When she was out of hearing distance, Ashley leaned in and said, “Did you hear she’s recording an album?”
“What?” said Heidi, their bass player.
“With who?” asked Edwin.
“Daybreak.” Ashley snorted, derisively. “Apparently, she signed with them last week.”
Emeline shifted uneasily. She scanned the pub, looking for Joel.
Heidi smirked. “Well, that’s fitting.”
Ashley nodded, glancing across the room and wrinkling her nose. “God, she’s so plastic. Just like her songs.”
The words turned Emeline’s stomach. Chloe’s songs werehersongs too. She sank deeper into her chair.
Across the room, Chloe and her friends chatted happily.I wish I was over there,Emeline realized, watching The Perennials lean in towards each other, gossip dripping like jewels from their mouths.
This was one of the things she’d learned to adjust to when she first broke into the scene.
Emeline remembered her first music festival and its after-party. How excited she’d been as she stepped into the bar after a hot day of stage hopping, hoping to befriend some like-minded newbie.
She’d ended up at a booth, sandwiched between four established musicians, with several more across the table. She’d asked how their sets went, how far they’d traveled, where they were staying. But the conversation quickly dissolved into petty gossip. How much so-and-so had signed their most recent deal for. Whose upcoming album was expected to flop. Who deserved to be on the Polaris short list—and who didn’t.
Here, gossip was currency. The more you had, the more power you accrued.
That day, Emeline was a little baby deer thinking she was wandering into a meadow, excited to befriend all the other woodland creatures, when instead she was wandering into oncoming traffic.
Her whole body had hummed with the need to escape that day. But in order to get out of that booth, she would have had to crawl under the table and make a run for it.
She had the same instinct now.
Except this wasThe Perennials.The band she was spending the next three weeks on tour with. And here they were, the night before their tour started, calling Emeline’s songwriter a sellout.
What do they think ofme?
With that upsetting thought, Emeline rose from her chair and made for the washroom. As the door shut behind her, the loud chatter of the Rev’s patrons hushed, leaving her in near silence amid the faint smell of cigarette smoke. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead. Band stickers littered the walls and stall doors.
The familiarity of it made her chest loosen.
She let out a breath.
Okay,she thought, standing at the sinks.Your tour mates are pretentious dicks. So what? You’ve dealt with dozens of others just like them.
Was this why people weren’t supposed to meet their heroes?
She ran a faucet, splashing cold water on her face. Someone had put out their cigarette in the ceramic bowl, and the butt lay soggy on the bottom.
Planting her palms at the edge of the sink, Emeline stared at her reflection.
It’s only three weeks. You’ ll survive.
And at the end of those three weeks, she would—she hoped—have a whole lot of EP sales, a whole lot more exposure, and a contract with Daybreak, who would want her to start recording an album ASAP.
Remember why you love this,she told herself.
It was the music she loved. The way the world went quiet and still the moment she started strumming. How she forgot everything she was running from when there was a song in her throat.
I knew a girl once,Hawthorne’s voice flickered through her.Singing was like breathing for her. When she sang, she went somewhere no one could touch her.
