Cherry
Los Angeles, 2024
“We’re live in five,”
the producer murmured, and gave ’s shoulder a squeeze.
nodded.
She was in Los Angeles—Los Angeles! She could still barely believe it—standing in the wings in a cavernous studio, with her guitar’s strap over her shoulder, watching as a stagehand adjusted the angle of a microphone stand and a makeup artist whisked a powder puff over Jason Carr’s handsome face.
It was her fifth day in Los Angeles, and the crowd of six hundred semifinalists had already been relentlessly winnowed down.
On the day she’d arrived, had met the first in a series of roommates.
“Don’t bother unpacking,”
the girl had told her, sitting on a bed in the room they shared at the Sheraton in Burbank.
“They said we’ve all got to be packed up again at seven thirty tomorrow morning, so we’re ready to go straight to the airport if we get sent home.
Brutal, right?”
That’s not happening to me, had thought, but she’d just taken out her cosmetics bag, pajamas, and clothes for the next day, leaving everything else folded in her duffel.
In the morning, they’d been bussed to the theater, on the CBS lot in Radford, a huge, echoing soundstage with six hundred empty seats, the same place where game shows and soap operas and, once, Star Search had been taped.
There had been individual performances, a version of the Philadelphia audition’s test, where the singers were grouped in lines of ten, and each of them got to step forward and sing for thirty seconds, before getting either the thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
’s roommate had been cut, along with three hundred or so other wannabes.
The next morning, each contestant had been assigned a phrase or a word, and had been told to come up with at least thirty seconds’ worth of a song.
’s phrase had been reach for the stars, and her song had mostly involved belting out repetitions of the words in the key best suited to her voice.
Reach for the stars / I know you can do it / Just reach for the stars / Like there’s nothing to it.
Not her best work, but good enough to get her through.
The day after that, they’d been put into groups of three or four, and assigned some old song from the 1980s or 1990s to which The Next Stage had secured the rights and told to come up with a performance, from arranging the music to inventing a dance.
had been grouped with a girl named Jacinda and a boy named Braden, and they’d been given a Hall not the good times, not the bad ones.
If it had been up to Zoe, would never have even known about the Griffin Sisters.
Her mom hadn’t even been the one to tell her about the band.
had found out accidentally, when she was six years old, and she’d been with her mom in a used bookstore on Bainbridge Street, a sprawling warren of rooms that stretched the width of a city block, with dusty hardwood floors and ceiling-high shelves crammed with books about every imaginable topic.
Her mom had been looking for cookbooks, and had wandered off and found a bin of CDs.
David Bowie had stared up from the first one, a star painted around one of his eyes.
had started to flip, enjoying the clicking of the plastic cases, past Natalie Imbruglia and Jewel and Mandy Moore, past Britney Spears, wearing a red shirt with a white tank top underneath and a miniskirt that left her tucked-up legs bare ...
and then her fingers froze.
She looked carefully, making sure that she wasn’t imagining things, but there it was.
Her mother’s face, on a CD case.
Her mother’s eyes, staring up at her.
Zoe’s hair was different, a lighter brown than was used to, with some strands dyed red.
She wore red lipstick, a short, lacy black dress, and lots of dark makeup around her eyes, and she was standing outside, on a rolling green hill, in front of a leafy green tree.
Another lady stood beside her.
This woman, too, wore black, but a suit, not a dress, a big, boxy, loose-fitting jacket with padded shoulders and creased pants, and a hat pulled down over one eye.
She had a soft, round face and a larger body, which the suit, the tree, and her pose all seemed intended to hide, just as the hat was meant to disguise her face.
There were three more people, three men, behind and to the sides of ’s mother and the black-suit lady.
One had long hair and a leather vest, and the other two wore a button-down shirt and a skinny tie.
“‘The Griffin Sisters,’?”
read, sounding out each word carefully.
She didn’t understand it.
Her mother’s last name was not Griffin.
She didn’t have a sister.
And she didn’t like music.
