Cassie
On the road, 2003
The morning after the Dallas show, when Zoe came flouncing back to their room, with her hair tangled and suck marks on her neck, and announced that she and Russell were together, had kept her face expressionless and her voice steady, hoping she didn’t look, or sound, like she was falling apart, like the world was ending, like her heart had shattered into jagged, glassy pieces inside of her. “Oh,”
she said. “Okay.”
Zoe lifted an eyebrow.
“‘Okay’? That’s all you’ve got?”
“Congratulations?”
ventured.
She tried to sound enthusiastic and sincere, tried to look happy.
“That’s great.”
She’d expected it, she told herself.
She should not have been surprised, or hurt.
She shouldn’t feel anything at all ...
and now, she thought, she would have to be even more careful.
If Zoe ever guessed how she felt about Russell, her sister would probably be kind and sweet.
Oh, .
I’m so sorry.
How can I help? What can I do? The reality of Zoe and Russell as a couple was almost more than she could stand.
Zoe’s sympathy, on top of that, would kill her.
Her heart was broken, but the tour rolled on: Tulsa and Kansas City, Denver and Albuquerque, zigzagging around the country, driven less by geography and more by the whims of the record label and the radio stations.
did her best not to look at Russell, not to stand too close onstage or sit with him in the van, to keep the focus solely on music when they were writing or performing together.
If Zoe pitying her would be bad, she knew, then Russell’s pity would be impossible to survive.
But it was hard.
The best songs, the truest songs, were based on real emotions—on yearning, on loneliness, on feeling loved or brokenhearted, cherished or rejected.
didn’t know much about love, but she knew plenty about loneliness.
Russell would probe, gently, carefully, for details.
“Tell me about that,”
he’d say, when she’d recall some bit of personal history—being picked up from a field trip by Sasha Lowry’s mom, watching Sasha and Zoe and Christina Tate and Meghan Moran squeeze themselves, giggling, into the car’s back seat.
Hearing Meghan hiss, “No, she’s not invited!”
as Zoe tried to shush her.
The look on Mrs.
Lowry’s face when she’d patted the passenger’s seat and said, kindly, “, why don’t you come up here with me?”
“Girls are the worst,”
she’d said to Russell, trying to smile.
“Really? I’d have thought boys would be the worst.”
He was looking at her in a Mrs.
Lowry kind of way, all kind and understanding, but with a sharp gleam of interest.
Mrs.
Lowry knew she’d be rid of within minutes, that her daughter’s friend’s weird, fat sister was an unpleasant and awkward task she’d get through and pass off to someone else.
But Russell was stuck with her.
He probably wasn’t really interested, told herself fiercely.
He was probably just pretending to care.
It was confusing, because Russell gave every appearance of caring.
If he was pretending, he did it well.
“No,”
said.
“Boys are obvious.
They just ...
you know.”
She ducked her head, not wanting to say what boys did, what boys had done to her.
Russell waited.
He waited for her to finish the thought, and, suddenly, felt a flare of anger.
Not just anger, but fury.
Why should she have to expose herself like this? Why should she have to display all her pain, so that he could set it to music, then go back to a hotel room and sleep with her sister?
Russell was looking at her kindly.
Considerately.
Like what she was saying mattered to him.
“You know, you’re not the only girl to go through something like that.”
“No,”
said.
“It just feels that way.
Every time it happens.”
She thought about the summer camp her parents had sent her to, when she was twelve.
They’d saved all year so that she and Zoe could go for a week, to the Poconos, had probably gotten financial aid too.
“Have a wonderful time,”
Janice had said, kissing them both before they’d boarded the bus.
And Zoe had.
, not so much.
No one had wanted to be her bunkmate, or her partner during swimming lessons; she’d eaten every meal at the end of the table, with only the counselor for company.
She remembered one night, going back to the cabin to change her clothes and seeing a postcard, half-written, on a bunkmate’s bed.
Camp is great accept for this one girl who is fat and weird.
She is ANNOYING EVERYONE.
We all HATE HER.
held the postcard in her fingers for one long, frozen moment.
You spelled except wrong, she thought about saying, or writing on the postcard, crossing out the misspelled word, writing the correct one in its stead.
She thought about tearing the postcard into a hundred tiny pieces, or slapping the girl in her snub-nosed, freckled face, or telling her, I can play the piano a thousand times better than you’ll ever be able to do anything in your life.
She’d done none of those things.
