forty-five
The fans start putting two and two together: my new albums and my interview, and they say they are ‘concerned for me’. But for once, they’re not cruel. I mean, most of them aren’t. There are those who fantasize and theorize endlessly about how I am definitely going to fall in love with them next. Even a few who think they’ve found ‘secret hidden messages’ in my old songs.
Well, let them.
I’m focused on trying to keep myself alive until the next concert.
My first night in Germany, I faint onstage, but I manage to do it out of sight. As soon as I wake up, I walk right up to the lights and keep on singing. The next night, I forget the lyrics to the entire first verse of Saint Hope and Jude has to start it for me until the cue in my ear starts feeding me the lines. That’s never happened before—I’ve never had to work with a teleprompter.
No one says anything.
On the first night in Munich, I fall apart in the middle of a song .
“Do you want to stop?” Jude asks me that night. I’m so tired I can’t get up off the floor. I shake my head and get dizzy.
Jude lowers his long body onto the floor next to me.
“Don’t think about the fans,” he says quietly. His face is wrinkled with worry, and I hate it. Not his face. Well, his face too a little bit right now. Why won’t he leave me alone? “Don’t think about the money. About everyone who is working on this tour. And don’t you dare think of me or Skye or Miki or any of the musicians.”
“What…” It takes too much effort to speak. My throat is shredded to pieces. “What should I think about then?”
“Yourself,” Jude says.
Yeah, right.
“Dude, you gotta eat something,” he goes on, relentless. My eyes have drifted closed, and it’s just as well because I don’t have to look at his stupid face while he’s saying stupid stuff. “You look like crap.”
“Sleep,” I murmur. “I need to sleep.”
I feel someone lift me with an arm around my shoulders and then I feel nothing.
Finally.
…
We are in Paris.
Everyone is enjoying what little time we have for sightseeing. Jude and Skye take selfies with the Eifel Tower flashing in the background and try going to a club incognito. All I do is miss Eden.
Every beautiful thing I see, every café, every little bookstore, every green tree by the Seine, makes me think of her. I can’t stop thinking about her; I know how much she would enjoy being here, experiencing everything with me.
No. Head in the game . No time to fall apart.
The Paris shows are going to be huge. People from all over the world have gathered here to see us perform, to dance with us, to sing with us. The stadium has been sold out many times over for months. There are going to be so many surprises, so much happening. Meanwhile, I feel like checking myself into a sanatorium in Switzerland like a soldier in the aftermath of the Great War. And never coming out.
Before I know it, I am on stage, opening night .
I break my own tradition, singing one of my new songs, No One Has Fantasized About This More , as I’m lifted onto the stage, and the stands erupt in screams.
“We have so many surprises for you tonight, Paris !” I yell the minute I finish my first song, and the stadium yells back my name. My real one, not Issy Woo. Then I speak a bunch of French to them, and I hear a snicker over my earpiece.
Freaking Skye is laughing at my French accent. Then:
“He’s here,” his voice says in my ear.
“Is he ready?” I speak away from the mic.
“Affirmative,” Skye tells me. He should be talking to the stage manager, not me, unless it was extremely important. It is. “I should warn you, though. He is in a murderous mood.”
“So am I.”
I nod at Jude, our signal for Pierce Me . Tonight’s Pierce Me .
He nods back. He’s ready. The team is all set. We’ve rehearsed this part to within an inch of its life. All that’s left is to actually do it.
I step to the front of the stage. The crowds roar when they see I’m about to say something. I need to say this, for me. I’m not hoping Eden will ever hear this—I killed Saint Hope dead during that interview. But I need to say it for myself, in order not to fall apart again. The gaping void inside me throbs like an open wound, but I push it to the back.
“This is not a song. It is me. I have survived whatever tried to destroy me,” I say, “and, in the process, I have become a song. This song.”
I lift a hand in the air, point a finger to the sky and look straight into the crowd, saying one last thing before Jude starts the first notes of Pierce Me on the bass:
“This is yours. You know who you are.”
Then I start the song. As I sing, the crowd beings a roar so loud it drowns out my voice. I know why they’re screaming, and I know why their screams are extra loud. It’s not because they love this song. It’s that behind me, a brand new music video is appearing on the huge screen.
Tonight, on the first Paris show, the music video of Pierce Me is making its worldwide debut. My singing is synchronized with the music video, which is muted. But the producers give me my cue so that I hit the notes in synchronicity with the actors. It’s a boy and a girl, roughly the age Eden and I were when we first met. And it’s set in our woods in Massachusetts .
They reenact some of the scenes that happened in real life, except slightly changed.
I couldn’t fix us back then. I couldn’t fix us now.