She never played records or CDs at home.
When they were in the car, the radio was tuned to the all-news station.
pulled the CD out of the bin and found her mother in front of the cash register, frowning as she rummaged in her wallet. “Mom!”
said, and tugged on Zoe’s sleeve.
“Mom, look!”
When her mother finally glanced down at what was holding, she went very still.
Her shoulders stiffened, and her face settled into a familiar expression, lips pursed, forehead furrowed, eyes glaring.
In a low, steady voice, Zoe said, “Put that back where you found it, please.”
saw the young woman behind the counter look down at the CD case, then up at her mom.
“Oh my God,”
she whispered.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”
Her voice rose higher and higher, until it was practically a squeal.
“You—you’re Zoe Griffin!”
looked at her mother curiously, but Zoe did not correct the young woman, who was standing with her mouth a little open, leaning forward like she wanted to touch Zoe but couldn’t quite work up the courage.
Words were spilling out of the lady’s mouth, almost too fast for to hear them.
She was saying that the Griffin Sisters was her favorite band and how she’d heard them twice in concert and how she didn’t think she would have survived high school without their songs.
“Your music was everything,”
she was saying, and it sounded almost like she was going to cry.
“Thank you,”
Zoe replied, in a voice just short of curt.
“Do you think you’ll ever make more music? Or play concerts again?”
’s mom gave the woman a hard, bright smile, one that showed her teeth.
“Never say never, right? Anything can happen.”
She reached down for ’s hand.
“Excuse us,”
she said, and tugged —not gently—toward the door, as the woman called, “Wait! Don’t you want your books?”
“Who are the Griffin Sisters?”
asked.
Her mother hadn’t answered.
had a hundred other questions.
How old were you when you were in the band? and Who are the other people in the picture? and Why don’t you do music anymore? and Why was that woman almost crying when she recognized you? But had learned to read the emotional weather in her household, to check the forecast on her mother’s face before she spoke.
Ask the wrong question at the wrong time, had learned, and Zoe would yell, or snap at and send her to her room, or, worse, go quiet and moody for hours or days.
I’ll wait, decided.
And I’ll find out what’s going on, even if I have to ask someone else.
“Here you go,”
said a stagehand, tucking the microphone pack into the back of ’s pants.
Glamorous, thought as she felt the hard plastic against the band of her underwear.
“Ten ...nine ...eight . . .”
took one last, long inhalation and, at the producer’s nod, walked out from the wings and into the spotlight, not too slow, not too fast.
Head held high and confident, shoulders back, like she had every belief in her own abilities and nothing had ever hurt her.
“,”
Jason, the emcee, said, giving her his professional, twinkly smile.
Up close, could see how the makeup had evened out his complexion and settled into the lines around his eyes.
“How are you feeling?”
“Nervous,”
said , with the self-deprecating grin she’d practiced in her hotel room the night before.
“Fair enough.
It’s a big night.”
Jason nodded toward the judges—or, rather, he nodded toward the audience, and the desk where knew the judges were sitting.
The spotlights had turned the auditorium into a blank black space.
That was probably a good thing.
A disembodied voice emerged from the darkness.
“, welcome to the semifinal round of The Next Stage.”
That posh British accent belonged to Sebastian Knoll.
Sebastian was a music producer.
Fifteen years ago, he’d come up with the concept of The Next Stage and had been the executive producer, head judge, and, the contestants joked, Lord High Executioner for each of its thirty-six subsequent seasons.
“Thank you,”
said, and was pleased to hear her own voice sounded steady.
“I’m very glad to be here.”
“, you’ve got a very distinctive look.”
That was Lizzie Blair, a country singer known for twangy ballads about men who’d done her wrong, and whose own look involved wavy blond hair extensions that hung to her waist, acres of cleavage, and brightly colored cowgirl boots paired with cutoff denim shorts.
touched her spiky, freshly bleached hair, the braided rattail that hung over her shoulder.
