America's Next Star

by Katie Dozier

  In front of a handful of people, including the employees from the restaurant where Mom worked—were they glaring at me, did they know it was my fault—Dad cleared his throat and stood in front of an unnecessary microphone.

  Was this the last time I would see my parents together? Him in a dated tuxedo and her—pieces in a box like a broken puzzle—without her cherished necklace.

  I clasped the golden oval around my neck until it grew hot enough to feel like an ember.

  It sounded like Dad was coughing up cotton balls before he spoke. “Thank you all for coming. I’d like to begin by reading Annette’s favorite poem, by Emily Dickinson.’”

  “Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops, at all.”

  Tears rushed down my face, choking me. Then I felt something a lot different than hope. I ran all the way out to the sign in front of Shaded Oaks, into the sticky Florida sun, and threw up bile—spackling neon over the sign.

  Because all hope had been torn from my heart, and the words of a dead poet weren’t enough to change that.

  Chapter Twelve

  ♪ Mess is Mine ♪

  * * *

  A week and a dozen pizzas later, I’d come out of my haze just enough to agree to resume watching America’s Next Star with Huck. No one knew how to act around me anymore, and I couldn’t stand watching them squirm with pity at school or whenever I so much as dared to leave the house.

  If I hadn’t done the stupid play, Mom would still be alive—likely cooking an early dinner before heading to work. We’d eat something like fresh pasta. She’d make it from scratch in large batches when she had a day off, then freeze it, with homemade tomato sauce and meatballs served on the side so Dad could avoid them.

  And if she was still alive, maybe Dad would come home early, instead of barely at all. After Mom died, he claimed his job as a copywriter at Florida Today now involved hundred-hour workweeks. But before, the kitchen would cling to the scent of fresh parsley, which she’d chop at the last minute and sprinkle over everything.

  With Mom, everything was worthy of a garnish. When I was in kindergarten, my grilled cheese sandwiches had these tiny sliced pickles on top. Though she didn’t often talk about it, it seemed like she must have grown up pretty rich. Even though she didn’t learn to cook until she took an Italian class in college, I really think she was talented. She said she would’ve been a cook if it weren’t for the (even worse) hours, and before I came along, that was the plan I guess.

  Even when she had to go in for lunch service on Saturday, she’d put a homemade candied violet on my cereal. And I never thanked her for it.

  Really, I should have agreed to go over to Huck’s house when he invited me, but that would have meant bothering to take a shower and change out of a blue tank top with so much pizza grease on it that it looked like some sort of stamped pattern.

  At least I had on some jewelry: Mom’s gold necklace that I hadn’t taken off once —even on the rare occasions that I took a shower.

  Pizza boxes were corralled like disobedient cattle near the overflowing trash can in our small kitchen. I followed a trail of ants to a pool of garlic butter—which explained why the whole house smelled like a stale breadstick. In the middle of the congealed pool of oil was a mound of dead ants. Maybe it was time to clean up a little.

  But there were some things I couldn’t bring myself to move—like Mom’s hot pink cardigan that was still thrown across the back of her floral chair in the TV room that hadn’t been finished yet.

  In fact, most of our house hadn’t really ever been completed. Dad bought 314 Boca Cantante Drive a few years ago at an auction, because it had always been his dream to live on the water, saying he’d fix it up before we even moved in. Instead it looked like we’d always be living in an un-flipped house.

  And Mom’s cardigan stood out like a lighthouse in the middle of the Atlantic, in front of the bare beams that didn’t have the benefit of drywall to hide their termite-riddled age.

  The sweater seemed to say, “I’ve just gone out to grab some butter at Publix, be back in five minutes!” Because dead people don’t have sweaters waiting for them.

  When doorbell rang, and I stashed the old pizza boxes in the oven, jammed the trash down into the can, and suffocate the ants with a dish towel—then realized that Mom was the last one to use the dish towel and cried until the doorbell became a rapid knock.

  “Hi.”

