Hold On To Me

by Taylor Holloway

  “Aren’t they supposed to put up the things on the sides of the lanes?” I asked after a moment. I had the ball, and the horrible shoes, but something was missing.

  “Bumpers?” It was Chris who replied. He smirked. “Bumpers are for kids, dude.”

  “Oh. It’s been a while since I’ve been bowling.” My reply was sheepish. The last time I’d bowled, there had definitely been bumpers.

  I had a feeling I was going to need the bumpers. I watched the bowlers in other lanes sending their balls cleanly down toward the pins in neat, efficient little lines, and winced internally. This might be embarrassing.

  At least I probably wouldn’t be as bad as the little kid two lanes down who fell over the line face-first and set off some kind of alarm. He grinned and squealed at the attention he received, lolling around on the waxed floor until his mom scooped him up.

  “Don’t worry,” Rosie said, grabbing my hand and reading my mind. “I’m a terrible bowler. It’s not about throwing strikes or winning. It’s just for fun.”

  As one half of a pair of competitive brothers, I learned a long time ago that all games were, in fact, about winning. If you weren’t winning, you were losing by definition. Despite the hypercompetitive mumblings of my inner ten-year-old boy, I tried on a smile for Rosie’s sake and squeezed her soft little hand in mine. Above all, I wanted her to have a good time. The past few days had been really tough for her, and she deserved a nice night. Still…

  “Prepare to be underwhelmed,” I announced. It was my first turn. I grabbed the ball, walked up to the line, and imitated the woman in the lane next to me. The ball rolled smoothly down the lane, and, impossibly, knocked the pins down. All of them. Wait… that was pretty easy.

  “Nice strike!” someone in another lane said to me, dipping his head approvingly.

  I turned to see my little party staring at me and clapping. Rosie gave me a kiss on the cheek when I sat down. I basked in the positive attention.

  “I’m actually very impressed,” she told me. “That was really good.”

  “Beginners luck,” I said modestly.

  Ok, maybe this won’t be so bad.

  “You shouldn’t be surprised. My brother’s always been excellent at playing with his balls,” a familiar voice interrupted.

  Goddammit Ian.

  “What, are you stalking me now?” I asked, flabbergasted. Ian shook his head, sending his too-long dark hair dancing around his face. Trina, Chris, and Rosie looked between us in confusion. They were nowhere near as confused as I was.

  “Nope,” Ian replied with a big, bright, shit-eating grin on his face. “It’s just a particularly freakish coincidence. I’m here to bowl, just like you,” he replied. He pointed down a few lanes to where Jack Reese, the former keyboardist-slash-rhythm-guitarist for Axial Tilt was hanging out with Victoria Priestly. One of the backup singers for Victoria’s old band, Edelweiss, was there, too. Ada? Ida? I wasn’t sure what her name was.

  I stared at him in disbelief. Freakish coincidence was right. Too freakish. Suspicious. My eyes narrowed, and Ian waved a hand. He seemed confused that I wasn’t happier.

  “Maybe a little bird sent me a message that you might be here, but if anything,” he told me, “you’re the one acting out of character. Since when do you bowl?”

  I glanced down at my watch. “Since approximately five minutes ago.”

  “Hmm,” he replied. He looked around at Rosie and her friends. “Aren’t you going to introduce me? Or do I have to do it myself?”

  I sighed. This was so not how I envisioned this meeting. It seemed like Calvin Ross had decided to reach out to Ian and engineer this on his own. How Ross knew that Rosie would be here tonight was a mystery, but I had a very good feeling that Ian’s little bird was Rosie’s meddling father. Unless Ian was actually stalking me. I couldn’t fully rule that out.

  As frustrated as I was, politeness forced me not to say anything other than, “Rosie, Trina, Chris, this is my brother, Ian.”

  “Hi Ian,” the three said in unison.

  “Wow. It’s just like an AA meeting in here,” he quipped. He zeroed in on Rosie. “I’ve heard quite a bit about you Rosie,” he told her. “It’s great to meet you. I hear birthday congratulations are in order.”