The Next Stage had a stylist who’d signed off on ’s clothes: high-waisted pants in a checkered gray plaid, a white cropped tank top, and black suspenders.
The studded leather cuff on her wrist was her own, as were her lucky Doc Martens, a sixteenth-birthday present—the last thing her mother had given her that had actually liked.
The pants were just a little too big, and the tank top was a little too small.
The combined effect was to make look waifish, even boyish.
Plenty of the other girls were doing sexy.
was happy to do something else.
“You’re a singer-songwriter?”
asked Sebastian.
“That’s right,”
said.
“I’ve been writing my own music since I was fourteen, and I hope to have the chance to perform some of it for you.”
“And you’re eighteen, right? Tell us a little more about yourself, how you got here.”
This was the third judge, Aurora Bloch, a model-slash-actress.
Aurora managed to sound genuinely curious, as if she didn’t already know the answer, as if this exchange hadn’t been scripted and rehearsed as recently as the run-through two hours previously.
was impressed.
She’d never thought Aurora was that good of an actress.
“Music is all I ever wanted.
I auditioned at home, in Philadelphia.
I skipped school and waited in line for twenty-four hours.”
She gave a self-deprecating smile.
“Sorry, Mom!”
This was where, knew, they’d insert footage of her audition.
“What about your family?”
Aurora again, staying on script.
gave the answer she’d rehearsed.
“My mom and my stepdad love me, but I don’t think they understand how much I want this.
I think they’d prefer it if I’d gone to college.”
That was the redacted version.
If made it to the finals, she’d have to tell more of the story, including who her mother was and who her father had been.
She hadn’t even started to figure out how to talk about that.
Right now, as far as anyone here knew, she was the daughter of a housewife named Zoe Rohrbach, who had no connection at all to Zoe Grossberg, who’d once been Zoe Griffin of the Griffin Sisters.
“That must be hard for you,”
Aurora murmured.
gave a little shrug, and a smile she hoped was charming.
“I’m not the only person who wants to perform whose parents don’t approve.”
It was actually parent, singular, who didn’t approve.
Jordan, she knew, would have been fine with whatever made happy, but his first priority was ’s mother, and keeping the peace in the house.
“But this is all I’ve ever wanted.
And I’ll do whatever I have to do to try to make music my life.”
“Because you want to be rich and famous?”
Sebastian’s voice was a bored, cynical drawl.
“Because this is it for me.”
hadn’t realized how serious she’d sound until she started talking.
“This is what I love, and it’s what I have to give.
This is how I share myself with the world.”
She’d considered those questions, and thought out answers, which she’d written down and practiced in front of her hotel room’s mirror, but when she said the words out loud, into the darkness, they didn’t sound rehearsed.
They sounded true.
“And, look, if I end up rich and famous, I promise I won’t complain.”
She gave a little smile.
“But it’s not about that.
Not really.”
“And if this doesn’t work out?”
Sebastian asked.
“Then I’ll keep trying,”
said.
“I’ll stay out here, in Los Angeles, and see if I can get hired to work in a studio.
I’ll sing backup or record other people’s demos.
I’ll put my stuff out on social media.
I’ll play in bars, or on street corners, or in subway cars.”
“Whatever it takes, huh?”
asked Lizzie.
“Whatever it takes,”
repeated.
“Let’s get to it,”
Sebastian said, his voice businesslike.
could picture him, arms set on his desk, leaning forward, eager to get on with it.
“What are you singing for us tonight?”
“I’m going to sing one of my favorite songs.
‘The Gift,’ by the Griffin Sisters.”
She could hear the audience’s reaction, the people who’d sent away for tickets and the ones they’d pulled in from the studio tour to fill out the crowd, and hoped that it was an approving murmur.
Choosing the right songs was just as important as how well you could sing them ...
and it wasn’t easy.
Every morning that they hadn’t been assigned a song, the show sent contestants a playlist with two hundred songs they’d been cleared to perform.
Each one got a little time to talk about the possibilities with the show’s musical director, an affable man named Michael Oh.
