Fifteen Minutes

chapter 21

Just after midnight, when the rehearsal was finally over, Kelly gathered her things and headed out the front entrance. She was the first to leave and as she opened the door, she was struck by the scene. They’d been found out. A crowd had gathered on either side of the sidewalk, smothering the doorway and spilling into the street. The bodyguards had set up ropes and stanchions, and they had positioned themselves along the boundaries to keep stray fans from blocking the path from the door to the waiting cars. Kelly paused and took a deep breath. Two guards were immediately at her side.

“Kelly! Look, it’s Kelly Morgan!” one of the women screamed, and the others in the crowd followed suit. Cell phones appeared from every angle, snapping pictures and casting a series of flashes in her direction. For a brief moment she felt good about the scene. Michael Manning gone from the picture and still she drew this kind of attention.

But just as quickly another scene flashed in her mind, even as her bodyguards escorted her between the ropes to the waiting Escalade. The image of her father running alongside her as she learned to ride her bike. “You can do it, baby. I’m right here.” His tanned face full of life, his pride for her shining in his eyes. “I’ll always be right here.”

But he wouldn’t always be here. Not anymore.

The crowd was shouting louder, screaming as the bodyguards helped her into the SUV. She blinked twice and the image of her father cleared. Two days had passed since she’d heard from either of her parents. She needed to call them in the morning before reporting for rehearsal.

The bodyguards followed her home and didn’t leave until she’d been safely inside for an hour. The staff would take over safety duties from that point until the morning, when the bodyguards would escort her to the SUV once again. William Gaines called to say another six guards had been hired.

Once inside her apartment she grabbed her laptop and settled into the sofa. The silence was heavenly. For a long time she stared at the dark screen, not ready to check e-mail or Yahoo! or do anything but sit and think. The Romeo and Juliet piece had shaken her. It was wrong what Samuel was doing to those kids.

But Chandra had talked to her before they left that night and the two of them had a suspicion. What if Zoey were in on the whole ruse? Kelly thought about Zack’s sincerity, the way his eyes shone with the faith he barely talked about anymore. He had no idea how obsessed his fans would be once he finished the run of Fifteen Minutes.

She thought about the look in Zack’s eyes when the production assistant forced him to dance with Zoey. Chemistry, yes. They definitely had chemistry. But what contestants didn’t, after this insane experience? Their lives were upside down and on display. Nothing was the way they’d known it before their auditions.

Once the piece on Zack and Zoey aired, there would likely be no girlfriend to go home to and no way to undo the damage. The two Fifteen Minutes singers would be linked forever, whether there was any truth to the segment or not. The coming storm would probably send them running into each other’s arms. Then the producers would have what they wanted.

Her heart kept time with the antique clock on her mantel. She had never questioned fame, never imagined it to be anything other than a dream come true. Something everyone wanted and only a few people found.

Now she began to wonder.

Certainly Chandra had paid the ultimate price, losing her parents to a psycho fan. She’d said something tonight that stayed with Kelly. They were talking about the changes in the contestants and how there was no going back to the life they once lived. Kelly commented that the world would be shocked to know how Chandra Olson really felt about being a celebrity. “You’re so self-possessed, everywhere we go. Every interview. Complete control.”

“It’s my secret. It’s how I keep my prison cell bigger.” A slight, sad smile graced her face. “Look at me, Kelly. The only guy I ever loved moved on years ago. I have no real friends. I’m constantly on tour. If I flip out and start drinking, doing drugs . . . hiding from the press and throwing things at the paparazzi, then the cell gets smaller. The walls close in. I’m getting through it the only way that makes sense.” Her smile fell off. “But if all my money could buy me back the day before my Fifteen Minutes audition, I would do it now. Right now.”

Kelly brought her computer screen to life. So sad. Living like that, hating the fame and being reminded of it every waking hour. She mindlessly began typing in names of former Fifteen Minutes winners. A country singer whose good looks had gotten him a fair amount of attention a few years ago. The guy was married with a two-year-old when he appeared on the show. In one of the final rounds, he sang so well people still talked about his performance. When the applause and screaming died down, Cullen had chuckled the way Cullen often did. “Too bad you’re married,” he muttered into the microphone. “I can only imagine how big a star you’d be if you were single.”

