Star Power (23 page)

coco

T
he artist formerly known as Coco Kingsley walked into the Java Joy coffee shop in North Hollywood, flanked by Mac and Erin. She scanned the crowd and saw lots of colorful sunglasses, knit caps, and vests, and she knew she had dressed just right. She'd worn big red plastic sunglasses, a tan leather vest with fringe, and the skinniest purple jeans she could fit into. Her dark hair was pulled back with feathery barrettes. (She still couldn't bring herself to cut it into a fauxhawk, as Erin had advised.) No one would know she was Cardammon's daughter here.

Despite her serene smile, Coco's heart was beating like she'd had a quadruple shot of espresso. After the disaster at the Star Power party last night, today felt more important than ever. Mac was a mess over the Emily situation, and Becks wasn't returning her calls either. Coco knew Mac could be difficult, but she also knew there must be more to the story. It felt like the I.C. was disintegrating, and there was nothing she could do about it. If tonight didn't go well, Coco had decided to call it quits on the whole indie songstress thing forever. Because if she tanked tonight, she couldn't blame it on her mother's fame. She could only blame it on her lack of talent.

Cordelia Rose was the third name called. Taking a deep breath, Coco walked to the tiny wooden stage in the middle of the shop and sat on a wooden stool under the warm lights. She balanced her guitar on her right knee and adjusted the microphone so it was about three inches from her face. She closed her eyes and felt the stillness of the crowd. Coco had grown to love that moment before a performance, when the audience was wondering if they would like the next act. She paused, waiting for someone to scream that she was Coco Kingsley, but there was only the hum of electricity.

And then, when she strummed her guitar, it was like she had entered a trance. Coco forgot about the crowds, and the do-or-die pressure, and what this meant for her career, and what the audience might think of her. She just focused on strumming her guitar. A simple, A-minor chord.

She sang three songs that night: first “Stay Away from My Latte,” and then “Only I Can Knock My Fam,” which were inspired by feeling so sad about Finn's diss. She finished with a cover of a Joni Mitchell song, and she stayed calm and soft without losing intensity. It was all over way too fast.

When she finished, there was a hush over the crowd. For three long seconds, she felt that stillness return, like they were at a surprise party and someone was about to yell. In the silence, Coco's mind had no focus and her worries returned full force. Were her songs too mainstream? Too intense? Coco gripped her guitar, bracing herself for the inevitable jeers.

Instead came applause.

It was slow at first, like a small trickle of water. Then, like a rainstorm, it grew to a crescendo, and Coco knew: She was a hit. She leaned into the microphone and whispered. “Thank you so much—I'm Cordelia Rose.”

Smiling brightly, Coco looked out at the audience to get a better view of her new fans, who were
still
clapping. After all, these were the people she had to please. She had no idea how a hipster would bow, so she curtsied daintily. She spotted guys in skinny jeans and vests and plastic sunglasses nodding approvingly. As she stood up to get off the stage, she remembered her mother's advice about performing: “Always play to the back row.” Coco looked to the far wall and waved to the row of hipsters sitting on the dilapidated yellow velvet couch.

And then she gasped.

Sitting there, in a body-hugging Hervé Léger dress, her face wrapped in a silk Hermès scarf, was Cardammon. Coco and her mother locked eyes for a millisecond, until Cardammon tilted her Gucci fedora over her face like a shield from the crowd. It was too late: She had already seen the devastated look on her mother 's face.

The lie she'd told her mother about not wanting to perform washed over her like a shame-wave and Coco instantly regretted everything: standing there in public, using a fake name, and most of all, being caught by her mother in a lie. She felt like a fraud in her bohemian getup. Of course her mother was devastated: After all, Coco had lied to her, and then lied
about
her, pretending not to be her daughter.

She wanted to run to her mother and explain herself, but then she realized that the crowd was shouting for her.

“
Encore!
” a man yelled.

Soon the entire coffee house was chanting “Encore!” and Coco remembered she was still standing on a stage, in front of a full house of new fans. She imagined them throwing plastic sunglasses at her if she didn't perform another song.

The show must go on,
Coco reminded herself. Heaving a shameful sigh, she sang a ballad she had written during one of her recent bouts of insomnia, “Don't Call Me Princess.” It seemed ironically apt.

The crowd loved it from the first note—they cheered and held their cell phones high in the air, casting a blue glow across the room. As Coco strummed her guitar, she tried to let the music take over her mind, and to just focus on the lines:

Coco tried, but she just couldn't get into her song. Even though the audience listened quietly, she knew that her second set didn't have that magical stillness of her first. She couldn't wait to get off the stage and explain everything to her mom.

But when Coco finished and ran outside, she spotted her mother scurrying into her baby blue Bentley while her Brazilian, Swiss-trained butler held open the door.

Coco yelled to get his attention. “Pablo!”

He looked at Coco sadly as he closed the door. The car zoomed off.

Coco stood in the middle of the parking lot, the cold night air giving her goose bumps. Shivering, she ran back into the coffee shop bathroom, to warm up and hide. She was so distressed thinking about her mother that she didn't even notice that the audience was still cheering loudly for her, or that a man in a charcoal suit had shoved a business card into her hand, or that Mac had followed her into the bathroom.

“Congratulations, rock star!” Mac exclaimed proudly. She removed the business card from Coco's hand and Mac read it. “Apparently Adriano Lesher from Moon-shine Records on Sunset Boulevard wants you to call him.” Mac paused to study Coco. “You know that's, like, huge, don't you, Cordelia Rose?”

Coco stopped splashing water on her face and looked at Mac. “My mom was here tonight.”

“Oh . . .” Mac said. She didn't say anything for so long that Coco knew it was bad.

“I'll bet she was proud,” Mac offered finally. “You nailed it.”

“You should have seen the look on her face.” Coco gripped the faucet to steady herself
.
She wished she'd never said anything to Ruby Goldman at Mac's party. Ruby had clearly set this up—there was no other way Cardammon could have found out about her gig, since she had used an alias. But more than anger at Ruby, she just felt disappointment in herself. Ruby hadn't made her use a fake name or lie to her mother. “Mum thinks I'm ashamed of her.”

“But babe, you
were
,” Mac said matter-of-factly. “You didn't want anything to do with her. I hate to say I told you so, but. . . .”

Coco's throat tightened. The last thing she wanted to hear was another reason why she was a bad daughter. “I thought this would make me happy,” Coco said glumly.

“Music does make you happy,” Mac said knowingly. “But it's hard to hide who you are in music. And part of who you are is the fact that you have a world-famous mother. So somehow, you're going to have to accept this.”

Mac was right, but that didn't change what had just happened. As Coco tore the business card up and threw it away, her mind replayed the look on Cardammon's face again. And again. She just wished she could take it all back. It was going to take a miracle to prove to her mother how truly sorry she—
Coco Kingsley
—really was.

emily

Emily lay on her back on the white carpet, alone in the Gift Closet, watching the ceiling fan spin. She hadn't left the room since the party and she'd been subsisting on stale Chex Mix from her secret stash.

Earlier that day, Mac had knocked on the door and offered to take her to see Coco's gig at some coffee house, but Emily had pretended to be asleep. She was depressed, and homesick, and not ready to face Mac. It was easier to just watch the fan spin. In fact, Emily was
still
watching the fan spin when her phone buzzed. With great effort, Emily rolled onto her side and peered at the screen. It was an e-mail from Giselle, Shane's assistant. Emily hoped he hadn't decided, in their three-day break from shooting, to fire her. But if he had, then at least she could avoid D.F.W.