Pop Princess

  I heard Tig mutter, “Yowza!”

  Kayla dropped her supportive clutch on my hand.

  There was a lot of applause after the video ended, and Will Nieves rushed over and grabbed me in a hug. If only I could have taken my miserable-at-Devonport-High self and transported her to this moment, wrapped in the arms of WILL NIEVES! So what about the big-time video debut. WILL NIEVES!

  Interestingly, none of the record company people came over to congratulate me after the video. They all rushed over to Tig like it was him who had performed the song. The execs proclaimed: “Best Female Video of the Year nomination for sure!” “The camera loves that face!” “Top Ten radio single—it’s bank!”

  The one person I thought would be at my side congratulating me, Kayla, bolted to the other end of the room and into deep huddle with Jules and Karl, all of them with cell phones at their ears. She waved and smiled at me from across the room when a photographer stood in front of her, but as soon as the flash died I could swear she was glaring at me like I had done something wrong. Then again, from weeks of living at her house, I understood that Kayla ran hot and cold toward a person. Minute to minute, she either loved or hated you, and in order to survive in her orbit, you had to learn to accept that behavior and not question it. If Lucky, my real sister, had been with me during this scene, she would have stood by my side, proud and clenching my hand.

  Will said, “We’re hitting the clubs tonight for sure!”

  Like a good pop princess, I was about to say, “I can’t! Aside from the underage-minor factor, I have to get to bed for an early call tomorrow morning,” and I was glad Tig was standing nearby so he would hear that my work ethic was intact and I had no intention of having a night out partying. But before I could answer, Tig came over and said to Will, “Montana will be at Steam tonight, right?” Will nodded. Tig handed him a promotional copy of “Bubble Gum Pop” and said, “If you think you can get Montana to give this a spin tonight, I think Wonder’s got herself a night on the town.”

  Yowza indeed! I asked Tig, “Did hell freeze over?” He tucked his arm into mine and maneuvered me into a corner while Will worked his cell phone. Then Tig said, “Just be yourself with Montana, okay? Don’t go all Kayla with him.”

  I wanted to know who or what a “Montana” was, but Tig was called away by some record company execs. Will came back over and said, “Let’s go, star! I worked it all out with Kayla’s assistant. We’ll all meet up at Steam later this evening. Jules took care of getting us on the list.”

  “What list?”

  “The VIP list!”

  Twenty-eight

  Here’s what The List really meant—you drop the right name at the door, and you’re wearing the right outfit and you’re sufficiently skinny and cute and famous, it doesn’t matter if you’re not of legal age—not even of legal smoking age. Welcome. Need ID? Uh, no. Your famous face—or in my case, Will’s—gained you immediate access. There were easily a hundred people waiting outside the club, being kept at bay by the bouncers, but The List meant Will and I could whisk past the barricaded lines of wanna-be clubgoers, stomp right into that club, and be ushered upstairs to a private floor where the beautiful people congregated.

  I’m not kidding about beautiful people. I never saw so many butt-dipping designer jeans and metallic gold halter tops, so much mascara, so many five-foot-ten blond Amazon girlies with fake boobs in my life! (Okay, I don’t think I ever saw any before in real life.) I was glad I had changed out of the cute tea rose frock, but I was still strictly casual, wearing a short black skirt and basic black tee that was as eye-catching an outfit as your grandma’s muumuu. Holding on to Will’s hand as I trailed him toward Kayla’s table, I was immediately intimidated by all the model and actress types cooing into the ears of mogul guys in expensive suits. Again I thought of Lucky, thought of how a good night for her was curling up with a good book or sitting on her bed with a guitar and a notepad, writing songs; Kayla’s world was totally not Lucky’s scene, and when you threw Trina into their mixture, I couldn’t imagine they ever would have made it through a year of being a girl group before splintering off, their friendships ruined.

