Liam hopped into the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition. The radio came on, playing “Bubble Gum Pop.” Liam banged his head on the steering wheel. “It’s impossible to escape this song; it’s everywhere! It’s not even safe to turn on the radio anymore.” Maybe he noticed the downcast expression on my face, because he sighed and added, “The song is kind of a guilty pleasure.”
I didn’t want to talk about the song or my career. Since I’d left Devonport half a year earlier, my career had consumed my life. Even if our car ride would only last a couple hours, I was psyched just to spend time with someone my own age who wasn’t a professional performer, or an adult who only dealt with me on a business level and always expected me to behave like an adult.
I said, “Fuck the song. How the hell is your life?” Please, tell me anything about you, I wonder about you all the time. It’s SO unfair, liking you so much more than you seem to like me. “Could we just drop the banter and get to know each other like normal people?”
There was a slight upturn of Liam’s lips, like he was flattered—and relieved. The VW bus ambled its way on to the interstate as Liam talked. His voice was really deep and sweet; I was surprised not to have noticed before. I could feel my heartbeat accelerating just from the sound of his voice, from the sheer nearness of him, his musky smell. “Well, whadya wanna know? I’m spending the summer in Woods Hole; some school buddies and I have rented this basic shack. We’ve all got jobs lined up, as waiters, cashiers, lifeguards, whatever. I tried to get a lifeguard job but I wasn’t quite a strong enough swimmer. But Dad was nice enough to throw some bucks my way to cover my portion of the rent and I was lucky, I scored an internship at a marine biology lab, which is cool because I think that’s gonna be my minor at school—”
“You must be really smart,” I interrupted. “Like that Anna Karenina chick. She was wicked smart but kinda plowed on without thinking sometimes, right?”
Liam looked over at me. “Uh, yeah,” he said. He did not look impressed by my literary mention, but his surprised look gave way to an indifferent one, which was better than a look of What are you talking about, idiot? “Why do you ask? Are you thinking about going back to school?”
I chuckled mightily. “Hah! No way—I am not school material. I’m at the University of Life.”
“Spoken like a true Kayla clone.”
I tilted my seat back and stretched my bare feet onto the dashboard. “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult.”
“It’s neither.”
Silence for a while, but a comfortable one. As we drove past Boston, I stared at the Prudential Building in the distance, knowing that I would give up every pop princess perk that had been thrown my way for just one more day back in our house in Cambridge, with my sister. What would Lucky think of Liam? I could hear her assessment in my head: highly cute + attitudinal issues = be careful, Wonder!
Liam flicked around on the radio until he settled on a country station playing a twangy, sparse tune with a male voice that was very hard and melodic at the same time, full of emotion that didn’t sound Nashville-produced country-fake. “Merle Haggard,” Liam said. “The guy’s a fucking poet.”
“My sister said the same thing about him, ‘cept she didn’t say ‘fucking.’ But what kinda name for a guy is Merle?”
“I don’t know, Wonder.”
“Where did you learn so much about music?”
“My mom’s a program director at a public radio station in upstate New York. She doesn’t make any kind of money but she’s that rare person who actually loves what she does. She loves discovering new artists and playing eclectic music and not having to work off a playlist of corporate pop and rock chosen by advertisers. You’ll have to meet her sometime; you’ll like her.”
“I don’t think she’d be interested in my kind of music.” Liam wanted me to meet his mom!
“Meet you, not the pop princess. Dad thinks you’re a ‘good kid,’ as he calls it, so you’ll pass with Mom.”
Karl said nice things about me? Wow. I always had the feeling he only tolerated Kayla because she was his job, that he didn’t think she was a very nice person. But I could never glean what Karl really thought; he rarely offered opinions, was always just business. I said, “I thought your parents were divorced.”
“They are. But they’re still involved, if you get what I mean? Very strange relationship. They can’t live together, but they never seem to stop loving each other. They date other people, but there’s always like a few months at a time, whenever Dad isn’t touring with whatever artist he’s with, that he stays with Mom and it’s like . . . just weirdness.”
