I got off the barstool and rejoined the others, slumping in a lounge chair. Merry put a hand on my arm.
“Rose, you okay?”
Had I told the bartender to splash a thimbleful of gin in that glass? Or had he seen past the sunglasses and sympathetically poured a long shot? My neck was loosening, swinging as if on a light hinge. My back felt pleasantly numb, a far cry from its usual twinging. I remembered now why I relied on alcohol so much—all pain, emotional and physical, dulled. I pulled the bridge of my sunglasses down on my nose and squinted at Merry through one eye. “Mm-hmm.”
“Come on,” said Emily, as she clasped my forearm and hauled me to my feet. “First class is boarding.”
Yumi tucked me into my seat and then sat down next to me. “Hey, should I be worried?”
“Chill, I’m fine.” I wanted to snarl that Yumi didn’t know me—all she knew were rumors, and rumors can be wrong. I accepted a glass of champagne from a flight attendant. I’d already slipped a little bit today—but it was not a normal day, and champagne didn’t really count. Yumi didn’t say anything else.
The tarmac grumbled beneath us as we rolled down the runway. It magnified in my bones as a warm rattle, massaging me from the inside out. I buried my face in a pillow and dozed off. My dreams were nondescript: black, quick, dissipating like incense. At one point I woke up and saw Merry across the aisle watching a free movie on the seat-back screen, and Yumi dozing next to me. I finished the last of my flat champagne before settling back into my recliner.
Twelve hours later, we touched down in Los Angeles. I didn’t wake until we were at the gate. I could sense the residue of the alcohol on the inside of my mind, like a window fogged with grease. My mouth tasted sour and my eyes felt sticky, like they’d been closed for too long.
The monitors in front of us were streaming the red CNN banner as the plane rustled with the sounds of disembarkation: the puckering noise of all seat belts releasing, people standing in the aisle to reach for overhead bins.
I fiddled with the ring on my necklace as I jammed on my shoes. Yumi clutched my arm suddenly, and I flinched away. But she wasn’t looking at my jewelry. “Rose,” she said, pointing at the seat-back screen.
Though we couldn’t hear the sound, it was obvious that the subject of the news story was Cassidy. A photo of Cass from the shoulders up, taken a decade before, popped up in a box next to the newscaster’s head. Most people, when they are relegated to a photo box on CNN, have the indignity of a driver’s license photo, but this was an old professional picture from the height of Gloss. Head shot. World tour. Short blunt bangs and honeyed highlights, glossy pink lips. The anchorwoman looked very serious as she spoke, but our eyes were drawn to the caption below Cassidy’s photo.
Cassidy Holmes: suspected suicide.
* * *
November 16, 1999
Cassidy
I’ve never felt more alive. The crowd is eating out of my hand. My teeth are glittering, my eyes are shining, my voice is strong. Once the initial jitteriness passed and I got out onto that stage, my confidence ballooned up inside me. I can feel the energy quivering off my body; I can almost visualize the rays moving outward and settling like a stupefying mist on the audience.
I can win this.
The final notes of Madonna’s “Frozen” linger in the air as I take a flourishing bow. As I unbend, I can see the audience on their feet, clapping and cheering, and the judges look pleased as well.
Matilda is beaming. “Wow!” she exclaims. “What do you think, Jenna?”
Jenna Kaulfield says, “It was splendid. You were splendid, dear.”
Jonah, Emma, Thomas, Marsha: their words are a blur. I can register that my mouth hurts from my ever-widening smile, and Marsha’s last words: “If it were based on this performance alone, I would offer you a contract in a heartbeat. In a heartbeat,” she repeats, as the crowd continues to whoop.
I am ushered off the stage to find Anna near tears. “You were so good,” she whispers, as she takes the microphone.
We’ve made it through our ballads, and Anna is finishing up our pop round. We’re more than halfway through this nerve-racking evening, and my insides are slowly untwisting.
I follow a production assistant back to the yellow room with the couch. A bottle of water is shoved into my hand and I drink. I keep shifting my feet, dancing a tiny jig on the ground, tap-tap-tapping my shoes, wiggling with my hands, which are clasped around the water bottle. I feel like a figure skater who has come off the Olympic ice and is awaiting her score. I want to whip around and grab the fingers of my coaches and smile and grip hard. But it’s only me in the room, and the television is flickering Anna’s image on the stage that’s only fifteen feet away from where I sit.
I reach for the remote and turn the sound up. Anna is smiling her perfect grin as she wraps her elegant fingers around the microphone and shakes her hips to the beat. It’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
Joanna and I discovered this song when we were in middle school and played it nonstop during sleepovers, so often that I can tell that Anna’s rendition right now is way too close to a karaoke performance. Something about Anna’s voice, her soft lilting tone, reminds me of a sleepover with Joanna—and my first kiss. Between giggles, with Cyndi Lauper in the background, Joanna and I practiced kissing on pillows, then on each other. When her lips were on mine, I’d experienced my first tingle of excitement, but just as I leaned forward to deepen it, she pulled away abruptly and said, “This is boring! Let’s watch Sleepless in Seattle!” I knew then that we were different from each other.
And that’s when I hear it. Anna’s voice ripples like a bullfrog. The note is flat, dead. Short, and she shifts back, but it’s horrified her. Anna’s expression is mildly terrified and, though she continues the performance, she’s off by a beat, rushes to catch up again, and doesn’t fully recover. She ends with a quick bow, a mortified hand leaping up to her mouth as the judges praise her.
As soon as they’re done, she’s running off the stage like a figure skater who’s tripped after a triple axel.
Two songs down, one to go.
* * *
I’M BACK TO biting my nails. It’s the final round of songs, and the camera sweeps over Stephen in an arc, showing the left side of his face, mouth agape. His full face comes into view, contorted in concentration and feeling, arm outstretched; now the other side of him, in silhouette, his perfect long nose and rounded lips outlined in streaks of light. The accompaniment tapers, he lowers his arm, he smiles.
Beside me, Anna is praying. I haven’t talked to a deity in a while but think that she has the right idea. Stephen hasn’t blundered. She has. And I’m up next with all of the pressure.
Stephen and I pass alongside each other in the backstage wings, one person leading him away, another leading me forward. My nerves are jangling again but I think my arrangement is a good one. My friend Edie picked it out for me, and she’s a music expert, so I trust her taste completely.
The lights are in my eyes, but I can hear the audience’s presence. There’s a transmission, a low-level hum, like a lightly plucked guitar string, that emits from a person. This auditorium is full of these little hums, a packed vibration, rippling out of their bodies and into mine. Their energy feeds me. I break out into a smile.