“Go Science Project with the science project!” I said, impressed.
I was about to launch into a sincere attempt to apologize for my aforementioned friendship lapses when I heard Katie’s voice approaching us from inside the house. “Oh, Science Project, there’s another girl on the phone for you.” She came through the door that led from their kitchen into the garage, and let out a squeal when she saw me. “WONDER!” She jumped up and down, then grabbed me in a hug. Then she turned to Henry and handed him the phone. “Don’t hog the phone all day, again!”
Henry took the phone, said all sweet, “Oh hi, Andrea,” in a voice that I feel sure was intended for me to notice, then he walked inside the house.
Katie said, “I have my Teen Girl issue with you on it upstairs! Will you sign it for me? And, like, tell me all about Kayla and FREDDY PORTER and Dean Marconi!” I almost envied her standing there, wearing cutoff denim shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops, her hair in a scrunchie, looking like a happy, relaxed person. Some irony, I thought—Wonder Blake who once dreamed of escape from Devonport now had a mild case of envy going on for Katie’s Devonport life of weekends and summer vacations with no responsibilities. She probably spent all day in her room, on the phone with her cheerleader friends, watching TV, or Katie’s favorite activity, blogging on her Internet diary. Katie didn’t have to worry about being bloated before a performance, or about showing up late at a meet-and-greet because the driver was stuck in traffic; Katie would never receive follow-up e-mails from Kayla after those experiences with Web links that contained mean reviews or nasty remarks about the new pop princess, Wonder Blake, who apparently was both a pudge and a diva. Stupid Internet—many curses on whoever had to go and invent that thing.
I lied to Katie and said, “I have a conference call with my manager and the record company in a few minutes. I really gotta get back home.” Fielding questions about Kayla, Freddy, and Dean was about the last way I wanted to spend my day off—especially with the new Mister Popularity, formerly known as Science Project, fielding phone calls from brazen little chiquitas—even though in fact I had nothing better to do while I was stranded in Devonport.
So I signed Katie’s magazine, went home, and went to sleep. Devonport lacked anything to stay awake for anyway.
Very late that night, I sat in my bed staring at the dark sea, in major angst mode because Liam still hadn’t called. Yesterday, he had been inside my body, and today, he couldn’t even bother to call to say, Hey, your technique could use some improvement, but not bad for a first time out or whatever. With headphones around my ears, I was listening to that Paul Weller guy again, and replaying the scene in the VW bus with Liam over and over, when I noticed some flailing arms from the corner of my eye, outside the side window. I rolled onto my side, and there was Opera Man in the window across the way, wearing a cape over his chest, but with chunky biceps emerging from underneath the cape as his arms flailed about. Opera Man was performing the dance routine from the “Bubble Gum Pop” video.
I smiled. Maybe some people in Devonport weren’t entirely a lost cause.
Thirty-eight
Philadelphia was the third city on our tour, and the City of Brotherly Love had a special treat for me in addition to my first (unbelievably yummy; who cared about Kayla’s reprimand) Philly cheesesteak. I’d thought no city could offer a better welcome than Boston, where we’d opened the tour to an arena audience that went crazy for its hometown girls. But Philly had a huge video screen that played a surprise announcement taped that morning at the J-Pop television studio. Sounding like the Wizard of Oz, J helped close out my opening set by announcing to the arena audience of ten thousand people that “Bubble Gum Pop” would be the number one song on his Sunday morning, nationally syndicated radio countdown.
The crowd roared its approval as Kayla appeared onstage, unannounced and before her show, a microphone in hand. “Give it up for Wonder Blake, Philly!” she cheered. “Congrats,” she said into my ear as she hugged me and flashbulbs went off like a light show. With an acoustic guitar player sitting on a stool set up next to us, Kayla sang one of her first hit songs, “Best Friend,” directly at me. I added in harmony on the chorus, just because the moment was so sweet and why not? Kayla nodded at me, her way of saying it was okay to muscle in on her song.
