I said softly, “Listen, I don’t know how he got this thing, but plenty of celebrities have had . . . embarrassing stuff come out. This might be a little different because you’re underage, but—”
Pulling back from me, she said, “This is totally different.”
“What do you mean? How?”
I could feel all the muscles inside her clench.
“We can figure this out, Max,” I said. “We can fix it. I can help. But I’ve got to know exactly what we’re up against.”
She swung her head side to side. “I can’t. I—”
“Start at the beginning if it’s easier. Tell me the whole thing. But you’ve gotta tell me.”
Max inhaled deeply, and then descended into a long series of coughs. I passed her a handful of tissues from a box nearby, and she cleared her nose and mouth, then wiped her face. Finally, after setting her fragile-looking jaw and staring at the mattress for a moment, she began speaking again.
“Before I hit it big, before Charlie, or the label, or any of that, I just liked to sing. I mean, I got a few parts, like, in the school play and stuff, but nothing big. Nothing that made me think I was something special.
“But my dad must’ve seen it. ’Cause when I turned twelve, I remember he bought this microphone and recorder. He brought it home and said we were going to start making records. I had no idea what he meant. I just sang whatever song he wanted me to into the microphone, and that was that.
“My dad went to Charlie the next year. I guess from what I’ve heard he actually went a few times before that, but Charlie blew him off. Anyway, something about the song I sang that time caught his ear.” Max glanced up at me, and for a moment her face brightened. “Maybe you know it. ‘’Til There Was You’? From The Music Man?”
I shook my head.
She smiled briefly, then looked down again, as if remembering a dear friend who’d died. “It’s a hard song—the original is all this high-register, vibrato stuff—but I just sang it straight. Anyway, Charlie liked it, and brought me in. He had me record six or seven test songs, and we all agreed ‘Love Takes Time’ was the best one. So that was my first single.
“Looking back, I guess I should have figured out something was wrong way before I did. My dad started saying things about Charlie. Bad things, like, Charlie didn’t know what he was talking about. At home, my dad would
be pushing me to record different songs from what Charlie was having me do. And then I’d have to go into the studio, and Charlie would get mad, ’cause my voice wouldn’t always hold up. So I’d be singing whatever he’d picked out, and I’d have trouble, and my father would be right there trying to play this other thing, saying it was better.”
“Did they fight?”
She nodded. “A lot. I didn’t always know why, but I knew they weren’t getting along.
“Then things started taking off, you know? I got some radio time. I got invites to sing on shows and stuff. That was another sign: my dad would never let me travel to do TV. It pissed me off, ’cause I wanted to go to New York for the Today Show, or Good Morning America, but he always made me do it remotely. I didn’t understand—what was the point of being famous if you couldn’t see all these cool places? He said I wasn’t old enough.
“So the older I got, the more I pressed him. Eventually, he didn’t have a choice, and started bringing me places. New York, LA. But it was always weird, you know? Each time I was supposed to do an appearance, it would fall through at the last minute. A few times it was we got ‘bumped.’ But after you’ve heard that three or four times, you’re like, ‘What’s the deal?’”
I nodded.
“The movie was going to be different.”
“The movie with Nancy Irvine?” I asked.
Max nodded again. “They contacted me through Charlie, instead of my dad. He thought it was awesome, and when he told me, I was so excited. With Charlie on my side, I figured I had more leverage, so I went to my dad, and I made him promise. Made him swear I could do it. He tried to talk me out of it, but I wasn’t going to let him. I didn’t even need Charlie, I had my mind so set on that. And I think my dad realized, so he said yes.”
“But then that fell through, too,” I said.
“Yeah. Irvine was so mean, I just bought into everything my dad was saying. That it was her fault. That it was Hollywood. They were trying to screw us on the money.”
“Do you know why he didn’t want you in the movie?”
“Because he worried it would make me too big a star.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But that’s not all of it. He wanted to control the money.” I told her quickly about the Coogan accounts Irvine had explained to me.
Max blinked several times as she listened, but her expression didn’t change. “When the movie fell through, that was the first time I really thought to myself, ‘I need to be on my own.’ I started thinking about leaving.”
“Leaving your dad?”
“Yeah. He was saying we should leave Charlie, and I just thought, ‘Why don’t I leave him, too?’ I didn’t tell you that part in California, I’m sorry.”
I shrugged.
“I looked up the emancipation laws and stuff, though. Texas makes it really hard.”
“You ever think that might be why your dad moved you here in the first place?”
“I hadn’t thought of that. I guess that makes sense.” Max paused, furrowing her brow, as if struggling to remember where she’d left off. “Anyway, after the movie thing, Charlie and my dad really weren’t getting along. My dad was pushing for all these extra songs and endorsements and photo shoots.”
“You mean like the swimsuit ones?”
“It started with those. But he kept wanting it to go further. He said fans needed to be able to think of me as a grown-up, as a woman. He wanted the photos to be sexier and stuff.”
“Did you tell him no?”
Max nodded gently. “I kept saying, ‘Let’s just finish this album—we’re so close.’ But then he’d go off about how awful Charlie was, how we were going to leave him.”
“So then what happened?”
“Turns out, Charlie had been putting together a tour for me. He told me the day we wrapped the second album. Twenty dates, cross-country.”
“Which was gonna mean going to New York and California again,” I said.