She’d set the postcard back on the bed where she’d found it.
That was how it always went.
No matter what happened, she’d just take it, like a whale being jabbed with a harpoon, over and over, until the water was dark with blood.
She’d keep swimming, pretending that it didn’t hurt.
In the hotel room, she looked at Russell, shrugging, and tried to sound blithe and unbothered.
Normal.
Like Zoe.
“That’s what the world does, I guess.
It makes you feel like you’re the only lonely girl.”
Russell’s eyes crinkled at the corners.
His smile was brilliant, electric: a firelit room on a winter night, inviting her inside.
“And that,”
he said, tapping her nose with his pen, “is a song.”
She smiled, because he’d almost touched her, because it was impossible not to smile.
Russell’s joy was infectious; she couldn’t resist.
This, she understood, was how it would be: she’d peel back layers of her skin, she’d show him every shameful part of herself, and he’d use them.
It would hurt.
But was powerless to refuse him, incapable of telling him no.
She loved him.
She could deny him nothing.
The band went west.
After New Mexico came Phoenix and Scottsdale.
Then Las Vegas.
Then, finally, Los Angeles.
Three days into what was meant to be a weeklong stay, Jerry summoned them home.
“The Gift”
was starting to get some airplay, and the label wanted an album.
Thanks to and Russell’s diligence, they had plenty of material.
The plan was to record ten new songs, make a video for “The Gift,”
and shoot the album cover in New York, accomplishing the last two tasks in two days (and with only one bill for hair and makeup and wardrobe).
The label had rented studio space in Queens, and a director and photographer were both standing by.
Zoe was overjoyed, jumping up and down on the hotel-room bed until the people in the room below them banged on the ceiling.
She’d grabbed ’s hands, whirling her around the room, saying, “We’re going to have a music video on MTV!”
feigned happiness.
She tried to find joy in her sister’s joy, in Russell’s satisfaction, but, mostly, she faked it.
The idea of a video terrified her.
The album was fine, she thought ...
but, mostly, what she liked was performing, with the footlights blinding her and her eyes closed and the crowd gone quiet to listen.
She is ANNOYING EVERYONE, she’d think, sometimes, as an ovation rolled over her, people clapping and screaming and lining up to meet her after, like she was someone who mattered, not a joke or a nuisance.
We all HATE HER.
Maybe I’ll send that girl a postcard, she would think.
Now that I am someone.
That thought was satisfying too.
They flew to New York on a red-eye.
On Monday morning, at six a.m.
sharp, a rented van fetched them at their Midtown Manhattan hotel and drove them to Queens.
They crossed the 59th Street Bridge as the sun came up over the Hudson, drawing ribbons of mist up from the water.
The studio was a sprawling, single-story building, with high ceilings, painted cinderblock walls, and concrete floors, a warren of dressing rooms and offices and huge, empty performance spaces.
and Zoe’s dressing room had mirrors everywhere: waist-high makeup mirrors running the length of one wall, a three-way, full-length mirror with a kind of pedestal in front of it in the corner.
There were two racks full of clothes for Zoe: diaphanous gowns, leather miniskirts, artfully ripped and faded jeans and white button-downs, a gold sequined blouse with a plunging neckline that made her look like a sexy disco ball.
Zoe had squealed in pleasure, pushing her hands into the fabric, pulling out a violet-gray gown made of some airy, floaty fabric, saying, “Oh my God, is this the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”
had inspected her rack, on which exactly two outfits had been hung.
There was another black pantsuit, with an oversized jacket and a spray of sequins on the lapels—like that would help anything, thought—and a long-sleeved, shin-length dress made of thick jersey material, like a sweatshirt that had gotten ambitious.
Instead of sequins on the lapels, this garment had rhinestones glued around the neckline.
(“I’m sorry,”
the stylist would tell her, when they’d finally met.
“There just weren’t a lot of options.”
said she understood.)
In a conference room, where urns of hot water and coffee and platters of bagels and cut-up fruit had been arranged, Jerry and Helen from the label were waiting.
They met the director, who showed them storyboards, explaining that the video would be about a couple breaking up at a high-school house party.
The label had hired dozens of extras and had built a set—living room, dining room, kitchen, and den—to resemble the interior of a suburban house.
Zoe would play the song’s main character.
An actor named Rick Jarvis had been cast to play the love interest.
“So I’m singing, while the party’s going on around me?”
Zoe asked.
