Everybody Knows Your Name (18 page)

“I mean that I want to go home
from the show
.”

The giddiness that has been swelling in me all night is now so big that it's almost too much. I've failed to reinvent myself. But being a failure is totally fine! I thought my problem was how hard it was going to be to change myself. But that wasn't it.

My problem was that I didn't understand what had to change. I needed to get out from under this idea that I wasn't doing life right. This idea that you're only whole if you can feel at home at a party. Only whole if you can go out into the world with a smile and get more charged up the more contact you make. (In bio, our teacher told us that in studies, healthy monkeys thrive on group interactions while the damaged ones go off by themselves.) Only whole if you're famous, even on the smallest scale. I get up on my knees in the booth and slap the table with both palms.

“Maybe I'm not disappointed in myself!” I say. “Maybe I just felt other people's disappointment in me and I thought it was mine too. But it's not!”

Lucien is giving me his crazy grin that says he thinks I've gone nuts, and he's just soaking it in. “I've always thought sports bars can cause psychic breaks. I'm sorry I brought you here.”

I just laugh, I'm so happy. “You think I'm being kooky. But I'm not, Lucien. I'm not.”

He slides out of the booth, still holding the grin. “I'm going to run to the bathroom and splash some water on my face before humoring you.”

I watch him head toward the glowing neon sign that says BLOKES. Some of the sports fans good-naturedly hit him on the back as he passes, even though he's not in red. Everybody assumes everybody else is for the same team.

I relax against the wall of the booth, feeling a calm wash over me. It's the calm of being at peace with myself. It's better than being on a beach.

I glance over at the TV that's hung from the ceiling across the room. The late local news is on, and there's a reporter standing in front of some kind of party. I can't hear the sound over the music pumping through the bar and all the people talking. The reporter smiles and waves her arm at the room. There are shots of people who look like they might be famous, except they're not famous enough for me to know who they are. They just seem like they're in show business somehow.

Then the story cuts back to the reporter, and I watch her expressions for a moment before I'm distracted by two people who are kissing behind her. One of them looks like Ford in profile. There's the same bruised quality about this guy's eye, which is open as he kisses this girl. He even carries himself like Ford. It's in the bend of his neck and the way his chest goes concave in lowering his face to hers.

It is Ford.

I sit there, watching him on TV. The giddiness drops straight out of me. The only thing I can do is sit and stare at the TV and feel it all.

I stop by the guesthouse to say good night to my mom before going into the mansion. When I open the door, she's lying on the couch, and I think I hear her say, “Jazz,” as though that's who she's talking to. It surprises me to think they've stayed in tight contact since my mom helped Jazz up from the red carpet, since I imagine Jazz's walls don't stay down for long. But maybe she wants a surrogate mom? Or maybe my mom is just saying she's jazzed about something.

My mom sits up like she's going to get off the phone, but I put up my hand to mean
Don't.
I make the sign with my hands for going to sleep. She says, “Absolutely, yes,” to whomever she's talking to and blows me a kiss. If she notices that I'm sad, she pretends not to.

I walk across the rose garden, along the pool, and into the mansion. It's late and the house is quiet.

I pass the downstairs powder room where I saw Dillon last night, sitting on the closed toilet with swollen eyes. We'd just come home from the elimination show.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Back to the minor leagues,” he said. “Back to Temple Bat Yahm. Before you know it, I'm going to end up being the annoying grandpa making the kids listen to him play guitar and sing at the holidays.”

“At least you'll have your grandchildren?” I hadn't known what else to say because I was already having feelings, even if I wouldn't admit them out loud, that the show didn't mean as much to me as it did to everyone else. And so I'd already started to feel like an imposter for making it through.

Now I run up the staircase. I make a left at the hallway, away from the bedrooms that the show is using. I go into the maid's room and flip on the overhead track lights. I shut the door behind me. There's no furniture, and it's partially the bareness of this room that makes it feel like such a relief to be in here.

I go to my favorite closet and open the sliding door. I shut it behind me. I let myself think about Ford. I think about meeting him on the rooftop at the hotel. I think about standing with him at the window at Stacy's house, how I felt weirdly close to him, fast. About the time we looked at each other when he was leaving the elevator, me telling him I'd heard his parents were dead. What I thought we were saying as we looked at each other then, the transparency I believed in. About our first kiss, about being underwater together, about every other single time his mouth was on mine and his body was against mine and I was so happy to feel like I was myself, even as I was his. And he was mine, even as I had no idea who he was. About his family walking up to the stage. About him kissing that girl tonight on TV, about him projected up there on the TV like a stranger—but if he was a stranger, then why did his image feel like it was wringing my heart?