“That’s nice!” I said. “My family needs a communal Zoloft prescription just to be in the same room together. So even if your parents are like sometimes together, sometimes apart, at least you know they always have this base with each other, and they obviously really love and support you a lot.”
Liam shrugged. “Maybe. That’s a nice way of looking at it.”
Was I a fool to think that we were having an actual conversation, to think that maybe he could feel something for me if he was comfortable enough to let me in to his life like this?
As we got closer to the Cape I could smell a salty sea breeze. I was nervous and excited—I didn’t know how my return to Devonport would work out, but the thought of the quiet and hanging out with Cash and listening to the ocean roar wasn’t so bad.
I lifted my seat back up. Being in that comfortable reclining position was making me want to doze. Liam said, “You look tired. Should we stop?”
“I am sooooo tired, and hungry. You don’t know what I would do for a nap and a lobster roll. But I can take care of both those things when I get home. I really appreciate you driving me and all.”
“You’re welcome, I guess,” he said. He looked over at me for a sec. “I’ve never heard a pop princess say ‘Thank you’ before. Freaking me out.”
I turned my head to face the window, soaking up the scenery as we crossed the bridge over to Cape Cod. When we were little, Lucky, Charles, and I used to scream with excitement in the backseat of our station wagon as it crossed over this bridge every summer to usher in our family vacation on the Cape. Now, the bridge felt like it was leading me to an alien place—or perhaps I was the alien returning to it.
Liam turned off Route 6 toward Woods Hole, not toward Provincetown, which was the direction for Devonport. “One amazing lobster roll coming up,” he said.
“Oh, I was just fantasizing. I’m not allowed to eat that.”
“So you’re gonna be a too-skinny pop princess just cuz the record company says so?”
“You’re right—fuck it, I want a real meal.”
“At last, the protégé breaks free of the Kayla mold!”
Liam drove into a town I’d never been to. We passed by cranberry patches and rolling green fields and Snow White-pretty houses, just like all the other small Cape towns, until Liam pulled up at a seafood restaurant near the beach. He said, “Lobster roll and fries, right? You can come in, but you risk being tackled by a retainer-wearing army of Girl Scouts wanting autographs from the ‘Bubble Gum Pop’ girl.”
“Don’t care,” I said. “Gotta use the bathroom.” I tucked my hair under a baseball cap, still surprised to see the platinum color, and put on a pair of sunglasses. As further disguise, I had already changed out of pop princess slutwear and into a long flowing hippie girl skirt with a loose T-shirt.
I made it through the crowd of people at the restaurant and into the bathroom, my disguise fully working. But there was no escaping the pop princess. When I stepped into the stall, I saw a sticker plastered on the wall from a radio giveaway, a sticker with my face advertising Wonder Blake, “Bubble Gum Pop” IN STORES NOW. I sat down on the toilet, reading the graffiti that past toilet tenants had trailed below the sticker, each line written by a different pen and in different handwriting.
WONDER SUX.
OMG, Wonder is from Devonport!
&n
bsp; No Wonder she SUX.
Shut up, WONdER is da bomb diggiry!
She is a ho’!!!!!
Don’t be mean, she’s cute. She’s not as good as kayla, but who is?!? Kayla 4 eva!
WONDER ’N’ KAYLA ARE LEZBOS!
The bathroom stall criticism was not able to kill my appetite. Hey, this graffiti was kinder than the fancy music critics who had weighed in on my album, pronouncing it “pop garbage” and “addictively sweet and bad for you, just like the bubble gum of the song’s name.” Sometimes I wished I could meet one of those critics and just say, If you think my music is so sucky, why don’t you go out and do it?
I found Liam at the front door of the restaurant holding two paper bags of food, the yummy smell of which was making my stomach turn over with wanting. Real food! We hopped back into the VW bus and Liam drove through a series of streets that dead-ended at a deserted beach spot. He hauled the blanket out from the back of the bus for us to sit on. Dusk was settling over the sky and the beach was absent the usual flocks of tourists—there were just a few people walking down the shore, barefoot, holding hands. I waited exactly no more minutes and dug into the food. “Mmmm, sooooo good!” Food, with taste! I remember. Enjoy now, pay later!
