Epilogue
As I sit in front of the computer, staring at the view count as it continues to go up and up, I try to figure out how I landed in this situation.
On the screen, I’m sitting in my old dorm room, holding a guitar. The camera quality is low, and my singing isn’t much better—at least that’s what I thought, anyway. I just threw this together at the last second, something to help Maddy out before we finished up college for good.
“I just don’t know what I’m going to do,” Maddy told me, leaning her head on my shoulder as we sat on the benches outside our dorm building together.
“You’ll figure out a way to make it work,” I told her, but I wasn’t sure if she believed me. She was trying to raise money for heart surgery for her dad, but she hadn’t been able to pull together nearly enough so far. Even with her working part-time as a publicist for this firm in LA to go along with her business degree, she just wasn’t pulling in enough money.
“I don’t know how,” she admitted, shaking her head, sitting up again and staring at the sky above us.
I felt a pang of sadness as I glanced over at her. Maddy has always been the sweetest girl, and to see her struggling so much made my heart hurt. I donated what I could to the fundraising page she had set up for her dad, but they still weren’t anywhere close to the total they would need to actually get his surgery done.
“I’ll ask around again,” I offered. “See if I can get some more people to share it at least.”
“You’re so sweet, Mila,” she told me. “Anything would help right now.”
And so, that’s what I did—contacted pretty much everyone I could to get them to post the fundraiser, but it still wasn’t going far enough.
I was clicking through my social media, trying to think of a new way to approach this, when I remembered I had an old account I’d made into a video platform. I had put it together to share some of my songs when I was in high school, and I had maybe a couple of thousand subscribers. It was something, right?
So, I made a video. Just a recording of one of the songs I’d written recently, more a practice than anything else, with a link to the fundraiser in the description. I recorded it in one take, the soft guitar filling the dorm room and drifting out onto the quad beyond, and then I hit upload.
And then everything went batshit crazy.
The next morning, I woke up to a call from Maddy—first thing in the morning, so I knew it had to be serious.
“Holy shit!” she exclaimed loudly, as soon as I picked up.
“Hey, I just woke up,” I muttered. “What is it?”
“That video! You didn’t even tell me you were posting it!” she continued. “It has over a million views. Some big influencer shared it! The fundraiser for my dad, it’s almost halfway full!”
“What?” I exploded. No way. No freaking way had something like this happened. She must have been kidding … even if the giddy excitement in her voice didn’t seem like something she could fake.
I flipped open my laptop, where I left the video open after uploading it last night, and my heart flipped when I saw the view count—more than a million, just like she had said.
Staring at it now, comments are popping up every few seconds, talking about it, talking about me. And most of them seem to like what they are hearing. A whole lot, actually.
“Oh, my …” I murmur.
“I know!” Maddy replies. “We are always telling you that you should put some of your stuff out there, and look how well it’s doing!”
She is right. Maddy and the rest of my friends have encouraged me more than once to start putting my music up on streaming sites so people could hear it, but it never really appealed to me. Yeah, I’m studying music, and yeah, I love writing songs, but I’m not interested in getting into the glamorous world in any serious way. It’s too corrupt for me, and I know I never would be able to put up with the lifestyle. It might suit some people better, but it’s never going to feel right for me.
As I come to the end of my college career, I am batting around ideas as to what I’m going to do once I actually graduate. I’ve run through a few different options, but music therapy is the only one that really jumps out at me. The thought of being able to bring people the same joy I get from playing, it sounds perfect, and it would mean I could keep writing my songs on the side, too.
Though I occasionally allow myself to be convinced into playing at an open-mic night after a couple of drinks, I really am not the type to put myself out there. Those songs are for me, and I have long-since dropped the idea of trying to change that.
But, over the next few days, the video keeps raking in views, going past two million, three million, five million, coming up to ten, and then passing it within a couple of weeks. People are sharing it, talking about it.
I scroll through social media and see people sharing their opinions on me and my music, and my head spins with the surrealism of it all. None of it can be real, right?
