Pop Princess (23 page)

That would never happen, using my new status to become some anti-drunk driving mouthpiece. That subject was—and probably would always be—the most sensitive of issues to me, just too close to us. But maybe Charles had a point. Maybe I should use my new fame toward some form of charitable cause.

“Spoken by the boy I saw smoking a joint on the beach last night,” I pointed out.

Charles's tense face opened in a small, sly smile. “That's different,” he said. “I'm not driving a car, I'm going home and going to sleep. And anyway, before you bust me, who was the guy that dropped you off in the VW bus that you were playing tongue hockey with on the beach last night? Don't think I didn't see you. . . .”

Now it was my turn to smile and blush. Who knew my brother would turn out to be a cool guy, funny and complicated and maybe on his way to being a stoner, but, well, a brother I wouldn't mind getting to know a little better?

Then: Who but Jen & Co., along with Doug Chase and the members of Doug's Band, should emerge from inside the DQ and sit down at the table next to ours without even noticing me. I looked at Amy and Charles. “Excuse me for a sec, will ya? I just can't resist this!”

I let my hair loose from under my BoSox baseball cap and took off the tracksuit jacket I was wearing over my jogging bra. Maybe I had gotten too skinny, but my muscles were
tight
and don't think I didn't want the party at the next table to notice. I stood up and stepped over to Jen and Doug's table. “Hi, guys!” I chirped. Jen's friend had a stack of magazines on the table in front of her, and there was my face on the cover of
Teen Girl,
with a caption that read “WONDER-ful!”

Jen rolled her eyes. “What do you want?” she said, but one of her friends was all, “Hi, Wonder! Wow, you look great, how did you lose all that weight? Would you sign my magazine? I'm Christine, remember, from third-period gym class—” Jen interrupted her with, “Shut up, Christine!” Yeah, I remember you Christine, you were the girl making farting noises while I was auditioning for the school musical. And now you want my autograph?

Doug looked exactly the same, good-looking but in a bored kind of way, the kind of way that had to lead to premature balding and a beer belly by age thirty. Even his serpent tattoo looked bland on his bicep, like it had been demoted from fierce killer to bored onlooker. Doug said, “Check you out, Wonder! You here to play with the band again? You look awesome.” He tugged flirtatiously at my hand, which I grabbed away from him and placed behind my back.

I shook my head. “I'm, like, going on tour with Kayla starting this week. We're going all over the country, that kind of thing. Hey, Jen, how did that
Guys and Dolls
show work out for you?”

Jen huffed, stood up, and walked back inside the DQ. “Fuck off!” she called out before the door closed behind her. Jen's friends did not follow her. Christine said, “Freddy Porter! You lucky girl! What's Kayla like? Is it true she's dating Dean Marconi?”

I ignored Christine. “Is Jen your girlfriend now?” I said to Doug.

“No way!” he said. Doug got up from the table, but instead of going inside to soothe Jen, he dashed over to his truck, reached inside the passenger door, and rushed back to his seat. He held out a cassette tape to me, saying. “We made a demo tape. Think you could give this to your manager, or some record company people?”

AS IF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I smiled very big, shamefully glorying in Doug's admiring look at me. “Sure!” I said. I took the tape and stepped back over to Charles and Amy's table. “See you guys later at home,” I said to them. I did not resist the urge to kiss Charles on top of his head and give his shoulders a tight squeeze of a hug before I took off.

I made sure Doug was watching me as I sprinted from the DQ and tossed his demo tape into the garbage can that one year earlier it had been my responsibility to clean. The clanking sound the tape made against the metal can was SUH-weet indeed.

Just because I planned to consider Charles's desire for me to upgrade my image didn't mean I was about to become a saint. There are some perks to the pop princess life, and a little slice of revenge on that day was one of mine.

