Chapter 28 #2
She leaned closer to the image of a famous jazz trumpeter surrounded by his band, the caption identifying it as more than thirty years old. In a meta twist, on one edge of the frame, a man stood with a video camera, capturing the session.
It had been here the whole time, one hallway over, and she’d had no idea.
“What is it?” asked Audrey, even though Merritt had no doubt she knew the answer.
Merritt pointed to the piano player, swallowing several times in succession, but it didn’t help her voice come out any less choked. “That’s my dad.”
She felt Audrey’s comforting hand on her back and fought to get her emotions under control. Even though this wasn’t the kind of content they were looking for, it was the last thing she wanted broadcast to the world. They didn’t get to have this.
“Sorry.” She straightened her spine and kept moving.
She could already hear the faint sounds of laughter and chatter before she pushed open the studio door.
She spotted Sadie immediately, her striking face half-covered by a curtain of long pink hair fading into blond, dark roots at the top; she was so tiny that she looked even younger than she clearly was.
When she spotted Merritt, her face froze in an expression of unvarnished shock—the exact moment the cameras were there to capture.
“No way. No fucking way.” Sadie’s voice was muffled by the hands clapped over her mouth before she folded in half, her head dropping between her knees.
Merritt smiled, always unsure what to do in the face of that kind of deference, and gave an awkward wave.
“Hi,” she said with a little laugh. “I’m Merritt.”
“I know who you fucking are,” Sadie said, straightening up, her face bright red, mouth still hanging open in an astonished grin. Merritt walked all the way into the room, the small huddle of people between her and Sadie parting like she was Moses.
“Can I have a hug?” she asked, then cringed internally, feeling like the creepy uncle at a family gathering.
But it was clearly the right thing to say, as Sadie launched herself into her arms. Merritt hugged her tightly, their height difference large enough that her head practically rested on Sadie’s.
When they separated, Merritt was introduced to the rest of the team, including Marc, the producer, a guy around her age with glasses and a slightly above-it-all expression.
She’d heard once that 98 percent of music producers were men, which certainly aligned with her own experience, so she didn’t know why she felt a twinge of disappointment that this seemed like one thing that hadn’t changed in the interim.
“So, are you here to sit in?” said Sadie, shifting her weight anxiously.
“If you want,” said Merritt. “But Audrey sent me demos of a few songs. ‘Something I Said,’ and ‘Fake It,’ and ‘One a.m.’ If you’re interested, I’d love the chance to work with you on them.”
Sadie’s face went even redder. “I would literally die.”
“Well, don’t die, because we have you under a three-album contract,” deadpanned the label executive in the corner. Everyone but Merritt laughed.
As nervous as Merritt had been about getting back in the studio, it felt as comfortable as slipping into an old favorite T-shirt, soft from repeated wear. She sat at the piano, Sadie on the couch with a guitar in her lap, working through the vocal harmonies for “Something I Said.”
She was hesitant to make suggestions at first, but when Sadie asked for her input, she played the alternate chord progression she’d been messing around with, plus a few tweaks to the lyrics of the bridge, gratified when Sadie’s face lit up in agreement.
When they ran through the new version one full, uninterrupted time, Merritt got goosebumps.
Based on Sadie’s expression, she felt it, too.
“Fucking fire,” Sadie said with a giddy grin. Everyone around them nodded and murmured in agreement, which startled Merritt, who’d almost forgotten they were there. “Let’s get in the booth.”
They spent the next couple of hours laying down the different tracks—guitar, piano, layer after layer of vocals. In between takes, she got to know Sadie, who in some ways reminded her so much of herself it was uncanny, but in others couldn’t have been more different.
From her music, she’d expected Sadie to be on the quieter, intense side, but she was bubbly and vivacious—words that had never been used to describe Merritt, at any age.
She was an LA native, the youngest of seven—all homeschooled—and it was easy to clock her as the baby of a family where attention was a limited resource.