Her cheeks were pink, her eyes were bright, and she looked, had to concede, very pretty.
“That’s right,”
replied the director, Luke Allston.
Luke Allston was a middle-aged white guy with a narrow build, a bald head, and a pointy dark-brown goatee.
He wore a wool beanie and heavy leather cuffs on both wrists, and he talked fast, his eyes darting around the room, never landing on .
“Zoe, you and the boy show up at the party together, and then you catch him making out with another girl, and then there’s kind of a dream sequence, where you’re standing on the dining-room table, and you’re singing while the party goes on around you.”
“Got it,”
Zoe said with a crisp nod.
“The rest of the guys will be at the party, and then they’ll be up there with you, playing their instruments.
Or, you know, pretending to play their instruments.”
“And what about ?”
Russell had been standing toward the back of the room while the director and his production assistant walked them through the storyboards.
saw dozens of heads—including her sister’s—swing around, felt many eyes looking at her.
She stared at the ground.
She’d been half hoping, half fearing, that there wouldn’t be a part for her at all.
Maybe they’d tell her that she’d be playing the designated driver, and while the party was unfolding, she’d be sitting behind the wheel of a station wagon in the driveway outside, waiting to take Zoe home.
This turned out to be not far from the actual plan.
“So, Cass, what we’re thinking for you is that you’re at home, and at some point Zoe calls you—you know, to tell you what’s going on.”
The director gave her a large and insincere smile.
“We’ll film you on the phone with her.”
“So she’s at the party and I’m at home?”
It made a sad kind of sense, thought.
She’d never been invited to parties when she’d actually been at high school.
Why should she have expected to have been included in a pretend one?
“That’s right.
You’re supporting her.
It’s going to look amazing.
And it’ll really fit with the message of the song! You know.
Women, uh, supporting each other!”
The director’s voice had gotten high and hurried.
Maybe he’d realized how stupid he’d sounded when he heard himself out loud.
“Quick question?”
Russell raised a finger.
“You know sings lead vocals, right? So you’re asking Zoe to lip-synch ’s parts? And you’re not going to show singing at all?”
saw her sister’s body stiffen, saw Zoe stare at Russell, tight-lipped and panicky.
Russell ignored Zoe.
He was looking at her instead.
“It’s okay,”
she said softly.
Russell’s eyes widened, and knew what he was thinking: Why are you letting them do this to you?
She tried, as hard as she could, to use her own eyes and face to communicate that she didn’t mind—that it would be better this way.
She had no desire to be on camera.
She could handle attention when she was performing, behind her piano, or standing at the microphone with her eyes closed and her sister and Russell nearby, but the idea of being in a video, her face and her body on television, to be judged and analyzed and mocked, compared to her sister and found wanting, made her stomach lurch and her skin feel clammy.
It would be like every rejection, every instance of mockery she’d described to Russell: the parties she hadn’t been invited to; the lunches she’d eaten alone, in the handicapped stall of the girls’ room; the time in eighth grade she’d opened her locker to find that someone had taped a Free Willy poster inside.
It would be all of that, multiplied, made global, because MTV was all over the world.
She held her breath until finally Russell gave a small, defeated nod, paired with a shrug.
Okay, if that’s what you want, he seemed to say, and nodded, almost faint with relief that she wouldn’t have to be on TV, that no one would see her ...
and that Russell had stood up for her, arguing her case.
Back in the dressing room, sat in the mirror’s unforgiving light, with the hairstylist clipping hanks of fake hair against her scalp, and the makeup artist using bronzer and contouring powder to essentially draw a new face on top of the face she already had.
At the neighboring mirror, the stylist was cooing over Zoe, holding up gowns for her approval: “Cindy Crawford wore this six months ago on the cover of Vogue, so you’re the second celebrity to wear it.”
Zoe sighed happily.
could picture the look on her sister’s face, could imagine Zoe mouthing the word celebrity to herself, and suddenly, couldn’t hold still.
“Excuse me,”
she muttered to the hair and makeup ladies.
She unsnapped her tentlike smock and hurried off down the hall, feeling her thighs wobble, her breasts jiggle, every despised ounce of her body.
She felt monstrous.
Enormous.
And, worse, she realized, halfway down the featureless white hallway, lined with framed photographs of bands that had shot their videos here and supermodels who’d posed for magazine covers, that she had no idea where the bathroom was.
She walked aimlessly until she heard familiar voices, coming through a mostly closed door.
“What’s going on with you and Zoe?”