Later, after the intermission, I stood on the stage sidelines watching Kayla perform her regular show, with a full live band, three backup singers, and ten backup dancers. She was truthfully a better studio singer than a live one, though her voice was always pitch-perfect, but to watch how she could match her dance moves to her song and connect to an audience was to watch a true pro at the top of her game. Technically, my voice was stronger than hers, and Tig said my phrasing and timbre were better, but she had an energy and pure love of performing I could never match. When it came to putting together the whole package—dancing, singing, and working the crowd—well, magic is a quality either ya got or ya don’t, and Kayla had it in spades.
But sometimes watching Kayla could be a little intimidating, too, even for a newly crowned number one pop princess. I left the stage area and headed over to where craft services was set up for the road crew. The door to Kayla’s dressing room was partially open as I passed by, and Jules’s voice called to me from inside. “Wonder, c’mon in! Congrats on the number one! You must be stoked.”
I stepped inside the dressing room, where Jules was sitting on a leather couch. I wondered if the road crew gossip was true, that Jules had slept with not one but two of the members of Freddy Porter’s early boy band on her climb up the celebrity assistant food chain. Jules was hunched over the glass table at her knees, her long blond hair obscuring her face. “Thanks—” I started to say when she interrupted me with, “Ticket sales are sorta soft. Hopefully the newspapers all got pix with you, Kayla, and J on the video screen for tomorrow’s papers to jump-start ticket sales a little, right?” Right, sure, thanks for deflating my number one song happy bubble, Jules.
Jules sat up, licking the rolling paper on the fat joint she’d been assembling on the table. Remembering Kayla’s freak-out the night of my party at Kayla’s brownstone when someone was smoking weed, I said, “Um, Jules, I don’t think Kayla would approve. Her first set is going to be over in two songs. Maybe you oughta put that away.”
“Yeah right, Shirley Temple, and monkeys are flyin’ outta my ass,” Jules said. “There’s no off-duty NYPD cop to show off for here tonight. And doesn’t the boss lady deserve a mellow-out treat, especially on the night that her protégé has knocked her off the charts? Right?”
How does someone respond to that? I couldn’t! I just shook my head and walked out. I thought, Three cities down, seventeen to go.
Thirty-nine
Karl laid, his last card onto the table, an eight of spades.
“Who wins again?” he smirked. “I believe . . . Karl does.”
“Hey Karl,” I said. “It’s just Crazy Eights. Don’t get too hyped on yourself. I recall a poker game yesterday afternoon in Minneapolis during Kayla’s sound check that set you back, no? Remember Seattle and Portland, too?” Karl’s eyes were dancing at me under those bushy eyebrows. I lifted my arm in the air and played with the five-dollar charm bracelet on my wrist. “Yeah, that’s right, Wonder Blake won those games, and if you don’t stop gloating, this poor bus driver who has driven us all night from Minneapolis to Chicago might have to stop the bus and kick you off. We’ve got three cities to go till we wrap up back in Boston, Karl, and I saw a nice locket to match this bracelet at that Wal-Mart opening last week. Watch the ’tude.” Chalk up my tirade to lack of sleep mixed with two straight cans of Starbucks double espresso drinks from the refrigerator on the bus.
Karl chuckled. “Someone needs to downgrade to decaf.”
Out the tour bus window, I could see the skyline of Chicago emerging. Karl and some of the road crew guys had promised to take me to a Cubs game—more fun for Wonder. But I was distracted from the view of the Windy City by the radio so
ng blasting from the overhead speakers built into the tour bus. “Bubble Gum Pop” had slipped to number nine from last week’s number five from the previous four straight weeks at number one, which could only mean one thing. . . .
Kayla slammed open the door from her private bedroom at the back of the bus. Her cell phone was in her hand, a mouthpiece attached to her ear, her PJs all rumpled, her hair wild and her eyes demonic. “Could you turn the radio down already?” She stepped back inside her room. Jules was on the chair next to the bed, also in PJs, a PlayStation console on her lap. Kayla slammed the door shut.
When was Kayla happy? When she was shut in her private bedroom in the back of the tour bus with Jules or one of her dancers, playing on her PlayStation and letting herself believe they weren’t just letting her win. When was Kayla not happy? When through her bedroom door she could hear “Bubble Gum Pop” from the speakers in the front of the bus, particularly on Top 40 countdown Sundays when it turned out “Bubble Gum Pop” was number one. Again.