So I made a song and I fixed us in it.
In the music video for Pierce Me , Eden and I are laughing in the places where we cried. There are orange leaves and sunlight beams streaming through the treetops and no one is having a panic attack. No one is bleeding from the knee. No one is running home to a man who is abusing her. It’s the most boring music video you have seen in your life.
Of course, it’s beautiful. The aesthetics of New England in the fall are on steroids.
But there is something else.
As the couple on the giant screen reclaims all the places Eden and I got lost in, the blissful image on the screen gets interrupted.
Footage of the girl sinking underwater starts flashing in-between.
Light interrupted by dark.
The crowd stops its excited screams. They continue to sing along with me, but it’s quieter, subdued. Their attention is completely arrested by the music video on the screen behind me. By the girl who is falling deeper and deeper into the dark water.
They are waiting to see if she will be saved. When she will be saved.
But she won’t.
The girl and her boy keep laughing and chasing each other in the woods. She reads, her head on his lap, and he plays his guitar for her. And at the same time, in parallel scenes, the girl is sinking deeper and deeper.
The music video ends with me belting the very last note of Pierce Me . Then, there is complete silence.
The screen goes black.
I fight against the urge to lean my elbows on my knees and pant as if I’ve just ran a marathon. Singing this thing really took it out of me, but it was cathartic. Making this music video got some of the darkness out of me, and now I feel somehow lighter. Creating does that to me. Now I’m left empty, but calm. For a second.
And speaking of calm, the crowd is eerily quiet.
It’s been a few seconds since the video ended, and not a single person has cheered. I hope it’s not because they hated it. I think they are only now realizing what they just saw. It’s beginning to sink in: the girl didn’t get saved. She drowned. They need a minute to digest it.
I don’t need anyone to understand the meaning behind it: I made if for me. Maybe they won’t get it at all.
Slowly, like a tidal wave, the crowd erupts in applause.
I give them a full minute, and they keep going, getting louder by the second. It seems like they could go on all night, but I have more stuff prepared for them, and zero time to spare.
“Hope you liked that,” I say into my mic, and they scream their heads off. I hear them over my earplugs, and I motion to my technician to turn the volume of my own voice up so that I can hear myself over the screams.
“While we are still on Pierce Me , does anyone here know who wrote the music to the song we just sang?”
Of course, they start chanting James’ name.
Right on cue, my brother is lifted onto the stage from a secret panel below my feet. He ascends from the bowels of the platform’s underground area like a deus ex machina in reverse, looking completely tall and unfazed by the ear-splitting applause that greets him. It was him Skye was whispering about in my earpiece before.
When he told me ‘ he’s here,’ Skye had meant that my brother has arrived backstage. And now, he is here here. On stage, with me.
I want to hug him and punch him on the nose at the same time. He’s holding his beautiful violin, his fingers gleaming with what seems like thousands of rings. The slim slice of silver on his lower lip catches the spotlight as he flashes a rare smile to the crowd, and they explode with delirium.
Behind me, a secret compartment of the stage is brought to the light, revealing a group of James’ students. They belong to the Parisian music academy James works for; they are his class. None of them older than twenty years old, they’re seated in a circle around James, lifting their instruments to their chins, a small string orchestra. The piano seat is waiting for me next to their chairs; I will be playing the piano and James will be conducting, God help us. His students will be playing the operatic piece as I perform I’m Counting This As A Date .
I introduce the musicians and talk a bit about my brother, about how he composes my music and produces some of my songs. As the students tune their instruments, I point to my brother:
“A man who needs no introduction, the one the only James Pan. ”
James was supposed to be standing in front of his students, by the podium, but instead I find him next to me, completely ignoring the roar of applause he gets, and whispering in my ear:
“You just had to make it sound as if I’m a circus ring master, didn’t you?” Has he forgotten that we’re standing in front of seventy-three thousand people? I think he just doesn’t care.
“My brother, ladies and gentlemen!” I hiss through clenched teeth.
The crowd roars for him.
And we start.
…
We get through the gorgeous piece of music before the first verse of I’m Counting This As A Date , James, his orchestra, and me, and then I start singing. I did not have the arrogance to expect the crowd to know the lyrics to a song that was released so recently—contrary to my brother, who insisted they would know every word—the entire stadium sings along with me. Damn him, he was right again.
James’ orchestra performs the piece flawlessly, as expected. James plays the solos on his violin while he is conducting. It is exquisite. He is in his element. Lost in the music he himself composed and arranged, doing a million things at once, conducting, performing, and keeping an eye on me in case I keel over again. He is utter perfection at all of it.
