Fireworks Read online

  “Hey,” Olivia said, holding her hands up to cut me off. “Uh-uh.” She looked me in the eyes. “First things first: you are never going to be your mom, do you hear me? The fact that you’re even worried about being your mom means there’s no way you’re going to wind up like your mom.”

  I smirked. “I don’t think it works exactly like that.”

  “I think it does,” Olivia said firmly, leaning her head back against the seat. Both of us were quiet for a moment. Through the window of Burger Delight, I could see the rest of our friends still inside, laughing and joking around just like we’d done every Friday since junior high, just like we’d all keep doing for the foreseeable future. That had never felt like a bad thing to me before.

  “I’m scared about being apart, too. You know that, right?” Olivia asked softly, tucking one leg underneath her and turning to face me. “I’m terrified. I don’t even know if I exist without you.”

  I shook my head. “Of course you do.”

  “We’ll see,” she said, looking down at her lap for a moment before raising her head. “But I also know it’ll be okay. I’m probably not even going to get that Guy Monroe thing, first of all—it’s a total long shot. But no matter where I wind up, obviously you’ll come visit me all the time.”

  She was right, I knew. I couldn’t imagine a time when I wouldn’t drop everything to be with Olivia, when I wouldn’t skip job interviews to keep her company at an audition or spend all night on a Greyhound to see her in a show. We were best friends; we were there for each other. That part of it would never change. Still, I knew it would never be exactly like this again, the two of us on one side and the whole world on the other. It was part of growing up; it wasn’t surprising. I just wasn’t sure if I was ready to say good-bye.

  “You sleeping over?” Olivia asked, turning the key in the ignition. The Toyota gurgled to tenuous life.

  “Yup,” I replied, so quiet I wasn’t sure if she heard me. “Let’s go home.”

  FOUR

  I finally started the job-search rounds in Jessell the next morning, dutifully dropping my application at Waffle House and Pizza Planet, a video store, and a place that sold pet supplies. “We’ll call you,” the skinny, oily-looking manager said unconvincingly, as I tried not to wrinkle my nose against the overwhelming smell of dog pee.

  By the time I got back to the empty house, all I wanted to do was sit in front of the TV and not talk to anyone, but I had barely closed the door behind me when the bell rang. I was surprised, first at the sound itself—we didn’t exactly have the kind of neighbors who just popped by—and second to find Olivia on the other side of it, her cheeks flushed and dark eyes bright. She hardly ever came over here, especially with no advance warning. If our friendship was a movie, the set was her house, not mine. “Hi,” I said, swinging the door open. She was wearing shorts and a pair of sneakers with giant platforms, her shiny dark hair slipping out of a ponytail. “You okay?”

  “Why are you not answering the phone?” she asked.

  I frowned. “I just walked in,” I said slowly. “I was out looking for a job.”

  “I think I got one,” Olivia said, her face glowing bright, “with Guy Monroe.”

  “What!” My mouth dropped open. “Really?”

  “Really.” Olivia made a funny face, eyes wide and tongue stuck out on one side of her mouth. “Really really.”

  “What! That’s amazing!” I flung my arms around her, disbelieving, a hundred different emotions ricocheting around inside my body. “That’s beyond amazing. What’s a word for beyond amazing?” I pulled back, scanning her face. “What happens now?”

  “I have to go back to Orlando at the beginning of next week,” Olivia explained. “They’re going to put me up in an apartment with the other girls so we can learn the songs and routines and do media training and stuff. And then we go into a recording studio, I guess? And at the end of the summer is the tour.”

  “I love how casually you’re saying that,” I teased her. “The tour. Oh, you know, just your national tour with Tulsa-fucking-MacCreadie.”

  “I don’t feel casual,” Olivia said. “I do not feel casual at all. Like, what was the biggest thing I did before now, Cinderella? Like, this is not freaking Cinderella.”

  “You’re freaking Cinderella,” I said, trying to picture it: Olivia cutting an album, Olivia in a music video like the ones we watched after school on MTV. Olivia walking the red carpet at the Grammys, and me back in Jessell, pointing at the screen: I know that girl. “I cannot get over this.”