  The VIP lounge was actually a balcony that ran the square length of the dance floor, with sheer pearl gauze curtains falling from the ceiling to keep the regular folks downstairs from getting a good glimpse of the people upstairs. I’d caught enough Miami Vice reruns on TV with Mom to recognize that it was cocaine—and not sugar—on the first table we passed, lined up between two bottles of Cristal. I’m looking around thinking, Does Tig know about this scene? Thinking, If Mom checked this place out right now—techno dance music blaring, smoke rising, drugs and booze flowing freely, dancers bumping and grinding but serious—my ass would so be back at Devonport High in like a millisecond.

  In the crush of people we might have had a hard time finding Kayla but for Karl, watching over every person, drink, and fleck of dust in Kayla’s aura, his towering presence immediately letting us know where to find her. I thought it was interesting that when Liam was around, Karl was almost genial and fatherly, keeping Kayla and Liam from bickering, laughing at their antics together, but with Liam out of the picture, he was all business. I never heard him comment on Kayla’s clubbing antics, her drinking, her moods—like he didn’t care at all about her personally, just about her safety. I said, “Hi Karl!” but his hard face didn’t even crack a smile, he just stepped aside to let us past to Kayla’s table.

  Kayla’s power button was activated to full ON. She had on the designer jeans and the halter top, the designer mule sandals, her makeup so pretty and her complexion so flawless that she practically glowed. She was sitting on Jules’s lap, a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other, in conversation with none other than Dean Macaroni—er, Marconi—the ex-B-Kid who thought he was the next Robert De Niro, with Freddy Porter and some bleached blonde making up the rest of the group. I thought it was funny to look at the assemblage of youth entertainment power players gathered. Kayla, Freddy, and Dean looked so fancy and important behind the velvet rope, yet in my mind, I could still see them all as freckle-faced, buck-toothed B-Kidz preteens. Kayla slurred her words a little, gesturing toward me with the cigarette hand: “There she is, Dean! Lucky’s li’l sis, my li’l protégée, the new darling of Pop Life Records. Bitch!” She stood up, laughed, kissed my cheek.

  Dean was brown hair/blue eyes Joe Schmoe good-looking, but in an interesting, dorky kind of way, the kind of way that made you just want to swoon at the sight of him and have no idea why. I could see the cut of his pecs under a brown shirt that revealed his every muscle; the guy was just unbelievably hot, it’s true. Out of respect to Lucky, who never liked Dean, I had to suppress sighing from the sheer nearness to his gorgeousness. Freddy stood up to greet me, but Dean remained in his seat, saying, “Oh God, not another pop princess? Don’t tell me—you dropped out of high school, and the record company has sent you here tonight to whore for a mention in tomorrow morning’s gossip columns.”

  That was the moment I officially retired my pop princess-in-training doormat routine. I went, “Well, nice catching up with you too, Dean! Pretentious asshole!” And I just walked off.

  Damn, rude much, Dean? As I stomped off I wondered why I tolerated that kind of ribbing from Liam—made out with him for it—but from Dean Macaroni, I was compelled to walk off. Just because he was a capital-A Actor now, he had to judge me before even bothering to get to know me? What was I doing in this stupid place anyway?

  By the way: Huffing away is somewhat difficult when you’re totally out of your element, stranded in a too-hot nightclub, you don’t smoke, don’t plan to drink, don’t plan on hooking up with any of the lecherous playas hanging around the VIP lounge, don’t know exactly where you’re stomping off to. . . .

  I wound up hunched in a corner where a deejay booth was setup, standing there like, Oh, now what I am supposed to do? Good move, Wonder, going off to sulk when you have nowhere to go. I felt sure there was a giant banner
hanging over me with an arrow pointing down at my head and big letters advertising “DORK.”

  But the music playing was good—the techno-blah had been switched to some ABBA disco meets Brit-pop sound that was fun and definitely had the crowd working on both levels of the dance floor. My Doc Martens boots—I’d never gotten the memo that this club was strictly Sex and the City fashionista shoes—were ready to jam to this music. The short guy grooving inside the deejay booth, who looked to be a mixture of Asian and Hispanic, wearing headphones over his bandanna-covered copper-dyed hair, was reading a comic book placed on the console as he spinned the tunes.

  He saw me in the corner and said, “Don’t you know this area is off-limits?”

  I said, “Is it okay if I kinda don’t care?”

