Dissonance Read online

  “I know.”

  “You can’t save everyone.”

  “I know,” I snap, my temper flaring defensively.

  I know where this is going, who we’re really talking about, and I’d rather not.

  “I’ll line her up with help somewhere else. It’ll look good for us recovering from this. She’ll be in rehab and you’ll be paying for it. You’ll be the victim and the hero.”

  “Great.”

  Grant frowns at his phone, his eyes darkening.

  I stand up straight. Stiff. “What is it? More photos of last night?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a shit liar. How are they different?”

  “They aren’t.” Grant stows his phone quickly. “Same shit, different day.”

  “You mean different angle?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Where was this one shot from?”

  “Looks like it was shot from Lexy’s right earring. It has that kind of zoom.”

  I throw my hands up in the air. “Shit!”

  “On the bright side—“

  “Don’t say it. It’s the same thing everyone is saying and it doesn’t help.”

  Grant chuckles, spreading his hands in front of him. “All I’m saying is, are you sure your dad wasn’t a brother?”

  “Camera adds ten pounds. And about two inches, it looks like.”

  “Either way – mazel tov.”

  “You’re Jewish now? You’re gonna be a black gay Jew? Do you just love swimming upstream?”

  Grant grins. “Adversity only makes me stronger.”

  “What about dick pics? What’s your plan for those? How do we overcome that?”

  “Same way we overcome all of the drug and alcohol rumors.”

  “I go to rehab too?” I ask, almost hoping I’m right. I could handle a week in Palm Springs at a resort rehab center, painting watercolors and hiding from the paparazzi. Anything to get out of the holding pattern I’m stuck in.

  “Nope. A return to your roots.”

  I laugh incredulously. “Disney? I really doubt they want anything to do with me right now.”

  “No, before Disney. Before the fame found you.”

  “Before Disney I was ten years old living in a tiny town in Washington.”

  Grant points at me triumphantly. “That’s it.”

  “What? Washington?”

  “You’re going home.”

  I shake my head, striding to the window overlooking the sweltering L.A. skyline. “No way, man. That’s not home. We were barely even there when I was a kid. Whenever we could, we were following my dad and his dreams all over the country to every bar that would book his shitty band. Then we pulled up stakes the second I signed on with Download and we never went back.”

  “It doesn’t have to feel like home, it just has to be anything other than what we’re dealing with right now. We need something to get people’s minds and eyes off your penis. We’ll do a small, private concert for free for the people in town. Anyone else who wants to attend has to buy a ticket, but the proceeds will go to a children’s charity. It’ll humanize you again. You’ve become too big for people to connect with. They’re looking at you right now like you’re the problem, not the victim. We need to change that.”

  “I don’t want to be a victim.”

  “Do you want to be out of a job?”

  I honestly don’t have an answer to that. I don’t want to be out of money but out of my job? I don’t know. Maybe.

  “What about the rest of my concert dates?” I ask. “Can we work it in between those?”

  Grant is silent behind me.

  I drop my forehead against the window. “They’re canceling, aren’t they?”

  “Seven cities so far.”

  I nod, the movement slowly banging my skull against the glass.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  “People aren’t comfortable with you right now, Ryker.”

  “Yeah,” I mumble. “Neither am I.”

  “The majority of your fan base is still young women who grew up watching you on the Download. They’re used to you being sweet and wholesome. Singing love songs on a beach with a guitar. They don’t know what to do with the new you.”

  “There is no ‘new me’. It’s just me.”

  “It’s new to them. They’re not sure what to think of the drugs and the alcohol. You’re not a role model anymore and parents are angry because they didn’t get the memo. It happened to Brittany when she transitioned too. And it doesn’t help that no one likes the women you’re dating.”

  “That’s nobody’s business.”

  “When you put it out there the way you do, Ryker, you make it their business. And that brings me to the next point Sarah and I talked about; women. You need to lay low on that front for a while. Before Lexy, there was the surfer in Australia with the sex tape. Before her you had that fling with a bartender in New Orleans and got caught having sex in a public park.”

