Pop Princess (5 page)

She squealed, “You guys are so fucked up!”

Jen snarled at me quickly, then strutted outside. Through the glass windows I saw her smush herself onto the bench next to Doug and light a cigarette.

I went to the supply closet to pull out the old mop and pail. What would Lucky do? I wondered. Grace under pressure—that was Lucky. Not someone to jump into a fight if provoked, like Trina, nor someone to enlist a group of love-struck guys to fight her battles for her, like Kayla. My heart pounded extra hard for missing my sister. Lucky would have figured out a way for me to make friends with the girl
and
get the guy.

The restaurant was empty and the outside benches cleared when I came out of the supply closet to close the joint. I had only waited inside there, chasing back tears over missing my sister and hating my new life, for fifteen whole minutes.

Dad and Charles picked me
up from work. Charles said, “Mom made the worst meat loaf for dinner. Even Cash wouldn't eat it. Dad and I need to stop at Mickey D's on the way home. We're starving.”

I was so seriously tired, but I said, “Okay.” We had to use the drive-thru because the restaurant was about to close. Since they didn't want Mom to know they were sneaking food after her disastrous meal, Dad parked on the street and he and Charles ate in the car.

I leaned over from the backseat and reached into Charles's bag for a handful of fries. “Order your own!” Charles barked. I stuck my tongue out at him. Charles said, “That's not a pretty face for a pop princess.”

We both laughed, but Dad got on his stern face. Dad said, “Wonder, you're not really serious about this business with Tig, right? I said okay to get Mommy off my back, but I'm assuming you're too smart to really take this seriously.”

I lied and said, “We're just fooling around. Nothing will come of it—I don't have the kind of look or voice Tig works with. I can't sing like, you know, Lucky.” I said her name low and soft, as had become our family custom, and then I diverted their attention from the name I had just spoken. “Guess who came to rehearse with me today. Trina Little!”

Dad and Charles both brightened up over their Big Macs. Trina had been practically a member of our family during the years she, Lucky, and Kayla had been like the Three Musketeers.

Dad said, “Doesn't sound like Gerald Tiggs is ‘just fooling around' if he asked Trina to drive all the way from Boston for a day to work with you. How is she doing in school, anyway? Still a straight-A student?”

“She's good. Sassy and smart as ever. She's gonna be a country singer!”

This revelation prompted Charles to tune the car radio from the pop station playing Kayla's latest hit to the country station playing a lame sugary hit by a flaxen-haired, dull-voiced country queen. “Ewww,” Charles cried out. “Trina's too good for this.”

“I'm sure if Trina sets her mind to country music it will be a lot more original than this pabulum,” Dad said.

Charles and I both asked, “ ‘Pabulum'?”

Dad said, “Find a dictionary.” From the backseat, I reached over and tousled the back of Dad's gray hair. He did have occasional moments of cuteness.

Later that night in bed, I tossed and turned. It had become habit that I had a hard time falling asleep. When I did sleep, it was only for a couple hours at a time, never for a whole night. Nightmares—Lucky bolting across the street, the sound of screeching brakes, me standing mute and shocked, Mom screaming—regularly struck me during sleep, so that I would wake up shaking and sweating, staring into the night, fearful of falling back asleep. Some nights when the lap of the ocean outside my windows was calm and quiet, I could hear Dad's fingers tapping a keyboard downstairs, or Mom's TV broadcasting Conan upstairs, and I knew they were struck sleepless too.

As I lay in bed wide awake that night, restless, I thought about the potential opportunity Tig was offering me, and the confidence he seemed to have in me. On the one hand, I didn't think for a sec that I had the kind of talent that could sell a million records; on the other hand, if someone of Tig's skills and experience thought I did have that talent, didn't I owe it to Lucky to give it my best shot? To complete what she had started?

I turned on the lamp and pulled Lucky's scrapbook out from under my bed, where I had it hidden from Mom. I flipped through the pages of first-place ribbons from talent competitions, honor roll reports, Girl Scout commendations, chuckling at the contrast between Lucky's roster of accomplishments and her handwritten notes. Lucky had the worst handwriting ever, an intense scribble that would have made you think she was a space case. Kindergartners who had written B-Kidz fan letters that Lucky had taped down throughout her scrapbook had better penmanship than she did.

She had a couple of full pages devoted to pictures of just the two of us: as little kids in the bathtub surrounded by rubber duckies and plastic toys; wearing identical sailor suits at the beach one summer; playing dress-up with Mom's makeup and nice clothes; Halloween with Lucky as Dorothy and me as the Wicked Witch; and the two of us making faces at the photographer from the
Boston Globe
during makeup on the
B-Kidz
set. There was a shot of me performing a hip-hop dance on
Beantown Kidz
that Lucky had framed with silver star stickers, under which she had written, “Wonder Blake can be an annoying brat
, but the girl can dance!”

On one
B-Kidz
taping when I had been singing backup for Lucky, she had looked at me funny afterward, and I thought she was angry that my voice had been too loud behind her. Instead, Lucky said, “You know, you're the real singer in the family.” I laughed because I thought she was kidding, but she wasn't. “Tell Mom you should take singing lessons with me,” she added, but I said nah. I thought I had all the time in the world with my sister.

I turned on my side in bed, so awake I felt like my eyelids were bolted wide open. My front bedroom windows offered the beautiful ocean views, but my side windows, with the bird's-eye view into Henry's bedroom next door, offered occasional sideshow entertainment. Sadly for my insomnia, Henry's light was out, so tonight I wouldn't get to smile and laugh into my pillow while Henry jumped on his bed and performed air guitar; nor would I be treated to one of his exclusive performances for my benefit, during which he played opera on his stereo and made wild operatic hand gestures out the window as he mouthed the arias, looking like Adam Sandler's “Opera Man.”

