by Gayle Forman
We were all sitting around the table, Mia, Kat, Denny, Teddy, and me, the third child, who’d taken to eating over. You couldn’t blame me. Denny was a way better cook than my mom.
“What’s that, Little Man?” Denny asked, spooning a portion of mashed potatoes onto Teddy’s plate next to the grilled salmon and the spinach that Teddy had tried—unsuccessfully—to refuse.
“I was looking at the old photo albums. And Mia got to go to all these concerts all the time. When she was a baby, even. And I never even got to go to one. And I’m practically eight.”
“You just turned seven five months ago.” Kat guffawed.
“Still. Mia went before she could walk. It’s not fair!”
“And who ever told you that life was fair?” Kat asked, raising an eyebrow. “Certainly not me. I am a follower of the School of Hard Knocks.”
Teddy turned toward an easier target. “Dad?”
“Mia went to concerts because they were my shows, Teddy. It was our family time.”
“And you do go to concerts,” Mia said. “You come to my recitals.”
Teddy looked as disgusted as he had when Denny had served him the spinach. “That doesn’t count. I want to go to loud concerts and wear the Mufflers.” The Mufflers were the giant headphones Mia had worn as a little kid when she’d been taken to Denny’s old band’s shows. He’d been in a punk band, a very loud punk band.
“The Mufflers have been retired, I’m afraid,” Denny said. Mia’s dad had long since quit his band. He now was a middle-school teacher who wore vintage suits and smoked pipes.
“You could come to one of my shows,” I said, forking a piece of salmon.
Everyone at the table stopped eating and looked at me, the adult members of the Hall family each giving me a different disapproving look. Denny just looked tired at the can of worms I’d opened. Kat looked annoyed for the subversion of her parental authority. And Mia—who, for whatever reason, had this giant churchstate wall between her family and my band—was shooting daggers. Only Teddy—up on his knees in his chair, clapping—was still on my team.
“Teddy can’t stay up that late,” Kat said.
“You let Mia stay up that late when she was little,” Teddy shot back.
“We can’t stay up that late,” Denny said wearily.
“And I don’t think it’s appropriate,” Mia huffed.
Immediately, I felt the familiar annoyance in my gut. Because this was the thing I never understood. On one hand, music was this common bond between Mia and me, and me being an all-rock guy had to be part of her attraction. And we both knew that the common ground we’d found at her family’s house—where we hung out all the time—made it like a haven for us. But she’d all but banned her family from my shows. In the year we’d been together, they’d never been. Even though Denny and Kat had hinted that they’d like to come, Mia was always making up excuses why this show or that was not the right time.
“Appropriate? Did you just say that it’s not ‘appropriate’ for Teddy to come to my show?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level.
“Yes, I did.” She couldn’t have sounded more defensive or snippy if she’d tried.
Kat and Denny flashed each other a look. Whatever annoyance they’d had with me had turned to sympathy. They knew what Mia’s disapproval felt like.
“Okay, first off, you’re sixteen. You’re not a librarian. So you’re not allowed to say ‘appropriate.’ And second of all, why the hell isn’t it?”
“All right, Teddy,” Kat said, scooping up Teddy’s dinner plate. “You can eat in the living room in front of the TV.”
“No way, I want to watch this!”
“SpongeBob?” Denny offered, pulling him by the elbow.
“By the way,” I said to Denny and Kat, “the show I was thinking of is this big festival coming up on the coast next month. It’ll be during the day, on a weekend, and outside, so not as loud. That’s why I thought it’d be cool for Teddy. For all of you, actually.”
Kat’s expression softened. She nodded. “That does sound fun.” Then she gestured to Mia as if to say: But you’ve got bigger fish to fry.
The three of them shuffled out of the kitchen. Mia was slunk all the way down in her chair, looking both guilty and like there was no way in hell she was going to give an inch.
“What’s your problem?” I demanded. “What’s your hang-up with your family and my band? Do you think we suck so badly?”