  “We weren’t having sex.”

  I was fingering her under her skirt.

  Grant snorts. “Yeah, and it wasn’t a flask in your pocket.”

  I don’t rise to the bait. I’m not arguing this again.

  “We need something big and positive to counterbalance all of this.” Grant pauses, looking at me pointedly. “It’d be even better if you wrote some new material that we could unveil.”

  “What? Internal isn’t doing it for you?”

  “I was surprised you wrote that song,” he replies seriously. “It doesn’t sound like you.”

  “It’s not me.”

  “Then why perform it last night?”

  I shrug weakly. It’s a question I asked myself before I played it, one I didn’t have a good answer for. Internal is a song I wrote under protest. I never meant for the world to hear it, but one day there it was on the web. It was leaked from inside my camp and I was pissed. The worst part was the reaction from the fans. They loved it. They ate it up and asked for more while I struggled to keep my lunch down every time I heard it.

  That was the first time I felt like I was losing them. Like I was honest to God losing myself.

  “I did it because it’s what they wanted,” I admit reluctantly.

  “They who?”

  “The label. The fans. The press. Everyone but me, man. I’m the only one who hates it.”

  Grant clears his throat softly. “Ryker, about the concert in Washington. We have to make—”

  “Do it,” I blurt out. My breath fogs the window, blurring the view. Sending it underwater where nothing feels real. “Set it up and I’ll do it, but not with any of the team we’re working with now. The band, roadies, dancers – everyone is on vacation during this one.”

  “A road team I can put together no problem, but do you have anyone in mind for the band or your dancers?”

  “No band. We’ll play pre-recorded music. I won’t even bring a guitar on stage.”

  “Okay, you’re call. But where do you want me to start looking for dancers?”

  “New York,” I answer without thought or hesitation. “I want to get some talent off Broadway.”

  “Why Broadway?”

  I lift my head off the glass, standing tall. “Because I want professionals, not partiers. I want a completely different style of choreography than what we’ve been doing. If we’re going to back me away from this flashing shit show, I need less twerking and more talent. And I want to background check everyone extensively. Drug tests too. Everyone thinks I’m a coked up, alcoholic man-whore and I’ll never get away from that stigma if I’m surrounded by users.”

  “Or carrying flasks in your back pocket.”

  I groan, turning away from Grant and the window – heading for the music room and my piano.

  “It was my fucking cell phone!” I growl.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Greer

  The first time I masturbated was to a poster of Jace Ryker. I stole it out of a Tiger Beat in a grocery store and stuffed it dow
n my shirt as I hurried outside. I ran back to the building I was camping in; some abandoned warehouse with three other runaways living in other corners. I barely spoke to them, but that afternoon I didn’t even look at them. I took my stolen goods to my corner, pulled my tattered blanket up around me tightly, and stared at the picture with wide, fearful eyes.

  He was seventeen at the time, I was sixteen, but he looked so much older than me. So far removed from me and my world that he didn’t even look real. His practiced smirk was in full affect and he stared at me from where I had him propped up on my pillow, my nervous hand in my underwear and my heart in my throat. His eyes held me tightly, brown and rich like chocolate, as I roamed my fingertips over the slickness building in my slit, pretending it was him. I’d never felt anything like it before. It felt wrong, so wrong. Like I should be embarrassed or ashamed, but I wasn’t. I stared at his mouth, thinking of his hot breath like mint on my tongue. I imagined his hands on my arms, on my hips, his fingers digging into my soft flesh to pull me closer. He kissed me slow and deep. I imagined him singing softly in my ear. My lips parted as my breath caught, a moan slipping and tripping out over my tongue, disrupting the song.

  I broke apart with Jace’s name on my lips.

