Best Of Everything (12 page)

“I’m super happy with the band. We’re going to kick some major ass.”

“Good. I’ll have your first local gigs confirmed tonight. Hope you’ll be ready in a week.”

“A week!” I swallow hard. That’s sooner than I’d been thinking. “I thought we had more time.”

“No point in waiting. The more hours you have in front of a real audience, the sooner you’ll find out what works and what doesn’t. By the time you hit the big stage I want you bulletproof. Only one way I know of to do that.”

“Wow. Okay, then. I’ll tell the guys.”

“Just make sure you’re happy with what you take out on stage. The first couple performances will be low-key, surprise appearances opening for bands I manage who’re slumming it around town. But once word gets out, you can expect to be mobbed at the shows, and with Twitter and Facebook and all that, your performances will be online before you’ve walked off stage. What I’m saying is, get ready, because it’s all going to hit hard once people know you’re doing local shows.”

I remember the adrenaline rush of the talent contest, thousands of people in the audience, and smile. “That’s cool. I can’t wait.”

“Good. Because I’m telling you that you won’t have to. A week, week and a half, and you’ll have a gig every other night. My goal’s to have you clock fifteen before you go on tour.”

“We’ll be ready.”

She studies me with hooded eyes and nods. “I believe you will.”

Chapter 16

Two days later I’m more confident in the band than ever before. Terry is at rehearsal and tells me she’s blown away at how improved it is over the last time she saw us. Which is good, because we have our show dates solidified, and we’re six days from the first one, out in the San Fernando Valley – no publicity, no advance notice, only whoever happens to be there to see the headlining act.

Terry keeps complaining about how it’s impossible to make a living from downloads, so it’s been a return to musicians playing for their supper, which is fine by me. After learning more about the business side of things, I appreciate how Terry held onto our merchandising rights – it looks like our T-shirt and hat sales will be worth far more than anything we’re likely to make off our downloads, unless we go huge, which only happens with a tiny fraction of records.

She’s got a friend who’ll operate the merchandising company, dealing with shipping, inventories, profits and expenses, and the logistics of getting all our swag from city to city without it falling off the back of the truck. Terry’s done a joint venture for the first six months with her friend’s company, until our profits are high enough that we can hire our own full-time staff and reinvest our cash into product.

The idea that I’m an industry is slowly sinking in, and after rehearsal she breaks down the finances for me so I can grasp what’s at stake.

“Take a long-sleeved concert shirt. That’ll sell for around thirty bucks. It costs about nine to manufacture. But now you have to take it into inventory, which costs. Then you have to transport it from city to city. You have to pay people to sell it for you. Someone has to reconcile the inventory to the cash receipts. Someone else has to do your taxes and corporate filings. By the time you’re done, your shirt will cost you, say, fifteen bucks. So you just made fifteen, right?”

“That’s awesome. We sell a couple hundred shirts every concert…”

“Right, but you didn’t pay to have the shirts made, which is where my friend comes in. He fronts the money, has the staff to deal with the logistics, handles the cash and the filings. So your fifteen is in reality seven-fifty.”

“That’s still good. I mean, what, that would be a few thousand dollars a show, right?”

“Correct. Actually, that could be low. Might be more like five to ten if your fans are big on merchandise, which hopefully they are. There’ll be other costs, of course, but in the end, the merchandising will fund your tour. And if you go big, the money gets silly.” She mentions a six-figure number that has me do a double take.

I try to imagine the sums she’s throwing around, but I can’t. It’s all surreal. There’s no connection between that kind of money and my reality, which is my bedroom at Jeremy’s and my monthly expenses, which have yet to exceed a couple grand a month, including airline tickets.

We say goodbye when she drops me off at the apartment, and I head down the street to grab a bite before calling it a night. When I sit down to eat, I check my phone messages, and see that Derek’s texted me three times. I call him while I’m munching on an egg roll, and when he answers his voice sounds strangely distant.

“Whassup, rock star?” I say, mouth half full.

“Have you heard?”

I stop chewing. “No. What?”

“It’s Lisa. She was in an accident. Drunk. Wrecked her mom’s car and almost killed herself.”