Jerry asked in his nasal, New York–accented voice.
stopped, holding her breath.
“It’s no big deal,”
Russell had said.
felt hope spreading inside of her, like ink coloring a glass of water.
Hope, and relief, at the words no big deal.
Jerry’s voice got louder.
“It better not be.
Because if you break her heart ...
if she leaves the band and goes running home to Mommy and Daddy . . .”
“That won’t happen.
It’s just a crush,”
Russell had said.
He didn’t sound angry, but he must have looked that way, because Jerry said, “Calm down!”
“I am calm,”
Russell said.
Jerry’s words came more slowly, his tone growing speculative.
“It’s good, though.
Everyone loves a happy couple.”
“Sure,”
Russell said.
His voice was flat.
“But, listen.
If there’s anyone the band can’t do without, it’s .
Not Zoe.
You know that, right?”
Pleasure, hot and shocking, had bloomed in ’s chest, warming her face, making her heart pound, making her glow right down to her fingertips.
Russell thought she was essential.
Russell thought she mattered.
She should have left right there, to savor the compliment in private, to tend her new crop of hope, those fresh green shoots that had sprouted in the soil of her imagination, no matter how much poison she’d dumped on the ground.
But before she could move, Jerry spoke up again.
“Can’t they do anything with her?”
he asked, low and angry.
“I don’t know what you mean,”
Russell said.
“Yeah, you do,”
Jerry said.
He sighed.
“Why is it that the pretty ones can hardly ever sing? And the ones who can sing have to look like that?”
had gasped, like something had stung her.
She’d hurried away, head down, cheeks flaming, a sick feeling spreading in her belly, all of her fresh pleasure erased by fresher shame.
Back in the dressing room, she flung herself down in the chair.
Zoe had stared at her curiously, and the makeup artist had dabbed sweat off her brow and upper lip, making feel even bigger, even more disgusting.
She tried to push out of her mind what Jerry had said and focus on Russell’s praise.
If there’s anyone the band can’t do without, it’s .
She’d tucked those words away, like strands of hair in a locket—a treasure, to get her through hard times; a keepsake, to be taken out and admired when she was alone.
was barely in the video, which meant, for most of the shoot’s first day, she just hung around the perimeter of the stage, in what they told her was called video village, watching on monitors as the story unfolded.
She watched Zoe in an evening gown with her hair up; Zoe in jeans with her hair down; Zoe pretending to slurp a Jell-O shot, to kiss a boy, to cry in a bathroom.
She watched Zoe lip-synch the lyrics and Russell had written and sung and tried to tell herself that she understood why it had to be this way, that she didn’t mind.
The truth made her feel like she’d swallowed a broken mirror, like every inhalation cut her open from the inside.
She was envious and ashamed.
Everything hurt.
Finally, it was time to shoot her scene.
She emerged from the dressing room wearing the pantsuit with its stupid sequins, feeling like she must have looked like Zoe’s high school principal, or, worse, like somebody’s mom, and found Russell waiting by the door.
Before she could say anything, he took her hand and pulled her into his dressing room, a smaller, but just as amply mirrored, version of and Zoe’s room.
He leaned against the counter and looked at her, frowning, his eyebrows drawn together, mouth pressed into a thin line.
“If you’re not okay with this, I’ll say something to Jerry.”
shook her head.
“It’s fine.”
“No,”
he said.
“It’s really not.”
Russell was wearing a denim jacket, a tee shirt, a pair of darker jeans.
He had fewer costume changes than Zoe, who had, thought, six in all.
This was his partygoer outfit.
Later, he’d wear a leather jacket, for the dream-sequence scene, where he played with the band.
She could see powder on his skin, and his hair had been styled into neater curls than normal, and it smelled of some unfamiliar product.
Which made her realize, with some surprise, that she knew the usual scent of his hair ...
along with its exact shade, and the precise color of his eyes, light brown backed by gold, like strong tea sweetened with honey.
“I don’t like attention,”
said.
“It doesn’t matter,”
said Russell.
“You deserve to be a bigger part of this.
You’re the one who sang the song.
You’re the one who wrote it.”
“We wrote it together,”
said.
Russell nodded, looking troubled.
“This feels . . .”
He waved his hand toward the soundstage.
“I don’t know.
Like a lie.”
“I feel like Zoe’s doing me a favor.”
That was the truth, thought.
Or a true thing, if not the entire truth about how she felt.
