Songbird Read online

  I couldn’t see any bones anymore, besides a few ribs anyway. I knew I wasn’t overweight and that I could even stand to put on a few more pounds, but I still couldn’t help but think I looked fat. Like I said, you never fully got over an eating disorder, you just learned to control it instead of the other way around.

  Forest called me beautiful, Demi said I was gorgeous. I couldn’t truly understand how they thought that. To me, I looked plain. My face wasn’t spectacular, my hair was normal, and my body was damaged. I wished I could see what they did, but I couldn’t.

  And if I, a mostly-rational twenty-four year old, couldn’t control the thoughts of my own self-image, how could anyone expect all those young girls to?

  Chapter Twelve

  Everyone was late onto the bus. For once, I wasn’t the last one on board. If anything, I was one of the first. I had some quality time with Marco the driver for a good ten minutes before anyone showed up. Clearly everyone else had a better night than I did.

  Judging by the dark shades and grimaces on the faces of my band as the sunlight hit them, I would say it was a fair guess they all had a good night out.

  I waited to see Forest, he was one of the last to catch up. Sure enough, his sunglasses gave away his shenanigans. He threw a ‘hi’ my way and took the seat behind mine. I spun around to get the low down.

  “Big night last night?” I purposely spoke a little louder than necessary just to confirm my theory.

  “Shh,” he begged. “Yeah, we ended up at some biker bar. There was pool and alcohol and a band and more alcohol. I can’t remember much of the details.”

  “Don’t let Ryan find out,” I warned. Getting blind drunk between shows was a big cross against your name in Ryan’s book. He needed everyone to be on top of their game. His rules were tough, but fair. It was why he was perfect for the tour.

  “He was with us,” Forest replied. That didn’t sound like Ryan. I guess everyone had a good time without me.

  “Was Demi?”

  He shook his head. “No, I haven’t seen her since yesterday. She wasn’t at breakfast this morning.”

  I had eaten alone too after hitting the hotel gym for an hour. I was starting to get worried about her. It wasn’t like Demi to leave me alone for so long. Normally two hours was the limit before my bungee cord pulled me back to her.

  “How was your night?” Forest asked.

  “I slept.”

  “Alone?” What was that supposed to mean?

  “Yeah, you?”

  “Yeah. At least I think so,” he replied. His tone of voice was joking but it made my skin bristle. Braydon used to joke about things like that too. He also used to go on benders and stumble home without a clue about where he was all night.

  “Forest, are you tattling on us?” Ace called out from the back of the bus. He earned a few laughs from the other band members.

  Forest gave me an apologetic look before standing and heading back. “What happens on tour, stays on tour.” They all laughed. He obviously hadn’t told them about us yet. If there still was an us.

  My eyes fixated on the door as I turned my attention back to Demi. I wouldn’t let the others’ laughter and discussion about last night get to me. They had a good time, good for them. Forest had asked me if I wanted company and I had turned him down. It was my choice to spend the night in my quiet hotel room.

  Still, it was bugging me. Forest had invited me to spend time with him, but no-one else had. Considering I was the reason they were all there, a simple text would have been nice from any of them to invite me out.

  Finally, Demi hurried onto the bus. Marco closed the doors behind her and pulled away from the curb. I waved Demi over to sit next to me.

  “Where have you been?” I asked, a little grumpier than I had aimed for. “I’ve been worried about you.”

  She had to take a few deep gasps to get her breath back. Wherever she had come from, she had run. “Now you know how I feel when you disappear on me.”

  Fair enough. “So where were you? Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, I just had some stuff to organize, no big deal.” Demi was chewing on her bottom lip, that was her tell that she was keeping something from me. I would worm it out of her eventually. “How was your night? You didn’t go out with the rest of them, did you?”

  “No. I stayed in like a good little girl.”

  “Good. I looked for you at the venue but you were already gone.”

  “I tried to find you too.”

  “Sorry.” Still no explanation about her whereabouts. “Did you want me for anything?”

  “Not then,” I started. “But there was something I wanted to talk to you about. I want to start a new charity.”

  “What kind of charity? You’re already involved in so much.”

  “This one is different. I want to run something that helps young girls with body image issues.” The thought had come to me in the middle of the night. A few words spoken at a concert wasn’t going to do much. But if I could establish a charity that worked with kids every day, I could actually make a difference. “We can get them to love their bodies instead of resorting to things like eating disorders. We can make a difference.”

  Demi must have seen the enthusiasm on my face because she softened a little. I had some weird and wonderful requests for her sometimes and she normally just waited them out until I got over it. I think she knew that I was serious with this one.

  I wanted to make sure of it. “I’ve got plenty of money to start it. I can donate a portion of my ongoing sales or something to keep it going. It’s doable, Demi, I know it is.”

  “It’s a kind and generous idea. The only thing that concerns me is having the time to get it done. You’ve already got so much on your plate, you don’t need anything else to add to the pot,” Demi stated bluntly. I had to remind myself that she was hired for things like that, she kept me grounded. I couldn’t blame her for doing her job. Plus, she probably had a point. But, then again, since when did I start listening to reason?

