“Our Gabi-now-Ellie had quite a set of pipes. She was in high school show choir as a freshman. Nobody makes show choir as a freshman.”
“You ought to sing louder,” Miss Mary said. “I’ve been missing it.”
I waved like I was dispersing her words. I didn’t sing in public anymore.
“Anyway,” Chloe continued. “She saw Miles there and fell madly in love, and—”
“Stop.” I sighed and threw the veggies into the hot skillet. “We had a regional show choir competition. Miles Crowe was there. He was a junior, and he had a solo. My very dumb fourteen-year-old self was immediately heart-eyes for him. Like, imagine the most unironic use of that emoji, and that was me. Which would have been fine. I probably would have dreamed of seeing him again the next year then gotten over it. But then he went on Starstruck, and the top four finalists do hometown performances. And suddenly, the normal celebrity crush some teen girls get went into overdrive because this one seemed so possible. Like, he lived in the next town over, my cousin knew his best friend, and I was so sure I would meet him for real.”
“It’s all she talked about for two months straight when she found out he was on,” Miss Mary said.
“I was ridiculous,” I agreed. “But I got tickets to his hometown performance at the fairgrounds. My cousin even got us passes so we could be down at the front of the crowd. The producers love having teenage girls in the front. Watch any of the dance or singing competitions on TV. You’ll see.”
“I believe you,” Jerome said.
“Anyway, when it was Miles Crowe’s turn, they cut to him live, and he was so good.” I sounded like I was admitting that against my will. But he was. I couldn’t deny that. “So I...”
“Had the meltdown,” Chloe finished.
“Yeah. Full snot-nosed, ugly-cry, fangirl meltdown during his performance. The camera panned to me three or four times. Some producer in a booth was loving it.”
“Going viral was a new thing back then,” Chloe said. “And memes weren’t much of a thing yet either, but our girl here was everywhere.”
“Yeah. It was bad. Reporters would wait on the sidewalk outside of my school and interview every single kid walking off campus to see if they knew me. I had invitations to go on every show. All the major late-night shows. Every major morning news show. My mom wouldn’t let me do any of the late-night ones because she didn’t trust them not to be mean to me, but she said yes to Live with Laura, of course.”
“Duh,” Chloe said. Laura was a former local TV newswoman who’d made it big in Hollywood.
“So I go on Laura’s show, she’s super nice about everything, and she gives me a bunch of Starstruck swag including a signed poster of Miles Crowe.” I’d burned that after his own appearance on her show. “Two weeks later, he wins the whole thing and does Live with Laura. By then I was already a GIF that you sent to show you were really excited about something.”
“That must’ve been weird,” Jerome says.
“Yes and no? Social media was still pretty new, so I had no idea how big it would get and keep getting. Anyway, Laura asks him if he thinks my ‘moment’ helped drive up the votes to help him win, and he’s like, sure, yeah. And then...”
At this point, I didn’t want to tell the story anymore, so I turned back to the skillet, giving it a shake. Stupid onions, making my eyes sting.
“That boy did her wrong,” Miss Mary said. “Laura asked him if he had a message for his number one fan, and he said she seemed like a sweet kid but she so wasn’t his thing.”
“Dang.” Jerome shook his head.
“Made us all so mad,” Miss Mary continued. “But I wish you wouldn’t have quit music, Ellie. I miss it. She used to write her own stuff and put it on YouTube,” she explained to Jerome.
Chloe’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know that. How come I didn’t know that?”
I shrugged. “That was then. Lots of teen girls go through that phase. If it’s not songs, it’s bad poetry. I deleted my channel.” I still sometimes worked my feelings out in lyric form in a notebook, but I hadn’t put any of it to music in ten years, at least. “I outgrew it.”
“Did you, though?” Miss Mary asked. “Seems like it still sticks