  “You were my good luck charm,” Olivia told me. “Is that lame?”

  “It’s totally lame,” I said, “but who cares? This is amazing!” It was amazing; it was incredible, it was unlike anything I’d ever dreamed about. But there was a tiny part of me that was sad, too—after all, this meant she’d be leaving home way before we’d planned, off on adventures I could only ever dream of—the rest of our lives arriving immediately, hers with a bang and mine with a whimper.

  “We should celebrate,” I said, pushing the thought away. I wanted to be properly excited—I was properly excited—but that was harder if I was feeling sorry for myself. “Should we get drunk?”

  “It’s three-thirty in the afternoon,” Olivia pointed out, laughing, and I was about to tell her that famous people boozed at all hours of the day and night when the phone rang.

  Grabbing the receiver off the wall in the kitchen, I breathlessly asked, “Hello?”

  “Is this Dana Cartwright?” asked an unfamiliar woman’s voice.

  “Yes,” I said slowly, twisting the cord distractedly around one finger. “Who’s this?”

  “Hi there, Dana,” the voice said warmly. “This is Juliet Evanston, Guy Monroe’s assistant. I’m calling with some good news.”

  I was confused. “Are you—are you looking for Olivia?” I asked, looking at her across the kitchen; she peered back at me, brow furrowed. Who is it? she mouthed.

  “I’m looking for you,” Juliet told me. “I’m calling because we’d like you to come join us in Orlando and be a part of Daisy Chain.”

  For ten full seconds I was silent. I honestly thought I’d heard her wrong. “Dana?” Juliet said, sounding unsure all of a sudden. “Are you there?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said finally. “Are you sure you have the right—?” I broke off, tried again. “I mean, at the audition I’m the one who sang—?”

  “‘Happy Birthday,’” Juliet supplied. “We know who you are, Dana.”

  Olivia was staring at me anxiously now, standing on one foot like a stork—perfectly still, though I could practically see the waves of energy vibrating off her.

  “What?” she said, out loud this time. “What?!”

  I waved my hand so she’d be quiet, listening as Juliet gave me the same details she must have given Olivia—the apartment, the media training, the tour. “I’m overnighting you a package with all this in writing,” she told me. “I know it’s a lot to take in.”

  “I—okay,” I said, in a voice that didn’t sound anything like normal. “Thank you.”

  Olivia was practically apoplectic by the time I hung up the phone. “Who was that?” she asked shrilly. “You look like you’re about to die.”

  I hesitated. For a moment I was weirdly worried she’d be mad at me—this was her rodeo, after all, the dream she’d been working toward since she was a toddler in a tutu. I was only ever meant to tag along. I didn’t want her to feel like I was trying to take something from her, like I’d stolen it out from underneath her when no one was looking; still, what could I possibly tell her besides the truth?

  “They picked me, too,” I said.

  “I—” Olivia blinked. “What?”

  “I’m not going to do it,” I said immediately. “But—that was Guy’s assistant person. They picked me, too.”

  “And you’re not going to do it?” Olivia’s eyes darkened. “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I’m not a pop star!” I said,
feeling like that should have been glaringly obvious. “I don’t perform. I’ve never even wanted to do anything like that! This is your deal, not mine. I don’t know why they picked me to begin with. It must be some weird mistake.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Olivia shook her head. “They saw something in you, that’s all. You have to come, I need you. It’ll be like if we’d gone to college together, but a million times better.”

  I let myself imagine it for a moment, adding myself to the images I’d conjured up of Olivia’s new life. I didn’t fit in there, even in my own imagination. In a lot of ways she was a shape-shifter: able to chameleon herself into Showbiz Olivia, to be whoever the situation demanded. I was just . . . myself.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I—what is even happening right now? No.”

  Olivia looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. “What are you going to do if you don’t do this?” she asked. “I mean it. I’m sincerely asking. Are you just gonna stay here forever?”

  It was a blunt truth, the kind of thing only Olivia could have said out loud to me. It was a slap in the face meant to bring me to my senses, and it worked. I looked around at the kitchen in my mom’s house—the linoleum peeling up by the refrigerator, the curtains above the sink that had gone yellowish from cigarette smoke. The empty vodka bottle poking out of the trash can, the one that hadn’t been there last night.

