twenty-four
After the funeral, I persuade everyone to leave and I stay at my childhood home by myself. I tell them that it’s just for a few days, until I figure out my next move.
As I move like a ghost through the haunted house, I discover some of my brother’s music. He must have composed these pieces when he was thirteen or younger. I play them on my guitar, just so that I can hear something other than the sound of my own breathing echoing off the walls.
The words just come on their own.
Saint Hope.
Heartbreaker.
The songs write themselves, as if they’ve been trapped inside me for days, itching to get out, to find a shape. And now they’ve found it: My brother’s music dressed in my heartbreak.
All my bitterness and pain finds an outlet, and I don’t stop writing lyrics to James’ music until the ink in my pen stops and my heart is all bled out.
I don’t know why I record myself singing them on my guitar. I don’t know why I post it on the Internet. Maybe because I think that I am truly a ghost. Invisible.
No one will see it, I think .
This pain inside of me needs an outlet; it’s eating me alive. The darkness begets more darkness until there will be nothing left but darkness. It needs out. And these songs are a way out.
Saint Hope is the first. The one Eden and I started writing together. The minute I upload it online, I feel a weight whoosh out of me, a release, like a deep wound emptying of poison. I sit there, phone in hand, suspended in time. Within seconds, everything has changed: I feel like breathing for the first time in weeks.
Then, complete silence follows. Nothing really happened. A pebble dropped in a forest. No one will care.
No one will see it.
But oh, they do.
…
Saint Hope goes viral.
It’s uploaded under the name ‘Issy Woo’, inspired by one of my Chinese names, and I’m shocked to see that strange name plastered all over the Internet within a few days. I’m relieved in a way, because I was this close to using my real name. But now that’s been erased too.
When the record companies begin blowing up my phone, at first I ignore them.
Then I get the one phone call I was hoping for—it’s from a job I applied to. They looked up my name (the real one, Isaiah Pan), and ran smack-dab into articles about the school scandal. They apologize profusely, but they ‘cannot hire me at this moment’.
It was a cashier’s job at CVS. The last of the fifty jobs I applied to. They have all rejected me, officially.
So I look at all the missed calls. Producers, music agencies, artists… I don’t know how they found my number, but if they traced ‘Issy Woo’ to Isaiah Pan, they must have missed the memo that I’m a wanted criminal. Another call is coming through right now. And I think: since I am unemployable, I might as well do this.
I pick up the phone.
It’s Skye on the other line.
Well, I don’t know it’s Skye yet.
As far as I know, it’s a dude who sounds like he’s entirely made of sunshine. Which is good, considering that I am currently standing in a room emptied of furniture, with no electricity, waiting for my childhood home to be sold on the market, to pay our debts to the school that expelled me.
“Issy Woo?” Skye’s voice says (even though I don’t know it’s Skye yet). “Man, did I love your song. You’re going places, kid.”
“I am not a kid,” I reply, my voice gravelly from being unused.
He bursts out laughing. It takes him a good half a minute to calm down. It’s so annoying that I hung up on him.
But then I think better of it and I sign with the next talent agent who hits me up. And just like that, it begins.
…
My next song, Heartbreaker , is released as a single under an official label. It blows up even more than Saint Hope . It goes viral on multiple platforms, and keeps going viral over and over .
I meet Skye in person at some event. He looks like a surfer, has the vibe of an older brother, and knows music as if he went to music school. He knows the industry like the back of his hand. But more importantly, he gets my songs without me having to explain them to him. I hire him immediately. I fire the other agent almost on the spot—my connection with Skye is that intense.
We talk for hours. Skye keeps shaking his head, saying he’s never heard anything like my songs. He looks at me as if he’s never seen anything like me either, but I don’t think it’s my nonexistent talent that’s got him so surprised. It’s the pain. He’s never seen so much pain in a single person.
But he hasn’t seen anything yet.
…
A month after Saint Hope climbs the charts, I call my brother.
“Can you write me a song?”
“Sure,” he replies. “How many hours do you need it in?”
“Don’t you mean days?”