Kelly remembered the guy’s response. He laughed along with Cullen, but he held up his wedding ring. “This guy’s proud of his wife.” He received another standing ovation for the comment.

For the most part the public seemed shocked by Cullen’s callous remark, even if the judge was right. The situation had bugged Kelly back then. Marriage was tough enough without Cullen Caldwell making it more difficult.

Now in the quiet of her apartment, Kelly typed the guy’s name into the Google search bar. His songs were played on the radio, and he toured with the biggest country acts. But what about his family?

The singer’s Wikipedia page came up at the top of the search. Kelly clicked it. Sure enough he was selling records like crazy, reaching gold on a few singles. She scanned down to the section about his personal life. Her heart sank as she read the news. A year ago the singer’s divorce was final. He was dating one of country music’s up-and-coming new artists.

She remembered another entertainer, a beautiful dark-skinned actress and singer who had starred on a show that took over after Kelly’s show finished its run. The girl had been full of light and innocence. Over the show’s five-year run, the public had a front-row seat to watching the actress change. Her clothing became more risqué, her makeup more severe. She was photographed in the arms of a number of leading men, partying at various A-list nightclubs. Her sitcom ended and she tried to make her mark in movies. But no one took her seriously. Kelly almost didn’t want to run a check on the girl, but she did.

A sick feeling started in the pit of her stomach. The actress had been dropped by her label and cut off from her studio deal. Today she was in rehab, hoping to find her life again. Reports said she was addicted to painkillers and heroin.

What about the celebs at the top of today’s pop music? One young pop artist had started off talking about purity and faith, but after a few years she was singing songs that shocked the world at the time—songs that seemed to change teen culture overnight. At the last Grammy Awards the singer wore a dress that caused Ryan Seacrest to blush. People in Kelly’s circle liked to joke that the young artist might single-handedly be responsible for loosening the morals of a generation.

But was that funny? Really?

Sure, Kelly no longer believed in her father’s faith. But she felt deeply uneasy at the examples most singers set for their fans.

What about the young boy bands and teen heartthrobs? Most of them started out genuine and down-to-earth. Not much older than kids. Documentaries had been done about a number of them, their love for music and how the sudden fame changed them.

In one documentary, a few of the singers from a boy band could be seen praying with their crew, being patient with fans and almost oblivious to the celebrity status closing in around them. Wide-eyed and innocent. Then for each of them something began to change, or at least it seemed that way. The paparazzi would become relentless; dangerously so. At one point a photographer attempting to catch a photo of one of the teen singers ran across a busy street intent on a picture. He never made it. A car hit him as he closed in for the picture. He died at the scene.

All for the possibility of a photograph.

Kelly squirmed. A few clicks and her computer screen filled with recent stories about a couple of young heartthrobs. Some were into drugs, others had been caught drunk in public. None of them seemed unscathed.

She scanned a series of Google images on a few of the singers and her heart hurt. They looked angry, not that Kelly blamed them. Everywhere they went someone wanted a piece of them. They hit the scene as kids and a year later some of them were at the top of the charts. One of them headlined his own tour and was the most Googled celebrity in the world.

Kelly sighed. The prison cell of fame was very small indeed for teenage singers. How were they supposed to handle that sort of pressure? Jaded by the time they were nineteen years old.

There were others. Elvis and Michael and Whitney. Kelly tried to think of a celebrity who had come through the madness of A-list attention without changing, without losing the people they loved or their very lives. Where were the shining examples of fame? Those stars had to be out there somewhere, though Kelly couldn’t think of a single one.

Even the successful celebrities had lost marriages or kids or some level of sanity.

Slowly, Kelly shut her laptop and set it down beside her. As if she were seeing blue skies after a storm, a new reality began to take shape before her eyes. What about her own life? At one point she had been close to her parents, in love with Cal, and content to live in South Carolina. But she could sing. Everyone said so, and deep inside Kelly knew they were right. So she convinced Cal to move to L.A. They packed up their few belongings and went on a quest for fame and fortune.