I was walking back to
the House from Hell—I mean home—when I saw this tall male figure with very well-defined shoulder muscles standing with his back to the street in the open garage at Henry and Katie's house. Before I could duck for cover and avoid talking to what had to be their studly cousin,
Science Project
turned around to face me! He was wearing jeans with no shirt and ohmygawd, what steroids had he been taking to get that new filled-out upper bod of muscle? Oh, I might be such a slut! For a split second, I forgot about the Liam being who had devirginized me just yesterday. It's not like all of a sudden Henry had turned into Brad Pitt, but last summer there was nothing on his chest besides skin and bones, and now he had filled out but good. There was definitely a grope-worthy experience going on there. This time last year, Science Project had a head of long, scraggly, dirty blond hair, and now he had a buzz cut that looked seriously Marine hot. Geez, first Mom and Dad separating, then Charles having a girlfriend, now Henry the Stud. What had been put in the Devonport drinking water since I'd left?

I almost felt all nervous and fluttery, and then my ego reminded me that
I
was the celebrity in this equation, not Henry who was all of a sudden so fine with the makeover. Henry who pulled his window shade down on me last night!

“Hey,” he said to me, in this casual voice like he saw me every day and I was still the same ole girl from Devonport, not the Devonport escape artist-turned-pop princess with the hit song that I could hear right this moment playing from a car radio passing down the street.

“Hi,” I said. “You look way different.”

Henry looked at my head of platinum blond hair, then scanned my body.
“I
look different?” he said.
“You
look different!”

He walked farther into the garage, as if he had no intention of finishing our conversation. I guessed I did owe him an apology—make that apologia—for not answering his e-mails (that he'd long since stopped sending me), for jumping off the phone with him so quickly that day at the
J-Pop
studio, for never calling him back. Maybe I most owed him an apology for barely wondering how he was doing since I'd been gone.

Now I wondered!

I followed him into the garage. A small home gym had been set up inside, with weights, benches, and a punching bag hanging from the ceiling. Henry lay down on a flat bench and started to bench-press. I stood behind the bar, my index and middle fingers under the bar to spot him, but he didn't need me.

I said, “So, what's the Schwarzenegger deal about?”

Henry finished a set of ten reps. He pointed at a mannequin standing to his side that had pencil marks all over it, lines sculpting muscle definition on the mannequin where there was none before, and Post-it flags with numbers and mathematical signs all over them. Even if I hadn't failed algebra, I don't think I ever in a million years could have deciphered the meaning of the scribblings.

“I've only gained a few inches around the chest—I'd hardly call me Schwarzenegger. Anyway, it started out as a science experiment—when you were still living here, in fact, not that you were paying attention. I've been getting into robotics and I wanted to test certain physiological parameters in relation to an experiment on a crash-test dummy, so I started trying to bulk up with weight-lifting and carbo-loading to see how the theories applied to a human body. The buzz cut just made it easier not to have hair getting in the way when I work out.”

“Go Science Project with the science project!” I said, impressed.

I was about to launch into a sincere attempt to apologize for my aforementioned friendship lapses when I heard Katie's voice approaching us from inside the house. “Oh, Science Project, there's another girl on the phone for you.” She came through the door that led from their kitchen into the garage, and let out a squeal when she saw me. “WONDER!” She jumped up and down, then grabbed me in a hug. Then she turned to Henry and handed him the phone. “Don't hog the phone all day, again!”

Henry took the phone, said all sweet, “Oh hi, Andrea,” in a voice that I feel sure was intended for me to notice, then he walked inside the house.

Katie said, “I have my
Teen Girl
issue with you on it upstairs! Will you sign it for me? And, like, tell me all about Kayla and FREDDY PORTER and Dean Marconi!” I almost envied her standing there, wearing cutoff denim shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops, her hair in a scrunchie, looking like a happy, relaxed person. Some irony, I thought—Wonder Blake who once dreamed of escape from Devonport now had a mild case of envy going on for Katie's Devonport life of weekends and summer vacations with no responsibilities. She probably spent all day in her room, on the phone with her cheerleader friends, watching TV, or Katie's favorite activity, blogging on her Internet diary. Katie didn't have to worry about being bloated before a performance, or about showing up late at a meet-and-greet because the driver was stuck in traffic; Katie would never receive follow-up e-mails from Kayla after those experiences with Web links that contained mean reviews or nasty remarks about the new pop princess, Wonder Blake, who apparently was both a pudge and a diva. Stupid Internet—many curses on whoever had to go and invent that thing.

