33
Sasha
It’s a Tuesday near the beginning of October.
And it’s six in the evening, which is too early for live music to really be kicking off unless you’re at a festival.
Yet here I am, sitting in the sparsely populated main hall of the East Side Performing Arts Center, waiting for Wavelength to come onstage and play their three songs to the bottom-tier industry people who attend events like this.
The houselights are on with no intention of turning them down.
It’s a showcase for young musicians, so the people who are supposed to be listening seem even more slimy and/or condescending than usual.
I haven’t been at this level of the pyramid for a long, long time, and even when I was, it was in a place where entertainment was big money.
Especially after Augustus and I got picked up by the Channel as kids, the grimness had a veneer over it.
But there were still auditions and sweaty desperation and trying too hard and dreams of fame hanging on incalculably thin odds.
There was still passion worn down to the bone and various types of predatory behavior from those who held the keys.
Isabelle dealt with a lot more of that than me.
Augustus did too, though not to nearly the same extent.
From some of the things he’s mentioned offhand as if they’re light stories, he sheltered me from some powerful creeps when we were young.
I wanted to thank him or ask him more.
Someone should have asked him if he was okay, but those weren’t the sort of words we traded.
Heather Erin took us on and transferred us from acting to music only.
From then on, it was constant coaching and rehearsals, then eventually recording and tours.
When we broke out, my dad helped restructure the contract to make us Admirer, to make us aim ever higher.
I was just thirteen.
My dad knew about the tumor then — an inoperable, obscured hourglass — though he hadn’t told us yet.
That contract was his last supervising act for Augustus and I.
The business he had to finish.
Things went downhill really quickly for him after that. Metastasized, endless treatments, pressure on his brain. A distant, foggy version of himself.
All the while, Admirer’s star rose.
Toward the end, he only remembered Augustus. If I visited him by myself, which was most of the time, I’d say I was Augustus, because I wanted him to know one of his kids was still there for him, not some stranger he forgot ever naming Alexander.
Admirer fans like Cyprus or even Quinn have heard parts of this story. Here I’ve told them my parents are still alive. It’d be easier to maintain that they’re dead, but when we were back at Falafel ’Til Dawn again a couple days ago, someone asked me about my parents and I answered without thinking.
While the first bands cross the stage, nervous and dressed to be whatever they imagine is most appealing, I go through the lies in my head, trying to keep them organized. It’s driven me to keep my circles small. Already, what I’ve told Quinn, Cyprus and Lillian over the weeks since I met them clashes with what I’ve told my downstairs neighbors and what I’ve told the school.
Example: the school thinks I have a rich family who basically bribed them to get me in at the last minute and that I live with my aunt, the family on the main floor thinks I’m a college student, and my friends think my parents own the entire house. I guess they rent some of it to the people who actually rent to me. I haven’t figured that out yet.
My friends also think my parents are overworked, exhausted, jet-lagged professionals who don’t like it if I have anyone over. My older sister (who I’m still not totally sure what I’ve named) goes to college back on the coast. So they’re all pretty absent, though I say they’ve found their way to accepting or affirming my identity.
If I’d said otherwise, my friends would try to take care of me, and I don’t want them to support me based on lies.
At the Performing Arts Center, a man who I resent for bringing too much false enthusiasm to the showcase, steps up to a microphone and says.
“That was Angelica Richmond. Give her another round of applause!”
Only a couple people do.
“Next up, we have Wavelength.”
He proceeds to do that horrible thing where he reads the bio out loud as if it’s a casual introduction when it was clearly not written to be read out loud. I can see Lillian cringing as she plugs in and whispers a few final things to Cyprus and Quinn.
As I try to ignore the emcee, I have an awful moment of realizing how everyone would pander to me if they knew who I was, or who I used to be. How all that desperation would be heaped on me for a chance to get ahead. I don’t have a helmet anymore, or a security team. I’m only invisible by allowing myself to be seen.
I’m afraid of being viewed as nothing more than a ladder.
I’m afraid of the mob and all the hope they tie to me.
I’m afraid my friends would be among them. Dear god.
I don’t think my heart would ever go out into the world again.
So I can’t let my friends find out until I’m gone. The big secret, that I’m half of Admirer and I’m on the run, can’t reach them. That’s the end. They’d never look the same at me again, because celebrities aren’t people.
Cyprus hits record to start filming, Lillian nods at Quinn, he counts them in — and from the moment Lillian plays the opening riff, I know something’s wrong. They’re too good to be off the rails, but they get rattled at the start of the first song and they can’t seem to shake it. Leading with a difficult song was a gamble that isn’t paying off.
I believe on another day they’d recover and bury the mistake in the confidence of the rest of their songs. Not today. I can see them all trapped in their heads. I think I know why.