Oh, sure, they didn’t talk about it that way back then. On the unknown side of fame there was only one thing to talk about. Finding it. But now? What did it all mean? Why were a hundred thousand unknown singers willing to audition for a show like Fifteen Minutes? Was it all just one big popularity contest? Wanting to be idolized and sought after, craving the attention and insanity of celebrity? Was it about the money?

For the first time in her life she actually thought about it. Since booking the hit teen show she’d been consumed by one aspect of celebrity. Keeping it. Holding on to it. Staying young and thin and current. Being A-list. But sitting here in the quiet of her living room she saw it all from another angle.

She remembered something from her high school days.

Cal had sketched a staircase in pencil. Each step included a landing. At first glance the drawing appeared to be the top of a set of stairs, looking down. But look at it long enough, and the entire image flipped. The view seemed to be from underneath the stairs, looking up.

“That’s weird.” She had jumped back, struck by the sudden flip-flop.

“It’s an optical illusion.” Cal had grinned at her reaction. “The guys on the football team showed me. There’s more than one way to see it.”

An optical illusion. Like the quest for fame. Like Kelly’s entire life.

Suddenly she knew without a doubt there were people who pitied her. They’d watched her change from the wide-eyed innocent girl on the hit TV show to the Hollywood diva in the midst of a divorce. Her parents were probably part of that group.

One time after her early success reached epic levels, she called her mom and asked her a burning question. “You knew I could sing. Why didn’t you take me to Hollywood sooner?”

Her mom’s answer burned in her mind now. “Why would I do that?”

“Why?” Kelly had been outraged. “So I could’ve found all this sooner.”

“Kelly . . . hear me. I knew you could sing. I believed producers would fall in love with you.” Her voice held a lifetime of emotion. “But you only get one childhood. I wasn’t willing to trade it so you could be famous.”

Chills ran down Kelly’s arms at the memory. What if her parents had taken her to L.A. sooner? Would she be another starlet statistic, in and out of rehab? Would she be dead?

The questions began to surround her, the new view of fame taking clear shape in her mind. What could she do about it? She couldn’t undo the attention, the celebrity. Chandra was right. The thing Kelly worked day and night to keep, to make perfect, carried a hefty price tag. All along she had really believed that those things would make her happier. Tighter skin would make her prettier. More Twitter followers would make her popular. More money for every gig and she would be successful. But the effort exhausted her and what did she have to show for it? Her all-consuming pursuit of those things was the reason she and Cal had fallen apart, the cause for the break in her relationship with her dad.

It was the reason that tonight she sat alone in her multimillion-dollar New York flat while her kids took their baths and shared bedtime reading with Cal two hours away. What would become of them? Her mother was right about childhood. The time didn’t last. One day all too soon her kids would be teenagers, and then what? Paparazzi would catch them slipping into bars with other celebrity kids, sleeping with people they barely knew, probably far older than them. They would spend their lives chasing the same stardom that had always defined their mother.

Was that what the future held for her kids?

Kelly had barely eaten dinner that night, and now she felt sick to her stomach. Kai and Kinley, her babies. They would probably reach high school age and give interviews to People magazine about how they hated their mother, how she had chosen fame over playing with them.

Tears fell onto Kelly’s cheeks and a series of quiet sobs began to build. From this view she didn’t feel like the luckiest girl in America. She didn’t want to spend another hour with her trainer or get up early for another shot of Botox. She couldn’t see an end to her fame. But she could feel something she hadn’t felt before tonight.

The prison walls.

More tears poured down her face, and she did nothing to stop them. Chandra had said she didn’t really have friends. Wasn’t the same true for her? Tonight she should’ve been reading to Kai and Kinley, helping them get ready for bed. Talking to her husband about how they’d fallen so far from the people they used to be.

Kelly could barely breathe for the sobs that choked her. She realized as she wept that for the first time since she could remember she wasn’t worried about whether her eyes would be swollen in the morning.

She was lonely and broken and worried about her heart. Her kids. Worried about her future. Her life.

