it tried to tug some of my hair loose from its rubber band.
He led us to one of the benches along the path.
“I’ll start by saying that nothing I’m about to explain in any way excuses my sixteen-year-old jerk self.”
“Understood.” I leaned forward slightly, anxious for the explanation.
“Second, it was less the meme and more your viral video that...” he trailed off.
“Are you self-editing? Pulling punches? Don’t. Just talk. I promise to stay right here.”
He nodded and did that nervous thing where he pushed his hair out of the way even though it didn’t flop anymore. “That video made my career in some ways and broke it in others. I’ve always had complicated feelings about it.”
“How could it do both?” It was surreal to think my teenage angst could do either.
“It turned me into dollar signs in the record executives’ eyes. A lot of times on these shows, the winner gets a recording contract, but the record company never invests in the marketing and publicity that will get the winner’s career off the ground. They say, ‘You won a million-dollar recording contract,’ but all it means is they subtract the cost of your studio times the producer, and the songwriters from that advance, then they do all kinds of shady accounting to explain where the rest of it went. If you’re lucky, they send you to state fairs or casinos to play shows, but they’re not trying to book you on high-profile gigs.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “I heard the ‘million dollar’ part and assumed you guys got it all.”
“We see almost none of it. But if we’re very lucky, the record company sees a commercial future for us, like One Direction. Which is what happened to me. Because of you. They saw your meltdown and thought, ‘We may have something here.’ Anyway, they brought in big name producers and booked me to open on some big tours, and you know the rest.”
“I don’t,” I said. “Remember my Miles Crowe media blackout?”
He shook his head, a small smile on his lips. “I never thought the one person in America who knows almost nothing about me would be the girl who shot me to fame, but...it’s kind of nice.”
“So you got big?”
“Yeah. I mean, I couldn’t sell out football stadiums even at my peak, but I sold out a few basketball arenas. Multi-platinum records. Merch. Endorsements. I got all of that.”
“But it’s not what you wanted?”
He stood and walked across the path to the grass to watch me from other side. “It was, for a couple of years. But by twenty, most of the friends I’d grown up with were halfway through college, and I was four years into a career I hadn’t planned on. The thing was, I loved making my own music, not the songs the record company kept making me put out. But they’d already decided I was a teen idol, and they wanted me to stay strictly commercial.”
“And you blamed my video for that?”
“I know how I sound. Ungrateful. Spoiled. But the truth is, the record company packaged me and sent me out as a product, and once I started figuring out who I was beyond that image...they weren’t interested.” He picked up a rock and tossed it out toward the river. “I didn’t handle it well. Started getting anxiety about going on stage to do the songs they chose for me. Threw tantrums. Trashed hotel rooms. It was not awesome.”
“You got shoved into your own box too.” I sympathized with that more than most people.
“Not as bad as the box you were shoved in, but yes.”
“Any box sucks if you want to get out of it and you can’t.”
“I did, eventually. I only had to give up any hope of more fame.” He shot me a wry smile.
“Yeah, you’ll have to rest on the millions you banked already.”
“Hard knock life.”
“Do they sell sympathy cards for that? ‘Sorry you don’t get to be a pop star anymore. Hope your millions are a comfort’? Maybe I can start a card line as a side gig.”
“Real talk, I think the market is going to be small.”
“Dream crusher.”
He cocked his head and studied me. “You’re being really chill about this.”
I stood and crossed the path to stand in front of him. “I’ve had about twelve years to get over this, and I only wished you dead for the first eight.”
He winced. “I deserve that.”
“Yes. But you’ve done your time, so don’t sweat it.” I held out my hand for