I thought about pulling the video down, but Maddy begged me not to.
“I know it’s hard for you,” she tells me, “but my dad … we need him to get this operation. And with all the money you’ve made for us, it’ll pay for his recovery, too. Please, Mila.”
I know she’s right, and I don’t want to make life any harder for her family than it already has been. So, I leave the video up, and soon, I start hearing from people. People who want to sign me or represent me. I ignore the emails at first but, unable to contain my curiosity, I start to go through a few of them.
And the offers they’re making me are good. Really good. Like, in the millions good. I’m sure some of them are probably too good to be true, but there are plenty of legit people there, too, real labels who seem to want to work with me.
The video has just thrown me into the midst of a mainstream music maelstrom, and I’m not sure how the hell I’m going to navigate it. This is not what I wanted, but am I really going to turn down the chance now that it’s here? It would set me up for life, give me a chance to take more space to figure out the rest of my career, and allow me to help my friends whenever they need it. Plus, I’m sure there are plenty of people I’m graduating with who would kill for this chance, and if I turn it down, I will have to hear about it from them for the rest of my damn life.
I read through every single email carefully, trying to find the one that makes the most sense to me. By the end of that second week, I find one—one I actually like the look of, from a manager who lives nearby. He promises to help me find my purpose, and the thought of it seems like a relief. With so many questions about what I’m going to do and who I’m going to be when college is over, having someone there to guide me through it sounds like the best thing in the world to me.
I reach out to him and tell him I’m interested in talking with him about it further. A few days later, he sets up a meeting with me.
His name is Luca Price, and he wears an expensive suit with a shirt unbuttoned a few inches to show off a generous amount of chest hair. He greets me with a warm handshake and directs me to his office.
“You know, it’s been a long time since I’ve been this excited about a new artist,” he tells me.
I nod and smile but try to keep my guard up. I’ve met plenty of people in this industry while in college, and I heard a lot of stories, too. I know better than to think he really means every word that comes out of his mouth, and I’m not going to fall for it.
“And I know you’ve got some amazing pull on social media, with the way that video of yours blew up,” he continues. “I’d like to sign you today, and we can announce it later this evening. Maybe give the fans a taste of your music—something new. How about it?”
I part my lips in surprise. I mean, I know this business moves fast, but this is even more than what I was expecting. He wants to sign me right here and now? Get me moving into a performance in front of … fans? I suppose it’s fair to call them that, but still, it feels surreal, like all of this has to be happening to someone else.
I don’t know what to say. But, as he grins at me from across the table, his hands clasped in front of him, I remember what he said in that email. That he would help me find my purpose. That’s what I need right now, more than anything else.
I nod. “I would love that,” I tell him.
He springs to his feet in excitement. “Wonderful! I’ll get my secretary to bring the contracts now …”
He already has them on hand?
He seems to notice the look on my face and waves a hand. “I had a good feeling about this meeting,” he explains.
I shift in my seat. So, he already decided I was going to sign up before I came down here? How many other things were already decided for me by the time I walked through that door? I’m not even sure I want to know.
What comes next is a rush—signing the contracts before I’m bundling off down to hair and makeup to get ready for my livestream performance tonight. He works with a couple of big influencers who have been promoting it on social media, so it’s going to be huge.
I stare at myself in the mirror as they tease out my hair and apply a new face. It’s like a dream, and I’m not totally sure it’s a good one quite yet.
I perform that evening, trying to keep my hands from shaking once they thrust the guitar at me. I have another little song I’ve been playing with for a while, and I figure it’s the safest to go with. Something close to the piece I put out before, even though I’m not sure just what was such a hit about it.
The numbers explode as the livestream goes on, and by the time I’m done, more than two million people are watching me.
Luca flashes me a thumbs-up from the other side of the monitor, those big white teeth spreading into a huge grin. He can’t take his eyes off the numbers, and I do my best to focus on the music. But I have the feeling everything about my music is about to change, whether I am ready for it or not.
And if I have just sold my soul.