  He laughed, then yelled at me over the music, “You’re brave. Don’t you know that this deejay booth is a sanctuary? I play at this club only because everyone here knows not to talk to me.”

  I said, “Kayla’s over there. I bet you would want her to talk to you!”

  Kayla was slugging back her drink, laughing, now on Dean Marconi’s lap. Deejay guy said, “Kayla! That pathetic excuse for a singer? Her constant presence in this club is one of the reasons I almost didn’t take this gig”

  I said, “You must be pretty important if you can pick and choose your gigs like that, demand that no one talk to you while you’re spinning and reading. . . . Is that manga? My little brother is really into Japanese anime, and that Hong Kong stuff too, but he’ll kick your ass if you even look at his books, much less touch them.”

  Deejay guy said, “You’re cute. Guileless.”

  “Thanks!” Note to self: Look up “guileless.”

  I didn’t realize I had been dancing to the beat, when suddenly he said, “Are you a dancer? You move like one.”

  He already had a self-proclaimed hatred of Kayla. I figured it better not to speak up about my career, but Will Nieves took care of that anyway. He found me and said, “You just dissed Dean Marconi! I don’t believe you!”

  Deejay guy beamed at me. “I like this kid,” he said to Will. Must have been Tig’s lucky night, because Will said, “Montana, this is the girl I was telling you about last week, the one whose video I’m in. Her manager asked if you’d give the single a listen, see what you can do with it.” Deejay guy was giving Will the I-hate-myself-for-finding-you-so-hot look. Deejay guy was crushing on my fave soap star.

  I said, “So you’re the Montana that Tig was talking about. Why does Tig care if you have the CD?”

  Here’s why. Turned out Montana (he had the thickest New York accent ever but spent a summer on a cattle ranch in the West, hence his deejay name) was not only the hottest deejay in NYC, and London and Ibiza (Ibiza? Ib-whata?), but he also produced on the side—he could take a basic pop track and turn it into a dance cult classic. He wasn’t in the game to be rich or famous, however—Montana only worked with artists he liked personally, and apparently there weren’t many of them. Tig’s radar, the same radar that let Tig in on Pop Life Records’ dumping pregnant Amanda Lindstrom from the label and finding the company desperately in need of a new pop princess to anoint, must have reported back Montana’s crush on Will. Tig’s okaying an all-access pass to Steam for this underage girl’s night out with the hot soap star was no coinky-dink.

  Montana had a portable Discman lying on the table. He threw the CD in and gave it a short listen on his headphones. “Not bad,” he said. “Good voice, fun. The arrangement sucks, though. Shall we test drive this single, cute girl named”—Montana glanced at the CD package—“Wonder! Love it!”

  He took the CD from the Discman and put it into the machine at the deejay booth. As the song that had been playing ended, I heard the opening chords of “Bubble Gum Pop” burst through the club. Wow! My song! My voice! Chew it, blow it, lick it, pop pop pop. The crowd on the dance floor kept moving, but to the beat of the last song, as if to say, What is this? And new song it was indeed, as scratches, rhythms, and I don’t know what else came from Montana’s booth, turning this simple cute song into a kick-ass dance remix that soon had the crowd pulsing.

  Kayla came up from behind me, pulled me onto the dance floor. “C’mon, it’s your song! I can’t believe what Montana did to it!” I hesitated for almost a second. Which Kayla personality was inviting me onto the dance floor—the one who considered me her li’l protégé, or the one who had dropped her supportive clench of my hand the minute the record company execs had pronounced my debut video a success?

  But this was my moment too. I wanted to revel, whether Kayla was being nice or mean. I made my way to the middle of the dance floor, where I began a shameless grind with Will and Kayla; no Cosmos necessary for this junior pop princess tonight. Dean and Jules joined us—this song was happening. Dean gave me the pelvic grind dance from behind and whispered in my ear, “You sound good, Little Miss All Grown Up. Look damn fine too! Forgive me?” Kayla was on my other side, showing off the dance moves that had made her famous around the world. She was grinding so hard at my side it was almost like she wanted to push me off the dance floor. I swayed into Will, who danced a simple but smooth step, arms in the air, hips rocking to the beat. I could have danced with him all night. Jules and Kayla were dancing so provocatively together I think they could have turned all the gay men in the room straight and all the straight girls into lesbians. The club was jumping on both levels—my song was seriously working this crowd!