  “If we lay the groundwork now, I can do all the work when we finish the tour. It will keep me busy later on.”

  “Your work will keep you busy later on.”

  Ugh, all the reasoning. “Then I’ll be extra busy. I really want to do this, Demi. I know I can help young girls and they are the ones responsible for my entire career. I have been a terrible role model. I owe them this.”

  “You don’t owe anyone anything for being human. Everyone makes mistakes, it’s how you handle them afterwards that is important. And you have handled yours exceedingly well.”

  “I’m doing it with or without your consent.”

  She sighed, I was a little ashamed for using the boss card. “Fine. We’ll talk about it later. Today, you have other work to do. We have three interviews, a photo shoot, and the biggest venue you’ve ever played.”

  I noticed the change in topic but let it go, making a mental note to come back to it later. I wouldn’t be dissuaded from my charity idea, it wasn’t just a fleeting thought like whether I wanted a muffin or not.

  “How many people can the venue hold?” I asked. I knew I was playing some big places, but bigger than I’d ever played before? Just the thought of it sent a cold shiver down my spine.

  “Fifty thousand.”

  “Fifty thousand? Have we even sold a fraction of those tickets?”

  “It’s sold out.”

  “When did that happen?” I thought ticket sales were poor, that’s what the rumors on the internet said. I tended to trust them more than my advisors who would try to shield me from bad news like that.

  “They officially sold out last week,” Demi grinned. “We splashed it all over the media the second it happened. I take it you haven’t Googled yourself for a few days?”

  “I’ve refrained.”

  “Good.”

  Demi’s phone rang. She hit the accept button and took off for another seat. I slid my ear buds in and turned on the music in my iPhone, resting my h
ead against the glass.

  Fifty thousand people was ridiculous. That was the size of a small town, or a big town in some states. Where were all those people coming from anyway? How did that many people like me enough to buy a ticket?

  I couldn’t get the large number out of my head. The biggest stadium I had played was only half that number and that seemed gigantic. How was I going to make fifty thousand people happy? Just stepping out in front of that many seemed like it was impossible.

  Everyone thought singers and performers didn’t get stage fright. They thought we were some superhuman race that doesn’t get freaked out by the thought of so many eyes watching them expectantly. But I did. Every night, just before my cue, I freaked out a little. My mind would swirl with doubts and fear and then the lights would come up and I would be thrust out into it.

  My fear of failure was the only thing that got me out there. To have any shot at success, you have to actually do something. Taking that first step every night was me doing something. It also gave me a chance of failure.

  I tried to clear my mind and settle it down. Before I even got to perform, I would have to get through my interviews and photo shoot. I couldn’t let my fear show for any of it or they would eat me alive. Rule number one of performing: don’t show fear.

  My phone vibrated in my hand with a text message.

  You look extraordinarily hot today. F xx

  It was so cheesy and sweet that I couldn’t help but smile at the message. I turned around and caught his eye amongst the rest of the band. He smiled back, nodding just a little my way. I quickly typed back a message for him:

  There’s none hotter than you, Mr. Knight. B xx

  I had the best band in the world, and I had Forest who was incredibly talented. If I had to walk out in front of fifty thousand people, then I couldn’t have a better group of people doing it with me.

  I rested my head against the window and tried to just listen to the music. My entire focus for the day was going to be keeping my mind occupied. Every time that number flashed in my head, I would have to shoo it away again.

  I got to relax for almost three hours before we reached the next city. Mobile, Alabama was in the south and home to the Ladd Peebles Stadium. Hopefully, the scene of my triumph and not my downfall.

  Demi grabbed me the minute the wheels stopped turning and whisked me away for interviews. I had to answer the same questions over and over again.

  “Your songs are quite personal,” Maggie, the rake thin reporter from IGT9 news, continued. “Do you think that’s why your fans connect so much with them?”

  “I hope so. When I first started writing my own material, I didn’t expect them to. I was just telling my story and getting it down on paper. However, the more I wrote, the more I realized other people were going through the same thing. They could identify with me.”

  “Does it ever get difficult laying yourself bare like that?”

  “It’s therapeutic,” I replied, hoping it didn’t make me sound crazy. “I travel a lot so I’m away from my family and friends most of the time. When something happens and nobody is around at two a.m. in the morning to talk about it with, I write about it instead. It helps get it out of my system and I work through it.”

  Maggie nodded like she completely understood what I was saying, even though I’m sure she didn’t. At the end of each day she probably went home to her husband and two children who swamped her with love. She continued on anyway. “One of your latest hits I Remember is about a cheating boyfriend. Is this one particularly difficult to sing and is it about your ex-boyfriend Braydon Foster?”

  I had exactly two seconds to formulate a lie. One didn’t come. “I don’t like to talk about who my songs are about, but it is a little difficult to sing. When I’m in the moment, I remember the experience I had that caused me to write the song and it can be overwhelming at times. I think that gives the performance something special though, because I can actually feel the emotions of the song. I connect with it.”