I let it all tear through me. The feeling wells up, and I kick into the wall of the closet, the part where you're supposed to store your shoes. My foot goes through the wall. I'm kind of surprised that the wall is that thin, but I don't care about the hole. It feels good to have made it.

I lower my foot and notice there's something catching the light down in the hole. A glinting tiny head. I bend down and reach in and pull out a silver figurine holding something that looks like a comet.

I guess my mom was right to be examining the wall. I've found the hidden Superstar.

It's after two a.m. when I finally get home. The party
was
fun: an escape from the show, from thinking about Magnolia. But things went downhill pretty fast.

Cody must have taken something, because he started getting weird and crazy. Shirtless on the bar, tossed a drink in a guy's face, started a fight, the usual. When the bouncers threw us out, I managed to wrestle him into our town car before anyone called the police.

“Don't take us home. I want to party!” Cody yelled at the driver from the backseat. He had his arm slung around my shoulders, and it felt so heavy. “This is my brother.
My
baby brother!”

We had to stop twice on the way up the hill to let him puke. He hung his head out the open door until he had nothing left but the dry heaves. I apologized to our driver about twenty times, trying my best to keep Cody from getting vomit in his nice car.

It's been a long night,
I'm thinking as the driver drops us off at the front gate, which is still all lit up. The mansion's always lit.

I have to help Cody stumble over to the RV because he can barely walk. It seems quiet inside the vehicle at first, but as we're coming up the pathway, my mom opens the trailer door. She's wearing a crisp-looking Venice Beach T-shirt and a brand-new sunburn.

“You're late,” she says to Cody. “You just almost screwed things up.” Then, to me, “Hi, baby boy.”

It's rare to see Mom so engaged in life. Her usual state is zoned out, not seeing or caring much about anything that's happening around her. I guess the change of scenery has been good for her. Woke her up, at least.

“Late for what?” I ask. “It's, like, a quarter after two in the morning.”

Cody drunkenly mumbles, “Chill, chill, it's all gonna work out.” He splays out on the lawn.

I sigh. “Are Sissy and John sleeping?”

My mom holds a finger to her lips, even though she's not keeping her voice down. “Sissy's sleeping in the back. Dad just went out to take a leak. The toilet's broke.”

“Take a leak—where?”

She nods, and I step around the RV to see into the yard.

My dad is pissing into the swimming pool like one of those little-boy-peeing fountains.

“John! Dad!” I snap. “You can't be doing that!”

He stops, but just because he's finished. He walks back to the RV, and when he reaches me, slaps me on the shoulder. “That's what the chlorine's for.” He looks at Cody all collapsed on the grass. “Cody, about damn time. You got the funds on you?”

“What funds?” I ask. A nervous feeling is settling in now. They've got something going on. They're up and waiting for a reason.

“Perrrrrr diem. That beautiful ollllll' perrrrr diem,” Cody slurs.

Catherine reluctantly agreed to the amount just to stave off more trouble, and she had Jesse deliver it in cash to Cody as we were leaving the party. My brother has an envelope with thousands of dollars wadded up in his back pocket.

“He's got the money. That was the deal,” I say.

“We've got money for the deal,” Cody says.

“That them?” my mom asks, looking past me. I turn and see a pair of headlights at the front gate. The car turns off, and two very questionable (believe me, I'm well acquainted with questionable) dudes get out and just stand there. My hands start to tingle immediately. I already know what's happening.

“Jesus Christ, you guys!” I turn to my family with a terrible ringing going through my body. “You're doing a drug deal? At the place where I'm being put up by the show?”

My dad rolls his eyes at me as he goes to get the money off Cody. “Stop being melodramatic. It's a good deal. We're gonna clean up back home.”

“Do you know how much cheaper weed is in California?” My mom is practically in awe.

One of the guys calls through the gate with a Spanish accent, “I leave in thirty seconds!”

“Look, amigo, it's all here, but I don't speak Mexican,” Cody answers.

