CHAPTER1
Now—Ellery
Thunder rumbles through her feet,but there’s no storm.Or maybe just a different kind of storm.Cheering travels through the floorboards like a tsunami of sound, a tornado of applause.The steel-and-wood girders supporting the backstage tremble with its force.
The roar of the crowd is deafening, but it isn’t loud enough to drown out the doubt in Ellery’s head.
“Elvie!Elvie!Elvie!”They all want this other version of her.Elvie.Cute, pliant, goes along to get along.They think she belongs to them.Maybe she does.
The only people who wanted the real her are all gone, but she can’t focus on that now.Not when she’s standing in a ring of costumers pulling at her hair and clothes, primping and fluffing and straightening and tightening.
It’s difficult enough getting dressed in this ridiculous outfit without having to struggle her feet into the too-tight glittering stilettos.Ellery closes her eyes, focusing on her breath.In, out.She’s done this hundreds of times now.She can do it again, one last time.After tonight, she has a break.After tonight, she can rest.
If only things will go well, though she doesn’t dare to hope.She’s had enough last-minute surprises to know that she simply has to grin and bear it.She has to, if she wants this—the acclaim, the one-sided adoration.Without this, she has nothing left.
She should simply smile and be Elvie.
“I lengthened the hem like you asked,” her assistant Maria says, nodding at the mid-thigh-length denim skirt that Ellery fights not to tug farther down.Maria circles me, frowning, her black hair streaked with gray up in a messy topknot.
“It’s great.Thanks.”It’s not, but it’s better than nothing.Even another inch will help so she doesn’t show her cooch when she perches on the stool.Not that she had much choice in this costume design—or any decision in the last few whirlwind years.
But that’s her own fault.
This is the last night.Maybe if she repeats it enough, it will crawl beneath her skin, weave into her DNA, and become real.Last night of the tour.She can sleep tonight in her own bed in her own house, for the first time in months.
A lonely pit opens in the middle of her chest and she snaps her head upward, sending artfully curled tendrils of hair flying.Alone.She’s always alone nowadays.
This is what you wanted, the small voice whispers in her ear.Right, yes.Maybe she’s just nervous, last-night-of-tour jitters.
She needs Jasper, her acoustic guitar, her one lifeline, but she can’t get to him in the flurry of makeup brushes and hairspray and journalists holding out their phones to record her and twist her words.
You’ll be all right, El.You can do anything for five minutes.
The voice in her head is ASMR, low and soothing.Her anxiety ratchets down a notch.
“Elvie?”The band manager, Hank, touches her shoulder gently.He’s older than her dad was, with dark brown skin lined with fading tattoos.“We have an issue.”
She maintains her composure despite her mind’s desperate attempts to lose control.“Of course we do.But hey, tomorrow we all get waffles and champagne for breakfast, right?”That’s good.Keep it light, keep it easy.Don’t cause trouble.Trouble got you whisper-labeled as “difficult” and “unemployable.”
Hank smiles.He’s aging well, the fine lines around his eyes softening with wisdom.If only she could write that smile into a song, but there’s the simple, hard truth.She hasn’t written a single lyric in months.It’s impossible to write anything true when she has lost all inspiration.
“It’s Abe.He just called.He’s way too sick to perform tonight.”
Their bassist had looked terrible at sound check, nearly as green as the palm trees lining the road to the theater.She had attributed it to the afternoon heat.“Right.Okay.”She keeps her breath even, despite the thumping in her heart matching the downbeat reverberating through the floor.“So what do we do?I can cover his parts.”Even though it will mean she will play so hard her fingers will be bloody and raw by the end of the night.
She can ice them tomorrow.
If you want this, you need to bleed.You need to earn it.That voice in her head was less ASMR and more drill sergeant, but it had gotten her this far.Further than so many other hopefuls.She had known the price, hadn’t she?
Hank runs a hand through his thick sheaf of gray-black hair.“I called around, and if you’re okay with it, I found someone.”
Oh hell, no.“Someone new?”Was that shrill?She doesn’t need this.Not when she’s ninety minutes—two hours max—away from a shower, sweatpants, and burning this fucking outfit in effigy.She’s so close to the limit of her tolerance, she can peek over the over side and see the cliff falling away to the sea.“Do they know my arrangements?”
“Yeah, actually.He said he’s heard everything you’ve ever done.”Hank taps the clipboard with his index finger.“He’s thrilled to be here, if you’re okay with it.”
The information glances off her titanium shell.What else is she to do?Totter onstage to make a fool of herself without a bassist, or play with someone who half-knows what they’re doing?She’s met far too many men in this business who let arrogance instead of talent run their careers.But she has to toe the line and be agreeable.There’s only one bassist she wants, and there is zero chance he would show.Not after everything she’d done.“Sure.If you trust him, so do I.”
“Great.”Hank’s shoulders relax, as though he’s relieved.