“I didn’t go to a lot of parties in high school.”
She cleared her throat and tried to put her hands in the pockets of her suit jacket, only they’d been sewn shut.
Because of course they had.
“Did you?”
She realized, with a hot, stinging, sudden guilt, that, as much as Russell knew about her adolescence, her high-school years, she’d hardly asked him a single question.
What was wrong with her? Why did everyone else know how to do this, why had they all been born knowing how to do the give-and-take dance of a conversation, and she had not?
Russell smiled a little.
“When I was in high school, I was pretty shy.
So no.
Not a lot of parties.
Until I was in my first band.
And then . . .”
His smile widened.
“When I was playing for people, I’d be crazy nervous at first.
Like, convinced-I-was-going-to-throw-up-level nervous.
But that stopped as soon as I started playing.
It felt like I could be there but invisible at the same time.
Like being a part of things but separate from them too.”
He shook his head.
“I’m not explaining it very well.”
“No,”
said .
“No, I understand.”
His face was so soft, his eyes so attentive.
“I get it.”
“I know you do,”
said Russell.
His voice was low and warm, and was suddenly aware that they were in a very small room, alone, together, where the air felt a few degrees warmer than the air everywhere else.
She groped for another question, suddenly self-conscious again.
Over the past weeks, she’d gotten comfortable with talking to him.
She could make eye contact, even initiate a conversation.
Now all the ease she’d felt was gone, and was just as awkward as ever.
“Do you still get nervous?”
she asked.
Blurted, really.
There, she thought.
That was a good thing to ask ...
even if it was something a normal person would already know about their bandmate.
Their friend.
Russell nodded.
“Oh, yeah,”
he said.
“It’s not as bad as it was, but it’s still there.”
He smiled a little.
“Have you ever noticed that I don’t eat anything before the shows?”
thought.
She remembered Cam eating pineapple (the better to turn the pineapple’s rind into a bong), and CJ, their manager, devouring pizza, folding the slices in half in order to fit more of them into his mouth faster.
Even Zoe would nibble at vending-machine crackers or at the fruit-and-cheese plates that had started arriving in the greenroom before their most recent shows (Russell, his voice unusually cynical, had explained that you could always tell where you were on the charts, and in your label’s estimation, by the quality of the food your label sent).
“Why did you agree to join the band, then?”
asked.
“If you get so nervous? You could have just written songs.”
She felt her face flush and her chest tighten as soon as she’d asked it, thinking that it made her sound like she didn’t want him in the band.
But Russell did not seem offended.
He was looking at her with an expression couldn’t decipher, a patient, soft-eyed kind of look.
“Don’t you know?”
She shook her head, feeling embarrassed.
It was probably something obvious, something like, I fell in love with your sister the minute I saw her, and I can’t stand to be away from Zoe for more than a day.
Something he’d said already—maybe even in an interview!—that , stupid and oblivious lump that she was, had failed to remember.
But Russell was smiling, smiling right at her, and her stomach was doing something strange and swoopy in her midsection, and her heart felt like a tiny bird cupped in someone’s hand.
“At first, all I was going to do was help you write a song,”
he said.
“I knew Jerry wanted me in the band—because you guys were so young, I think, and I had a little bit of experience—but I told him I wasn’t interested.
I liked writing songs a lot better than getting up in front of a crowd and playing them.
And then I heard you sing.”
His face was sweet and guileless, his eyes clear, like she was seeing him the way he’d looked as a little kid.
“I’d never heard a voice like yours.”
’s mouth was very dry.
Her face was hot, and her pulse thrummed in her neck and her wrists.
Part of her wanted Zoe to appear, to help her make sense of this, to tell her where to stand, what to do with her hands and her body, to help her decide what to say.
Another part of her thought she’d claw her sister’s eyes out if Zoe dared to open the door.
Russell was still looking at her, like she was a revelation, or a puzzle he’d solved. A gift.
“You really don’t know,”
he said, speaking as much to himself as to her.
“Having you sing my songs—it’s like, if I came up with a recipe and got Gordon Ramsay to cook it.
Or if I wrote a play and got, like, Robert Redford to act.”
His hands were swooping through the air, and he was smiling.
“I’ve never been so productive; I’ve never had so many ideas.”
He closed his mouth, going suddenly silent, looking a little abashed.
could recognize that easily enough.
So often, it was how she felt.
“You’re my muse, I guess.”
His muse.
did not know what to say to that.
