“What was the point?” Charla asked. “What could you have done? And there was always the chance that he’d change his mind. Guy’s mercurial that way. He might have woken up this morning and decided he wanted to keep everyone after all.”
“This is fucked up.” I glanced at Olivia’s shut door, figured there was no way she could hear me over the music. “In case you haven’t noticed, things are bad enough between me and her already.”
“Oh, I’ve noticed,” Charla said.
I made a face. “So you think the solution is to make us fight it out like Lord of the freaking Flies?”
“I know this is hard for you to believe, Dana, but there’s more at stake here than just your feelings. We’re talking about a lot of money, first of all. We’re talking about people’s jobs.”
“Like yours?” I asked snottily.
Charla ignored me. “Look, it was obviously not working the way it was,” she pointed out. “Can we agree on that much, at least?”
I shrugged. It wasn’t like I had any great love for Ash and Kristin, and it certainly wasn’t like they had any great love for me; still, the idea that they were so disposable—that we all were—made my skin crawl. “Isn’t it Guy’s job to make it work?” I countered.
“Yeah,” Charla said, nodding. “And part of what’s made Guy so successful in this business is that he can recognize when making it work means he needs to cut his losses.” She made a face, like, what are you going to do? “For you girls, I know it’s love—it’s love for me, too, believe me, or I wouldn’t be here. But for him it’s money, at the end of the day. That’s all.”
“That’s disgusting,” I said.
“Is it?” Charla asked.
“Yes,” I said, flopping onto the couch with my arms crossed. “All that talk about being a product? Who would want to be a part of that?”
“Plenty of people want to be a part of it,” Charla fired back. “And frankly, I’d be careful who I said that in front of, if I were you. Because I’ll tell you, Dana, that’s a thing that’s come up more than once among the other coaches and me. Whether you’re actually willing to put the work in. If you actually want this or not.”
“Or if I’m just here to steal it from her?” I asked angrily, jerking my head toward the door to my and Olivia’s bedroom. All of a sudden, I felt like I was going to cry, and I grimaced: I hadn’t been a crier before I came here. It was like the last few weeks had stripped away all my protective layers so that everything left was the new skin under a scab, too vulnerable; the feeling of constantly being looked at, the feeling of never once measuring up. I stared hard at the ceiling, willing myself to keep it together.
“Hey,” Charla said, reaching over and laying a hand on my elbow; I jerked it away, and she sighed. “Nobody thinks you’re here to steal anything from anybody, Dana. Okay? Let’s be clear about that. But it’s demanding, what we’re doing here. It’s not a secret that you didn’t grow up wanting this. The others have been rehearsing and performing their whole lives. They understand the sacrifices. Olivia understands the sacrifices. That’s all I’m trying to say.”
“Well,” I said, raising my chin and swallowing down the crack in my voice, feeling my spine straighten with steel and resolve. If they wanted commitment, I’d give it to them. If this was a contest, I’d win. “I’ll just have to prove myself, won’t I?”
Charla nodded seriously. “Yeah, Dana,” she said as the song ended, a few seconds of blissful silence before the next one started up. “You will.”
“I’m an asshole,” I said, standing at the door of Alex’s apartment that evening. “And I’m staying. I’m an asshole who’s staying.”
Alex’s lips twitched, tilting his head at me in the doorway. His hair was wet from the shower; he smelled like soap and shampoo. “Which part of that would you like me to respond to first?” he asked.
I wrinkled my nose at him, shoved my hands in my pockets. “Whichever you’d like.”
“Okay.” Alex nodded. “I know this is important to you in a whole different way than it’s important to me,” he said, leaning against the doorjamb. “I think maybe I didn’t entirely get that before, but I get it now, and I’m sorry. But it’s still not fair to get freaked out and pissed off and pick a fight with me, okay?”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Alex shrugged. “I’m pulling for you, okay? I think you’re amazing.”
“I know,” I said, blushing, reaching down and grazing the tips of his fingers with my own. “I’m pulling for you, too.”
“I’m gonna respond to the other part now.” Alex’s whole face broke open in a grin then; he scooped me clear off the floor. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “I knew it. Of course he’s keeping you. He’d have to be an idiot not to. And Guy is a lot of things, but an idiot isn’t one of them.”
I laughed at that, enjoying the feeling of his warm arms around me. “I’m not a sure thing yet,” I told him. “I have to beat Olivia for a spot on the tour.”
Alex shook his head. “That’s tomorrow’s problem. Tonight we should celebrate. Do we have beers?” he called to Trevor, who was back in the kitchen.
“We have, like, one possibly skunky Corona,” Trevor called back.
“Sounds like a party to me.”
The three of us sat out on the tiny balcony and split it, toasting with coffee mugs as the sun dropped behind the palm trees to the west. It felt nice, being out here with the two of them; for the first time I let myself enjoy it a little, the fact that I’d made it this far. Still, I couldn’t help but think that the person I really wanted to talk to about everything was Olivia. I wasn’t used to combing through my emotions without her around to help me get the tangles out.
“Solo star, huh?” Alex said, curly smile and his blue eyes sparkling with the promise of it. “Dana Cartwright.”
“Yup,” I said, watching the last of the twilight. “Just me on my own.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Walking into my first rehearsal as a solo act was like jumping into a shark tank with an open wound. The coaches had flipped my schedule so that it was the opposite of Olivia’s, voice in the morning now, and even the studio felt different to me: bigger and more cavernous, quieter somehow, even though the boys were rehearsing right next door just like always. “You got this,” Alex had promised last night down by the vending machines. I wasn’t so sure.