There was only one Griffin Sisters song on the playlist, one that had been used on the Netflix show.
had to hope it would hit the sweet spot, that it was popular but not overplayed to the point that people were sick of it.
“The floor is yours,”
said Sebastian, the way he always did.
And that was her cue.
settled her fingers on the guitar’s strings, feeling the comforting weight of the instrument’s body pulling at her shoulders.
She took a last deep breath and looked out into the obscuring darkness.
She found that she wasn’t nervous at all, just excited.
Her body was thrumming, her heart beating fast.
She played the first chord, raised her chin, opened her mouth, and began.
“I can see the day I met you / All I do is hit rewind / You were tall just like my father / Your hands were big, your eyes were kind.”
As always, she sounded like a stranger when she sang, like she was hearing her voice from the outside.
In her own opinion, she sounded good.
Her voice wasn’t shaky; she wasn’t pitchy or sharp or flat.
Even better, could feel the audience’s attention ...
and, she hoped, its approval.
She imagined the song reaching into people’s memories, plucking on a guitar string, or singing a single note: taking them back to whatever it had made them feel.
Her fingers were steady on the fretboard, her feet were solid on the stage, and her voice was soaring, clear and strong.
“I was the girl who no one wanted / Too big, too weird, too much / Frightened of all the empty faces / Hungry for your touch.”
The song was in a major key, and it sounded, at first, bright and cheery, a sugary-sweet pop confection to be sung on a summer afternoon, driving in a convertible with the top down and your crush in the seat beside you.
But the last word of the pre-chorus landed on an unexpected minor note, foreshadowing that what sounded like a bouncy power-pop anthem was something different, a story that would not have a happy ending.
That was Cassie Griffin’s genius.
Or maybe it was the genius of Cassie and Russell together, the way they’d been able to take familiar things and rearrange them, twisting and subtly reshaping them, making pop songs that felt both familiar and new.
Listening to a Griffin Sisters song felt like walking down a familiar street in the city where you’d always lived and looking up to see a building you’d never noticed, with gargoyles perched on its cornices, and the mouth of a dark alley you’d never seen before just beyond it.
The songs invited you to keep walking until you realized you were somewhere else entirely.
A different neighborhood.
Even a different world.
bent over her guitar as, behind her, the light display burst into a fusillade of color, and the house band came in; the bass first, its heavy-bottomed notes thick and dark and insistent, and the drums exploded, and the backup singers joined her in soaring three-part harmony.
moved her mouth a crucial fraction of space back from the microphone and opened up into a belt, her chest and throat and lips all vibrating with the music.
She pictured the song’s subject so clearly that he could have been standing right in front of her.
A handsome, heartbreaking liar, an agent of chaos.
A target.
A present. A prize.
You’re a gift
You’re my present
You’re the rip in my heart
You’re a star
You’re a scar
And you tore me apart
And I know
Even so
If you come back, I won’t say no . . .
And every day I’m learning
That there is no returning
The backup singers dropped out, bass and drums vanishing, the guitar fading away, until it was just ’s voice, all regret and longing.
She poured herself into the song, every heartache and betrayal she’d ever felt, all the pain she’d ever endured.
couldn’t see the crowd, but she could hear them, joining in with the chorus, clapping, stomping, singing, almost shouting along.
“You’re a gift / And I can’t take you back.”
held the last note, her voice the sound of a hundred girls’ hearts being torn to pieces; the sound of a thousand girls sobbing into their pillows, and the battle cry of all of those girls, who would wake up the next morning, sharpen their swords, and come to take their revenge.
The song ended.
There was silence for the space of a breath.
Then came the applause, pouring over her like a wave.
stood, breathing hard, flushed and glowing, knowing that she’d done well.
She couldn’t predict what the judges would decide, or how, or if, her particular look and sound would fit into the final selection (she’d heard stories of singers being cut because the producers already had a pretty Black girl with a gospel sound, or not-conventionally-attractive guy with a compelling backstory).