  “I brought you these,” he said. As he struggled to give me a hug with his arms full.

  “Jesus.”

  He handed me two huge boxes of different cookies, and also held a deli-platter of mini-sandwiches inside pretzel buns.

  “My…mom’s assistant went to Costco again.”

  Mom seemed to echo as loud as if we were in a giant cave.

  “Well it’s just th e two of us , but tell your mom thanks. So who was eliminated in the last few weeks?”

  Besides Mom.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ♪ We Didn’t Start The Fire ♪

  * * *

  O n TV, a guy in his early twenties wearing leather pants was performing a dance-remix version of Beyoncé’s If I Were a Boy on America’s Next Star . The camera panned around to show tens of thousands of fans packed into Star Stadium. While not nearly as elaborate as next season’s Solar Stadium, that the tabloids said cost a quarter of a billion dollars, the old stadium still did really cool things like shoot balls of flames high into the air.

  Brandon, a Comet (as contestants are referred to on the show), was simultaneously singing, dancing, and juggling sticks with water flowing out of the ends.

  As he attempted to hit a falsetto high F (it peaked a quarter note sharp), the camera did more close-ups on his gyrating hips than of his mouth performing flimsy vocals. His water-shooting sticks were exchanged for flaming batons which he juggled in time to the music. He threw one torch high in the air and caught it on the last note of the song.

  “Thanks for that, mate,” said the British host, Sam, as he slapped Brandon on his back so hard that the Comet stumbled forward.

  Back on my couch, Huck cat called.

  “Sam looks so hot in that navy tux,” he said. “And don’t get me started on Bradon’s ass!”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

  Those days, the cookie I was munching away on was a whole lot sexier to me than even the “Hottest Man of the Year,” a title Sam won from pretty much every magazine since he started hosting the show.

  Back on the screen, Sam pierced the camera with his solemn gaze.

  “Now let’s check in with the judges! Let’s hear from your mentor first. Zelina?”

  “How the hell can Zelina be over thirty?” I pointed at the screen with half of my next cookie. “She looks like she’s our age.”

  “They say being nice makes you age slower. Well, that, and tons of Botox!”

  I studied her platinum bob on the screen, and her almond eyes. When I was little, I’d jammed out to her song, “Baby, Don’t Baby Me,” by jumping around on Mom’s bed with an orange plastic microphone for the countless weeks when it was the number one song on the charts.

  “But who cares about her. If they kick Brandon off and we don’t get to see that ass in leather pants again at the finale, I swear, I’ll quit watching this show.”

  Huck made at least one such promise every single episode.

  “Brandon,” Zelina began, flashing perfect teeth. “I think you’re a star. I mean, like, who can dance better than you here? And you killed it on this week’s juggling talent!”

  She turned to face the admiration of the studio audience of thousands behind her. The camera did a close up of a girl with a neon green poster that read: “Brandon: America’s Sexiest Star.”

  “Preach it, Zee!” said Huck.

  “I vote to put you in the finals—”

  “Zelina, we are running short on time here, so let’s hear Tyler’s critique,” Sam s
aid.

  Tyler was wearing his signature black v-neck and show-stopping glasses. This week’s were enormous blue circles. The only other person I could dream of pulling them off was Elton John.

  “Yeah, well you clearly won this week if it were just about the juggling. Not everyone’s attempt with flames worked out that well.”

  The camera panned to a girl underneath the stage, with a medic dressing a scorched area on her forehead as she winced.

  “Sorry,” said Sam. “We’ve got to wrap things up Tyler.”

  On the screen, Tyler pulled off his glasses which always meant he felt especially strongly about the Comet in question—almost always in a bad way.

  Huck groaned. “He’s gonna eat that poor boy alive.”

  “Look,” Tyler began. “This is America’s Next Star , not America’s Next Backup Dancer .”

  The audience booed and Tyler waved them off. “I’m just being honest. You seem like a nice guy, but you are not a singer, and I can’t vote for a backup dancer who can kinda juggle to go to the finals.”