She nodded. “I did three dates before my dad pulled me off the road. Just tiny little clubs, tune-ups for the big arenas. And then he canceled the whole thing.” Her eyes squeezed shut for a moment, and tears spilled out the sides. “I just started screaming at him. Right there in the dressing room, when he told me after the show. Touring’s where the money is now, you know, and so I just couldn’t understand why he was blocking me from it. It seemed so . . . stupid.”
Max took a deep breath. “When we came back home, that’s when I started seeing Dr. Roosevelt.”
“That’s when you started the Oxy.”
She nodded silently.
“Did you know your dad was behind that before Petén told us?”
She shook her head. “The doctor said to take them, so I figured they were good for me. They made me feel good. And for a while, everything seemed okay. Until later, when Charlie noticed I was acting different.
“One day, we’re in the studio, and it was like he just saw me and knew, you know? Like he could see right through me. He ripped me a new one. He was trying to help, I guess, but my dad had told me so many bad things about him. I couldn’t listen. I was just so tired of being controlled, I couldn’t take it anymore. I—”
Her eyes flooded again. “I didn’t quite see, at Otra. Is he . . . is Charlie . . . ?”
I shook my head.
Max’s chin dropped to her chest.
“Go back—what happened after you started taking the Oxy?”
“The second album was doing good, even with the tour getting canceled. My dad started pressing again about the photo shoots, saying this was the perfect time. He had this thing in mind, a shoot where I was with a man. He said not to worry, nothing would really happen. Like on TV, it would just look like it.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him no. And I dodged it. I’d pretend to be sick, stuff like that. But he was so insistent. So we had this big fight. I remember, it was right before Thanksgiving. I screamed at him, and screamed at him. And finally, I . . .”
“What, Max?”
“I said . . . I told him . . .”
“What did you tell him?”
Max’s neck muscles clenched as she swallowed. “I told him if he didn’t drop it, I would get rid of him just like we were gonna get rid of Charlie.”
“How’d he react?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Different. I figured he’d do something horrible. Normally, if we were fighting, he’d yell back at me, make threats. But that time, he just let me go. It’s fuzzy if I think about it now, but I think . . . I thought I won.” Max looked up, the corners of her mouth curling into the slightest smile. “Stupid me.”
“You scared him,” I said.
“Next thing I know, he tells me we’re off to the Caribbean.” Max rolled from her side onto her back so that she was staring up at the ceiling.
When she didn’t speak for several seconds, I said, “Okay.”
“I was sort of excited, you know? I mean, I was still pissed about the tour and everything, but . . . the islands? Finally, I was gonna get to go somewhere.
“We left home early in the morning. Connected in Dallas. But to a private jet. It was so different—I’d never traveled that way before. There were these waiters on the plane. I’d had alcohol before, you know, at parties and things. But never in front of my dad. I didn’t think he even knew. During the flight, though, he’s ordering the waiters to give me these blended-up margaritas. They were so soft and sweet, like Slushees, almost. I can still remember him with the pitcher, refilling my cup.
“I’d never drunk hard alcohol before, just like, wine and champagne. I don’t know how much I had, but it must’ve mixed with the drugs, ’cause I got so wasted. I mean, everything was spinning, and all I could think was, ‘Hey, maybe my dad’s turning cool.’ You know, like, after the fight, he . . . maybe he respected me more or something.”
“Where’d you go?”
“I passed out before we landed. Later, I found out it was Saint Lucia. But that
’s when . . .”
“When what?”
Max didn’t speak for several seconds. Her chin trembled.
“What happened when you woke up?”
When she finally spoke again, it was almost in a whisper. “I was really out of it. So wasted, so hungover, it was hard to wake up. My head was pounding. I remember feeling cold, which I thought was weird, ’cause it was supposed to be so hot there . . .”
“What else, Max?”
“It took me a second to figure stuff out. I was in some house, some . . . bedroom I didn’t recognize. It was bright. The cold was because I wasn’t wearing a shirt. And there was this guy, standing behind me. He had his . . . hands on me.”
“Your dad went through with the shoot?”
Max nodded slowly. “I was so confused. Scared. And that’s when I heard his voice.”
“Whose voice?”
“My dad’s. He was . . . directing. Telling the cameraman where to stand. Telling the guy . . . what to do.”
“Oh God.”
“And that’s . . . that’s when it got bad.”
“What do you mean?”
“My dad called cut. Like they should stop. The shoot was over. But they . . . they didn’t listen.”
“Max,” I said, “you don’t have to tell me the rest.” In truth, I knew I didn’t want to hear it.
She didn’t hear me. Her eyes had turned glassy, her arms tightening around her sides as she kept telling the story.
“The guy behind me stripped off the rest of my clothes. Then he . . . he forced me down onto my knees. They were laughing.” Tears began pouring from her eyes.
“Didn’t your dad—”
“When they didn’t listen to him at first, he tried to stop them. Sort of. I guess. But when it kept going, I looked up . . .”
“What? What did you see?”
Max’s eyes grew distant, her voice falling into a near monotone. “I saw him. My dad. He was just . . . standing there. His arms crossed like . . . like it was no big deal.”
My mind was racing and I shivered, literally. It seemed like every hair on my arms and neck was standing straight up.
Max rolled toward me and threw her head onto my shoulder. She was bawling, spasming. I wrapped my arms around her as tightly as I could, feeling her chest shuddering beneath them as it all came spilling out.