Since she was in her life for only a few days, though, all Merritt could do was make sure her own attention was undivided.
The two of them seamlessly slipped into a working rhythm, their musical chemistry as effortless and natural as Merritt had ever experienced. Slowly, everyone else drifted out of the studio, bored by the monotony of take after take with minute differences audible only to Sadie, Merritt, and Marc.
Late in the afternoon, they gathered around Marc’s monitor to hear his rough mix of the song. He gave up his chair to Sadie, standing behind her as they listened, Merritt leaning against the console.
Merritt couldn’t hear a thing, though, because all she could focus on were Marc’s hands resting on Sadie’s shoulders.
It felt like all the air had been sucked from her lungs.
She told herself she was being too sensitive.
She’d been out of the game too long. It was perfectly normal for a grown man to touch the teenage girl he was working with in such a casually affectionate way.
Sadie herself didn’t seem to think much of it, her face rapt and attentive, nodding along to the beat with a small smile.
But then, Merritt could vividly remember being in that exact position, rationalizing away her boundaries being pushed by photographers, executives, producers—men who held every card, dangling her dream in front of her like a carrot.
She wasn’t special; everyone dealt with this.
This wasn’t an industry for prudes or complainers.
If a joke or a request or a touch made her uncomfortable, that was her problem.
She could easily be replaced with someone who wasn’t.
In the past, she’d even considered herself lucky that all her experiences could be filed under harassment rather than assault, until her therapist had pointed out how twisted it was to think of any of it as “lucky.”
Merritt cleared her throat. “I think I’m going to get some air. Maybe we should all take ten?” She shot Sadie a significant look before grabbing her phone from her bag and heading outside.
She took a lap around the building, checking her texts for the first time all day to find a few from Niko.
He’d spent the day at Griffith Park, with a stop at Amoeba Records; her heart squeezed when she saw his haul included some of the albums they’d listened to on their road trip.
Wish u were here, he wrote. Hope ur having fun & i know ur kicking ass.
Seeing his texts released the knot in her stomach somewhat, dragging her back to the present. She hesitated, her thumbs hovering over the phone, but decided this wasn’t the time to get into it.
Kicking ass is questionable, she wrote back, but i am having fun, mostly.
I should be back in a few hours. Let me know if you want me to pick up some dinner.
She rounded the corner, relieved to see Sadie leaning against the brick, phone in her hand and hot-pink vape in her mouth. As Merritt approached, Sadie exhaled, a huge cloud of vapor briefly obscuring her face, then offered it to Merritt.
“Want some?”
Merritt came up next to her, eyeing it. “What is it?”
“Just nicotine.”
She was struck by the urge to advise Sadie to quit, to protect her voice—but she remembered herself at that age, sucking down cigarettes outside this very same building, and thought better of it. She wasn’t Sadie’s mom.
She tried not to wonder where the hell Sadie’s parents were in all of this, anyway.
“Sure,” she said, and took the smooth plastic rectangle, her attempt at a conservative hit still sending a powerful blast of nicotine to her brain.
It knocked loose the queasy revelation that, in a different universe, she would be the parent of a teenager right now—not quite Sadie’s age, but not far off.
In another universe, she’d still be (unhappily) married to Adrian.
And in another—
Merritt hopped off that train of thought before it had the chance to derail her, refocusing on the issue at hand. She felt suddenly tongue-tied, choosing her words carefully.
“So…how have you been feeling? About this whole experience.”
Sadie’s mouth twisted for a millisecond, then her face brightened artificially. “Good. I mean, it’s fucking amazing, right? A year ago I was applying to be a cashier at In-N-Out, and now I’m here.” She glanced away, taking another nervous hit.
“And you like working with Marc?”
“Yeah, totally,” she said, a little stilted. “He’s, like, a legend. Everyone keeps telling me how lucky I am that we got him.” Her gaze dropped to the ground, the toe of her Doc Martens oxford digging a groove into the dirt.
