Chapter 45
Shame infused Joni’s skin. Helena was right: there had been no gig.
“I checked the tour dates,” Helena was saying, lips barely moving.
“You were in Madrid the night before the funeral, then your next gig was two days later in Prague. You could have flown back. There was time.” Her voice wavered as she asked, “What were you doing that was more important than saying good-bye to my mother?”
Joni felt the collective gaze of her friends. She swallowed repeatedly, unsure how to explain.
When Helena had messaged her about the funeral, asking if she’d play, Joni was mid-tour. She knew it would be grueling to fly there and back in forty-eight hours. Her schedule was so jammed—twenty-seven gigs in thirty-three days—that she needed that rare window to decompress.
Touring was impossible to explain. It was this crazy, messed-up, distorted reality. The drugs and alcohol. The haze of jet lag. The brutal insomnia. The adrenaline that never left her body or let her sleep. The screaming fans. The press following her every move. The cameras shoved in her face.
It was arriving at a different arena night after night, knowing you had nothing left to give.
Looking through the wings at a sea of faces, fans screaming your name, expecting Joni Gold.
Only it’s not you. It’s someone else pasting on a smile, stepping out into those dazzling lights, arms thrown wide—Hello, Brooklyn!
Hello, Sydney! Hello, Tokyo!—when all you want is to curl up tight, to stay in the dark, because that’s where you belong.
But you can’t. You must pump out this energy, fill a whole stadium with it, and it’s got to come from somewhere.
But you don’t have any left. You’re a shell.
An empty, broken shell! So you get it on loan any way you can—caffeine, cocaine, antidepressants, champagne, vodka, nicotine, ketamine—whatever you can get.
The idea of flying home, standing in a small, respectable church in the village where she’d grown up, seeing all those people who had known her, championed her, believed in her. She just . . . she couldn’t do it.
She hadn’t flown back and seen Helena’s mother when she was sick. And now she was dead. She didn’t feel worthy of turning up at the funeral, singing a song to the whole church, and being praised for it. So she didn’t fly home. She sat in a hotel room on her own and got blasted out of her skull.
“I . . . I didn’t have it in me . . . ,” Joni tried. “I was in a bad place. I didn’t want that to be how I sent off your mum.”
“So you didn’t send her off at all,” Helena said, eyes glistening with tears.
“I sent flowers—”
“A big, ostentatious bunch that your manager probably arranged. I wanted you there. Mum wanted you there. You didn’t even call me in the weeks that followed. You just carried on living your big, beautiful life and abandoned me.” Helena’s voice tripped over those last two words.
Tears stung Joni’s eyes. Her throat felt like it was closing. The air on the mountain felt too thin, hard to breathe. Maggie and Liz were hanging back, eyes wide. “I’m sorry,” she said eventually. “I didn’t know that’s how it felt. I cared about your mum—”
Helena shook her head. “You only care about yourself.”
“Helena . . . ,” Liz said quietly.
“You don’t get to jump in. Defend her,” Helena barked.
“I wasn’t going—”
“Everyone fawns around Joni. Grateful for her scraps of attention. You do it, too, Maggie. She bowls into your wedding, all jet-set superstardom, does her thing on the mic, and everyone thinks she’s a hero.
Then you don’t see her again. Not when you go through the divorce, not when you’re bringing up Phoebe alone. Tell me I’m wrong?”
Maggie looked pained as her gaze fell to her feet.
“All that glitters is not gold,” Helena said.
“To me, a friend is someone who is there when it counts: when a parent dies; when you’re going through a divorce; when life isn’t shiny and bright.
Not for the holidays and the high days, or when you need a place to crash to try on a family Christmas for size. ”
Joni felt like her chest was being crushed. “You don’t understand my life!”
“Quick! Grab your guitar! Catchy chorus line.”
“Fuck you,” Joni spat, the tears coming now. She turned away. Her mind raced, a flood of adrenaline washing away the tired muscles and exhaustion. She tipped forward into a run, ignoring Liz’s shouts.
The wind was against her face. Into it she let out a huge explosion of noise, a scream of frustration, of hurt, of she-didn’t-know-what! Just knew she wanted to be anywhere but this mountain trail.
She felt like her skin had been flayed right off. She wanted the cocaine. Wanted to disappear from herself.
“Just stop!” Liz yelled.
Joni turned back.
“What is it?” Maggie asked.
Liz’s face was pinched. She was pointing toward the beach. “Look! Someone’s down there.”