“Atta girl,” Liam said. After we finished eating, we sat on the beach listening to the lapping of the water. Neither of us filled the air with chatter; we were both comfortable just sitting with our knees hugging our chests, the wind whipping our hair back, silent.
After the sun went over the horizon, I said, “I’d better get home or I am going to fall asleep right here.”
Liam said, “I have a sleeping bag in the back of the bus if you want to take a nap back there. I have a flashlight. I’ll read a book on the beach while you rest.”
I knew I should have said no, but Mom and Dad weren’t expecting me until tomorrow anyway—I had never called to say the plan for me to spend the night at the hotel in Boston and take a limousine service to Devonport in the morning had changed. I didn’t want this time with Liam to end, this time where I wasn’t a pop princess or a daughter or a sister, I was just me, normal, hanging out with a cute guy, so I said, “Okay.”
The back of the bus was a long space that was empty in the middle, with tools and CDs and food wrappers pushed to the sides. Liam laid the blanket down for me and placed the sleeping bag on top. I fell asleep within seconds.
When I woke up, darkness and starlight and ocean breeze were coming in through the windows. Liam was lying next to me, staring at me. A strand of hair hung in front of his face. I reached to tuck the strand behind his ear.
“What time is it?” I whispered.
“Just after nine. You’ve been asleep for two hours.” His hand tugged at a strand of my hair, then stroked my cheek.
I wanted to say thanks for letting me sleep, thanks for the nicest day of my pop princess life so far, but I didn’t. I placed my hands on his cheeks and brought his stubble mouth onto mine. So much for my pact with my hormones.
Thirty-four
I didn’t intend for Liam to be initiated into the Pop Princess Club. It’s not like I woke up that morning and thought, Hmm, today is the day the latest contender to be America’s sweetheart will become not so innocent. It just happened—basic making out that turned into much, much more, fast. I kept remembering the Merle Haggard country song that had played during our drive down from New Hampshire: “It’s Not Love (But It’s Not Bad).”
Later, after he’d driven me home and we sat in the bus in front of my house on the dark street, where I could see Dad through the living room window sitting at his computer and my parents’ upstairs bedroom window flashing TV light, signaling Mom’s whereabouts, my heart literally ached from needing my sister. This was the one time I should have been rushing through the front door and running upstairs to our bedroom. I would lock the door and sit on Lucky’s bed, and as I told her the story I would throw in spicy details that had never happened just to see the look of shock on her serious face. And I would listen to her lecture about my irresponsibility and appease her by indulging her in her favorite silly habit—brushing my hair until it crackled and then French-braiding it—and I would fall asleep with my Discman on my ears in the bed next to her as she read a book with her “Itty Bitty” Book Light clipped to it. Being able to tell Lucky about It might make the fact that It had happened feel less empty and ick and lonely.
For sure Liam didn’t want to talk about It. Afterward, we rode in silence the whole half-hour drive up to Devonport. The only words we spoke were when I gave him directions to the house, and when I said “Could you please change the station?” when some random “Lite Rock, Less Talk” radio station had Foreigner singing about how it feels like the very first time. During the time of It, our only words had been “Do you have a condom?” from me and “Are you sure?” from Liam. Yeah, on both counts.
How could an experience you wait a lifetime to happen be over so quickly? In the moment, the experience was okay-nice, not earth-shattering, not scary, a little tender, a lot hurried. But then we stopped kissing right as It happened and we were just looking into each other’s eyes and then suddenly It was so personal and weird and awkward and I would have done anything to turn back the clock on It, anything to remove his body from on top of mine.
It was over so fast.
For something supposedly so special, how come I felt so supremely sad?