An appearance on J-Pop, constant radio play, and my much-publicized date with Freddy Porter had been enough to get “Bubble Gum Pop” into the Top 20. What had brought the song to number one—and kept it there—was a dance remix by deejay Montana that was a piece of genius, a completely remastered song that took my vocals and laid them over a dance beat that was old school funk turned into techno hip-hop. The new beat overwhelmed the fact that the song relied heavily on a catchy chorus and had minimal—and silly—lyrics. “Bubble Gum Pop” was just that fun song you can’t stop singing along with and love grooving to in the clubs or on the beach or in the shower, but its summer dominance at number one was wholly the result of the musical strokes of Montana. I was just the cute girl on the record cover, the babe dancing with His Most Formidable Babeness, Will Nieves, in a new remix-version video hastily shot during an all-night filming session at a warehouse converted into a rave scene after a show in Atlanta.
But summer was officially over. We were at the tail end of September, the tail end of the tour, which meant that while “Bubble Gum Pop” was losing its chart dominance, perhaps Kayla’s cross-country commentary to me as the song climbed the charts would disappear with it. Miami: “Wonder, could you drag that note out any longer? Who do you think you are, Celine Dion?” Dallas: “Excuse me, Wonder, I loved your supersincere speech to Tig about how you weren’t going to diet anymore just because the record company said so, but that jumpsuit is way tight on you. Maybe next time pass on the Popeyes run with the stage crew?” Denver: “Oh my God, Wonder, did you know some horndog put up a Web site totally devoted to pictures of your boobs? It’s called ‘Bubble Gum Trollop.’ ”
If Kayla thought her comments could make me drop out of the tour like my opening-act predecessors had, she was mistaken. Nasty as she could be, Kayla was a very small fraction of the tour time; half the time she didn’t even travel on the bus, but opted for private limo rides. She usually only took the bus when we had to travel all night between cities and she wanted to sleep in her tour bus bed. I actually liked when Kayla traveled on the bus, because that meant I could hang out and play cards with Karl.
I barely checked in with my own family; the tour crew felt more like family now. Traveling on tour was like an extended nationwide road trip, with TVs and music blaring and first-class hotels, as if I had won the deluxe camper in the Showcase Showdown on The Price Is Right, and set off for adventure with an all-access backstage pass. My list of adventures included: riding an alligator swamp boat in Key West, Florida; laissez les bon temps rouler in N’Awlins; singing the national anthem at a Texas rodeo show; hiking in the Rockies, personally escorted by a babe of a Park Ranger; helicoptering over the Grand Canyon; sneaking over to Tijuana with some of the road crew for after-hours partying following a San Diego show; and enjoying primo Cali beach time—roller-coaster rides in Santa Monica and sunbathing in Santa Barbara—with dancers from Kayla’s crew. I’d had to buy another suitcase just to accommodate all the plush white robes I lifted from every posh hotel room in every city.
I no longer minded the hectic pace of the pop princess lifestyle: traveling, rehearsing, grooming, performing, appearing. This was the life, sorta, that Wonder Blake had dreamed of back when she was working the Dairy Queen counter, and she rather enjoyed it.
My time on tour was booked solid. Not like I was gonna go all Little Miss Goody-Goody, but I did take Charles up on his challenge to do charitable work, and made sure that Tig scheduled free appearances by me at the local Boys & Girls Clubs in whatever city we toured; sometimes I even managed to snare Kayla for appearances, when I could guilt-trip her out of bed—and get to her before Jules could nix any request. Then there were the daily local radio station interviews to promote my album, Girl Wonder, followed by sessions recording promo spots for the radio stations. Hi, this is Wonder Blake, and you’re listening to . . . I also had regular mall appearances where I would perform “Bubble Gum Pop” and sign autographs at a local record store. Still, I always managed to sneak in sightseeing time. Who knew when I would get to experience the world like this again?
