Blood To Blood (2 page)

Sure enough, Nina, pressed
into a corner of the room, spoke urgently into her cell. My stomach flipped
with excitement. This was really happening.

“And if that weren’t enough,”
Julietta gushed, “we’ll be working with— OMG—Sawyer Creed!”

My smile immediately crashed
and burned. “The dude who did that Swedish Moreno track? The one that sounds
like it was made with a toy keyboard?”

“Duh, Angel.” Jules rolled
her eyes. “Only the number one track of the year!”

It may have been number one,
but to me the tune was one step above a nursery rhyme. For the millionth time,
I wondered how the most simple-minded songs became huge hits and figured it had
something to do with the limitations of mortal hearing. Nevertheless, I
swallowed my criticism. “If you have nothing nice to say...” Dad always told
us.

Eventually, Nina, taking note
of the silence and what was probably my dubious expression, set her Blackberry
down. “Raj followed you for months,” she said to me. “Trust me, he’s a fan. And
he thinks the natural match for your work is Sawyer.”

The skepticism I felt etched
on my face was now echoed on LaLa’s. “They say he’s got a bad temper,” she
said. “You really think this is a good idea?”

With determination, Nina quickly
punched laptop keys and pulled up a
Billboard.com
feature titled:

“Pop’s Teen Genius”

“Creed’s the future,” she
asserted while we scanned the article. His rugged, unsmiling face hosted
piercingly green eyes, which seemed to hover in front of the halo of his blond
shoulder-length hair.

“Yikes,” Julietta said, “he’s
hot.”

Nina ignored the
interjection. “He’s riding the wave from that Moreno track. The timing’s right
and, as I understand, he’s got stacks and stacks of tracks. I smell a hit.”

The ticking of the huge clock
on the wall seemed very loud to me as I swiveled my chair around to gaze out
the wall of glass overlooking the Boston skyline. Something didn’t feel right.
My eyes were focused on the way the afternoon sun glinted off the tops of cars
in the traffic stream below. “Is he the only producer we’re slated to work
with?” I asked. Nina’s heartbeat accelerated slightly. Not good.

“That’s something we need to
discuss.” Nina pressed the tips of her fingers together until her hands formed
a triangle. “You didn’t sign a record deal, per se. What we agreed to was
recording one song.”

“What! Only one song?” The
words came out in what felt like a growl as the cars, the sunlight, and the
skyline disappeared from my view. For a split second, I was one hundred percent
my mother’s daughter. I saw nothing but red. Angry, bloody red.

Julietta took a step away
from me and LaLa slid to the edge of her seat in the opposite direction. Nina’s
heart rate speeded up some more, but she stayed put, her poker face never
flinching as my eyes met hers. I kept my voice level and calm. “We have an
album’s worth of material.  At least forty-five songs.”

“Labels are unwilling to put
a lot of money into new acts these days.” Nina’s voice took on the annoyingly
soothing tone she reserved for less-than-ideal situations. “Once you prove
yourself with a track that has downloading and or ringtones heat, I’ll be
empowered to go ahead and negotiate another contract.”

So in other words, everything
was riding on hitting the Top 10 with just one measly tune produced by the
hotheaded Sawyer Creed. Did I really just throw my family’s traditions under
the bus for the sake of
one song
? Inside of me, an icky tide of
resentment rose toward Creed. It was illogical, seeing as he had nothing to do
with the decision I’d made to go against my family’s wishes, or the fact that I
didn’t read the contract before signing it. But logic didn’t matter. At that
moment, Creed represented all that was wrong with the music industry and I was
going to hate him anyway.

LaLa, fanning herself,
responded first. “Don’t worry. I’m in.” Julietta, swiping sweat from her
forehead, nodded in agreement. They both glanced expectantly at me. I nodded.

“Good,” Nina said as she
lifted her bone-straight weave off the nape of her neck in an attempt to cool
down. “Raj went to get him.”

“He’s coming up here?”
Julietta said excitedly.