“Jesus Christ,” I say again, and then I start backing away from my family. “I'm not staying around for this. I don't care what you do as long as I wake up tomorrow morning, look out the window, and see a big empty space where this RV now stands.” I spit on the ground—that's how angry I am. “I want you gone by sunrise.”

You can actually see the insult ripple through my mom's eyes. “I guess we're just big disappointments to you,” she says. “Look who's giving his own mother orders. You know, you should be a whole lot sweeter to me because . . .”

I don't wait to hear the rest. I turn and run up to the house. I slam the front door behind me, pretending it's some kind of magic portal that erases what's outside. I jog up the staircase just to feel like I'm getting even farther away from my family as quickly as possible.

When I look up, there on the top step is Magnolia, sitting. She stares at me as if I've gone fuzzy, like there's nothing solid she can make of me.

“I don't even know who you are,” she says. Then her eyes get real sharp. “Are you
so
desperate for attention?”

It takes me a second to come back to the planet that doesn't revolve around my family. Then I remember the kiss, and I know that she knows.

How is it that you can spend hours trying to get someone who's giving you the silent treatment to respond, yet somehow, right when you forget to obsess about them for one goddamn minute,
then
they want to talk?

“I saw you on TMZ tonight, kissing that girl. I just want to let you know how desperate that looked,” Magnolia snaps. We've ducked into the upstairs game room so we can raise our voices.

I knew that the kiss with Rey would get back to Magnolia—and maybe that's partly why I did it—but they don't keep cable or computers in the house, so I thought it would at least take a day.

It's been a long night.
I want to say something hurtful. Even though, at the same time, all I want is to hit rewind. “You're the one who's avoiding me—what am I supposed to think? I saw you that night sneaking around with your surfer boyfriend—Keanu or Kahuna or whatever the hell his name is. So don't get all holier-than-thou.”

I know it's not the same thing, but right now I don't care.

“How could I be so wrong about someone?” She yells this, almost like she's angry with herself. She's now sitting slumped on the air hockey table, rubbing her eyes, obviously crazy tired. Her makeup blurs underneath her lashes.

In my head I'm racing through all the smart points to make. In my head I ask her,
How was I supposed to know you would care what I do? You've been avoiding me like I had rabies ever since you found out about my family. I've tried talk to you, text you, but you don't respond. Do you expect me to read your mind?

But all I say accusingly is, “You didn't answer my texts.”

She looks up. “I've been trying to sort out my feelings.”

“Oh, I see.”

“And I didn't want to get into it over text.”

“Didn't want to get into what? That you think I'm trash? That's pretty easy to type.” I act out texting with my fingers,
I THINK UR TRASH
. I don't know why, but I'm angrier toward her than I thought I'd be if I could get her to talk to me. Maybe it's just my family. But I feel like I want to get under her skin. Make this her fault for ignoring me. Make her say words I want to hear.

She brushes aside my blame with a wave of her hand. “I'm sorry if I wasn't on your unbelievably fast timeline for getting over things! One day you're telling me your family's dead, and the next they're running up onstage. That's no big deal, right? That's how you act! So I shouldn't think it's a big deal either? And then seeing you tonight on TV with that girl . . . I mean, is it all an act with you? Is that it?”

She's making me into a husk of a person.

“Look, I don't know how to say or explain things right. We never talk like this in my family. I've always been better at doing than I am at talking.” I stare at her, hoping she can just understand what I'm going to say. “That girl tonight, that wasn't real.”

Magnolia gets up from the hockey table. And she laughs. But it's a sad laugh. It's full of disappointment.

“It wasn't real,” she repeats. “It was special effects. It was an optical illusion. I know—it was a performance.”

“Partly.” I stand up too. “Partly it was a performance. It was about something Catherine said. I know you think it's stupid, but she told me I had to do something to, like, save my brand.” I'm basically watching myself talk at this point, wondering why I think this is going to make things better.

“Your ‘brand'? Are you a breakfast cereal?”

“I can't go home. If I go home, it's all over for me.” I want her to understand this so badly.

But she bends forward and crosses her arms on the edge of the hockey table, sinking her head down into them. Muffled, she says, “I don't get how someone can do that. Lie about who they used to be, who they are, be someone different from one second to the next. Believe me, I tried. That was my whole goal coming on here! I was going to try to lie about myself and couldn't pull it off. But you're totally fine with making the whole world into an extension of this stupid show.”

“If you think I'm such a fake,” I tell her, “then I guess there's nothing I can say. But if you think I wasn't being real with you, you're wrong. I meant every bit of it.”