  Huck slammed his can of Diet Coke down on the table.

  “I. Hate. Him.”

  “Look he’s clearly right though, hot as Brandon is—it’s amazing he’s made it this far,” I said.

  “Why do you always side with Tyler? You say Zelina’s your favorite, but you never even agree with her.”

  “I guess it’s because she finds the good in people and focuses on that.”

  “Well, of course she’s nice when she’s Brandon’s mentor! If he wins he gets the mansion and the money, and Zelina gets ten million too.”

  “She’s the one that actually works with him all the time in rehearsals, so maybe she knows he’s better than he seems,” I said.

  “Oh hey, Huck…Ella.” I hadn’t even heard Dad get home from work.

  The snap of a bottle of beer resonated from the kitchen. As he came into the TV room, his eyes hung on Mom’s hot pink sweater.

  “Oh you got food, good. And you cleaned up.” He took a mini-sub and plunked down into his creaky recliner.

  “You did?” Huck said, just to me, as he eyed the coffee table. I’d flung empty bottles, magazines and a stack of bills on the floor to make room on the coffee table for the mountain of food Huck hauled over.

  “How’s school, Huck? Looking forward to FSU?”

  “Dad, we’re watching this now.”

  The camera captured a girl juggling beach balls, then she hit herself in the face with one and fell into a sand dune.

  “This isn’t nineteen-ninety-five, Em. Let’s pause it,” Huck said as he grabbed the remote from my hand. “Yeah, things are going okay I guess. Glad Ella and I are going to the same college in only a few weeks.”

  Dad had already downed half his beer. “She hasn’t told you then.”

  I sunk into the couch.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Windmill, I don’t know what you mean.”

  I stuffed an oatmeal cookie in my mouth, because desperate times called for desperate cookies. Who the hell wants a dessert and thinks, you know what would be better than chocolate chips—squishy dried grapes.

  “Ella said she’s not going to FSU this summer.”

  Huck practically doubled over, stunned by the invisible punch.

  My hands shot out, outstretched in front of me, as if to shove away Dad’s comment.

  “Look, maybe in the fall, okay? I don’t want to talk about it! Can’t we just watch the fucking show?” Crumbs flew out of my mouth in pools like venom.

  “No,” said Dad. “We can’t watch the fucking show. Huck, go home.”

  He’d already gathered his hoodie and he gave me a quick hug, and whispered in my ear, “Call me later.”

  As he left, Dad deleted the recording and turned off the TV as I yelled for him to stop. Then he drained his beer and swung open the fridge door causing the whole thing to wobble.

  Another bottle cap cracked as it landed on the stained tile floor.

  “I can’t believe you deleted the show! That’s the only time in the last few weeks that I’ve felt anything close to normal.”

  He stopped me from standing up, and pushed a platter of cookies to the floor so he could perch like a vulture on the coffee table, his bulky knees knocking my own.

  “We are not leaving this room until you tell me you are going. And going means back to finish high school and then to FSU.”

  Was this a staring contest? If so I felt I could at least win that, but his eyes reminded me of the pools of mud at the bottom of the Banana River.

  “Your eyes are all bloodshot. Have you been smoking pot?”

  “For Christ’s sake, no. Your breath smells like alcohol.” I leaned in with my nose raised and said, “You smell like cheap booze.”

  “You’re seventeen.” He took a defiant swig of his beer. “You don’t even know what cheap booze smells like.”

  “You’re an alcoholic.” I grabbed the beer from his sweaty grasp. “So now I have an alcoholic father and a dead mother.”

  He slapped me across my cheek, then retracted the weapon hand, rubbing it with his other hand—as if it were an eraser, and the slap was an errant mark on notebook paper.

  After the shock threatened to bury me like waves, I started crying as he muttered, “I’m sorry,” and headed back to the kitchen.

  “You know why my eyes are bloodshot?” He turned away from me, shielding the beer I could hear being opened in his hand. “Because I’m bulimic!”