“No…when did this happen?”

“I just know what I’ve seen on the web. One of the sites picked it up, and now it’s all over Twitter. Apparently she was at a party and was complaining that her life was over, that she didn’t know what she was going to do…they’re speculating it was a suicide attempt.”

“Oh, my God…”

No wonder Derek sounds tormented. My first thought is that he probably feels responsible for her actions, as illogical as that is. He didn’t do anything but uncover the truth.

But now a girl’s lying in the hospital, and the obvious reason is because she believed she was out of options.

“What about…Jason?”

“Lisa’s mother’s taking care of him. But they don’t know if Lisa’s going to make it. Apparently it was pretty bad, and she wasn’t wearing her seat belt.”

“That poor kid…”

“Yeah.”

There isn’t a lot to say. Both our mothers killed themselves with substances. Lisa plowing into a tree while drunk isn’t much different. In a world where so many with real problems are struggling to survive, why some opt to end it all seems not only tragic but unfair. We’ve both seen the fallout, and it’s never pretty.

“How are you doing?” I ask.

“I’m kind of shell-shocked. I mean, I thought the whole ordeal was over, you know? And now this.”

“Derek. Listen to me. It is over, for you. For us. You can’t be responsible for someone else’s actions, and none of this is your fault. You didn’t fly to New York and wave your kid in front of the cameras and falsely claim someone innocent was the father. You didn’t try to get money out of someone on false pretenses. And it’s not your fault if this girl’s unbalanced. It’s sad, and it sucks, but it’s not your doing.”

“I know you’re right, but it still feels like I’m somehow to blame.”

“Derek, don’t do this to yourself. People do shitty, stupid things all the time.” I swallow hard. “When we’re kids, we think we’re to blame when it’s our parents. But once we grow up we get that we didn’t cause the problem. As kids we assume we did, because we can’t imagine a world where we’re not the center. But we aren’t. My mom killed herself with booze, and it had zero to do with me. With whether I could have said or done something different, or how I behaved, or any of it.”

“Sage…”

“I have my mom’s diary. I’ve been reading it. All these years I’ve blamed myself for her self-destructing, and I was completely wrong. I thought if only I’d been different, she would have been, too. I felt like I caused her to be who she was, when I had it completely backwards – she caused me to be like I am. But I don’t have to stay this way. I don’t have to be a victim. I’m not. And neither are you.”

My intensity surprises me, and I realize that I’ve bottled this up, ever since reading my mom’s diary. I thought I was the cause of her misery, and I secretly blamed myself. But it was all wrong. Every bit of it.

I’m not going to allow Derek to saddle himself with Lisa’s bad luck and even worse decisions. He’s already got enough misplaced guilt over his mom’s drug problem. That probably makes him predisposed to feel responsible for Lisa’s substance abuse and accident, but it’s not going to happen while I have anything to say about it.

I take a breath and keep my voice even. “Derek, let’s talk about this. Why do you feel like you’re to blame?”

“Come on, Sage. You know why. If I’d maybe done something different…”

“What? You mean if you’d ruined your life living a lie so Lisa could take advantage of you, maybe she wouldn’t have crashed?”

“I could have handled it differently…”

“How, Derek?”

“I don’t know,” he admits.

“You have nothing to do with this. You helped her when she was on the streets. You shared some time with her. And then she went home while you went your way. The end. You even helped her out financially when it wasn’t technically your responsibility. The only reason you even know about any of this is because she tried to become part of your life – because you were successful and got a record deal. That’s it. She searched you out because she thought you would be a good meal ticket for her. I’m not trying to be harsh, but that’s what happened.” I’m building up a good head of steam, but I can’t help it. “And when she got caught in a lie – and don’t tell me she didn’t at least suspect that Jason wasn’t yours – she turned to alcohol. I’m sorry, Derek, but I have no sympathy for that. You’re the victim in this. And so’s Jason. But you’re not responsible – that’s completely backwards.”

I can practically hear the wheels turning in his head. There’s nothing he can say to counter my argument, which is why I went down that road. Left with too much time to think, he’ll convince himself he’s part of the problem.

