Forgotten: A Novel (29 page)

Chapter 1

Must Love Music

T
his is how
I lose my dream job.

It’s the day before my thirtieth birthday when I
get the call from
The Line,
only
the
most prestigious music magazine in the world,
maybe the universe. OK, maybe
Rolling Stone
is
number one, but
The Line
is definitely second.

I’ve wanted to write for
The
Line
for as long as I can remember. It still blows me away that
people get paid to work there since I’d pay good money just to be allowed to sit
in on a story meeting. Hell, I’d sit in on a recycling committee meeting if it’d
get me in the front door.

So, it’s no surprise that I almost fall off my
chair when I see their ad in the Help Wanted section one lazy Sunday morning. I
sprint to my computer and wait impatiently for my dial-up to connect. (Yes, I
still have dial-up. It’s all this struggling writer can afford.) When the
scratchy whine silences, I call up their webpage and click on the “Work for Us!”
tab, as I have too many unsuccessful times before, and there it is. A job, a
real job!

The Line
seeks self-motivated
writer for staff position. Must love music more than money because this job
pays jack, brother! Send your CV and music lover credentials to
[email protected].

I spend the next twenty-four hours agonizing over
the “music lover credentials” portion of my application. How am I supposed to
narrow down my musical influences to the three lines provided? Then again, how
am I going to get a job writing about music if I can’t even list my favorite
bands?

In the end I let iTunes pick for me. If I’ve
listened to a song 946 times (which, incidentally, is the number of times I’ve
apparently played KT Tunstall’s “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree”), I must
really like it, right? Not a perfect system, but better than the
over-thought-out lists sitting balled up in my wastepaper basket.

And it works. A few days later I receive an email
with a written interview attached. I have forty-eight hours to complete the
questionnaire and submit it. If I pass, I’ll get a real, in-person interview on
The Line
’s premises! Just the thought of it has
me doing a happy dance all over my living room.

Thankfully, the questionnaire is a breeze.
Pick five Dylan songs and explain why they’re great.
Pick five Oasis songs and explain why they suck. What do
you think the defining sounds of this decade will be? Go see a band you’ve
never seen before and write five hundred words about it. Buy a CD from the
country section and listen to it five times. Write five hundred words on how
it made you feel.

I stay up all night chain-smoking cigarettes and
working my way through two of my roommate Joanne’s bottles of red wine. She’s
always buying wine (as an “investment,” she says), but she never drinks any of
it. What a waste!

When the sun comes up, I read through what I’ve
written, and if I do say so myself, it’s a thing of beauty. There isn’t a
question I stutter over, an opinion I don’t have. I’ve even written it in
The Line
’s signature style.

I’ve been waiting for this opportunity forever, and
I’m not going to fuck it up.

At least, not yet.

The next two weeks are agony. My brain is spinning
with negative thoughts. Maybe I don’t really know anything about music? Maybe
they don’t want someone who can merely parrot their signature style? Maybe
they’re looking for some new style, and I’m not it? Maybe they should call me
before I lose my goddamn mind!

When the spinning becomes overwhelming, I try to
distract myself. I clean our tiny apartment. I invent three new ramen noodle
soup recipes. I see a few bands and write reviews for the local papers I
freelance for. I clean out my closet, sort all my mail, and return phone calls
I’ve been putting off for months. I even write a thank-you letter to my
ninety-year-old grandmother for the birthday check she sent me on my sister’s
birthday.

I spend the rest of the time alternating between
obsessively reading
The Line
’s website (including
six years of back issues I’ve read countless times before) and watching a young
star’s life explode all over the tabloids.

Amber Sheppard, better known as “The Girl Next
Door” (or “TGND” for short), after the character she played from ages fourteen
to eighteen on the situation comedy called—wait for it—
The
Girl Next Door,
is Hollywood’s latest It Girl. When her show was
canceled, she starred in two successful teen horror flicks, followed by a
serious, Oscar-nominated performance for her turn as Catherine Morland in
Northanger Abbey.
She’s been working nonstop since,
and has four movies scheduled to premiere in the next five months.

When she wrapped the fourth film just after her
twenty-third birthday, she announced she was taking a well-deserved, undisclosed
period of time off to relax and regroup.

And that’s when the shit hit the fan.

Anyone really seeking relaxation would rent a cabin
in the woods and drop out of sight. But not TGND. She partied all night, slept
all day, and dropped twenty pounds from one photograph to the next. There were
rumors appearing on such reliable sources as people.com, TMZ
,
and Perez Hilton that she’s into some serious drugs. There were
other rumors, of the Enquiring kind, that her family had staged an intervention
and packed her off to rehab. It seems like there’s a new story, a new outrageous
photograph, a new website devoted to her every move every day, and I read them
all.

Such is the fuel that keeps my idling brain from
going crazy as I wait and wait.

The call from
The Line
finally comes the day before my birthday at 8:55 in the morning.

Mornings are never good for me, and this morning my
fatigue is compounded by the combination of another bottle of Joanne’s
investment wine, and the riveting all-night television generated by TGND’s
escape from rehab (turns out
The Enquirer
was
right). She lasted two days before peeling off in her white Ford hybrid SUV, and
the paparazzi who follow her every move captured it from a hundred angles. It
was O.J. all over again (sans
,
you know,
the whole murdering your ex-wife thing), and the
footage played in an endless loop on CNN, etc., for hours. I’d finally tired of
it around three. The phone shatters my REM sleep what feels like seconds
later.