  I expected him to turn to me with empathy. Our house wasn’t big. There was one bathroom. Surely he had heard me by this point anyway. But he turned to me with bulging eyes as I tried to run in the few feet to my bedroom.

  “How the hell could you be bulimic? You’re getting fat!”

  “You’re an alcoholic!”

  But that didn’t make me feel any better, so I added, “Fuck you,” which made me feel even worse. I locked myself in my bedroom.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ♪ 100 Years ♪

  * * *

  I hadn’t known for sure until that moment that I’d gained a lot of weight since Mom died, but the last time I tried to button up my jeans it was more of a workout than I ever had in PE. So much for blaming the dryer and the fact that I was way worse at doing my own laundry than I ever would’ve guessed while Mom was alive.

  There’s nothing glamorous about a fat girl crying in her bedroom—especially in my odd bedroom. When we moved in, Dad decided to redo my room first, mainly out of necessity. It had started out with peeling clown wallpaper and someone’s failed attempt to paint “Baby Tom” on the walls, with a shaky hand in red paint.

  Back then, I’d decided that I wanted to paint bubbles on my purple walls, was my favorite color for years before I started wearing black all the time. Dad cut a hole in the bottom of a plastic trash can, and we spray-painted it from the inside using the rim as a stencil. Funny how we used to do things together back before he became a drunk asshole.

  Instead of intended happy bubbles, the rainbow of hues looked like gumballs, which I had thought were fun and happy before Mom died. But now—I felt like I was being suffocated inside a giant gumball machine. I guess there are worse ways to drown.

  Mom got me a punch of polka-dotted decorations that year, including my turquoise comforter with white spots that seemed to only serve the purpose of highlighting how stained it had become.

  My closet contained only bare, twisted wire hangers, and my ridiculous prom dress sealed away in a clear bag.

  Even less glamorous than my room was my moment at two a.m., when I crept out like a cockroach to the cookie platter and ate them all. Even the oatmeal raisin ones. They died in liquid swirling in the toilet bowl.

  Dad may have been right that I was fat, or at least fatter than Mom had been, but at least he was way wrong about me being bulimic.

  Huck emailed me, since I still had no phone, to ask me again if I was going to prom with the techies.

  No. For the millionth ti
me.

  But even though he didn’t save me from Dad’s wrath when he really could have, he still saved my night by giving me his login info so I could stream America’s Next Star . So at least I got to watch that in my room as I drowned in the gumballs and laundry.

  Of course, it had been impossible to avoid a spoiler as it seemed like literally everyone was talking about who made it to the finals. It was the only topic more heavily covered than the President. If I somehow managed to avoid spoilers for five minutes I bet the termites would’ve crawled in to tell me!

  “Veronica,” said the host, Sam. The camera zoomed in on the faces of her parents. “There’s been a lot of controversy with you on America’s Next Star . The fans say you can be too cutthroat. Tyler thinks you have been getting worse every week, and says you should be disqualified because you juggled two things instead of the required three this week for your talent.”

  The camera rode up the curves of her size-two neon green mini-skirt, to her silver-sequined tube top, to her shimmering eyelashes. Sam put an arm around her bare waist.

  “But none of that matters now. Because you are going to the finals for a fifty percent shot at a ten million dollar recording contract!”

  The screen flashed between her parents, who were jumping up and down, to her shining face as she sunk to her knees in the center of Star Stadium. Her ears took in the ringing applause of over a hundred thousand people. The lights went dark except for the thousands of twinkling stars that appeared on the stage floor all around her, and a spotlight in the shape of a star highlighted her face.

  I paused it there, right on the close-up of her overjoyed face. She seemed to glow from within like a Renaissance painting. The funny thing is that, even though I was in awe of her, I didn’t actually like Veronica. Her interview clips said she was homecoming queen of her New York high school, and she usually just seemed kind of fake. But this moment of her happiness it was so pure and genuine. I wondered what the chance of me ever having a moment of joy like that were.