“No, of course not!”
“Do you resent me and your dad talking music all the time?”
“No, I don’t mind the rock-talk.”
“So, what is it, Mia?”
The tiniest rebel teardrops formed in the edges of her eyes and she angrily swatted them away.
“What? What is the matter?” I asked, softening. Mia wasn’t prone to crocodile tears, or to any tears, really.
She shook her head. Lips sealed shut.
“Will you just tell me? It can’t be worse than what I’m thinking, which is that you’re ashamed of Shooting Star because you think we reek to holy hell.”
She shook her head again. “You know that’s not true. It’s just,” she paused, as if weighing some big decision. Then she sighed. “The band. When you’re with the band, I already have to share you with everyone. I don’t want to add my family to that pot, too.” Then she lost the battle and started to cry.
All my annoyance melted. “You dumb-ass,” I crooned, kissing her on the forehead. “You don’t share me. You own me.”
Mia relented. Her whole family came to the festival. It was a fantastic weekend, twenty Northwest bands, not a rain cloud in sight. The whole thing went down in infamy, spawning a live recorded CD and a series of festivals that continue to this day.
Teddy had insisted on wearing the Mufflers, so Kat had spent an hour grumbling and digging through boxes in the basement until she’d found them.
Mia generally liked to hang backstage at shows but when Shooting Star played, she was right in front of the stage, just clear of the mosh pit, dancing with Teddy the whole time.
TWENTY-THREE
First you inspect me
Then you dissect me
Then you reject me
I wait for the day
That you’ll resurrect me
“ANIMATE”
COLLATERAL DAMAGE, TRACK 1
When our flight lands in London, it’s pissing down rain, so it feels like home to both of us. It’s five in the afternoon when we get in. We’re due in Guildford that evening. We play the next night. Then it’s countdown till total freedom. Mia and I have worked out a schedule for the next three months while I’m touring and she’s touring, breaks here and there where we can overlap, visit, see each other. It’s not going to be delightful, but compared to the last three years, it’ll still feel like heaven.
It’s past eight when we get to the hotel. I’ve asked Aldous to book me at the same place as the rest of the band, not just for the festival but the duration of the tour. Whatever their feelings are going to be about my leaving Shooting Star, sleeping two miles away ain’t gonna minimize them. I haven’t mentioned Mia to Aldous or anyone, and miraculously, we’ve managed to keep her name out of the tabloids so far. No one seems to know that I’d spent the last week in Asia with her. Everyone was too busy buzzing about Bryn’s new love interest, some Australian actor.
There’s a note at the front desk informing me that the band is having a private dinner in the atrium and asking me to join them. I suddenly feel like I’m being led to my execution and after the fifteen-hour trip from Seoul would like nothing more than to shower first, just maybe see them tomorrow. But Mia has her hand on my side. “No, you should go.”
“You come, too?” I feel bad asking her. She just played three intensely amazing and crazily well-received concerts in Japan and Korea and then flew halfway around the world and directly into my psychodrama. But all of this will be bearable if she’s with me.
“Are you sure?” she asks. “
I don’t want to intrude.”
“Trust me, if anyone’s intruding, it’s me.”
The bellman grabs our stuff to take to our room, and the concierge leads us across the lobby. The hotel is in an old castle, but it’s been taken over with rockers and a bunch of different musicians nod and “hey” me, but I’m too nervous right now to respond. The concierge leads us to a dimly lit atrium. The band’s all in there, along with a giant buffet serving a traditional English roast.
Liz turns around first. Things haven’t been the same between the two of us since that Collateral Damage tour, but the look she gives me now, I don’t know how to describe it: Like I’m her biggest disappointment in life, but she tries to rise above it, to tamp it down, to act all casual, like I’m just one of the fans, one of the hangerson, one of the many people who want something from her that she’s not obliged to give. “Adam,” she says with a curt nod.