  Thinking back on the memory now, I feel less awkward about that than I do about this; seeing his penis. It’s weird because it feels like I used him in that poster. I objectified him for my own pleasure, but now… I don’t know. Seeing the video feels more invasive. More of a violation than the grappling imagination of a fifteen year old girl figuring out her body. I have guilt over this new transgression, one I didn’t even enjoy.

  Not too much.

  “You feel bad for Jace Ryker?” Samantha demands.

  I sigh, stretching my arms high over my head. I watch myself in the mirror on the other side of the rehearsal room, ignoring the burn of her amazed stare. “Just because he’s famous doesn’t mean his dick is public property.”

  “Agreed,” Cam chimes in from behind us. He’s on the floor, his body arched over his outstretched leg. “I feel bad for the guy.”

  Samantha laughs. “Why? Did you not see the picture?”

  “I don’t care if he’s hung, he still got his junk whipped out in front of the entire world against his will.”

  “Please. They’re already calling it a wardrobe malfunction. It was an accident the way Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl nip slip was an accident. He did it for publicity.”

  “That’s not the way I read it. Sounded to me like his girlfriend was high and groped him on stage. First his album gets delayed, what? Six times? Now this. His career is tail spinning.” Cam grunts, switching legs. “Sucks for him.”

  “He’s done a new album every year since he was twelve,” I point out. “Maybe it’s about time he took a break. He’s twenty-one and he’s already won five Grammy’s. He’s earned a vacation.”

  “That’s past work,” Bryce argues, appearing out of nowhere to stand between me and my reflection.

  “What about the Prince tribute earlier this year,” Cam argues. “His cover of Purple Rain was sick.”

  I smile sadly. “It made me cry.”

  “Me too,” Samantha says seriously.

  I look down at her, my surprise painted brightly across my face.

  She looks back dispassionately. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You don’t think I can cry?”

  “I assumed you had your tear ducts surgically removed.”

  “Reduced. Not removed.”

  “He did that cover of Call Me,” Cam carries on with the previous discussion, probably avoiding a confrontation between Samantha and I. It’s bound to happen if we talk to each other for too long. “It was hot. They used it in those Verizon commercials for forever.”

  “And the Aerosmith Cryin’ remix he did with Postmodern Jukebox,” I remind him. “That was just this year. It blew up all over the internet.”

  “Yeah, but you see what all those songs have in common, right?” Bryce demands.

  Cam nods reluctantly. “Nothing is original.”

  “None of it. Internal is the first original thing he’s done in like, two years, and that song is shit.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I argue diplomatically.

  “Please. It sounds like some boy band shit. It’s tired.”

  “Maybe he’s dried up,” Samantha suggests.

  Cam grimaces. “I don’t wish it on the guy, but that’s what it looks like. And if you lose momentum, you disappear. Getting to the top is the easy part. It’s staying there that’s the bitch.”

  “We know that better than anyone, don’t we, Dorothy?” Bryce asks me.

  I roll my eyes, sidestepping him to see my reflection. “Some of our reviews are still good. You should read them.”

  Bryce steps with me, blocking my view again. I drop my arms in frustration.

  “You’re bright-siding again, Miss Gale,” he warns me.

  “I’m not from fucking Kansas and I’m not Judy Fucking Garland.”

  Bryce laughs. “Honey, don’t I know it. If you were Judy Garland, we might actually be friends.”

  “Will you move?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t see myself in the mirror. This is how I get focused before rehearsal.”

  “I’m doing you a favor. I’m more fun to look at.” He takes my face between his hands, kissing my forehead with a loud smack! “You’re welcome!”

  I laugh as I shove him away roughly. He goes willingly, collapsing on the ground next to Cam.

  “Reviews don’t mean as much as ticket sales,” he sings up at me. “And we’re not selling out anymore. Shit, we’re barely selling at all.”

  “You can’t sell out every night.”

  “Heartstrung is. Shoot the Messenger is.”

  “Surrendered is,” Cam mutters.

