Chapter 14
Hannah
The walls are so thin in San Francisco’s historic Bellmore Hall that we can hear the clamor of the crowd even with the door shut.
Ripper, Kenny, and I are in the greenroom, waiting for Bowie to tell us it’s time.
I’m bouncing my leg, tapping my fingers against a suspi-ciously stained armchair, before I realize I’m subconsciously playing the noise coming through the wall, as if the chatter of our fans is a song I can drum to.
“We’re trending again,” Kenny says, scrolling his phone.
“They made us a meme. Look.” Kenny holds out his phone, and even though I don’t want to look, I do.
There I am next to Kenny and Rip at the LA show, captured in a GIF nosediving off the stage, the lyrics “And I’m wasted” from “Family Fruit” superimposed over my head.
As I watch, the little me on-screen rewinds and falls all over again.
“Stupid TikTok.” I press my head back against the chair, stains forgotten. “I miss the good old days when you could humiliate yourself in private. A few hundred people at a time, max.”
“Apparently there’s a ‘Hannah Cortland aesthetic’ too,’” Kenny says.
I crack an eye.
“A what?”
He shows me a picture of a girl with messy hair in an oversize black sweatshirt, the hood pulled low over her head, dark eyeliner smudging her eyes. She’s giving the camera a dead-eyed stare and holding up both middle fingers. A thick assortment of bracelets wraps her wrists.
“Please,” I scoff. “I don’t look like that.”
“You look exactly like that.”
Ripper leans back on the couch. “Not sure why anyone would want to look like a thirteen-year-old Hot Topic employee.”
“Ouch, Rip. My fragile heart.”
He shoots me a look. Until now, he’s been unusually quiet, listening to the volume through the walls. “Theo said tonight’s sold out, right?”
I nod, fighting the urge to bounce my leg again. It’s the first time we’ve ever sold out a show, and it’s at the Bellmore, a dream venue. Two weeks ago we could barely scrape fifty people together at the Hideout, and now we’ve got six hundred. The power of TikTok.
Rip grabs a straw from the mocktail setup in the middle of the coffee table.
After LA, Theo isn’t taking any chances.
In place of our usual boozy setup, we have a truly pathetic display of virgin cocktail mixes and limp little celery sticks and carrots.
Ripper puts the straw in his mouth and chews.
“I think you should fall on your ass again. More embarrassment, more clicks, more ticket sales.”
Ginny’s looking at Kenny’s screen over his shoulder. “The internet does seem to find you fun to laugh at.”
“Maybe I’ll push you off the stage instead,” I say to Ripper, kicking his legs so fast he spits out his straw. “Then you can have the spotlight.” Right as Ripper and I are trying to untangle ourselves, Theo bursts through the door.
“Guys, quit messing around. A reporter from Rolling Stone is here.”
Ginny gasps.
“Are you serious?” Ripper asks.
I straighten in my seat. “Why?”
“He just showed up unannounced.” Theo starts pacing around the mustard-yellow rug meant to make the greenroom homey. “He said he was in town to cover a tech story and saw we were playing, so he pitched his editor a last-minute music feature and the editor said yes.”
I glance suspiciously at Ginny, to whom I attribute all divine intervention. She smiles enigmatically.
Kenny whistles. “A feature is serious. That’s, like, multiple pages.”
Ripper pumps his fist. “We’re going to be famous.”
I mentally flip through all the Rolling Stone covers I’ve idolized: Bowie, the Beatles, Nirvana. A frisson of anticipation makes the hairs rise on my arms.
“Needless to say, this could be big.” Theo scrubs his hands through his hair and blows out a breath. “I asked Bowie to stall him so I could prep you, but we’ve only got a minute. Can I count on you to be on your best behavior?”
“It’s Rolling Stone.” Ripper crosses his legs, like he’s had a personality transplant and is now a dignified gentleman. “Of course.”
Theo’s eyes find mine. “I’m begging you. Now is not the time to hash out our issues, okay? We want the story to be about your music, not your antics.”
“Smile bright,” Kenny says. “Act like a happy family. Got it.”
I don’t drop Theo’s gaze. “So I shouldn’t mention our manager’s overreaching?”
He squares his jaw. “Why don’t you just say whatever you have to now?”
“Fine. Fuck you for sending me to mandatory therapy.”
“Fuck you for not sending yourself.”
Kenny tries to cover his laugh with a cough.
Suit and I stare at each other, both unwilling to bend. It might be the most I’ve respected him since he arrived.
“We get it, you’re both stubborn,” says Ripper. “Reporter, remember?”
Theo wrenches his eyes away. “I want you guys at the top of your game onstage. And I wish I didn’t have to say this, but be nice to the guy. No stranding him in a different city—”
He has to wait until Ripper and Kenny are done laughing to continue.
When Theo finally arrived in San Francisco after wrangling a flight, I’d expected him to have a full-blown meltdown, or call Roger Braverman.
But he just strode into our practice here at the Bellmore, flipped us off, then told us to get back to work.
“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Yuck it up now. I’m serious, though—no pranks or drunk adventures. Let’s just kill it out there and show him a good time.”
The door bursts open for the second time and Bowie practically trips over himself ushering in a short guy in a tweed blazer, tortoiseshell glasses, and floppy brown hair.
I blink. Where’s the music journalist— the leather jacket, tattoos, cigarette dangling from his lip?
This minia-ture nerd is not what I expected. He’s a library assistant.