I lied to Katie and said, “I have a conference call with my manager and the record company in a few minutes. I really gotta get back home.” Fielding questions about Kayla, Freddy, and Dean was about the last way I wanted to spend my day off—especially with the new Mister Popularity, formerly known as Science Project, fielding phone calls from brazen little chiquitas—even though in fact I had nothing better to do while I was stranded in Devonport.

So I signed Katie's magazine, went home, and went to sleep. Devonport lacked anything to stay awake for anyway.

Very late that night, I sat in my bed staring at the dark sea, in major angst mode because Liam still hadn't called. Yesterday, he had been inside my body, and today, he couldn't even bother to call to say,
Hey, your technique could use some improvement, but not bad for a first time out
or whatever. With headphones around my ears, I was listening to that Paul Weller guy
again,
and replaying the scene in the VW bus with Liam over and over, when I noticed some flailing arms from the corner of my eye, outside the side window. I rolled onto my side, and there was Opera Man in the window across the way, wearing a cape over his chest, but with chunky biceps emerging from underneath the cape as his arms flailed about. Opera Man was performing the dance routine from the “Bubble Gum Pop” video.

I smiled. Maybe some people in Devonport weren't entirely a lost cause.

Philadelphia was the third city
on our tour, and the City of Brotherly Love had a special treat for me in addition to my first (unbelievably yummy; who cared about Kayla's reprimand) Philly cheesesteak. I'd thought no city could offer a better welcome than Boston, where we'd opened the tour to an arena audience that went crazy for its hometown girls. But Philly had a huge video screen that played a surprise announcement taped that morning at the
J-Pop
television studio. Sounding like the Wizard of Oz, J helped close out my opening set by announcing to the arena audience of ten thousand people that “Bubble Gum Pop” would be the number one song on his Sunday morning, nationally syndicated radio countdown.

The crowd roared its approval as Kayla appeared onstage, unannounced and before her show, a microphone in hand. “Give it up for Wonder Blake, Philly!” she cheered. “Congrats,” she said into my ear as she hugged me and flashbulbs went off like a light show. With an acoustic guitar player sitting on a stool set up next to us, Kayla sang one of her first hit songs, “Best Friend,” directly at me. I added in harmony on the chorus, just because the moment was so sweet and why not? Kayla nodded at me, her way of saying it was okay to muscle in on her song.

Later, after the intermission, I stood on the stage sidelines watching Kayla perform her regular show, with a full live band, three backup singers, and ten backup dancers. She was truthfully a better studio singer than a live one, though her voice was always pitch-perfect, but to watch how she could match her dance moves to her song and connect to an audience was to watch a true pro at the top of her game. Technically, my voice was stronger than hers, and Tig said my phrasing and timbre were better, but she had an energy and pure love of performing I could never match. When it came to putting together the whole package—dancing, singing, and working the crowd—well, magic is a quality either ya got or ya don't, and Kayla had it in spades.

But sometimes watching Kayla could be a little intimidating, too, even for a newly crowned number one pop princess. I left the stage area and headed over to where craft services was set up for the road crew. The door to Kayla's dressing room was partially open as I passed by, and Jules's voice called to me from inside. “Wonder, c'mon in! Congrats on the number one! You must be stoked.”

I stepped inside the dressing room, where Jules was sitting on a leather couch. I wondered if the road crew gossip was true, that Jules had slept with not one but two of the members of Freddy Porter's early boy band on her climb up the celebrity assistant food chain. Jules was hunched over the glass table at her knees, her long blond hair obscuring her face. “Thanks—” I started to say when she interrupted me with, “Ticket sales are sorta soft. Hopefully the newspapers all got pix with you, Kayla, and J on the video screen for tomorrow's papers to jump-start ticket sales a little, right?” Right, sure, thanks for deflating my number one song happy bubble, Jules.