How terrible that she hadn’t talked to her parents in forty-eight hours. Her dad’s situation wasn’t stable. She was about to open her computer again and check her e-mail, see if her parents had updated her on her father’s condition, when her cell phone rang.

The sound made Kelly jump. As she answered it she caught a glimpse of the caller ID. It was her mother. “Mom!” She sounded awful, her nose stuffy. “I was just thinking about all of you. How’s Dad?”

“Honey . . .” Her mom clearly had been crying, too. “He’s worse. He has an infection.” She paused. “His fever is very high.”

Panic pulsed through Kelly. She was on her feet, pacing, pushing her fingernails through her hair. “What . . . what happened?”

“We don’t know. The ambulance came.” Her voice broke. “I can’t lose him. Please . . . can you come? He’s . . . he’s in trouble.”

“Dear God, no.” She whispered the words as more tears blurred her eyes. She wasn’t ready for this, wasn’t ready to say good-bye to her daddy. Not yet.

“Kelly?”

“I’m sorry.” She fought through her sorrow. “Yes, I can come. Of course. I’ll find a way. I’ll see if the show’s private jet can get me there before sunrise.”

Her mom told her the details, which hospital, which room. “Cal’s already here. He has the kids.”

“Right.” The kids! Kelly felt dazed. She finished the call and dropped to her knees at the edge of the sofa. Kelly had completely forgotten about Kai and Kinley going with Cal to Greenville this weekend. Cal had arranged the visit through Kelly’s manager. Rudy had shot a quick e-mail to Kelly explaining that Cal wanted the kids to have as much time as possible with their grandparents. Kelly felt horrified. Until her mother’s call she had completely forgotten where they were. What sort of mother did that make her?

The tears came harder and she collapsed over the edge of the sofa. For the first time in too many years, more than her next heartbeat she cared about just one thing.

“Dear God. Jesus . . .” she prayed out loud. Spoke His name out loud. And though the words sounded foreign, a peace fell like rain around her. “I need to get home. I . . . I have to be with my family. Please . . . help my dad. Help me get there in time.” She was shaking, overcome by the strangest mix of emotions. A peace like she’d never known and a fear big enough to consume her.

“Is it too late for me, God?” The sobs kept coming. “I turned my back on You.” She squeezed her eyes shut, her fists pressed to her face. “Stubborn pride.” Anger strangled her voice. Who had she become? Celebrity was nothing but a snare. Running after a body and Botox and a boyfriend barely out of college. What had she been thinking? “Plain old stupid. That’s all it was, God.” Sadness and frustration came in waves, fury at her years of selfishness.

All of it consumed her until she had no more tears to cry.

The urgency of her father’s situation drew her back to her feet. She found her phone and called Samuel Meier. “There’s been an emergency.”

And like that pieces fell into place. An hour later Kelly flew out of LaGuardia on the Fifteen Minutes private jet. Three hours after that she rushed through the front door of the hospital, up the elevator to the seventh-floor intensive care unit. She found the waiting room and there they were.

Kai and Kinley and Cal.

The kids looked sad and tired but mostly confused. When they saw her they ran to her, their eyes flooded with relief. Mommy was here. All was right with their world. Kelly stooped down and hugged both of them. What was she thinking, missing so much time with them? She had no answers for herself. As she stood, empty and exhausted, Cal came to her. Their eyes met and in a single heartbeat there was no broken relationship, no affairs or unkind words, no years of estrangement.

“Kelly . . . I’m sorry.” His eyes were red, his cheeks tearstained. He loved her dad as much as she did.

“No. It’s my fault.” She stared at the floor, struggling. When she looked up, his eyes held a love she’d forgotten. She took a step closer. “I’m so sorry, Cal.”

They came together in a hug that only a husband and wife could share, close, connected in body, heart, mind, and soul. Never mind what had happened or where things might go from here. She had no real answers, and whatever they decided none of it would be easy. But here and now with their kids sitting nearby, the hug was the most right thing in the world. They stayed that way for a full minute, not speaking.

Because for the first time in a long time, no words were needed.