But she knew she’d never sung that song better than she had just now.
If she left the show with nothing else, she’d have that.
“Thank you, ,”
came Sebastian’s voice out of the darkness.
’s lips were numb, and her face ached from smiling.
She nodded, mouthed, Thank you.
Then she kissed her fingertips and raised them to the sky—the gesture her mother used to make at the end of her shows.
Anyone watching might have thought she was praying, and supposed that it was a kind of prayer.
For you, Cassie, she thought.
Wherever you are.
Backstage, the PA helped her remove the mic pack.
Once she was freed, she put her guitar on a stand and stepped into the lounge, where the other contestants were waiting, watching their competition, and being filmed as they watched.
They clapped for her, whooping and cheering and chanting her name.
“OhmyGod, that was AMAZEBALLS!”
Tori shrieked in her ear.
and Tori had been roommates for two nights, moving in together after their respective previous roommates had been sent home.
“I’m crying!”
said Braden, pointing at his cheek.
Braden was from New York City.
He’d started his run at the beginning of the week as a sensitive singer-songwriter in cardigan sweaters and geeky glasses, only another singer-songwriter had already emerged as one of the judges’ favorites, and so Braden had quickly pivoted, acquiring a cowboy hat from the Galleria mall and discovering his love of all things beer- and pickup-truck-related.
“See? Actual tears!”
hugged Braden, and let Tori waltz her around the room.
At another PA’s instruction, she took her seat in the holding pen, a semicircle of couches surrounded by three different cameras, and watched, on monitors, as the last three performers sang their songs, then waited, while the judges conferred.
Thirty minutes later, the twelve semifinalists were summoned back to the stage.
They stood in a line, waiting for the verdict.
One by one, Sebastian read out names.
“Will David Reyes please step forward.
Will Rohrbach please step forward.
Will Tori Johanssen please step forward.
Will Crystal Jones please step forward.
Will Braden Welsh please step forward.
Will Tamara Easton please step forward.”
The six of them whose names had been called stood at the front of the stage, hands linked.
Tori’s eyes were squeezed shut, and David’s hand was slippery.
The pause, before Sebastian spoke again, felt endless.
held her breath.
Sometimes it was the people whose names got called who’d made it through to the finals, and sometimes they were the ones who got sent home.
Every year was different, and you never knew, until you heard Sebastian say . . .
“Congratulations.
You six are on to the Next Stage.”
Tori screamed so loudly that was sure her eardrum had suffered permanent damage.
David kissed the cross he wore around his neck.
His lips moved soundlessly.
guessed he was having a conversation with Jesus (personally, she couldn’t imagine a deity taking interest in a singing contest, but what did she know?).
’s heart was beating so hard she could feel her pulse throbbing in her wrists, in her throat, in the hinge of her jaw.
“Except . . .”
Sebastian was talking again, his voice cutting through the shrieks and the shouts and the intimate chats with Jesus.
It took a minute for the audience and the contestants to quiet down, but finally, he had silence.
“This year . . .”
All the contestants went very still.
could imagine the editing: the ominous chord that television viewers would hear just after Sebastian’s pronouncement.
David grabbed ’s hand again, squeezing hard, and squeezed back.
“This year,”
Sebastian continued, “our theme is ‘Mentors.’ Each of our finalists will be paired with an established figure in the music industry.
This person will serve as a teacher, a coach, and a performing partner, because, this year, for the first time, our finals will include a duet.”
David’s grip on ’s hand had tightened to just shy of painful.
On her other side, Tori said quietly, “Oh, wow.”
couldn’t see it, but she could picture Sebastian’s smug smile, and his face, all bright teeth and cold eyes, looking them over like eggs in a carton, wondering which one would crack first.
Her knees felt wobbly, her throat and chest felt hot.
Shit, she thought.
Because she didn’t want whoever they would give her.
There was only one person she wanted, one person who made sense ...
and had no idea how to find her.