“Liz,” I begin cautiously.
“Hey, asshole! Nice of you to join us!” Fitzy’s irrepressible voice is both sarcastic and welcoming, like he just can’t decide which way to go.
Mike doesn’t say anything. He just pretends I don’t exist.
And then I feel the brush of Mia’s shoulder as she steps out from behind me. “Hi, guys,” she says.
Liz’s face goes completely blank for a moment. Like she doesn’t know who Mia is. Then she looks scared, like she’s just seen a ghost. Then my strong, tough, butchy drummer—her lower lip starts to tremble, and then her face crumples. “Mia?” she asks, her voice quavering. “Mia?” she asks louder this time. “Mia!” she says, the tears streaming down her face right before she tackles my girl in a hug.
When she’s released her, she holds Mia at arm’s length and looks at her and then back at me and then back at Mia. “Mia?” she shouts, both asking and answering her own question. Then she turns to me. And if I’m not forgiven, then at least I’m understood.
The rain keeps up throughout the next day. “Lovely English summer we’re having,” everyone jokes. It’s become my habit to barricade myself at these types of giant festivals, but realizing that this is probably my last one for a while, at least as a participant, I slip inside the grounds, listen to some of the bands on the side stages, catch up with some old friends and acquaintances, and even talk to a couple of rock reporters. I’m careful not to mention the breakup of the band. That’ll come out in time, and I’ll let everyone else decide how to release this news. I do, however, briefly comment on Bryn’s and my split, which is all over the tabloids anyhow. Asked about my new mystery woman, I simply say “no comment.” I know this will all come out soon enough, and while I want to spare Mia the circus, I don’t care if the whole world knows we’re together.
By the time our nine P.M. slot rolls around, the rain has subsided to a soft mist that seems to dance in the late summer twilight. The crowd has long since accepted the slosh. There’s mud everywhere and people are rolling around in it like it’s Woodstock or something.
Before the set, the band was nervous. Festivals do that to us. A bigger ante than regular concerts, even stadium shows—festivals have exponentially larger crowds, and crowds that include our musician peers. Except tonight, I’m calm. My chips are all cashed out. There’s nothing to lose. Or maybe I’ve already lost it and found it, and whatever else there might be to lose, it’s got nothing to do with what’s on this stage. Which might explain why I’m having such a good time out here, pounding through our new songs on my old Les Paul Junior, another piece of history brought back from the dead. Liz did a double take when she saw me pull it out of its old case. “I thought you got rid of that thing,” she’d said.
“Yeah, me too,” I’d replied, tossing off a private smile at Mia.
We race through the new album and then throw in some bones from Collateral Damage and before I know it, we’re almost at the end of the set. I look down at the set list that’s duct-taped to the front of the stage. Scrawled there in Liz’s block lettering is the last song before we leave for the inevitable encore. “Animate.” Our anthem, our old producer Gus Allen, called it. The angstiest screed on Collateral Damage, critics called it. Probably our biggest hit of all. It’s a huge crowd-pleaser on tours because of the chorus, which audiences love to chant.
It’s also one of the few songs we’ve ever done with any kind of production, a strings section of violins right at the top of the recorded track, though we don’t have those for the live version. So as we launch into it, it’s not that rolling howl of the crowd’s excitement that I hear, but the sound of her cello playing in my head. For a second, I have this vision of just the two of us in some anonymous hotel room somewhere dickering around, her on her cello, me on my guitar, playing this song I wrote for her. And shit, if that doesn’t make me so damn happy.
I sing the song with all I’ve got. Then we get to the chorus: Hate me. Devastate me. Annihilate me. Re-create me. Re-create me. Won’t you, won’t you, won’t you re-create me.
On the album, the chorus is repeated over and over, a rasp of fury and loss, and it’s become a thing during shows for me to stop singing and turn the mic out toward the audience and let them take over. So I turn the mic toward the fields, and the crowd just goes insane, singing my song, chanting my plea.