When he speaks, he sounds sheepish. “You’re right. I mean, of course you are. I just wish…I wish it hadn’t turned out this way. It’s totally unfair to Jason.”

“It is, Derek. What my mom did to me was unfair. What yours did to you was, too. But you can’t stop people from doing bad things – you can only decide not to do them yourself. Lisa crossed a lot of lines you or I never would have. But that’s Lisa’s problem, not yours or mine. Don’t let her make it yours.”

The silence on the line is deafening.

“Has anyone told you you’re awesome today?” he asks quietly.

“The only one whose opinion matters is you.”

“I miss you, Sage. Especially now, with all this crap…”

“I know. Get on a plane and come out here. Find some excuse.”

“I’m trying, but they have me booked solid. I keep bugging my manager to free up some time, but with travel taking a day each way, we’re talking three or four days, and our first gigs are coming up soon, just like yours. There’s no way they’re going to let me bail now.”

“Did you ever think you’d kind of hate having a record deal?”

“I know. Way different problems than dodging the third rail, huh?”

“I guess our lives aren’t so terrible. If we were together right now, I’d say they were almost perfect,” I admit. But that doesn’t help much at the moment.

“Yeah. My manager said that this morning. He said once the album breaks, I’ve got it made. I’m young, decent-looking, and I can sing. It could be a lot worse.”

“Speaking of which, I finally saw the finished art this morning for my album. Did I tell you what they named it?”

“No. We were busy listening to me whine about how hard it is being me.”

“What your manager said reminded me. Because it’s true for both of us.” I pause. “They’re calling it
Best Of Everything
. What do you think?”

When he answers I can hear the smile in his voice. “I think that’s perfect. We’re really lucky, Sage. We really do have it made.”

I think about how long I lived as a loner, my time on the streets, and before that, the hell that was my existence with my mom and Ralph. I close my eyes, thinking about the misery that flows page after page in the diary, and how terrible life can be if something inside you breaks and you can’t fix it. I think about Lisa and Jason and a mother who’s got to be torn in two watching her child fight for her life after making yet another stupid mistake, and my throat tightens as I nod.

“I know, Derek. Believe me, I know.”

Chapter 17

Saul’s decided to invest in a second video to follow up the first, and I’m standing on the seashore with a blanket over my shoulders, watching the camera crew prepare for the first shot of the day. We’ve got a stretch of Laguna Beach to ourselves as the sun rises over the multimillion-dollar mansions that dot the surrounding hills. The director for this video is a woman named Joan who speaks with a thick Texas twang.

A golden retriever named Buddy is wagging his brush of a tail by my side while his trainer holds his leash. Buddy is my new best friend ever, and the first shot will be me throwing a tennis ball for him to chase in the mild surf. I’ve been petting him for the last twenty minutes, and Buddy wants to live with me now, in no small part because of the treats I’ve been feeding him.

Joan walks over and looks up at the brightening sky with a wary gaze. “You ready?” she asks, and I nod. An assistant removes the blanket and I take up my position by the surf line. I’m wearing bell-bottom hip-huggers that are a quilt of multicolor patches sewn together, with leather laces holding them closed through medieval-looking eyelets. My cutoff black T-shirt shows enough midriff to be flirty without revealing more than I’m comfortable with. My Janis lyric tattoo peeks out from one side when I raise my arms, which is kind of cool.

Portable speakers blare the opening notes of my song, Joan screams “action” through a megaphone, and then I’m running down the beach with Buddy by my side, carefree as a newborn. I stop and throw the ball into the air in a high arc and he goes berserk, leaping into the waves with pure joy on his furry face. I watch as he retrieves it and comes splashing back to me, and then Joan yells “Cut” and we get ready to do it all over again.

Buddy stands obediently as he gets toweled off by his trainer, and after five minutes of hurried blow-drying, he’s dry enough for another shoot. He’s got to wonder why these crazy humans are interrupting an awesome game of catch with unnecessary drying, but he’s good-natured about it, and after two more takes it’s a wrap.

We move to the second scene, where I’m kicking waves while skipping barefoot through the surf. By the time it’s completely light out, we’ve nailed two more scenes and are ahead of schedule.