  I ran my hands through my messy hair, yanking at the tangles. I tried to be calm and rational and smart. Olivia had wanted this her whole life, but she didn’t truly need it. In a very real way, I did. Random and potentially disastrous as it was, this was the universe throwing me a life preserver. I’d have to be an idiot not to take it.

  I took a deep breath. “Okay, then,” I said. “Looks like we’re going to Orlando.”

  Olivia let out a loud, delighted squawk, then dashed across the room and flung her arms around me—all long limbs and strawberry shampoo hair—both of us laughing our heads off. I should have known she wouldn’t be upset. That wasn’t how our friendship worked.

  “I can’t believe this,” she said, twirling me around the kitchen. “It’s perfect. It’s the best thing.”

  I smiled and let her spin me, the dingy kitchen blurring before my eyes. Already I knew nothing was going to come of this. I had no training, no real talent. That I’d auditioned at all was a freaking mistake. But I couldn’t shake the feeling of warm possibility that was unpacking its suitcase inside me, the idea that maybe there was something out there for me after all.

  FIVE

  The address on the paperwork Guy’s assistant had sent us was for an apartment complex not far from the studios where we’d auditioned, a cluster of two-story stucco buildings arranged in a square with an in-ground swimming pool of questionable cleanliness at the center. The sun was already setting by the time Olivia pulled into the parking lot, the cast of pink and gold more forgiving than I suspected broad daylight might be. “Tulsa lives here?” I asked with no small amount of skepticism, peering from the buzzing neon sign identifying the complex as THE COCONUT PALMS to the low-rent strip mall across the boulevard.

  “Well, he used to,” Olivia said, in the clipped, efficient tone she used when she was nervous. “Not anymore, obviously. Which apartment is it, again?” Then, pulling a sheaf of papers out of her purse before I could answer: “Wait, never mind. I have it.”

  A good thing, too, since I actually had no idea what I’d done with my copy of the information Juliet had sent us. I thought I’d packed it, but my stuff was all in a jumble—I didn’t have a suitcase big enough to fit everything I needed for the trip down here, so I’d shoved the overflow into a beach tote, plus a couple of grocery bags. The plastic handles cut into my wrists now as we climbed the metal steps to the outdoor walkway that ran along the second story of the building, Olivia knocking a cheerful little tattoo on the front door of apartment 208.

  “You’re here!” trilled the blond girl who opened it, flinging her arms up in a cheerleader’s V like she’d just stuck a landing. She was tall and pretty, dressed in expensive-looking jeans and a T-shirt that showed off a jewel in her belly button, her hair so thick and straight and shiny you could have used it to sell prenatal vitamins. “Ash and I got set up in one of the bedrooms already. We figured you guys wouldn’t mind.” Then she shook her head. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. Hi. I’m Kristin Aires. I’m in Daisy Chain with you guys. Clearly.”

  Something about her—the clearly, maybe, or the fact that she said her name as one word, like millionaires—irritated me right away, but Olivia flung her arms around Kristin like they were long-lost friends and said, “Hiiii!” I was surprised—usually Olivia hated being touched by anybody who wasn’t me or her immediate family—but then again, I reminded myself, as I remembered how she’d acted at the audition, this was Showbiz Olivia. The rules were bound to be a little different here.

  There were four of us in Guy Monroe’s Daisy Chain, Olivia and me plus Kristin and a tall, pretty girl named Ashley Coombs, who was black and from a suburb outside Chicago that sounded rich. All four of us were staying in this apartment with Charla, the choreographer who’d run the dance audition and who met us in the living room now. “Hey, ladies,” she said, smiling warmly; she had an easygoing, big-sister quality to her, the opposite of Juliet’s chilly efficiency. She was dressed in leggings and a T-shirt that said HOUSTON BALLET, with a long, flowy cardigan overtop. “Let’s get you settled in.”