“Saints, meet Matt Sanford from Rolling Stone,” Bowie says, and practically bows. “Matt, this is Ripper, Kenny, Theo, our Manifest rep—” He turns to me, and Matt’s gaze follows. “And, of course, Hannah.”
Matt holds out a hand, nudging his glasses up his nose with the other.
“I’ve been following the social media discourse.
Excited to see if real life lives up to the hype.
” The way he says it is half compliment, half threat.
“If you guys are one-third as interesting as the world thinks you are, I imagine we’re in for a hell of a story. ”
I can practically feel Theo blanch. His eyes flit to me like I’m a bomb waiting to go off.
Interesting. The reporter likes the social media hype. I picture him watching the TikTok video of me falling off the stage in a never-ending loop, and thinking to himself, I’ve got to meet that woman.
“For better or worse,” Ginny points out, “you’re always a story.”
She’s right. Theo wants us to play it straight and narrow, focus on our music, but maybe he’s got it wrong. It’s not just our music that drew Rolling Stone’s finest library assistant–slash-reporter out here to cover us.
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to put on a show.
Theo’s giving me a panicked look that clearly says, Whatever you’re thinking, it’s wrong.
But I ignore him, as well as Matt’s outstretched hand, and drape my arm over his shoulders instead. “You know what, Matt? I think we’re going to have a great time.” I tap the bridge of his glasses. “But you may want to tape these up first. Just a precaution. You like parties, right?”
“Parties?” Theo echoes. “What parties?”
“I’ve been known to enjoy them,” Matt says.
I nudge open the door with the toe of my boot and look back over my shoulder, where I find a display of surprised faces, none more than Theo’s.
Ginny’s eyes shine from across the room. “Break a leg out there, Han.”
I wink and pull Matt into the hall, toward the stage. Beyond it, I can hear the crowd’s anticipation: fevered, high-pitched, louder than it’s ever been.
*
There’s nothing like when the world fades onstage.
People assume you have to be an extrovert to perform, but when the massive swirling lights dial so bright you can’t see past them, and the tidal wave of sound from the speakers surrounds you with a fortress of noise, and the concentration it takes to play for hours edges out the anxious drone of your thoughts, being onstage can be almost meditative.
Matt the reporter watches us next to Theo, drinking a longneck beer Bowie probably served him on a silver platter.
I don’t need the audience’s cheers to tell me we’ve hit every chord, note, and transition perfectly all night, but they’ve been effusive, especially when I strummed the opening chords of “Six Feet Under.” They love the new stuff, which makes me love them.
Don’t listen to musicians who tell you we don’t have favorite crowds. We do, and this one’s mine.
I grab the mic stand and pull it toward me like a lover at the end of the night.
Squinting against the lights, I find a sea of shining faces looking back, nearly as sweaty as my own—the crowd’s been moshing tonight.
“Last song,” I say, and they groan. “It’s a new one.
” The groan turns into a cheer, and this is why I’ve stayed up writing every night on tour, why I’ve woken up early to walk Kenny and Ripper through my ideas.
Despite what the label predicted, people are responding to our new music.
Instinctively, I glance at the side of the stage, where I’m rewarded with Theo’s incredulous face.
I watch him give Bowie a death glare and know he wants nothing more than to shake him and demand to know where these songs are coming from.
But he can’t lose his cool in front of Rolling Stone Matt.
Instead, Theo wraps his arms over his chest and turns his steely gaze back on me, eyebrows lifted in a silent question.
Dr. X’s voice echoes in my mind: And are you coming to terms with the fact that what you want is impossible?
A shiver runs the length of my spine.
“For this last song,” I say, keeping my eyes on Theo, “I’m going to invite a special guest onstage.” Theo guesses what I’m doing and the corners of his mouth turn up. I’ve learned this look means he doesn’t want to reward me with a smile, but can’t help himself.
I turn my attention back to the crowd. “You want to meet a real live Rolling Stone reporter?” They cheer and I beckon Matt, who looks shell-shocked. Bowie’s behind him, trying to nudge him forward. Theo’s laughing.
“Come out, come out, Matt,” I call.
“The water’s fine,” Ripper drawls into his mic.
The crowd starts chanting “Matt, Matt,” and finally Matt’s feet unglue and he stumbles forward into an awkward jog, waving at the audience.
I point the mic at him. “Say hi to San Francisco.”
He glances at me for a second, dazzled by the lights and red-faced at the attention, then he puts his lips directly on the mic and says, “Hello, beautiful people,” in a way that tells me he’s fantasized about this exact moment. The crowd loves it.
I wipe the mic with my sleeve. “All right, Matt. You’re going to rock out with us for this last one, okay?”
“Hold on,” he says, and pulls something from inside his tweed blazer.
It’s a fifth of Bulleit whiskey—contraband on Theo Ford’s stage.
“I’m going to stress–black out this entire experience anyway,” he explains, unscrewing the cap.
The crowd’s back to chanting “Matt, Matt,” as he tosses his head back and drinks, then hands the bottle to me.
In the wings, Theo shakes his head and mouths, Don’t.
I lift the whiskey and frown. “My manager says I’m not allowed.” The crowd boos.
Theo crosses his arms. I bring the bottle close enough to sip and our eyes lock.
We’re in front of hundreds of people and yet we’re alone in a private battle of wills.
I wink, then tip my head and swallow as the crowd whoops, and I can’t tell if it’s the whiskey or the heat of Theo’s glare, the strangely satisfying glow of his disapproval, that warms me all the way down.