  She blinked at him, and then her eyes zipped back and forth between my face and his. “Hello and thank you. I’m a really big fan of Axial Tilt.”

  He sighed dramatically. “Me too. Jason kicked me out before we ever got big. I was too drunk and disorderly to take on tour.”

  It was funny how he glossed over the accident that killed Jen. I bit back a wave of familiar anger.

  “J-Jason Kane?” Rosie was stuttering. The world-famous lead singer of Axial Tilt had been one of my best (read: most lucrative) clients. Now that he was contentedly raising a family and living a quiet, normal life (normal for him, at least), I was in trouble with the firm. Which was how Calvin Ross could blackmail me into getting in touch with his daughter to help fix her plumbing problems and then crush her dreams. Really, at the end of the day, all of this was Kane’s fault. I made a mental note to let him know.

  Ian nodded, oblivious to my inner monologue, and then shrugged. “Yeah. Jason’s a real pain in the ass. Nice guy though.”

  All three college students look appropriately in awe of my brother. “I can’t believe you know Jason Kane,” Trina said. The amazement in her voice was obvious.

  “To be fair to my brother, Ryan probably knows him better than I do these days,” Ian replied, cuffing me on the shoulder. “We all used to be pretty tight back the day though.” I stared awkwardly back at him. This bowling alley interaction felt super-weird.

  The problem with Ian, aside from the fact that he was too-clever and too-talented for his own good, was that he was objectively both better looking and more charming than me. Now that he was sober, all that charm no longer went to waste. Watching Ian interacting with Rosie made me feel weirdly territorial. Violently territorial. All of a sudden, I wanted to toss her over my shoulder, bang on my chest like King Kong, and climb the Empire State building in a jealous, ridiculous, childish rage.

  Calm down Donkey Kong, I reminded myself. Ian’s just curious. Your dumb brother’s not after your girl.

  The speed with which Rosie had become ‘my girl’ at least in my sordid mind, was astounding. All thoughts of exposing Rosie to Victoria and Ian to help her career fled. But with a concerned and focused effort, I fought down my primitive Cro-Magnon impulses. I didn’t beat my beat chest. Instead, I put another polite smile on my face.

  “Well Ian,” I said as smoothly as I could, “it’s weird that you’re here, but, um, you’re definitely here. Nice seeing you. Let’s talk later.”

  Ok, it wasn’t particularly smooth. That was more his thing. I was the smart one, not the smooth one.

  “Don’t be silly,” Ian replied. “We should combine forces and have a real party. Let me go grab Victoria, Isla, and Jack.” Isla, that was her name. Ian paused. “Unless you don’t want to hang out?”

  Ian was up to something. I frowned at him and he winked back at me. “It’s really up to Rosie. This is her birthday party you’re crashing.”

  Ian turned his megawatt smile on Rosie. “Rosie, can I please crash your birthday party?”

  Rosie’s eyes were a few lanes away. She was staring at the collection of famous people with an awed expression. “Sure,” she stuttered. “I’d love that.”

  19

  Rosie

  On my right, Victoria Priestly—the ex-lead singer of Edelweiss was laughing merrily at a joke that Jack Reese told her. Across from me, Ian Conroe was telling Trina and Chris another bizarre, madcap story about the early days of Axial Tilt. Next to me, Ryan had his arm around my shoulders and was absently stroking my hair.

  Best. Birthday. Present. Ever.

  After the disaster that was yesterday, the difference a day could make was unreal. I couldn’t believe I was surrounded with so many famous, successful, and talen
ted people. The entire experience was utterly bizarre. What was probably most the surreal about the whole thing was how nice, welcoming, and kind they were being. They might be famous, but they were surprisingly down-to-earth, too. We’d given up bowling some time back and were now just talking.

