It was hard to remember the first time Mom said it, but I’m pretty sure that was the moment it all started to fall apart.
“Don’t hold me in suspense,” Isabel said sarcastically. “What did he do?”
“Not him,” I said. “Me. What did I do.”
What had I done? I must’ve commented cleverly on something in the newspaper, done well enough in school to get bumped forward a grade, solved some puzzle they hadn’t thought I could solve. One day, Mom said for the first time, half a smile on her long, plain face that always looked tired—perhaps from being married to greatness for so long—“Guess who he’s taking after.”
The beginning of the end.
I shrugged. “I left my brother behind in school. My dad wanted me to come to the lab with him. He wanted me to take college classes. He wanted me to be him.” I stopped, thinking of all the times I’d disappointed him. Silence was always, always worse than shouting. “I wasn’t him. He was a genius. I’m not.”
“Big deal.”
“It wasn’t, to me. But it was to him. He wanted to know why I didn’t even try. Why it was I went running the other way.”
“What was the other way?” Isabel asked.
I stared at her, silent.
“Don’t give me that look. I’m not trying to find out who you are. I don’t care who you are. I just want to know why it is you are the way you are.”
Just then, the end of the table jostled, and I looked up into the bright, pimpled faces of three preteen girls. They had three matching pairs of half-moon eyes curved up in three matching expressions of excitement. The faces were unfamiliar but their postures were not; I immediately knew, with sinking certainty, what they were going to say.
Isabel looked at them. “Uh, hello, if this is about Girl Scout cookies, you can leave. Actually, if it’s about anything, you can leave.”
The ringleader preteen, who had hoop earrings—ankle holders, Victor had called them—thrust a pink notebook at me. “I cannot believe it. I knew you weren’t dead. I knew it! Would you sign that? Please?”
The other two chorused “omigod” softly.
I guess what I should’ve been feeling was dread at being recognized. But all I could think while looking at them was that I’d agonized in a hotel room to write these brutal, nuanced songs, and my fan base was three squealing ten-year-old girls wearing High School Musical T-shirts. NARKOTIKA for kindergartners.
I looked at them and said, “Excuse me?”
Their faces fell, just a little, but the girl with the hoop earrings didn’t withdraw the notepad. “Please,” she said. “Would you autograph it? We won’t bother you after that, I swear. I died when I heard ‘Break My Face.’ It’s my ringtone. I love it so bad. It’s, like, the best song, ever. I cried when you went missing. I didn’t eat for days. And I added my signature to the petition for people who believed you were still alive. Oh my God, I can’t even believe it. You’re alive.”
One of the girls behind her was actually crying, blinded by the sheer emotional good fortune of finding me with my heart still beating.
“Oh,” I said, and proceeded to lie smoothly. “You think I’m—yeah. I get that a lot. It’s been a while. But no, I’m not.” I felt Isabel’s eyes on me.
“What?” Now the hoop-earring girl’s face fell. “You look just like him. Really cute.” She flushed a shade of red so deep it had to be painful.
“Thanks.” Please just go away.
Hoop-earring girl said, “You’re really not him?”
“I’m really not. You don’t know how much I’ve heard that, since the news story.” I shrugged apologetically.
“Can I at least take a picture with my phone?” she asked. “Just so I can tell my friends about it?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, uneasy.
“That means get out of here,” Isabel said. “Like, now.”
The girls shot Isabel foul looks before turning and huddling around one another. We could still hear their voices clearly. “He looks just like him,” one of the girls said wistfully.
“I think it is him,” hoop-earring girl said. “He just doesn’t want to be bothered. He ran away to escape the tabloids.”
Isabel’s eyes burned on me, waiting for an answer.
“Mistaken identity,” I told her.
The girls had gotten back to their seats. Hoop-earring girl looked over the back of the booth and said, “I love you anyway, Cole!” before ducking back down.
The other two girls squealed.
Isabel said, “Cole?”
Cole. I was back where I started. Cole St. Clair.
As we left, the girls took my pic with their cell phones, anyway.
Beginning. of. the. end.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
• SAM •
I had never worked so hard on my music as I did the first two hours in the studio: Once Dmitra had decided that I wasn’t an Elliott Smith wannabe, she shifted into high gear. We went over verses once, twice, three times, sometimes just trying a different arrangement, sometimes recording additional strumming guitar to go over my fingerpicking, sometimes adding percussive effects. On some tracks, I recorded over my voice with harmonies, sometimes more than once, until I was my very own pack of Sams crooning in polyphonic splendor.
It was brilliant, surreal, exhausting. I was beginning to feel how little sleep I’d gotten the night before.
“Why don’t you take five?” Dmitra suggested after a few hours. “I’ll work on mixing what we’ve done so far and you can get up, piss, get some coffee. You’re starting to sound a little flat, and your girlfriend looks like she misses you.”
Through the headphones, I heard Grace say indignantly, “I was just sitting here!”
I grinned and slid the headphones off. Leaving both them and my guitar behind, I came back into the main room. Grace, looking as exhausted as I felt, lounged on the sofa with the dog at her feet. I stood next to her while Dmitra showed me the shape of my voice on the computer screen. Grace hugged my h*ps and rested her cheek on my leg. “You sound amazing from out here.”
Dmitra clicked a button, and my voice, compressed and harmonized and beautified, came through the speakers. I sounded—not like me. No…like me. But me, if I was on a radio. Me from outside myself. I stuffed my hands into my armpits, listening. If it was that easy to make a guy sound like a proper singer, you’d think everybody would be in the studio.