“Now?” My voice sounded like
a squeak.

“His studio’s just around the
corner,” Nina answered as LaLa’s head swiveled between the three of us.

Heavens to leotards, it just
kept getting worse and worse.

As if on cue, the door opened
and in strutted a triumphant-looking Raj followed by…Sawyer Creed. The latter
seemed annoyed, and his dark eyebrows were drawn together in a unibrow-inducing
frown. He looked the way I felt: ticked off.

“Ladies, meet our resident
genius, Sawyer.” Raj—slight, dark, roughly five-foot-seven—was the
exact opposite of Sawyer, who stood at what looked like six-foot-four with an
athletic build. Julietta immediately jumped up to shake his hand and LaLa and I
rolled our eyes at her never-ending boy craziness. Raj continued the intros
throughout the endless handshaking before everybody finally sat down.

“Again, welcome to the mill,
girls,” Raj said before shooting me a sheepish smile. “Not to say we’ll be
grinding you up, but you’ll be grinding even more.” He beamed, seemingly
pleased with his use of ‘90s American slang. Sawyer sat sullen, silent and
unimpressed. “Sawyer,” Raj continued, “Kat Trio have crazy potential, and I’m
confident that together you’ll come up with a slamming number one.”

Four sets of eyes turned
toward Sawyer.

His skin was somewhat pale
and his hair, almost as long as mine, was pulled back to reveal a square
jawline. His Atlanta Braves baseball cap rested on the table next to a pair of
black Ray Bans; unusual since most of the industry dudes, at least the ones
we’d met, hid underneath caps pulled down as low as possible over black shades
and never bothered to remove either whether they were indoors or out.

He sported a midnight-blue
tracksuit with gold piping and his goatee was kind of fuzzy, as if he’d been in
the studio for the past month and was now stepping out to forage for food. I
remembered the article mentioned that he’d produced almost a dozen Top 20 songs
before he hit the age of seventeen a little over a year ago. “Incredible Green
Eyes” struck me as a cool song title just as his gaze shifted to mine. His
frown deepened. Hmm…he wasn’t annoyed; he was concentrating on something. I
wondered what… Oops, I was staring at him. Awkward. Mentally insert foot in
mouth. Now, tear gaze away…

“Sawyer usually doesn’t leave
the studio,” Raj continued.  “Had to drag him out. Maybe you guys can all
get together tomorrow?” He and Nina quickly made arrangements for our first
session before I ran off to my after-school tutoring job.

#
# #

Later, as I picked up candy
wrappers and rearranged the chairs in the empty middle-school classroom where
I’d just finished tutoring, I wondered why Mom and Dad insisted I have a job. I
was ahead in completing credits for the year, and as a result, my school day
ended earlier. But the job was slightly annoying mainly because one of the
sixth graders had a crush on me. He always got red in the face when I stood
next to him and stammered when I asked him questions. Chuckling, I picked up
another wrapper, and remembered how lame life was when I was in sixth grade,
before I started singing and before I stopped caring about what the other kids
thought of me. Now school didn’t matter at all, and stuff like being popular
and the upcoming prom were just a distraction from what really mattered: music.

I grabbed my boots from the corner
where they lay drying. They’d gotten soaked when I’d stepped in a slush puddle
earlier, and instead of tracking water through the room I’d changed into my
track shoes.
Thank goodness I decided to bring them home for washday,
I
thought as I took the sneakers off and stuffed them back into my
knapsack. 

My cell blared “Madame
Butterfly” and Julietta’s smiling face popped up on the screen. “What’s up,
giiirrl?” I asked.

“Giiirrrl, we’re doing the
Garden!” Jules was the group’s broadcaster of good news, and the
ever-conservative Nina used that enthusiasm to save time by making one phone
call instead of three.

“Wow. That’s over fourteen
thousand people!”

“Yep! So...you’re, like,
telling your folks tonight, right?”

“Yeah.” Ultimate resign.
“Guess so.”