  Interestingly, the fact that Trina and I weren’t old enough to drink didn’t seem to matter. Chris had a beer, as did Victoria, Jack, and Isla, but neither Ryan nor Ian did. Ian was vocal and obvious about his issues with alcohol, but I wasn’t sure why Ryan didn’t have a drink. I wondered if Ryan didn’t drink out of solidarity with his alcoholic brother or if it was a personal choice he made for another reason. Maybe he wasn’t drinking because he was going to drive me home later? I filed the question away for later.

  “Ian showed me your YouTube channel,” Victoria said, turning away from Jack and focusing in on me. “You’re really good.” I was instantly distracted from puzzling over Ryan’s Dr. Pepper.

  Ian knew about my YouTube channel?! Ryan didn’t know about my YouTube channel. Trina barely knew about my YouTube channel. My mouth worked up and down in disbelief until it snapped shut of its own accord.

  I’d set the channel up in frustration one day shortly after my high school graduation when I’d been particularly unsure that I’d ever get to play for anyone but my mom and my bedroom mirror. I’d been wondering how I would ever be successful as a singer if I wasn’t able to get gigs. The problem with getting gigs, you see, is that places only wanted to book you if you had a record. And the only way you made a record was by getting gigs until someone who made records noticed you. It was a horrible, circular, catch twenty-two.

  But that horrible, circular catch twenty-two had opened up a whole new world for me once I turned online. The internet doesn’t care who you are. There are children with Fortnight streams that make bank on the internet. Surely, I could use the power of technology to help myself, too. So, I made myself a page and started posting videos of myself singing the songs I’d written when I was zoning out in Calculus class. It just sort-of took off from there. Now my channel was becoming a thriving, if modest, community of fans.

  “Thank you,” I said haltingly. “That means a whole lot coming from you. I’m a huge fan.”

  She smiled indulgently. “I mean it. You have real talent. What made you create a YouTube channel? That’s a clever way to get yourself out there.”

  I blinked. “I can hardly claim that I developed the idea. It worked for Justin Bieber, after all.”

  She laughed. “You’re a lot more talented than the Beibs.”

  I gasped. “Do you actually call him that to his face?”

  Her next laugh was even louder than the first. “I don’t call that talentless little weirdo anything. Thankfully, we’ve not met. Different circles, you know.” She smirked. “I intended to keep it that way.”

  I smiled at her, and she smiled back. “Do you have any advice for me?” I asked, unwilling to let another minute go by without using this opportunity. It might never come again.

  She looked at Ryan before she continued. I’m not sure what exactly passed between them in the wordless glance, but when she refocused on me, it didn’t seem to matter. Her attention was entirely on me. “I think you’re doing just fine Rosie, but I’ll tell you this much: keep at it. You’ve got a really respectable number of subscribers on YouTube. Start there. Figure out how to increase that number and start making money off it. Money talks in this industry. Meet everyone that you can, go to as many shows as you can, play as many shows as you can, and network, network, network. You never know who you might meet. Sometimes the most innocuous meeting can make the biggest difference.”

  I nodded. I wished I had a pen, but in reality, I didn’t even need one. Her words were already inscribed on the inside of my skull in indelible ink. Someday an archeologist would find it and wonder what it meant. “Do you think I should change anything about my current act?” I asked. “Do you think there’s a market for my music out there?”

  She cocked her head to the side and her orangey-red ringlets bounced. “As far as your look goes, you might go blonde. I think you’d look good as a blonde, especially with your exotic features. But that’s just my opinion.” She grinned. “Your music is your music. It’s your voice, and it’s great. Don’t let anyone ever tell you to change it.”

  At my side, Ryan stirred. He was pulling out his phone and looking me up by my name on YouTube. A search for ‘Rosalind Ross’ produced no results.

  “Do you have a stage name?” he asked me. His voice was low, but I could tell he was fascinated.

  I felt my cheeks flushing so brightly they burned again. “I go by a version of my Korean language nickname on YouTube. It’s under the name Rosalind Soon.” I liked the name because it sounded like a sentence in English. Plus, one day it would look really cool on a marquee: Rosalind Soon, live in concert.

  When he found it, his mouth fell open in shock. “Rosie, you have three hundred thousand subscribers.”