I sing my heart out while playing the piano, and the result is truly out of this world. When it’s over, I feel empty. It was that beautiful. That epic. The crowd is subdued too, tired from the deluge of emotion that drowned us all. Depleted from takin in the beauty—but for once, it a good kind of emptiness. A good kind of quiet.
It’s a silence that’s swelling—full. My eyes sting as I think of all the trouble James went to for tonight: endless rehearsals on top of his usually grueling schedule, composing music for a ton of my songs, then changing the timelines of his students’ performances so they could all be here tonight. I have no idea how he found the time to do all this. I know he didn’t do it for the crowd. He didn’t do it for the fame either—he couldn’t care less about it, even though right now it sounds like he has more of it than me. He did it for me.
And I don’t deserve it. Because all this labor, effort and time he sacrificed for me can’t fix me. No one can if I can’t do it myself .
Once their part is over, James’ students are led backstage, after a standing ovation of two minutes. I breathe a sigh of relief. Being on a stage of this magnitude exposes me to all sorts of dangers, and bringing all these college students on it has been giving me anxiety since we started planning this. But it seems to be a success, all around.
Until now.
Everyone is gone. Even Jude and Miki have disappeared, and it’s just James and me on the stage, panting after giving everything, and I do mean everything , to the performance of the song.
But the crowd can’t see us fighting for breath.
Instead, they start chanting:
“Duel. Duel. Duel. Duel.”
I pretend not to hear them, and they get louder. The chanting picks up from all sides of the stadium:
“Du-el. Du-el. Du-el. Du-el.”
James laughs. I feel the ground sway beneath me. He holds my gaze, still panting heavily from conducting that majestic piece, and lifts his violin. The crowd stops chanting and screams in joy.
James puts the violin under his chin.
“No,” I say to him.
“Scared?” he whispers. He doesn’t have a mic fitted to his mouth, a blessing for all of us, but he does have one on his violin. He plays a quick flourish that sounds suspiciously like the opening notes of Saint Hope , and the entire stadium echoes with the notes. They know what’s coming. They’ve asked for it.
“No,” I hiss again.
James lifts an eyebrow. The crowd is already singing the first verse of Saint Hope without music, just perfectly synchronized. Seventy-three thousand people.
“Absolutely not,” I say to James, and pick up my guitar.
The crowd goes completely silent. Watching. Waiting. For us to start.
…
I’m losing to my brother in front of seventy thousand people. I’m losing the duel.
I knew I would; that’s why I didn’t want to do it in the first place. But my brother is seriously giving it his all. I didn’t expect him to try half as much. He knows he has me. He knows all he has to do is lift a single finger and touch that violin, and he will steal the soul of every single person in this stadium.
Yet here he is, sweating, concentrating, playing his ass off, while I struggle to keep up on my guitar. We are playing a rendition of Saint Hope , but it’s not fair, because he keeps composing new melodies on the spot, and I am scrambling to follow his lead. He is literally running circles around me as we play, he and his violin, both of them on fire, high on music.
At one point, we stand back to back, each fighting for his life. At least, he can’t see me , I think. He can’t see that I’m drowning.
The concert has turned into an arena, people rooting for either my brother or me to win, roars of our names going up in waves as he hits the hardest notes, and boos when I hit the wrong ones.
I am going to be humiliated in front of literally all of my fans . There is no salvaging this. I never stood a chance; he has them eating out of the palm of his hand. He has me.
The Pan brothers making fools of themselves in front of a packed stadium. Mom will be ever so proud.
I stare blindly into the crowd, trying to concentrate, but I can’t magically make my brain match James’ genius. He, meanwhile, is having the time of his life. He weaves his violin’s demonic magic around my guitar’s melody as if he is inventing music in front of my eyes. I’m about to throw in the towel, and let him play his little heart out by himself—I doubt he’ll notice that he’s playing alone anyway.
And then, up in the VIP section, something catches my eye.
A flash of red curls in a stray ray of the travelling spotlight. No, it can’t be.
Eden.
She is sitting on the shoulders of a man—I think it’s Justin. Manuela is dancing next to them. Eden is absolutely still, but her eyes are on me. She is wearing my jacket, the one I left behind in my hurry to leave her dorm in February. It’s swallowing her whole.
I can’t be sure it’s her from this distance, especially since the light is beginning to shift away from them. But as long as it’s there, I stare at the three people in those high seats, and I imagine it’s them.
My family , I think before I can help myself.
It’s not my family, though, is it? Nor is this my girl.
It’s Eden and her family. But right now, I’m imagining it’s my family too. The music, the crowds, my stupid, brilliant brother, everything falls away as I close my eyes and imagine that somehow, magically, she is here for me. I imagine she has forgiven me for the interview. I imagine she doesn’t care that people might see her—that she is standing tall and proud, perched on Justin’s shoulders just for me, and who cares about the consequences.