Merritt’s pulse pounded in her throat. “And you’ve never felt, like…uncomfortable around him or anything?”
Sadie blinked, surprised. “Um…” She met Merritt’s eyes, then quickly looked away again, the syllable sliding up a full octave. No matter what she said next, Merritt already had her answer. “Yeah, no, it’s fine,” she finally said, with a shrug, her brows knitted together.
Merritt recognized the look on her face—the vulnerability of being very young and unsure in an industry where a lot of people were profiting off you while simultaneously making you feel worthless.
“Okay,” she said, sensing she wouldn’t get any further by pushing it. “Well, I’m really glad to be here. To share this with you. It means a lot.”
Sadie’s face lit up, the clouds parting.
“Me, too. Like, I literally wouldn’t be here without you.
” Merritt’s stomach lurched uncomfortably, but Sadie’s attention was on her buzzing phone.
She glanced back up at Merritt. “We should probably get back in there. But they invited you to the party, right? I told Audrey to tell you.”
Merritt shook her head. “What party?”
“The label is having this party on Saturday for my eighteenth birthday. It might be totally lame, but they want me to do a set. It’s going to be a whole big thing.
” Merritt opened her mouth to graciously decline, but Sadie held up her hand to silence her.
“Before you say no…” She took a long, dramatic pause. “…Don’t.”
Merritt laughed. She’d thought she could escape this trip without running the gauntlet of an industry event, but for Sadie, she’d make an exception.
“Okay. Can I bring my, um…” She trailed off, unsure what to call Niko.
Friend? Boyfriend? Summer fling that I might actually be in love with, oops? “Niko?” she finally finished.
Sadie grinned. “I’d love for you to bring your Niko. Here, give me your number. You’re not on socials, right?”
When Sadie headed back inside, Merritt told her to go ahead, that she just had one more quick phone call to make.
Audrey picked up on the first ring. “Merritt! How’s everything going over there?” The wary note in her voice told Merritt that she’d been expecting some form of 911 call this whole time.
“Great,” said Merritt, as falsely perky as Sadie had been earlier. “You were right, Sadie’s incredibly talented. I was just wondering…” She paused, suddenly regretting not strategizing her approach before calling. Might as well swing big. “How difficult would it be to replace Marc?”
Audrey was silent, too—one of the loudest silences Merritt had ever heard.
“Fairly difficult. The label loves him, and they have a contract. I don’t know if there are many names bigger than him out there right now.
Why? Have you two been…clashing? Remember, you’re only there for a few days, he’s committed for the full album. ”
Merritt’s stomach sank in dismay—both at the news and at the assumption that she would be the cause of the conflict.
“Uh, no, it’s not that.” She ran her fingers through her hair in agitation.
“Well, if that’s the case, can you…is there someone who can be here with her when they’re recording?
Like, all the time? I, um…I don’t think they should be left alone together.
It’s just a gut feeling, and I don’t think anything’s happened yet, but…
” She trailed off, realizing with a sudden rush of panic that she’d done that exact thing.
There was another silence, somehow even louder than the last. “I’ll take care of it” was all Audrey said, her tone sending a shiver down Merritt’s spine.
She thanked her and hung up, hurrying inside. When she got back into the studio, Sadie was already in the booth, messing around on her guitar and humming to herself.
Marc looked up from his phone at the sound of the door, and when Merritt met his eyes, she felt a bolt of incandescent rage pass through her.
At what, she couldn’t name exactly. Maybe at the way some people moved through the world so carelessly, unconcerned with the damage they caused.
At the selfishness of tainting something so important to Sadie, creating a suffocating atmosphere of discomfort that would be tangled up in her memories of this time forever.
At how weak someone had to be to abuse their power.
But she had power now, too. She could swallow her anger, and make the most of her time with Sadie, and ensure she was protected once Merritt left. Even if no one had been there to do the same for her.
Especially since no one had done the same for her.