She wasn’t sure she even remembered how talking happened, how tongue and teeth and breath and palate worked together to form words, how words conveyed thought.
Her mind had gone silent.
There was no more ceaseless, anxious chattering, no more hectoring voice that said You’re doing it wrong.
She could hear crowds of extras in the hallway, an assistant director calling out instructions in a loud, droning voice—“You, striped shirt, lose the gum; no cell phones, no cameras, if I catch anyone with a camera, you’ll be asked to leave”—and, more faintly, four bars of “The Gift,”
playing over and over and over—and I know / even so / if you say yes, I won’t say no.
She could picture the scene.
Zoe would be up on the kitchen table, in that silvery, airy ball gown, pretending to sing ’s lyrics, while kids danced and drank beers all around her.
She’d be so beautiful.
Russell touched her arm and looked at her expectantly.
Obviously, he’d just asked her something.
She had no idea what.
“I’m sorry.
What did you say?”
“I asked if you had AIM.
You know—the messaging thing, on your computer?”
“Oh—I . . .”
Did she? She thought that Zoe did, but wasn’t sure whether she, herself, had it or not.
“Tell you what,”
Russell said.
“When we finish up tonight, I’m going to send you the lyrics for that song I’ve been playing with.
‘Carry You Through.’ Read them tonight and tell me what you think.”
He raised his eyebrows at the noise outside.
“Assuming we survive this.”
nodded, weak-kneed with gratitude that Russell had sensed her difficulty and had found a solution, a way for them to communicate that she could manage.
A PA knocked on the door and, at Russell’s “Come in,”
stuck her head into the dressing room.
“Russell? They need you on set.”
“Gotta go.”
He smiled at .
“I’ll write.”
nodded again.
And then he was gone, leaving her alone in a room full of mirrors and her own reflection all around her: big and ungainly, unlovely and unlovable.
Russell sent her the first message that night, and had gone running to her laptop when it pinged, her hands a little unsteady as she opened the screen.
There’d been the lyrics, as promised, and then a note.
I can tell it freaks you out when I talk about how talented you are, so I promise not to do it anymore.
Just take my word for it—you’re amazing.
And when this album comes out, you’re going to be famous.
People are going to love you.
I hope you can be proud of yourself, or enjoy this, even a little bit.
All those years later, she could still recall every word he’d written.
People are going to love you.
She’d wanted to ask if he was included in people, if there was a world where he could love her, even platonically.
Talent is just luck, she’d written instead, after spending half an hour composing and discarding drafts and forcing herself to wait until morning before hitting send.
You don’t ask to be born with a good voice or a pretty face.
It’s just something that happens.
Maybe that’s why it’s hard for me to enjoy this.
I don’t feel like I’ve earned it.
Russell had written back right away.
You work as hard as anyone I’ve ever met.
And if you’re implying that you don’t deserve to be talented, I disagree.
No one deserves this more than you.
She should have stopped it then.
Maybe it wouldn’t have been too late.
If he’d never sent that first message, or if she’d never written him back.
If she hadn’t let him pull her into his dressing room to say what he’d said.
If she hadn’t started to understand that it was his words, backstage, before the shows, that had started to matter; his words, and not Zoe’s, that allowed her to get through the shows.
There’d been chance after chance, dozens of moments where she could look back and think, If I’d stopped it then, if I’d done this, if I hadn’t done that, everything would have been different.
But she hadn’t stopped it.
She and Russell had exchanged messages, and onstage smiles, and Zoe didn’t know about the first thing and didn’t seem bothered by the second.
was stung by her sister’s indifference, annoyed by the idea that Zoe didn’t even seem to consider the possibility of as a rival or a threat.
For so long, had needed her sister, but, in this world, it was the other way around.
In this word, Zoe needed her, and Zoe didn’t see it.
But Russell saw.
You have a gift, Russell would tell her over and over, his eyes sincere, his voice warm.
You make people feel less alone.
This is what you were born to do.
And she’d believed him.
Standing onstage, hearing girls singing along with her, felt better than anything she could have imagined.
Like she was a little kid, putting a quarter in the gumball machine outside the grocery store, turning the handle, and, instead of just one piece of gum, having all the candy, red and blue and yellow and green, every bit of sweetness in the world come pouring out into her hands.
It was as unexpected as it was thrilling—this idea that her music was doing something that mattered, that Russell was there to encourage her and tell her she was worthy of every good thing.
She should have known not to trust something that wonderful.