I imagine that she thinks I’m worth it all.
“Zay!” James is screaming into my ear.
I turn to him abruptly, yanked out of my daydream. He’s stopped playing. I have too.
“What?” I murmur, blinking, suddenly blinded by the lights.
“You won,” James says, sounding extremely shocked. “You won the duel.”
The crowds are standing up, chanting my name. James executes a perfect bow, and claps for me. Then he steps towards me and lowers his head to my ear.
“Listen to me,” he says through fake smiling teeth. “I need you to tell me what you’re on.”
“What am I on?” I ask, still stupefied.
Wait, I won the duel? What the hell did I play? My mind—and my eyes—were on Eden the whole time. I was barely aware of what I was doing. Well, not real Eden, of course. Imaginary Eden.
“Are you on some kind of substance?” James asks me, worry etched on his face. He’s ignoring the crowds completely. “Pills?”
“They will be reading your lips all over the Internet by tonight,” I murmur to him with my mouth closed. “Shut. Up.”
He’s grabbed a fistful of my shirt, and is leaning down until our faces are inches apart. The crowd roars; they probably think we’re doing a bit.
“I don’t give a crap what they will do,” James says. His eyes have gone completely black on his pale face. He is dripping with sweat, but somehow he manages to make even that look absurdly cool. “It’s only you I care about. Tell me what you are on. What kind of performance was that? You composed an entire movement in front of my eyes. You left me miles behind, I couldn’t follow you.” He swallows. “I had to stop playing. That’s never happened to me before. I have never seen anyone play like this. Not even Mom—least of all you.”
“Thanks,” I wince.
“No,” James frowns even harder—I didn’t think it was possible. “No. We are not going to be funny right now.” He grabs my elbow, right there, on the stage, under the pink and black spotlights. “We are going to tell the truth. Tell me.”
“I haven’t taken anything.” I meet his gaze fully. “I don’t know how it happened. ”
“You—” He looks completely confused.
I take a deep breath.
“I thought I saw Eden in the audience,” I tell him and regret it the same second. Now he’s definitely going to think I’m on something.
But instead, he smiles wryly and wraps me in a hug. The crowd goes out of its mind, but neither of the Pan brothers are paying it any attention right now.
“I think I’m going out of my mind,” I say into his shoulder.
“Happens to everybody,” he replies. “Well, not me. But if it stops you from crying, then feel free imagine whatever you like.”
I step away abruptly. “I was not crying,” I hiss at my brother.
“That’s something a crying person would say,” he says. Gosh, he’s insufferable.
I know what he’s doing. He is trying to rile me up because he is tired of seeing me so sad all the time. Or maybe he has seen me fall apart one too many times on this stage. Maybe he’s scared. So I turn to my brother and, like the completely mature twenty-two year old superstar I am, I retort:
“Would your face like to be a crying person?”
…
We sing Beethoven together, and then James exits the stage amid a cacophony of deranged love declarations from my fans. Idiot. Then Jude and Miki come back up and seamlessly keep the music alive.
I start the next song.
The show must go on, right? Right.
I sing like I’ve never sung in my life. I hit notes and pitches I never have before. Ever. I can feel it in my bones that this performance is on another level. Better than anything I’ve ever done before. Rare, even. If the mere idea of her does that to me… What would the reality of her do?
I sing the four singles from my new album, and the fans know every single word already. Finally, after all the surprises and the new songs, the crowds as well as Jude, Miki and me, are exhausted. It’s time to end the show. My eyes keep going to the section I imagined Eden in, but I can no longer see anything but a constellation of purple lights from the fans’ bracelets.
The last song is Enough Love . Jude and I picked it so that we’ll send the audience home good and heartbroken. As I finish the ending, fireworks explode above our heads, making this first Paris night even more magical, like a scene from a movie.
My voice is drowned by applause and the sound of fireworks exploding, and there is a brief moment filled with chaos, screams and people clamoring to get to the stage. I shout to the security staff, but they’re already handling the situation. The surge of the crowd is contained within seconds, and I heave a sigh of relief.
Then it’s time for our first encore.
We play Chemistry , and when the music stops, I look up in the direction I imagined I saw Eden. I’m not ready to let go of the daydream. The minute I step off the stage, I’ll lose her all over again—even though she only existed briefly in my imagination.
Still, something pushes me to keep the delusion going.
I lean in and say softly into my mic:
“Meet me in the woods.”
The crowd loves it—but this one wasn’t for them.
It was for Eden. Even though she will never hear it.