“I mean at this point… I’m not sure inspiration will strike, but I’ll have something for you by this afternoon,” he says. “I’ll rework some of my old stuff.”
How much ‘old stuff’ exactly has this dude written? He is barely seventeen years old.
“I want the melody to be based off Beethoven’s 5th,” I tell him.
“Like the opening orchestra motif?”
“Yeah, something like that. A recurring theme, you know?”
“Right. Why?”
“Because it’s the freaking Beethoven’s 5th?”
“So? You’ve never cared about Beethoven before.”
“Well, I used to. A long time ago. It’s… It’s kind of our song.”
“Come again? Beethoven’s 5th is your song ?”
“It’s a long story.”
“A girl?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh wow.”
“ The girl.” My voice breaks. I don’t think I have said these words out loud since the last time I said them to her. In a different life.
“Zay.” My brother sounds freaked out.
‘Who has Beethoven’s 5th as their song?’
‘We do. ’
The memories come flooding back and I quickly hung up on my brother, because I’m about to throw up. But I don’t, so I dial his number again, my chest going concave with pain.
“What,” James answers on the first ring. He sounds annoyed, but he also sounds scared for me. As he should be.
“We did ,” I say. “We did. We don’t anymore.”
Silence for a bit.
“Then, what’s the song going to be about? Is it going to be about me?” my brother asks. He has this delusion that everyone thinks he is the next Beethoven. He probably is, but there’s no need for him to know that.
“Sure,” I say and I hung up on him again before he can ask any more questions.
He sends me the melody before noon. It’s simple and catchy and sad. It starts on the piano, the same notes as the 5th. Those notes she loved; she said they sounded like stars on an empty black sky. And then I put words to it.
And that becomes my next single, Beethoven .
It climbs the charts within hours, and reaches the top within less than ten days after being released. And it stays there.
…
I have forbidden myself from thinking about her, from remembering.
And yet all I do is remember. And want.
All I do is write about her, for her. As if she would ever in a million years hear these words, these songs. But I can’t do anything else with the memory of her. I can’t mourn her loss; I can’t let myself feel the pain.
Because whenever I think of her, the same question destroys me again and again:
Did she do this to me?
Did she and her dad call my school and straight up lie? Impossible. Did her dad accuse me of doing these things to her? Was she the ‘sixteen-year-old’ girl I was supposed to have hurt?
No. Absolutely not.
It’s not possible. There is just no way… No. Just no.
I refuse to entertain the thought, and even if I did, it would be ridiculous.
And yet… Her father was a rich patron of the school—she had threatened them with his patronage in front of my eyes. She had be en fifteen years old when I’d first met her. I didn’t even kiss her until she was sixteen, I barely even touched her, but… Why did she completely disappear the day the accusations were made? The day after she had broken up with me in such a weird, robotic way? As if she had been taught what to say.
In what universe is that a coincidence?
The question eats at me like poison, the doubts won’t let me breathe.
It seeps into my brain while I’m asleep, brushing my teeth, writing music, pretending to eat. It torments me.
It reaches out its slimy tentacles and drags me down into the abyss, and all I can do is just keep lifting my head over the water, barely taking in gulps of air, before being dragged back under. One day, I know I will not surface again. One day, I know I will not be able to avoid answering the question any longer.
Did she do this to me?
Deep down I know she did. I know it was her dad. So she either did this, or she let it happen, which is pretty much the same thing. So the question really is:
How could she do this to me?
…
By Christmas, I release the Heartbreaker LP, and it blows up overnight. It just… blows up. I don’t think anyone—least of all me—thought a new artist had so many songs in them from the get go.
Except I am not a new artist.
I am pain incarnate.
And my brother’s music is pure genius. So, apparently, that is a recipe for success: Pain on top of pain.
I have included a few songs I wrote the music to myself, back in the woods, in another life. I never made it out of the woods—at least, not alive—but it turns out my music did. It turns out that all that’s left of me is music. And good music too. Who would have thought? Not me.
To my surprise, almost every song in the album climbs to the top on multiple charts. And not just James’ music—the songs I composed myself are hits too.
I am just numb from shock.