I don’t know what Liam and I weren’t saying as we sat in the VW bus parked in front of my house later—Gee, did that really happen? or, You’ll call me, right?— but the silence was unbearable, broken only by my teeth chattering in the cold ocean wind. Finally, words. “I have a flannel shirt there on the floor in front of your seat if you’re cold,” he said. Thanks, how romantic. I reached down to pick up the shirt, brushed the dirt from it. As I put my arms into the sleeves I tried to ignore the smell of gasoline and pure Liam-ness embedded in the green flannel material.
Maybe there really was nothing to say. I stepped out of the bus. Liam got out also, took my luggage out from behind my seat, and placed it on the lawn. Well, if he wasn’t saying anything—not even “good-bye”—neither was I. Instead of going into the house, I walked down the wooden plank of stairs at the end of the street that led to the beach, not yet ready to face Mom and Dad. A group of kids had a small bonfire going on in the distance, and I could see a joint being passed around. And then I saw that Charles was in the group! Only Charles would wear a neon lime-colored skullcap that glowed in the dark. For a sec I had the urge to run across the sand and spring him from that group and give him some lame “Just Say No” lecture, but then I remembered what I had been doing in the last hour and thought, Hypocrite much?
Liam had followed me down to the beach, and the relief that positively flooded me when he wrapped his arms around me from behind was beyond comprehension. I turned around to face him, locked my hands around the small of his back. He leaned down and after all that silence, we at least had the perfect kiss, capped by moonlight shining onto the ocean. My heart was beating so fast I don’t know how I lasted through that kiss, wondering what did he think of me, was this for real, when would I see him again? Why were we both incapable of speaking words to each other, about It, about Us, about anything?
Maybe the kiss wasn’t so perfect.
Because for all that he caressed my hair and let me burrow my face in his neck, when he kissed me one last time before walking back up to the bus, somehow it felt like that last kiss on the beach had been a kiss-off.
I waited a few minutes until I heard the VW bus drive off, then I walked back up to the house. As I stepped inside, Cash barked at me like I was a stranger. I leaned down to pick him up, dying to pet him and slobber him with kisses, but he was having none of me. He sniffed me, then retreated to a corner and stared at me, accusing.
Dad looked up from his computer, did a once-over from my platinum blond hair to my skinnier-than-ever pop princess bod. He said, “Jesus Christ, I almost didn’t recogn
ize you.” When I would inspect my reflection in the full-length mirrors at my daily two-hour dance classes, I sometimes didn’t recognize myself anymore: ribs sticking out on my tightened stomach, an elasticized face. Dad did not stand up to greet me, hug me, kiss me. “I thought you were coming tomorrow.”
“The plans changed.” Great to see you, too, Dad.
Mom came charging down the stairs. “Who was Cash barking at?” She stopped at the end of the stairs and also did the once-over on me. “Wonder, what a surprise! You look so . . . different!” Mom, you have no idea.
Charles came in behind me. Someone had obviously sprayed him with Jean Naté or some drugstore perfume before he’d walked in—whoa, the stench. But whoa, he was like four inches taller than the last time I’d seen him and he had this baby soul patch on his chin and silver cross earrings dangling below that lime green neon skullcap. Not even a hello from him. Charles looked me up and down and pronounced, “You look fake.” His shitkicker boots barely missed pounding my bare feet as Charles raced right by me, past Mom at the stairs, up to his room. Door slam.
When I went to my room and turned on the bedroom lamp, through the side window I saw Henry—with much shorter hair, I think—sitting at the computer by his dimly lit bedroom window across the way. Oh! I thought, there’s someone who will be nice to me! For a sec I dared hope that Opera Man might make an appearance through the windows, but Henry just looked surprised to see me standing at my window. Then he pulled down his window shade. I’d like to think he was possibly just looking at porn on his computer and didn’t want me to see, but I do believe that in fact the boy next door had just decisively dissed me.
Welcome home, Wonder!
Thirty-five
There’s no place like home. Thank God. I couldn’t leave fast enough.
I was still groggy when I went downstairs the next morning. Mom and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for me.
“Good afternoon,” Dad said. “I guess your record company doesn’t mind if you sleep till noon.”