The Secret Life of a Dream Girl (Creative HeArts) (13 page)

“Go ahead. Look inside.”

“I don’t care what’s inside.”

“You should, if you want to keep your emancipated status.”

My blood runs cold. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, since I’m head of discipline and attendance, the principal has put me in charge of the monthly reports to Judge Abernathy telling him if you’re complying with his orders.”

“I am complying! I’ve been here every day. I have straight As.”

“Really? Because I’m pretty sure I just fished you out of the tardy line.”

“One tardy doesn’t mean noncompliance.”

She makes a point of glancing at the clock on the wall. “I think you mean one absence and one tardy, don’t you? You’re already late for second period.”

“Because you made me come in here!”

“I can make you come in here every day if I want to, Cherry. You should probably remember that.”

“Are you serious? What kind of Machiavellian shit is this?”

“Really? You’re going to add swearing at the vice principal to your list of transgressions?”

“You’re blackmailing me! What am I supposed to say?”

“You’re supposed to say that you won’t see my son anymore. And then everything will go back to the way it was and you’ll get to spend your senior year here at NextGen doing whatever musical thing you’re trying to do, instead of in L.A. with your father.”

“You’re a real bitch, you know that?”

“What I am is a mother concerned about her son. Keegan is already suffering because of his father. The last thing he needs is to have his heart broken by you, too.”

“I already told you that I’d never hurt him—”

She gives me a disbelieving look. “The whole world knows you leave a string of broken hearts wherever you go,
Cherry.
I’m just making sure my son’s isn’t one of them.” She picks up the file and puts it back in her drawer with great ceremony. “Now, get to class before I decide to give you a detention for swearing.”

“We’re not done with this conversation.”

She stares me down as she stands up and walks over to the door. “Oh, yes, we are.” She holds the door open for me.

I want to stay and argue. If I were Cherry right now, I
would
stay and argue. And I would get my way, too. Because one of the big rules in the entertainment industry is to keep the talent happy—at least on the surface.

But I’m not the talent here. I’m just another high school student, and she’s the one with all the power. It sucks. It really, really sucks.

I can feel tears blooming in my eyes, but I beat them back out of sheer will. No way am I going to cry in front of her. No freaking way.

I grab my backpack off the floor and sling it over my shoulder. I need to get out of here, now.

I’m halfway to the main office door when Mrs. Matthews calls, “Don’t forget to get a tardy slip, Dahlia. For the attendance record.”

The threat of it all hangs in the air between us for one second, two, before she retreats back into her office and closes the door. I’m out of the front office—and out of the school—in five seconds flat. Screw second period. There’s no way I can sit in a classroom right now. Not when I’m so close to falling apart completely.

Chapter Sixteen

I flee the school parking lot like the hounds of hell are after me. I think about going to the lake or the graffiti park, but in the end I just drive around for a while. Thinking. Trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Not that I need to figure anything out when Mrs. Matthews pretty much drew me a road map, after all. Stop hanging out with Keegan voluntarily or she’ll find a way to make me do it—by having the judge send me back to L.A. Back to my dad.

Just the thought makes my skin crawl. I can’t do that. I can’t go back there. I can’t go back to him using me or telling me to “make nice” with producers or DJs or whoever the hell he thinks can help my career and make him more money.

The worst part is that I get it. I do. If you believe even half of what the tabloids say about me, then Cherry
has
left a string of broken hearts all around the world. She’s dated guys much older than she is. She’s broken up relationships, friendships, marriages. In breaking out of the Disney mold, she went too far in the other direction, used her sexuality to sell records and concert tickets and merchandise.

But none of that’s me. Not really. Most of those stories are exaggerations and flat-out lies planted by my team—my father—to increase my exposure. Even the stories that are mostly true have important details missing or wrong. I’m not the person the media and the record label and my father have made me out to be.

That’s why I’m here. That’s why I filed for emancipation, why I’m hiding in Austin, why I’m trying to write the songs I want to sing. Why I’m trying to be the person I’ve always wanted to be.

And Keegan, he makes it easy for me to be that girl. More, he makes it feel natural. He’s my first real friend here, besides Finn—who is friends with Cherry, not Dahlia. He’s the first person I feel like I can talk to, really talk to. And no, he doesn’t know about Cherry, but he gets me. He gets Dahlia, even though it’s only been a few days. I don’t want to give that up.

I don’t want to give
him
up. Especially not after that kiss last night—and the sweet, funny string of emoji texts that he’s sent since. Keegan’s not like other guys I’ve known. He listens to me. He’s nice to me. He did all those cool things for me last night because he wanted to make me happy, not because he wanted me to do something for him or his career. And not because he wanted bragging rights about sleeping with Cherry.