I don’t understand what’s happening.
I don’t understand what’s about to happen, what it all means, until it is too late. Of course, I couldn’t have stopped it, even if I had known. There is no stopping the tsunami of fame and obsession that descends on me like a thick, black cloud. In the months that follow, I keep fighting to keep my head above water, but I am sinking deeper and deeper into fame with every number my album climbs on the charts.
It reaches number one, and it stays there. Week after week.
I give my first concert; the album stays on number one. It tops more lists, in more countries, in more platforms. It eradicates every other album of this year.
I try a second concert, and that too, goes ok. Skye says I was magnificent. I say I didn’t mind it. Actually, that’s not true. I am beginning to like singing in front of a crowd, however small. I lose myself in the music, which is what I have always wanted, since I was three years old. And singing makes me completely forget myself, for a bit.
What could be better than that?
I begin to bond with my musicians, but most of all with Jude and Miki, the bassist and drummer Skye and my label matched me with. They see glimpses of my darkness, and they don’t leave. At first, I have trouble looking them in the eye. I think they will see the truth of me, that I am a fraud, but they don’t. They treat me with respect and that’s enough to make me almost break.
But I don’t break anymore.
Issy Woo doesn’t do breaking.
Skye asks me how I feel about a little tour. I say, fine, whatever.
It’s not like I have any idea what I’m doing anyway. There is nothing else to do with my time, my empty soul, my tired brain, but music. In the end, I am my dad’s son: I tried my best to run away from it, but music is my fate.
Music and I have finally found each other, it seems, in the most unlikely of ways.
…
Skye’s ‘little tour’ is nothing short of a Herculean labor. It lasts until the beginning of the new year. I had no idea how much energy, money, skill and time goes into a tour, even a tiny one like this. But it takes my mind off Eden, my grandpa and all the mess I left behind, so I don’t complain once.
Skye takes care of everything and the whole thing goes down exceptionally smoothly, especially for a complete noob in the music scene like myself. People actually come to hear me sing. I can’t wrap my mind around it. They know the lyrics to my songs already.
I’m not even an opening act. I am the act. How did this happen?
“We’ll do another one soon,” Skye says. “That wasn’t a complete disaster.”
“Another one? When?” I murmur.
I can’t remember when was the last time I was so tired; I can barely open my lips. Finals at school had nothing on this baby.
“When you build up your stamina a little,” Skye laughs and kicks me off the bed. “And when you release your next song. So,” he looks at his watch, “by my calculations, any minute now.”
…
She (I can no longer think of her name) never replies to my frantic texts. She never contacts me. The months turn into years, until I convince myself that all that’s left of her is a memory.
The memory of our last lazy afternoon in the woods, when I’d kissed her and said a quick goodbye to her, already aching inside, thinking I would see her again tomorrow. Already counting the minutes until I would.
The last time I held her, kissed her, spoke to her, having it was the last time.
But that’s not all that’s left of her.
There is the hole where my heart used to be—she left me that, too.
My mind plays tricks on me. I keep imagining I see her everywhere.
I catch a glimpse of a girl that looks like her the first time I ever play for a tiny crowd of twenty people at a basketball game. It’s not her, of course; it can’t be. It’s just a random girl outside the stadium. But I freak out for a good three days afterwards.
Every time I think of her, I cope the only way I know: by writing more songs, by working harder on my guitar playing skills, and by going to the gym. By calling Skye. Anything to get my mind off her.
More time passes.
I meet Weston Spencer, the famous actor. I meet a lot of famous people—they leave me completely indifferent. But there’s just something about Spencer. I don’t know what it is yet .
He says, and I quote: “You’re Pan’s brother, right?”
“ I am Pan,” I say. “Isaiah Pan. The eldest Pan. The Pan.”
He blinks at me. He already knows James, so I’m the second Pan brother he’s met. He doesn’t get why I’m so weirded out. I think he’s out of his mind drunk.
“I’m just Wes,” he tells me. “Can I borrow your songs for my movie? They’re brilliant. You’re brilliant.”