I leave them at it and I take a little walk around the stage. The rest of the band sees what’s going on so they just keep repping the chorus. When I get closer to the side of the stage, I see her there, where she always felt most comfortable, though for the foreseeable future, she’ll be the one out here in the spotlight, and I’ll be the one in the wings, and that feels right, too.
The audience keeps singing, keeps making my case, and I just keep strumming until I get close enough to see her eyes. And then I start singing the chorus. Right to her. And she smiles at me, and it’s like we’re the only two people out here, the only ones who know what’s happening. Which is that this song we’re all singing together is being rewritten. It’s no longer an angry plea shouted to the void. Right here, on this stage, in front of eighty thousand people, it’s becoming something else.
This is our new vow.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is customary in these types of things for writers to thank their editors and agents separately. But when I think of my writing career, I often imagine myself flanked by my editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel, and my agent, Sarah Burnes. These two fiercely intelligent book warriors are both so integral to the creation and guidance of my work that it’s hard to separate them. Sarah advises, advocates, and helps me keep things in perspective. Julie’s greatest gift is that she gives me the key to unlock my stories. The two of them are my twin pillars.
But, as the saying goes, it takes a village. And in Julie’s case, that village consists of many, many dedicated people at the Penguin Young Readers Group. I will save some trees and not list them all but suffice it to say, there are dozens of people in the sales, marketing, publicity, design, online, and production departments to whom I am deeply—and daily—grateful. Shout-outs must go to Don Weisberg, Lauri Hornik, Lisa Yoskowitz, and Allison Verost, who is equal parts publicist, therapist, and friend.
Sarah’s village at The Gernert Company includes Rebecca Gardner, Logan Garrison, Will Roberts, and the formidable Courtney Gatewood, who, for someone bent on world domination, is remarkably nice.
Thank you to Alisa Weilerstein, for inspiring me, as well as giving up some of her precious free time to help me understand the career trajectory for a young professional cellist. Thank you Lynn Eastes, trauma coordinator at OHSU, for offering insights into what Mia’s recovery and rehabilitation process might look like. Thank you to Sean Smith for an insider’s view into the film industry (and a million other things). Anything I got right in regard to these details is because of these people. Anything I got wrong is because of me.
Thank you to the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society for the generous use of one of my all-time favorite sonnets, “Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink.” Many of Edna St.
Vincent Millay’s poems are incredibly romantic and yet still kind of edgy all these years later. I only included the second half of this sonnet in the book; you should all go look up the full sonnet.
Thank you to my readers at all stages: Jana Banin, Tamara Glenny, Marjorie Ingall, Tamar Schamhart, and Courtney Sheinmel for just the right mix of encouragement and critique.
Thank you to my other village—my neighborhood community—for pitching in with my kids and generally having my back. Isabel Kyriacou and Gretchen Sonju, I am forever in your debt!
Thank you to the entire Christie Family for their enduring grace and generosity.
Thank you to Greg and Diane Rios for continuing on this journey with us.
Thank you to my family, the Formans, Schamharts, and Tuckers, for your cheerleading and cheer. Extra thanks to my sister for hand-selling my books to half the population of Seattle.
Thank you to my daughters: Denbele, who arrived in our family about midway through the writing of this book, and if she ever thought it was weird that her new mom occasionally seemed to channel an angsty twenty-one-year-old guy, never let that dent her ebullience. And to Willa, who inadvertently supplied me with so many of the book’s fictional band/movie/character names in a way that only a four/five-year-old can. I should probably raise your allowance.
Thank you to my husband, Nick, for your not-so-gentle critiques that always force me to up my game. For your sublime playlists that bring music into my life (and books). For supplying me with all the little band details. And for being the reason I can’t seem to stop writing love stories about guitar players.
And finally, thank you to the booksellers, librarians, teachers, and bloggers. For helping books take flight.