My stomach grumbled. I tucked the scrapbook back under my bed and went downstairs for a snack.

Dad was sitting at his computer. The computer monitor and the moonlight reflecting off the ocean outside the living room windows provided the only light. I could hear Cash's tail wagging at Dad's feet.

I flipped on the kitchen light. Dad said, “It's three in the morning. What are you doing awake?” I heard the ring of an IM coming through on Dad's computer. His hand turned the volume down.

Mom must have heard me trudge downstairs, because she was right behind me. “Sweetie, what are you doing up?”

“Geez, I'm just hungry. Why all the interrogation?” The chocolate emergency at hand was making me grumpy.

I walked into the kitchen and pulled some stale Chips Ahoy! from the pantry. Mom and Dad followed me and sat down at the kitchen table, where Mom opened a bag of Doritos and Dad lit his pipe. Somehow I had stumbled into a family powwow.

Mom said, “How did things go with Tig today?” She had been asleep when I got home from my DQ shift. These days, when Mom wasn't eating, she was usually sleeping.

“Good. Trina came. She's gonna, like, coach me.”

“Fantastic!” Mom said. Dad's eyes hardened but he didn't say anything. Mom looked at him and said, “Our baby is going to be a star!”

Dad said, “So long as she keeps her grades up. I expect an improvement over last year, Wonder. I'm not kidding.”

“Sure, Dad.”

Mom said, “Who cares about grades! Wonder has the chance to be the next Kayla!”

Mom was laughing, and I knew she was joking and I think Dad did too, but he shouted, “GOD-DAMNIT, MARIE!” He got up from his chair and went outside to the beach, slamming the screen door so hard behind him that it broke off its top hinges. Poor Cash whimpered under Dad's computer table.

Mom burst into tears. Again. I patted her hands to let her know everything would be okay.

Working with Trina over the
weekend was worth switching my weekend DQ shift with Katie, even if it meant I had to work after-school shifts every day the following week. I knew that when Monday came, I would go back to my real life as the new girl at school with the broken-down home, the crush on the impossible guy, the B-Kidz backlash to live down, and the grades to bring back up to standard if I ever intended to get Dad off my case. I wanted to give Trina and Tig my all before I turned back into a pumpkin.

Mom came to Tig's with me on Saturday morning to co-sign the artist representation contract that Tig's lawyers had prepared. Sounds like a big deal, but it wasn't—yet. It was a standard contract—no money involved—that spelled out the terms by which Tig would represent me in any potential entertainment opportunities.

The really cool part of the day was that Mom didn't wig out when she saw Trina. Mom didn't cry, she just hugged Trina and sat down with her at Tig's kitchen table and asked her all about her life at Boston University. She told Trina how proud she was of her, and how she knew she had the smarts and talent to make all her dreams come true. I had told Trina a little about our family life the last year in Cambridge, but she warmed to Mom right away and gave me a sort of look like, She's not doing as bad as you said! Mom had gained a lot of weight since Lucky's death, but on that Saturday, her larger size was the only difference from the old B-Kid mom Trina had known back in Cambridge. Perhaps it was seeing me with Trina and Tig, or signing the contract with Tig; maybe Mom just felt like our lives were getting back on track and there was something to be hopeful about again, and she could act normal.

Mom stayed at Tig's for over an hour and was going to be late for her shift at the grocery store, but she took her time about leaving. As she walked to her car Mom turned to Tig and said, “I know you'll take good care of my baby.” I knew she'd spend the remainder of the weekend getting the silent treatment from Dad.

Trina had our weekend mapped out on a precise schedule: four hours each for song and dance rehearsals on Saturday, two hours' rehearsal time followed by two hours' recording time for each on Sunday. For the demo, Tig and I had chosen a song that Trina had written, “Don't Call Me Baby (Call Me Woman),” an awesome song about a girl demanding respect for being as smart as she was attractive. The song was a good fit for my voice because the melody had more of an R & B than pop flavor, and it was a funky empowerment kind of song that wouldn't have suited Lucky's soft and sweet demeanor. Lucky's shadow would not creep over my performance of Trina's song.

Trina worked me hard—very hard—but I have to say, by the end of Saturday night, when I collapsed in bed, I was twice the singer and dancer I had been even the week before.

The weekend was a sleepover occasion, as Trina wanted us to have maximum time together. Trina came into the living room and sat with me on the pullout sofa bed. She was wearing a stiff white nightgown against her dark skin, and her long cornrows were tied into two sets of plaits falling down over her shoulders. I was wearing flannel PJs with Oreos pictured on them, and teddy bear slippers. It was like the old days, when I used to join Kayla, Lucky, and Treen's slumber parties and we would sit on Lucky's bed and talk until dawn.

“You did good today,” Trina said. “Tig was impressed. He thinks you have what it takes.”

“Like Lucky?”

“Wonder, your talent is so totally separate from Lucky's. How come you don't see that? Don't do this for her—do it for you!”

“But Lucky was the singer!” I whispered. My confidence wavered continually, despite Tig and Trina's encouragement.

“I know you are not going to like hearing this, but let me lay one on you: You're a better singer than Lucky. No disrespect intended here, but Lucky was presence, and you're the real deal.”

If it had been anybody besides Trina speaking that way about my sister, I would have stopped them cold. I did protest, “But you and Lucky were in the same group. Why were you in the group together if you didn't think she was a great singer?”

“Lucky was my friend. I loved her—you know that. But Trinity worked because our voices together added up to a great whole. Solo, Lucky might not have had enough. She balanced out Kayla's hard voice and my overpowering voice. She softened us, evened us out. She also kept me and Kayla from killing each other. Lucky was a peacemaker. She did not have what you have—pure natural talent.”