Even opening up for the Kayla monster was enjoyable. I only performed twenty minutes’ worth of songs, always ending with a “Bubble Gum Pop” finale, but it was my important job during that short period to rev up the crowd, to ignore the fact that people were just streaming into their seats, overloaded with popcorn and soft drinks, and viewed me as a performer to tolerate until the real deal, Kayla, came on. Winning over the crowd was my nightly challenge, and I was up for it. “What’s up, HOUSTON?” Insert name of city and local fave deejay, mention the town’s favorite dive diner where you ate breakfast, then sing sing sing. A formula, but it worked. Performance anxiety was not a problem, especially not when I looked out into the sea of faces and reminded myself, Screw this up and you have nowhere else to go. I never experienced that moment of looking out into a crowd of ten thousand-something people and panicking. I psyched myself into thinking of the crowds as one big blob of light, and once I was able to do that, I could burst into performance. By the time the light dissolved, I was halfway through the song and the kids were dancing and screaming in their seats. I remembered what Charles had said about the true loss—Lucky not getting to live out her life—and I vowed to relish the privilege of the experience for both of us. After a fourth city called me back for encores, Kayla cut my performance time to fifteen minutes, saying I needed to save my voice for all the daytime appearances I was required to do (she was too big a star for those appearances; her days were her own, and she usually spent them sleeping or on her cell phone with Dean Marconi). Kayla was not able to convince the stage manager that “Bubble Gum Pop” was the song that should be eliminated from my act.
The Windy City approached as Karl stood up to turn the radio speaker volume down and “Bubble Gum Pop” faded into a soft whisper. Then he returned to his seat opposite me. Sometimes sitting opposite Karl while we played cards was like being in a stare showdown, and not because we were each trying to gauge the other’s poker face. Karl had a way of looking at my eyes, then glancing at the green flannel shirt that I constantly wore because the bus was always freezing (yeah, that’s why; the smell of Liam on the shirt, even after it had been washed, had nothing to do with it), and I had a habit of hugging myself to keep warm, looking at Karl’s eyes and wondering: How much do you know?
Karl’s cell phone rang, and I knew Liam was on the line because Karl said, “What’s up, Punk?” From overhearing plenty of their phone conversations while pretending to doze against the bus window but really doing surveillance on Liam’s life, I knew that Karl always called him “Punk.” But Karl’s “Punk” grunt to his son went down with great affection, like, “Hey Punk, Mom said you made dean’s list. What’s the matter with you—your old man is a dropout, you’re making me look bad,” or “Yo, Punk, sounds like a carburetor problem. Take it to Sal’s in Quincy on your way back to school. He’s expecting you. No, don’t worry about it, the cost has been covered. Do
n’t say ‘Thank you,’ Punk, just get it taken care of.”
If Dad called me “Punk,” would I like him more, would I be compelled to call him every few days to check in? Probably not.
Kayla was screaming for Karl from the back of the bus. He handed the phone to me. “You talk to the Punk a minute,” he said.
Yikes, why did Karl always do that?
“Hi,” I said into the phone. Why did my heart have to pound so painfully when I talked to Liam? In the time since It—three months, during which I had left two voice-mail messages on his cell that just said “Hey, it’s Wonder” and he had called me back exactly ZERO times, though he never seemed to mind when Karl put me on the phone to him—I had accepted that It had just been some fluke fling for him, but It had meant a lot, lot more to me.
“So you made it to Chi-town?” Liam said. Why did even the sound of his voice have an effect on me? It so wasn’t fair. “Good blues there. Make sure Dad takes you to hear some decent music, pop princess.” He spoke very quiet, and monotone-slow, like he was hungover.
“Yeah.” If I had any guts, I would have said what I really felt: You are the most interesting and smart and hot guy I’d ever want to be with, I could fall in love with you if you gave me half a chance, and I’m lucky to have been traveling and performing nonstop these months you haven’t called or tried to see me, so that I could think about something other than how much you hurt me by acting like It never happened.
“I hear you’re going back to Boston after the tour, no more camping out at Kayla’s in Brooklyn. Maybe I’ll see you there sometime—I go through Boston a lot back and forth to school.”
“Yeah.” What was that supposed to mean? Does that mean you want to see me or are you just being polite because you wish your father would stop handing his phone off to me when you call? State your point, Punk!
Should I bother to tell him I was only going home to Boston for a brief period, to check in on Mom and prepare to shoot a new video for the follow-up single to “Bubble Gum Pop,” but otherwise I had no real plans? Tig said I was in danger of overexposure and the end of the tour would be a good time for me to take a little break before shooting the video and setting out on another promotional blitz for the new single. I would be completely free for Liam to haul ass into Boston anytime and sweep me off my feet.