  I thought about how Tig had masterminded this moment, how, from the vocal coaches and stylists to the song selection and video debut, he had been planning a series of plateaus to launch my career, not to mention his all-knowing radar that zeroed in on choice opportunities. As I danced, pressed inside a Dean Marconi/Will Nieves sandwich that made me what any girl with a pulse would have considered about the luckiest wench on the planet (if she didn’t know I was secretly wishing it was Liam here dancing with me instead), I wondered, Where can I go from here?

  The song ended; the crowd cheered. Montana pointed at me. He mouthed at me the words: “A hit.”

  Twenty-nine

  Less than a year ago I was scrubbing down floors and toilets at the end of each shift at the Dairy Queen. Now, Cinderella was in full pop princess glory, in front of a television camera with microphone in hand, standing before the gigantic top-floor windows of a loft television studio in Tribeca to introduce “Bubble Gum Pop,” her first single, which would be officially released on Tuesday. The full album, to be called Girl Wonder, would follow a few weeks later. In the distance outside the windows were views of the Hudson River and midtown Manhattan, but the closer view outside featured a giant billboard on top of a nearby building advertising a new line of sneakers targeted at teen girls—an ad featuring yours truly, bent over, her butt high (and airbrushed way thinner) and her grin wide as she laced up the shoes, with two guys smirking happily at the rear view.

  Earlier in the dressing room, J, the radio/TV host whom I had met at Kayla’s party for me, had come in to say hi. “You seem nervous,” he said. Nervous about what? That I was about to be interviewed in front of a live studio audience of kids my own age, for a television program that was broadcast across the globe for millions to see? Me, nervous? Nah.

  Kayla, sitting next to me having her makeup touched up, said, “This girl’s a pro; she’ll be fine.” She patted my arm, which felt almost like a slap. She was still mad about a blind item that had recently appeared in the gossip column of her favorite tabloid newspaper: WHICH underage prospective pop star upstaged her superstar mentor at an exclusive over-21 club hangout recently as she table-danced with not one but two of the hot young male stars who had been invited to keep company with the queen singer, but who instead spent their dance floor time fawning over the new princess? Tig said Kayla was even more mad that Montana had agreed to produce an official remix of “Bubble Gum Pop.” Kayla had been trying for almost a year to get Montana to work on one of her tracks.

  The show was J-Pop, a live musi
c video show broadcast every Saturday morning to the viewing demographic that had just graduated from Saturday morning cartoons but still needed a weekend morning TV baby-sitter to go along with their Cap’n Crunch. “This is it,” Tig said to me.

  “That’s right,” Kayla added. “This is the last appearance I’m making for you. I gotta be in Cali tomorrow to shoot a video, and we still have to hire more dancers and do tech for the tour. Wonder, you’re on your own after this.”

  My nerves caught up with me in the form of my bladder; I always have to pee when I’m anxious. I excused myself from the dressing room, where Kayla, Tig, Jules, Karl, J, and an assortment of stylists and producers were hanging out preshow. Bathrooms—whether they were in Tig’s offices, at Kayla’s brownstone, the record company, or the recording studio—had become my haven, the one place I could be alone. As I was washing my hands I looked out the windows of the bathroom and saw the billboard advertisement featuring my picture. I stood up on the sink to climb into the window perch, where I nestled my body, legs against the wall, in a V shape to look out the window. J-Pop was set to go live in a matter of minutes. Tig’s words echoed in my mind: This is it. No turning back now. I stared at the billboard advertisement, thinking it funny how the image looked in comparison to my strange lifestyle: I was splayed across a billboard representing the All-American Girl, pretty but not beautiful, innocent yet sexy, your basic cute and fresh girl at the mall. Yet how many All-American Girls graduate from high school outcast-slash-dropout to pop princess wanna-be, sixteen years old yet essentially living on her own, parentless—and crashing in the spare room of a pop diva’s brownstone?