She turns her head to the side so she's looking at me, and we're just staring at each other quietly for this instant. It's like a crack in the wall, like I can see a little light coming through. Maybe the girl who felt like my girl is still in there—if I can only reach through and go back to where we were before. I walk toward the table. I'm gonna get to her. Her dark eyes look up at me from under her hair. I can still make this right.

“Maggie,” I say.

We both jump a little when the door to the room creaks open and a bleary Mila, hair up in a pillowcase, walks in. “Late game of foosball?” she asks.

“We're kind of in the middle of something,” I say.

“It's hard for me to believe you're not at the end of something. I can't believe she's even talking to you.”

Magnolia curls up. “We're just finishing. I'm going to bed soon.”

“This is between us,” I throw in.

Mila just shrugs and says, “It's kinda between you and everyone with an Internet connection, buddy.” Then she gives Magnolia a look, and leaves.

When we're alone again, I discover that Magnolia's expression has gone distant. She's rested her head on her shoulder like she's made up her mind. “I think the problem underneath it all is you're not true to yourself,” she says flatly. “It makes me doubt what I feel about you.”

This girl operates from a kind of pure place. Not pure like some of the churchy types back home, who put on their own kind of performance. It's not like some set of rules she's following for a gold star. It's a thing that's born out of her own self. It reminds me of when Leander told me about that Greek god who holds the Earth on his shoulders, and I was like,
Okay, but what the hell is
he
standing on?
With her, she's standing on some immovable ground inside herself. If I push against it, I'm going to collapse like a thin cardboard person.

I start to feel angry, really angry that she can't see what it's like for us regular humans, who never found a place like that to stand.

I say, “You think you know everything when all you know is your own situation.”

“And you think you don't deserve anything,” she says, “so you're afraid if people see the real you, they'll think that too. You're great; you just don't really believe it. If you did, you wouldn't need this show. Winning this show isn't
that
important.”

It's the snobby way she says this that riles me. It's like she's talking about whether I'm going to make the school soccer team. Like the fact that I
need
to win is a personal flaw. This is one judgment of my shortcomings too many. All I can see now is the giant gulf between us.

I pace the room. “Your whole life, your biggest worry has been whether you'll grow up to make the best, most perfect choice from your millions of options. You grew up in a nice house. In a nice place. You were comfortable. You were safe. You had parents who wanted the best for you, even if you had to lose one of them too soon. People thought you were smart. Your mom's a bit much, but she'd obviously do anything for you. It's all good for you to float above it all because there's no real risk for you, is there? So which one of us is really the fake here?”

From the look on her face, I can tell she's not sure if I'm wrong.

I keep going. “The consequences for me are real. When I fail, there isn't going to be a net to catch me.” I have so much anger, I want to hurt her, get to that part of her she thinks is so superior and untouchable.

“Everybody has other options,” she says, but yeah, she isn't sure.

“The minute they vote me off, what do you think my chances are? I don't have anything. All I'm good at is music. I was ten when I started drinking. I've got a juvy record instead of a diploma. Nobody ever expected anything more from me until the night Leander caught me breaking into his music shop. Guess what? His store might not make it past the year, but I suppose you would also tell him that his talent will take him as far as he needs to go.”

Magnolia looks upset. It doesn't feel like winning. But still, I keep talking.

“People at home live just to get through the day. I've never known anything else. Until I got on this show, then it was like someone showed me a kind of map of the world I never saw before, directions I never even imagined. The difference between you and me is that you were born with the whole atlas.” It's like I can't stop talking until I know I've torn everything all the way down. “You don't know anything about me. It's like I said that first night I met you—someone like you will never understand.”

Magnolia takes off the Pat Graves sweatshirt we all got at the premiere, like she's starting to undress for the night. The motion feels defeated. I think she's accepted what I've said and now she's packing it in.

“You're right,” she says. “All the nervousness I feel about this show was this luxurious paranoia about staying true to myself. And yes, yes, I'm sheltered. I know I am. But I swear, Ford, I get that you've had a hard time, and I see how you could think the world's against you. I'd make it all go away if I could. But then who would you be?”

I don't have an answer for her.

It seems like there's nothing more to say.

We just kind of squint at each other in the halogen light of this room. It's like we're a couple of vampires up too late, who can't stand to look at each other in such a clear bright light.