Jules was my best mortal
friend, which meant I could tell her everything… except the truth about my
family or my pending immortality. Unlike me, she was optimistic. Maybe it was
because her mom was super-supportive of her singing in our group. I envied that
support. How cool would it be if, after I told them the truth, Mom and Dad came
to the Garden gig? But then again, they’d probably question my sanity. After
all, why would I put our way of life in jeopardy for a chance to have my voice
heard by mortals if I weren’t insane?

“LaLa and I can come over if
you need us,” Julietta was saying. “You know. Moral support.”

LaLa and Julietta had been
over to the house many times for sleepovers, homework, and writing sessions,
but they had no idea my family was immortal and would probably die of fright if
they saw Mom’s Shimshana reaction to my news.

“Thanks, girl. I think I’ll
be okay though. Maybe you guys can come over tomorrow to scrape what’s left of
me off the wall.”

Unaware I was serious,
Julietta laughed. “Okay, girl, we’ll be there.” She clicked off.

A movement caught the corner
of my eye. Glimmering in one of the classroom’s large windows was Reflection.
She was staring at me, but I hadn’t given the usual mental permission that
allowed her to take on a life of her own.

“I didn’t call you!” I
exclaimed.

“You don’t have to. Now, what
was I saying before? Oh yeah, you’re a nut job, attention-freak, doofus.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and
concentrated, but she was still there, smirking, when I opened them. This
couldn’t be happening. Even worse, what if Reflection was right?

What if all the attention
from Quake and the Garden gig ended up hurting my family by exposing our true
nature? I anxiously paced while imagining the online media blitz; the posts and
tweets about the Beacon Hill mom,
my
mom, who drank the blood of willing
donors.

I felt Reflection's eyes
following me as I agonized. “Hmph,” she said, “Jules isn’t the only one who
thinks the blond dude’s hot, huh? Mom’s really gonna kill—”

“Enough!” I yelled. I glanced
at the window and Reflection was gone. Sigh of relief. Then I heard the front
door open. I turned to see her there, three-dimensional and with a hand on the
doorknob.

I nearly screamed.

“You have no control—actually,
you never had any control over me,” she said in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice.
“I'm leaving now. It's really for the best.” Reflection started changing then.
Her skin became a more golden shade of brown. The length of her hair shrunk and
got curlier. Her body grew rounder and fuller in certain places...

“What do you think you're
doing?” I said through my teeth. “Get back in that window now!”

But all she did was peer at
me with a weird little smile, as if her upper lip was partially stuck to her
front teeth, before waving her hand goodbye and softly closing the door behind
her.

Racing to the door, I flung
it open and scanned the hallway. No one was there. I slammed the door shut,
leaned against it, and exhaled. My stomach felt like it had broken into a
million tiny pieces, and each little shard of what used to be my lucidity
floated around my insides like tiny islands of foreboding. Sweat broke out
everywhere I had skin; and my hands shook like they belonged on someone else’s
body. I remembered I hadn’t slept for almost two days. I tried to breathe, deep
and slowly the way Dad taught me to do when I felt like this; like I, and the
world, were both falling apart. His technique didn’t quite work this time.

I need Mr. C.
, I thought.

With an overwhelming need to escape
whatever doom I just
knew
was gearing up to steamroll me flatter than an
oil stain in the middle of the street, I snatched my keys, cell, and knapsack,
and ran out of that room like a bat out of you know where.

O
utside, snow drifted down in fat flakes
that stuck to my hair and nose as I sprinted through rush hour Harvard Square
traffic to catch a taxi.

Inside the cab, the driver
flashed me a puzzled look before I gave him the address to the studio of my
singing coach, former international concert pianist Sheridan Caulkins, and
a.k.a., “Mr. C.” The cab driver shot me more weird eye action before finally
pulling away from the curb.
What’s his problem?
I wondered, looking down
at myself for an answer only to realize, with a gasp, the reason for the guy’s
behavior.