  The apartment was bare-bones but huge, with a master bedroom that Charla slept in and then two smaller ones for the four of us, connected by a bathroom with double sinks and tilework in a seasick shade of green. The couch and loveseat were upholstered in plasticky pink fabric that seemed to have been chosen specifically for its stain-repelling qualities; a watery painting of palm trees was hung above the TV. A laminate breakfast bar separated the kitchen from the living space.

  Olivia dropped our bags in the bedroom we’d be sharing, which was outfitted with a pair of twin beds and a couple of windows that didn’t actually open. The AC whooshed noisily from a vent over the door. Still, it was ours, mine and Olivia’s. “This isn’t so bad, is it?” she asked, bouncing a bit on one of the mattresses and grinning across the room at me. “I mean, I can live with this.”

  “Me too,” I agreed, smiling back at her. It wasn’t until I felt myself relax that I realized I’d been clenching my jaw, my shoulders migrating upward to somewhere in the general vicinity of my ears.

  Once we were all unpacked, Charla made popcorn and had us sit in the living room and go around in a circle saying where we were from, our favorite song, and what our hopes were for Daisy Chain. It felt like summer camp, which I’d never actually gone to—like we should have been huddled around a fire instead of a prefurnished college apartment with a noisy highway right outside. Kristin put the soundtrack to the musical Rent on a boom box on the shelf. She and Ashley both had performing backgrounds like Olivia’s, and I dug into the popcorn as references flew through the air: Bernadette Peters and Tommy Mottola, whose range had how many octaves and who’d auditioned for which directors in New York. I nodded and tried to look interested, hoping nobody would notice that I had exactly zero to add.

  “I hope our first album goes platinum,” Kristin said earnestly when it was her turn to say what she wanted for Daisy Chain. Ashley hoped for a number one single, and Olivia said that all she really wanted was to make people happy by performing, which I suspected was probably a lie and fully intended to tease her about later. She was using her audition voice again, I noticed, pitched way higher than she normally spoke. I was going to tease her about that, too. I couldn’t wait until later, when we could close our bedroom door and compare notes.

  “I’m Dana,” I said dumbly when it was my turn, although obviously we didn’t have to introduce ourselves. “I’m from Jessell, same as Olivia. My favorite song is ‘Tangerine,’ by Led Zeppelin, which Olivia hates.”

  “I don’t hate it!” Olivia protested from ac
ross the circle. “I just think it’s, like, a weird, clangy, old-man song about a breakup.” Then she tilted her head to the side. “Okay, I kind of hate it.”

  “Uh-huh.” I grinned. “As for what I hope happens with Daisy Chain . . . I don’t know, really. I guess I’m kind of just here to have fun and see what happens.”

  Right away I could tell that was the wrong answer. Kristin’s eyebrows crawled toward her hairline. Olivia looked down at the floor. I felt myself blush. Just because I was here on a lark and weird luck didn’t mean the rest of them were. “And of course I want the group to be successful,” I added lamely.

  Charla went to her room not long after that, but the rest of us stayed in the living room, where I ate the rest of the popcorn in its entirety while the three of them chatted, listing their accomplishments, sizing one another up. Kristin had been in a series of Wendy’s commercials when she was a toddler. Ashley had been dancing ballet since she was three. My attention had started to wander when Kristin looked at me shrewdly. “What about you, Dana?” she asked, tilting her head to the side in curiosity that might have been genuine. “What shows have you done?”

  “Um, not much, really,” I admitted. “I’m kind of new to performing.”

  “Dana’s a natural,” Olivia said, and I smiled.

  Kristin was nodding. “We heard how you weren’t even going to audition, that Guy just picked you randomly. Ash and I figured you must be super hot or something.”

  I shrugged in what I hoped was a self-deprecating kind of way, feeling myself chafe and trying not to show it. “Yeah,” I said, holding my hands up. “I don’t know what the deal was, either.”

  “It’s weird,” Kristin agreed. “Well, I hope you’re a fast learner.”

  I bit my tongue and smiled. “I hope so, too.”

  “Okay,” I said to Olivia as we got ready for bed a little later, digging through the pile of clothes I’d dumped on the floor and unearthing a pair of boxer shorts to sleep in. “Did it seem to you like Kristin’s gonna strangle me with a pair of pantyhose if it turns out I’m not as good as you guys?”