‘Both Steve and Sasha think it’s bad if people know that we’re dating. They tell us not to be seen together.’
‘Really?’
‘He’s got all these crazy fans, you know? I think they’d be upset if he had a girlfriend.’ Brooke shrugged, looking down at the caller I.D. on her phone, which had suddenly buzzed to life. ‘Speak of the devil.’ Like a little girl–minus, of course, the Marlboro dangling between her fingers–she clasped her phone to her chest, cradling it like an infant. ‘I’m soooo in love with him!’
Ten seconds to show time and I hustled over to the security barricade at the front of the stage, trying to dodge the throngs of screaming fans that had assembled. A pair of bulky bouncers in matching red T-shirts chatting on their two-way radios nodded as I flashed them the tour pass hanging around my neck. ‘’Sup?’ a familiar voice asked.
‘Hey T-Roc,’ I said cheerfully, turning around. His typical gentleness had gone, replaced with a definite no-nonsense vibe. He stood with his enormous frame between the concertgoers and the stage, eyes scanning the crowds. His dark clothing and stern expression made it clear: this was not a time to be congenial; every single person, every hysterical teenage girl, was a potential threat. How was I supposed to act toward him under these circumstances? ‘Quite a turnout, huh?’
‘It’s crazy, right?’ he responded gruffly, not taking his eyes from the crowd for a second or even cracking a smile. ‘Jackie.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m in Defcon Mode.’ I flashed him a grin, laughed to myself, and left him to his work.
Slipping past the wooden blockade into the pit–the closest you can actually be to the stage without being on it- a group of teenage girls congregating close by stared in my direction, except not really at me, but at the backstage pass dangling from my neck. From their looks of longing and envy, this feeling of importance suddenly washed over me. For once in my life people were actually jealous of my good fortune and success.
They wished that they were me!
Wading past the handful of photographers, I found Brooke’s mother and stepfather with ear-to-ear grins on their faces, excited to watch their girl in action. Sitting to their right, David had a half-pained and mildly amused expression on his face as ‘the Tweedles’ clung to and hung from his back, shoulders, arms, neck. I chuckled. He looked like a human jungle gym. Catching my gaze, he winked at me and smiled, and, of course, I blushed. Before either of us could say anything the auditorium darkened and a computer-generated voice commanded the attention of the audience. It was routine–the snap-crackle-pop of the robotic voice as Brooke’s silhouette appeared behind a screen onstage. But as I prepared myself for the high-octane introduction I noticed that the voice overhead didn’t sound fuzzy like usual; in fact, it didn’t sound like anything at all.
‘Shi—’ David looked down at the twins, rethinking his words. ‘Oh, crap…’
‘What’s happening?’ I asked, concerned.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, staring in confusion. ‘The backing track must be out or something.’
The screen rose to reveal a nervous Brooke unsure of what to do as her voice was drowned out by the precision-timed pyrotechnics. Without the layered, prerecorded vocals, she went through her regular high-athletic-style dance moves at a snail’s pace, clashing achingly with the song’s high tempo and throwing off all her backup dancers. She kept shooting looks offstage left toward the sound console in confusion. In the pit, we were one collective held breath (save for Brooke’s parents who–still all smiles–didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong).
It took two full songs: two agonizingly long songs, for those of us who knew better, to fix the problem. Brooke, it seemed, who had already been shaken from the press earlier in the day, couldn’t fully recover. It was the end of the world as she knew it. After the final pyrotechnic flashes signaled the end of her set, we quickly navigated through security and followed the sound of sobs. We found her, elbows resting on her knees, hands covering her face, in a chair next to a boy in a tailored, scoop-necked vest and straight-leg chinos. Whispering in her ear, Jesse twirled locks of her hair around his fingers while passersby just stared. We all tried to find something to pretend required our attention, but I snuck glances, still upset by the sound failure but intrigued by the two lovebirds. They made a cute couple, I decided–with his tanned skin and shaggy, dark brown hair, loose curls, paired with Robert’s trendy flourishes (the leather-tab elastic suspenders limp at his sides) he was handsome–seeing him for the first time as Brooke’s boyfriend rather than as a teen pinup.
No longer able to ignore the summons he was receiving to the stage, Jesse kissed her tear-stained face. Taking his place, Steve pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket as Brooke rehashed the mishap.
‘Jackie! It was horrible…it just went out, I didn’t know what to do!’ Brooke sprang from her chair, throwing her arms around me as I walked up to join them.
‘But I thought Gary said that it couldn’t happen?’ I asked.
‘Well, it obviously did happen, so I guess that would make Gary wrong, wouldn’t it?’ Steve snapped. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me, but the iciness of his tone sapped what energy I had left right out of me. Not even an hour ago, covetous looks from high school girls had me on a temporary high. It was funny how Steve could put me in my place so quickly–how fast he could snap me back to reality.
By the time we made it back to the hotel, crowds of people were still outside, though thankfully there were far more fans now than sign-toting, Bible-belting protesters. Crowding both the front and side doors, they hoped to catch a glimpse of the teen stars. Under Sasha’s instruction, the inexperienced hotel staffers on duty helped clear a path that allowed us to enter relatively unscathed. All of the fanfare excited Robert, who secretly dreamed of starting his own supermarket-checkout-lane tabloid, and here he found himself on the inside, snapped candidly alongside someone famous. He, of course, made sure to walk close to Brooke, though to his disappointment, all of the professional photographers had long since gone home.
Seeing that their daughter was upset, Brooke’s parents had sat with her on the ride back to the hotel. Mrs Dianne (as everyone, I found, called her) followed her upstairs while Willy took the boys to the restaurant in the lobby for milkshakes–the reward that he promised them if they were able to sit still during the concert. I was a bit confused as to what the Parkers’ definition of ‘sitting still’ meant, as they hadn’t stopped moving the entire time.
As I packed my set case–color-coordinating tubes of lipstick by their varying shades of pinks, reds, and berries–I half-listened as Mrs Dianne attempted to boost Brooke’s spirits with a little pep talk, though it didn’t appear to be doing much good, while both Steve and Sasha argued over something petty in the corner.
‘You know you can come home with us tonight darlin’,’ Brooke’s mother, perched on the end of the bed in her room, cooed as a last attempt. ‘Might be nice to relax in your own bed.’
‘I don’t know,’ Steve said, breaking away from Sasha and patting the opposite side of the mattress. ‘These pillow tops are pretty hard to beat.’
Ignoring him, Mrs Dianne continued on. ‘Don’t you have tomorrow off?’
‘She’s scheduled to be on one of the morning radio shows along with the Emerson boys, actually…’
‘Boyyyy, I dunno–you think that’s a smart idea? Are you completely nuts!’ Sasha bellowed. ‘After all that craziness, uh-uh, she’s not going on.’
‘Steve,’ Brooke chimed in. ‘I want to go with my parents. I really need to go home.’ Her chin quivered and for a moment I thought she might cry. Regaining control, she flashed him a faint smile. ‘They can drop