  I shifted a little bit in the uncomfortable molded plastic seat. That was up about a thousand from yesterday. My new videos were doing really well. My momentum was starting to be self-sustaining and it felt fantastic, if a bit surreal. “Yeah, it’s really taking off.”

  That silly YouTube channel which had started so humbly had become my primary creative outlet. I might not have a big enough name to go out and book big shows in front of live humans, but I had an audience of a sort. I had the people that watched my videos and listened to my songs. Sometimes the comments I received were cruel, or creepy, or racist, or even downright threatening, but mostly they were positive, encouraging, and kind.

  “Rosie,” Ryan was saying to me, turning my chin to look at him, “this is incredible. You need to be setting up ads. You could be monetizing this. You could be making thousands of dollars a month off of these numbers…”

  I could? That would… that would change everything.

  20

  Ryan

  When Rosie and Trina went to the snack bar attached to the bowling alley to load up on the type of food that I’d come to realize I no longer had the metabolism to support, I did a bit of digging into Rosie’s YouTube channel. I could still barely believe my eyes. She was far, far closer to the success she was seeking than she even knew.

  Hundreds of thousands of followers stalked Rosie’s every digital move. They consumed her comments, posts, and attention with a ravenous appetite. There were people that posted every day, begging for more videos, more songs. Her fans wanted to know when they could buy her albums, and when she’d tour in their town. Rosie was legitimately internet famous.

  I couldn’t resist listening to at least one of her recordings. I wanted to choose the most popular one she’d ever posted, but by accident I selected a cover song. The video queued up to reveal Rosie sitting in the bedroom I’d glimpsed in her now off-limits apartment. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, with a small drum machine to her left, and an acoustic guitar in her lap. Her hair was a couple of inches shorter in the video, indicating that the video must have been recorded at least a few months ago. There was no spoken introduction.

  Baby take off your coat

  Real slow

  Take off your shoes

  I'll take off your shoes

  Baby, take off your dress

  Yes, yes, yes

  You can leave your hat on

  You can leave your hat on

  You can leave your hat on

  Go over there, turn on the lights

  All the lights

  Come back here, stand on that chair

  Get up woman, that's right

  Raise your arms up in the air

  And now shake 'em

  You give me reason to live

  You give me reason to live

  You give me reason to live

  You give me reason to live

  Sweet darling

  (You can leave your hat on)

  Just leave your hat on, girl
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  A little wild man

  (You can leave your hat on)

  Leave your hat on

  (You can leave your hat on)

  (You can leave your hat on)

  Suspicious minds are talkin'

  They're tryin' to tear us apart

  They don't believe in this love of mine

  They don't know what love is

  They don't know what love is

  They don't know what love is

  They don't know what love is

  I know what love is

  My jaw was slack. Since the first chords strummed lazily on her guitar, I’d been utterly transfixed by Rosie. I’d honestly thought that You Can Leave Your Hat On by Joe Cocker couldn’t get any sexier than it had been during the movie 9 1/2 Weeks. I was wrong. Watching her sing that song with the stripped-down instrumentation and blushing vulnerability of a virgin, was something else.

  Rosie returned before I had the chance to listen to the whole thing, and I thumbed the button on my phone before she saw me watching. She flashed a smile at me and offered me some of her nachos. She truly had no idea what she was on the verge of.

  The song was a classic, and the arrangement was spare in its instrumentation and presentation, but the sound of her voice. Her high, ethereal voice was the perfect counterpoint to the throbbing drum machine and crystalline guitar. Rosie’s music was incredibly compelling.

  Unsurprisingly, talent agents see a lot of talent. It’s an integral part of the job. But only a tiny, little fraction of that talent ever goes far beyond the shower. Every now and then, however, an act comes along that makes all the rest of it look mediocre and dull.

  Rosie was that special, one in a million talent. She had the looks, the talent, and the drive. But more than any of that, she had that mysterious unnamed quality that was impossible to pin down and harder to find. If anyone had a shot in this business, it was Rosie.