  Maggie gave me another nod for the answer. “So, just between us, is it about Braydon Foster? He did cheat on you, after all.”

  Like I was going to tell her after she reminded me of that in front of all the cameras. I felt like killing her and then Braydon. “A girl’s got to have her secrets.” I put on a hopefully charming smile.

  “Okay, okay,” Maggie backtracked. “So are we going to be hearing some new songs about love soon? Perhaps about this guy?” She held up her iPad that was plastered with photos of Forest and I in Washington D.C. “He’s your lead guitarist on the tour, right?”

  I laughed, trying to be flippant. I think it came off as nervous instead. “His name is Forest and, yeah, he’s the lead guitarist on my tour. We’re just friends.” Hopefully he wouldn’t see the interview too. We hadn’t talked about it, but I’m sure he wouldn’t want me to out him to the public at large. It would only make him a target for the tabloids.

  “Just friends, huh? These pictures scream romance to me.”

  “They’re taken out of context, I can assure you.”

  “What about the eyewitness reports that you were seen kissing shortly after these photos were taken?” Maggie smiled sweetly, a smiling assassin. I tried not to fidget, that was a tell that she would only jump on.

  “We all know eyewitness reports are rarely reliable. I can assure you, if there was something going on, I would be more than happy to share the news with my fans.”

  Maggie gave up, probably sensing that I was close to shutting down altogether. We moved on to safer topics about the tour and the album release. At least those answers wouldn’t get me into any trouble.

  I was tied up in interviews and then a quick photo shoot right up until sound check. Demi led me into the middle of the stadium through the back door. There were already long queues outside. Fans that had been waiting for hours would have another couple of hours to wait.

  Nothing could have prepared me for how big the venue was. Demi said it could hold fifty thousand people but that didn’t really register in my brain. Standing in the middle and seeing a ring of seats around the stage, going back seemingly forever, my mind was blown.

  “There will be standing room only on the floor,” Demi explained, pointing at the flat area with no seats that ran from the circular stage to the tiers of seating at the sides. “We’ll keep an eye on them, but you may have to tell them to take a step back now and then. You know how they surge forward and crush those at the front.”

  I nodded, knowing how dangerous it could get. I’d heard of people on two occasions getting killed in a mosh pit like that. While I liked that people enjoyed dancing at my shows, I would have preferred everyone had a seat. If nothing else, it allowed everyone to have some space around them.

  “Chairs weren’t possible here?” I asked.

  “It’s a sports arena, they didn’t want the risk of damaging the ground.”

  “And people’s feet aren’t going to do that?”

  Demi shrugged. “Apparently metal is more dangerous than feet. We tried, Brierly, really. Ryan had a good old argument about it with the stadium management.”

  I made a mental note to keep an eye on the audience. There would be no crushing casualties on my watch. Demi guided me up onto the stage. It was a circular platform in the middle of everything. I looked around for a pathway. “How am I going to get here?”

  Demi grinned with a knowing smile. She pulled me over to a raised platform. “This is a trapdoor. There is an underground tunnel that will take you from backstage to here. Genius, right?”

  “Isn’t that going to damage the ground?”

  “We’ve promised to replace the turf. It’s just a small piece. Ryan had to win one of the arguments he had with them.” Ryan normally won every argument he had with anyone, especially when it was about work. Whoever owned the stadium had some guts to take him on.

  I tuned all of that out and tried to imagine what the stadium would look like full of people. It was scary to think abou
t, especially when they would all be looking at me.

  “This place is really sold out?” I asked, still unable to believe it.

  “Full to the brim,” Demi replied proudly. “You’re going to blow the roof off this place.”

  “It doesn’t have a roof.”

  “You know what I mean.” She put her arm around my shoulders. “Now, come on, we’d better get you miked up and ready.”

  I let her lead me through the sound check, the entire time trying not to let the nerves take over. Fifty thousand people, the number kept flashing in my head. That was the size of a town. I was going to have to make it my best concert ever.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The crew member to my left gave me the final thumbs up. They might be ready, but I wasn’t sure if I was. They weren’t about to pop up in the middle of fifty thousand people and have to entertain them. That was just me, only me.

  As I crouched down, I couldn’t help but remember a time when I had been that nervous before. Except it wasn’t the concert that did it, I had found out only eight minutes earlier of Braydon’s latest cheating scandal.

  Like every other time, I didn’t want to believe it. One of my backup singers had coming running to me with her phone, the photograph of Braydon and some bimbo already poised for my viewing. She waved it in front of me, telling me how sorry she was.

  I got angry at her, I said if she was so sorry, then why did she feel the need to come hurrying over with the news. She could have waited until after the show, or somewhere more private than backstage. She huffed out, muttering something about shooting the messenger.

  My call time came only a few seconds later. The picture of Braydon and the bimbo locked together with their lips burned into my brain. I had to step out on stage and see him pretending like nothing had happened. I wondered how long ago the picture was taken, ten minutes? An hour? A day? A week? How long had I been sharing him with the woman?