  We all pause, not sure what to say to that. We’re dangerously close to talking about her. To naming the name we’re never supposed to name in his presence.

  No one wants to see Cam fall into the funk he does whenever he gets to thinking about Eve. I barely pulled him out of it when she left Rendezvous. When she left him. If he goes down that hole again, I don’t know that I’ll find him.

  When I was passed over for the lead in Rendezvous, they gave the part to Eve Sanders and put me in the ensemble. Cam got the male lead, and he and Eve started a romance that played out both on and off stage for that whole first year. We spent long months workshopping the play and taking it for a run in Illinois before it landed on Broadway. It was a dream come true for all of us. During the first few months we were showered in rave reviews. We sold out shows repeatedly. Former President Barak Obama attended with Michelle one night. They came back stage to meet the cast and I almost fainted at his feet. Cam has never let me live it down.

  Everything was going perfectly. I had a home, a job, a future. I was living a dream I was terrified to wake up from.

  That’s when things started to fall apart.

  It began with Eve. She got into the fame. Deep into it. She stopped spending time with the cast. She stopped returning Cam’s calls. She was in the tabloids running around with big screen actors and the wealthy elite of New York. She totally lost touch with us and the play, and as tension started to rise between her and Cam offstage, their performance started to slip onstage. They fought all the time. They were cold to each other during shows. We stopped selling out. The reviews started getting ugly. That’s when she bailed. One day our director, John, brought us all together to tell us that Eve was gone. Fired or quit, we didn’t know. She took a role with a new production called Surrendered and she wasn’t coming back.

  I was offered her place right there in front of the entire cast. They all looked at me expectantly, some with definite doubt in their eyes, and I felt it in my heart; I wasn’t ready. The old fear came rushing back and I shook my head, silently saying ‘no’. John moved on without missing a beat, handing the role do
wn to Anna instead. She meekly accepted, but we all knew the truth. She was third choice behind Eve and I. The slight reverberated through the entire show, and we’ve never been able to recover. The bad reviews have kept coming and recently our run was shortened. We have three months before it’s all over. Three months to find new work.

  It’s a pressure I feel deep into my bones, like an increase in gravity.

  “We’ll find places in a new show,” I remind Cam buoyantly. “One that’ll do better than Surrendered.”

  “One with a director that shows up on time?” Samantha grumbles.

  “Yeah, where is John?” Cam asks, glancing around the room. It’s full of dancers mid-stretch and writers mid-rewrite, but no director. No producer. “He gets on all of us if we take too long peeing and he can’t be bothered showing up to rehearsals on time?”

  “Didn’t you hear? He’s a legend. He can do what he wants,” Bryce comments dryly.

  “Apparently what he wants is to jerk us around and waste our time,” a voice says quietly to our left.

  We all turn to look at Mia, a redhead from the ensemble sitting on a stack of mats. I hadn’t realized anyone was listening to us.

  I smile at her. “No, what he’s probably doing is some hopeful from the wings who—”

  The door to the studio swings open. The room falls silent except for the hard snap of high heels on the wood floor echoing through the room. All eyes are immediately focused up front where Meredith, our producer, is taking up camp. She’s an older woman with beautiful gray hair and an ugly, tight mouth. I struggle to remember, to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her smile. Reactions around the room are mixed. Some people rise to their feet slowly. Others slink farther into the room’s shadows.

  “What were you saying, Greer?” Bryce prods quietly, nudging me with his foot.

  “Shhh,” I hiss, my body frozen in place. “Shut up.”

  “You’re not scared of the big bad bitch, are you?”

  “Keep your voice down. She can hear everything. Like a dog.”

  “Or a bitch.”

  Cam covers his responding snicker with a cough.

  John walks in moments behind Meredith. She ignores him as he runs his hands through his perpetually disheveled dark hair and yanks on the lapels of his expensive sport coat. He looks angry – not unusual for him – and anyone who didn’t rise when Meredith came in takes to their feet now.