I end up holding his waist while he throws up in the back of an exclusive club in L.A. He’s my slave after that.
We work together. He drinks. A lot. I start taking pills. He will stop, eventually; I won’t.
My so-called career takes off. Skye begins to talk about a real tour, which ends up being a sold-out stadium tour. Once that starts, it goes much better than anticipated, and they add Europe shows. At this rate, this thing is going to take a couple of years, at least. Skye says we ought to ride the wave of my fame. He asks me if I’m thinking of writing more songs, as he wants to release them while I am at my peak.
The label wants to get a second album out as soon as possible, but they don’t think I have it in me. They think my star will die soon. They say it happens to most pop stars that blow up suddenly, like I did. They call it the ‘firework effect’. Otherwise known as ‘crash and burn’.
“It’s not going to happen to this one,” Skye tells them, staring at me the whole time. “You’ve never seen anything like Issy Woo. Watch what happens. He’s going to be a phenomenon.”
I personally couldn’t care less, but writing songs is the one thing that actually interests me right now. It kept me alive once before, didn’t it? Skye knows it. I know it. Music is the only thing that keeps the darkness at bay—and suddenly, I’m scrambling for the melodies that will save me. They prove elusive.
Fumbling for something to anchor me as I sink deeper into despair, I descend into addiction, trying to fight the darkness with more darkness. It doesn’t work that way, of course. I nearly die; Jude and Skye save my life. They tell me I’ve caught it early, and to go to rehab asap. I do. It takes me months, but I beat that ugly beast.
Who knew I had it in me to fight to stay alive?
Skye and Jude save my life in more ways than I can count. Once I’m clean and ready to resume the tour, I am hungry to make more songs .
But the fear still lurks, the fear that eventually, I will get tired of fighting. There will be left inside me except darkness. The fear that no matter how many years pass since the day she left me in those woods, I won’t be able mend my heart. I won’t lift this darkness.
She took away my heart, my hope, my education, my future, my reputation, my family and my name. She gave me so many things, but, in the end, she took away everything she had ever given me, including my ability to love.
All she left me was music.
So that has to be my weapon, until it breaks in my bloodied hands.
…
More time passes.
More shows, more performances, more fans.
I write songs I don’t record. I toy with the idea of a song named Laconia , after a place in Greece—Sparta—where, in ancient Greek myth and history, people used as few words as possible to communicate. Like, no more than two or three words in a sentence. It’s art; it’s science. I try to write a song about my grandfather; I can’t even record it in the end.
I can’t write about my dad. I don’t think I ever will. But writing a song about Grandpa was healing in a way I wasn’t expecting it to be. Too bad my voice keeps breaking, and I end up never recording it. It seems like all I can sing are tortured songs about her .
“You’ve got a broken heart,” Skye observes. We’ve been working together for almost three years at this point.
“Well, aren’t you a genius,” I scoff.
“No,” he says, his eyebrows drawing together. “No. I didn’t just notice, Zay. I mean, you still have a broken heart. After all this time.”
“How do you know?” I ask him.
He points to a piece of paper that’s got part of the lyrics to Little Bird written on it in my handwriting. An advertising team has confiscated it; they are considering using my actual handwriting for merch. How unbearably boring.
“It keeps spilling out of you,” Skye says.
“Isaiah’s never had a girlfriend,” Jude jumps in, helpful. “He only has hookups. Well, rarely.”
“Don’t help,” I hiss at him between clenched teeth .
“I know what I see,” Skye insists. “You are a man who’s had his heart broken—never mended.”
“And you are a man who doesn’t know when to shut up,” I tell him.
I should do something about this ‘never had a girlfriend’ situation, shouldn’t I? At the mere thought of dating, bile rises to my throat. How pathetic that I can’t move on, after all this time.
I will , I promise myself. I will . I won’t be this person whose pain keeps spilling out every night on a stage as he sings Heartbreaker .
But I can’t.
As time passes, more darkness gathers and drags me deeper and deeper. Everywhere I go, people sing along with me, cheer for me, chant my name. But they don’t see me drowning right in front of their eyes.
And eventually, the music? It leaves me too.