“Mmmph?”

“Is this Kate Sandford?”

“Mmm.”

“This is Elizabeth from
The
Line
calling? We wanted to set up an interview?” Her voice rises at
the end of each sentence, turning it into a question.

I sit bolt upright, my heart in my throat. “You
do?”

“Are you available at nine tomorrow?”

Tomorrow. My birthday. Damn straight I’m
available.

“Yes. Yes, I’m available.”

“Great. So, come to our offices at nine and ask for
me? Elizabeth?”

“That’s great. Perfect. I’ll see you then.”

I throw back the covers, spring from bed, and break
into my happy dance.

This is the best birthday present ever! I’m going
to nail this! After years and years of writing for whoever would have me, I’m
going to finally get to write for a real magazine! For
the
magazine. Yes, yes, yes!

“Katie, what the hell are you doing?” Joanne is
standing in the doorway looking pissed. Her curly orange hair forms a halo
around her pale face. She looks like Little Orphan Annie, all grown up. Her robe
is even that red-trimmed-with-white combination that Annie always wears.

“Celebrating?”

“Do you know what time it is?”

I check the clock by my bedside. “Nine?”

“That’s right. And what time do I start work
today?”

I know this is a trick question.

“You don’t?”

“That’s right, it’s my day off. So why, pray tell,
are you dancing around and whooping like you’re at a jamboree?”

Despite the inquisition, my heart gives a happy
beat. “Because I just got the most fabulous job interview in the world.”

Joanne isn’t diverted by my obvious happiness. “I
think the answer you were looking for is, ‘Because I’m an inconsiderate roommate
who doesn’t care about anyone but herself.’ ”

“Joanne . . .”

“Just keep it down.” She turns on her heel and
storms away.

As I watch her leave, I wonder for the hundredth
time why I’m still living with her. (I answered her in-search-of-a-roommate ad
on craigslist three years ago, and we’ve had a love-hate relationship ever
since.) Of course, she’s clean, pays her share of the rent on time, and never
wakes me up when I’m trying to sleep in because she’s yelping with joy.

Then again, I’ve never seen Joanne yelp with joy .
. .

Ohmygod! I have an interview at
The Line
!

I resume my whooping dance with the sound off.

I
spend the
rest of the day vacillating between extreme nervousness and supreme confidence.
In between emotional fluctuations, I agonize over what I should wear to the
interview. I lay the options out on my bed:

1) Black standard business suit that my
mother gave me for my university graduation. She thought I’d have all kinds of
job interviews to wear it to. Sorry, Mom.

2) Skinny jeans, kick-ass boots, T-shirt from
an edgy, obscure nineties band, black corduroy blazer.

3) Black clingy skirt and gray faux-cashmere
sweater with funky jewelry.

I settle on option three, hoping it strikes the
right balance between professional and what I think the atmosphere at
The Line
will be: hip, serious, but not too
serious.

In the late afternoon, I receive a text from my
second-best friend, Greer.

U free 2nite?

No. Very important blah, blah am.

Must celebrate bday.

Bday 2morrow.

Aware. Exam in 2 days. Party 2nite.

No.

Insisting.

Must sleep. Need beauty for blah, blah.

Never be pretty enough to rely on looks for
blah, blah. Still insisting.

LOL. Need new friend. Still can’t.

Expecting u @ F. @ 8. Won’t take no for
answer.

No.

LOL. 1 drink.

It never ends with 1.

Will 2nite, promise.

Can’t.

I’m $$.

Well . . . maybe just 1.

Excellent. CU @ 8.

I throw down the phone with a smile, and try to
decide whether any of my outfits will do for a night out with my university-aged
friends.

I’m a nearly thirty-year-old with university-aged
friends because the only way I’ve been able to survive since I graduated (and
the bank stopped loaning me money) is to keep living like I did when I was a
student, right down to scamming as much free food and alcohol as possible on the
university wine-and-cheese circuit. I met Greer this way two groups of friends
ago. She’s the only one who stuck post-graduation. She thinks I’m a fellow
graduate student who writes music articles on the side to pay for my education
and that tomorrow’s my twenty-fifth birthday.

My own-age friends have all moved to nicer parts of
the city. They work in law firms and investment banks, have dark circles under
their eyes and pale skin. Their annual salaries are twice what it cost me to
educate myself, and the only wine and cheeses they go to are the cocktail
parties given by their firms to woo new clients.

They mostly don’t approve of the way I live—the
part they know about anyway—but I mostly don’t care. Because I’m doing it. I’m
living my childhood dream of being a music writer. It’s not a well-paying life,
but it’s the life I’ve chosen. On most days, I’m happy.

If I get this job at
The
Line,
I’ll be over the freaking moon.

S
hortly
after eight, I meet Greer at our favorite pub in my number two outfit: skinny
jeans tucked into burgundy boots, obscure-band T-shirt, and black corduroy
blazer to keep the spring night at bay.