But what am I supposed to do here? Even if I tell him who I am and he’s okay with it, his mother won’t be. She’ll make sure I end up having to go back to California, and then I won’t get to see him anyway. Plus, it’s not like I want to cause any problems between him and his mother. His father already has cancer. Keegan doesn’t need to deal with anything else right now.

Which means I really don’t have a choice, do I? I have to give him up.

It sucks. It just totally sucks.

My phone vibrates with a text and I almost ignore it. But Keegan’s name flashes across the top of my screen, and I can’t let it go. I swipe across the screen, pull up his message—a link to Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Love Struck Baby.

God, he’s good. He has yet to text me a word, but from the song alone I know that he wants to take me to the park down the street from the school for lunch. There’s a statue of Stevie Ray Vaughan in the middle of it, and a lot of seniors hang out there when they can sneak off. His way of introducing me to more of his friends? I wonder, as I ache with the need to return his text. Or just a chance for us to hang out together some more?

Either way, I want to say yes. I want to forget the conversation I just had with his mom, want to forget all the reasons being with Keegan is a bad idea. I want to pretend I’m just a normal seventeen-year-old and he’s just the boy I like. Why is that so hard? Why is everything so hard?

Another text comes in while I’ve still got the phone in my hand. But this one is from Ben, telling me he’ll expect my call at two o’clock California time so we can discuss the European music awards.

Screw it. Just screw it.

Instead of ignoring him, instead of texting Keegan back, I do what I should have done when I got his message earlier today. I call him.

“Cherry, babe! How are you?” he says as he picks up the phone on the second ring.

“I’m good, Ben. How are you?”

“I’m excellent. Especially with the news I got today. Can you believe this? They want you to headline the MTV Europe Music Awards. Best news ever, right?”

“It’s great, yeah.”

“It’s better than great, babe. It’s fantastic. This is going to do what we’ve been trying to do for you for three years. Open up the mainstream European audience instead of just the kids. Everyone will get a chance to see you and man, when those guys get a load of you, we’re going to sell so many albums you’re not going to know what hit you.”

“That’s awesome.” I shove as much fake enthusiasm in my voice as I can manage. “When are they again?”

“Mid-December this year. The last big awards show before Christmas. The thing is, we’re going to need you over there for at least two weeks. I want to do a big campaign with you before the awards—get you on as many TV and radio stations as we can book. Maybe try to arrange an intimate get-together with some of the European DJs to get your songs in rotation more often. You know the drill.”

My hands clench on the steering wheel as nausea slams through me. “I’m not doing those meetings, Ben, and you know it. My dad’s not in charge, I am, and there’s no way—”

“Just one or two, babe. To grease the wheels, kick things off right—”

“No. Absolutely not. You can cancel the whole thing then, if that’s what you want.”

“Of course not! We’ll work it out. No big deal. The press tour will be crazy, but if we do it right, it will pay off big-time. So I’ll need you from December first—”

“I can’t take two weeks off school in December. That’s finals time.”

“It’s a performing arts school and you’re going to be performing—which is what they’re supposed to be teaching you to do. Take your finals early if you have to. Do extra credit. Or better yet, tell them to go to hell and come back to L.A. We’ll get you enrolled in school here. I already know where to send you. It’ll be easy.”

“You know that’s not going to happen, right? I’m not leaving NextGen.”

He laughs. “I know, babe, but you can’t blame a guy for trying.”

I can, actually, and I do—especially about those meetings he just suggested. I told him I was done with that when I ditched my dad, and he agreed. He said I’d never have to do something that made me uncomfortable again. And yet here he is, only a few months later, suggesting business as usual. Damn right I blame him.

But I don’t tell him that right now. Instead I just listen as he lays out his grand plan for Cherry. For
me.

“We were planning on releasing a new single in December and then dropping the video in January. I want to move the video up to December. We’ll debut it at the awards show. Millions of people will be watching. It’ll be brilliant. Then we’ll book you a couple shows for the following week—one in London, one in Paris, one in Berlin. Nothing huge. In fact, we’ll do intimate venues. Maybe even go acoustic since you’ve been doing that singer/songwriter thing for a few months—”

“Really?” For the first time I feel a little excited. “I can do some of my new stuff?” I don’t have a lot yet, but I can get some things ready if it means getting a chance to perform them.

“Let’s not get carried away here. We don’t want to go too far off brand since we don’t have any of it available for purchase yet. We’ll do songs from your current album, a couple of the popular ones from the past. I’ll look into partnering with iTunes, see if we can get them to do some kind of exclusive release for at least one of the shows. Your fans are going to eat this up, Cherry, baby. It’s going to be amazing.”

“Yeah, amazing.” My tone says it’s anything but, but he doesn’t notice. Or if he does, he doesn’t say anything.

“This is going to be big. So big. But you’ve got to get out to L.A. so we can film the video. Have you thought about what you want for ‘Smokin’’?”

“I want to not release ‘Smokin’’ as the next video. How’s that?”

“The label thinks it’s your best bet for a number one hit. You know that. It’s a hot song, great beat. People are going to eat it up.”

“Yeah, like junk food.”

Ben heaves a long-suffering sigh, like dealing with me is just so hard—despite the obscene amount of money I make him. “It’s a good song, Cherry. I know it’s not necessarily the vibe you want to put out there, but it’s what we’ve got right now.”

“It’s what we’ve always got. Just more of the same sexy pop stuff that doesn’t mean anything—”

“Because that’s what’s selling right now.”

“Maybe I don’t care about what’s selling. Maybe I just care about being honest with my fans, for once. Honest about my music, honest about my life. What’s so wrong with that?”

“Besides the fact that they’ll turn on you? Fans are fickle, fickle creatures, kid, and we’ve worked too hard to build you the fan base you’ve got to just throw it all away because you want to be an ‘artist.’”

“I
am
an artist.”

“You’re a business. You’re a really beautiful girl with a unique voice and fun, sexy albums and merchandise that showcase both of those things.”

“But what if that’s not all I want to be anymore?”

“Then you better get used to disappointment. The label has you for two more albums, and they aren’t going to take kindly to you messing with a winning formula.”

“You don’t know that. I’ve written a couple really good songs down here.”

“Two songs don’t make an album.”

“But once they hear them—”

“They’re not going to hear them, Cherry.”

“You don’t get to decide that. You work for me.”

“Yeah, and you work for them. In the end, you’ll do what they want or they’ll dump your ass.”

“Maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world.”

“Yeah, it is. Because they’ve got you for as long as they want you. You know that—to get the higher royalty rate your dad demanded, we had to give up your freedom. If they don’t want your next albums, they don’t have to put them out. But you can’t take them anywhere else, either. Not for seven years. And that is your whole career, gone overnight. In this business, seven years is a lifetime.”

The tears are back, burning my eyes and thickening up my throat until it’s almost impossible for me to breathe, let alone speak. Not that I would anyway. There’s nothing left to say and Ben knows it. He and my father made sure of that.

His voice softens. “Look, we’ll figure it out, okay? Take the next couple of months, write what you want to write, be who you want to be. Get it out of your system. We’ll talk at the end of the semester, have a whole state-of-the-union-type summit, and we’ll figure out what we want to do next. What we want your next album to look like.”

“We already know what my next album is going to look like. Isn’t that what you just said?” I know when he’s just trying to placate me. I’ve seen the moves enough times through the years.

“You know, now’s not really the time to deal with this. We should be celebrating. This is great news. Let me put together some possible dates to film the video—either here in L.A., if you can make it, or there in Austin if you can’t. Sound good?”

“I’ll be in L.A. next weekend.”

“Oh, yeah? What for?”

“I’m flying in with Finn McCain. We’re coming for Matt’s party, but—”

“Finn McCain? Are you two an item?” I can practically hear him salivating.

“No. We’re just friends, Ben.”

“Of course. Friends.” But I can already hear the wheels turning in his head, can already see him plotting God only knows what. “What time are you coming in? What airline are you flying?”

Shit. I really shouldn’t have said anything. “No pap pictures!”

“Of course not! What kind of manager do you think I am?”

“I know exactly what kind of manager you are.”

“I’ll send a car for you, babe. That’s it.”

“I can find my own way. But thanks.” It’s getting harder to talk, harder to hide the fact that tears are streaming down my face.

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll send you those dates. Pick one that works for you.”

“Okay.”

He pauses. “It’s going to be okay, Cherry. I promise. You’ll have more fame and more money than you’ll know what to do with.”

“Yeah, I know.” I click off before he can say anything else.

It’s just in time, too, because the moment the connection ends, my stomach goes from churning to full-on revolt. I pull the car over to the side of the road and barely get the door open before the granola bar I ate on the way to school this morning decides to come back up.

When I’m finally done puking, I grab the bottle of water from my cup holder and swish some around in my mouth before spitting it out. Then I lay my head back against the headrest and wonder how the hell everything went so wrong.

Most people my age are looking forward to the future, looking forward to finally being able to do what they want to do. To be who they want to be. To love who they want to love.

I’d give anything to feel like that. Would give anything to have a future, a real future, instead of having to spend the next five years trapped in a past that had become a lot more than I counted on when I was excited about going to that first audition. But real life doesn’t work like that—or so my father has told me a million times through the years. At least, not for me. The sooner I learn to accept that, the better off I’ll be.