The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

CHAPTER 21. New York (Second Day)

I was so amped up for the Garden show that I woke up way early, even before Jane. I grabbed the USA Today outside my door to kill time and to see if they mentioned anything about us or my show.

I had zero real estate, but there was an interview with Zack. The intro explained how he’d been kicked off our tour and out of the label after the Memphis incident:

Q: What are the Latchkeys’ plans now?

A: We are in the process of inking a deal with a small label, and believe we will be well taken care of in our new home, which respects our independence and provides artistic, not merely financial, support. And lower-back support.

Do you regret signing with a major label?

Well, they did help put us on the map, which resulted in interviews in august publications like your own, but on their terms, both musically and presentation-wise. Complete control.

If you could do it again, would you have toured with Jonny Valentine?

That was a decision made for us, so we went along with it. But you can’t regret your actions, even when they’re regrettable. Hey, how about that: the world’s worst needlepoint sampler.

What’s Jonny like offstage?

He’s a good kid.

And his mother, Jane Valentine?

I would prefer to talk about the Latchkeys and our exciting musical future.

You have nothing to say about the situation?

This is my final statement on the matter: It’s an environment I wouldn’t subject my own child to. Not that I have a child born out of wedlock I’ve been keeping in hiding in Raleigh, North Carolina, for seven years, whom I see only on layovers. Wait a minute, is this why you interviewed me, simply to ask about these items of lurid interest to the entire nation, and not because you like my limited body of work beloved by a small coterie of music consumers? God, I feel so used.

If Zack liked me so much, and if it was an environment he wouldn’t raise his own child in, how come he hung up so quickly and didn’t ask if I wanted to hang out in L.A.? He pretended to be so concerned about me, but he just rode me and my fan base to develop the Latchkeys’ brand. He could say it was a decision made by the label, but I’m sure the band loved it. They’d never sell that many seats on their own. And Dana was right. He tried so hard to be clever.

I bet the interviewer didn’t get the reference to “Complete Control,” though. I’d have to find a way to listen to that song again sometime.

The phone rang as I read a preview of the baseball season and their fantasy-baseball picks. If there was a fantasy-pop-star draft, Tyler would go first overall, and I’d probably drop to the third round now.

I picked up the phone and said, “Hi, Jane.”

“Hi, Jonny. This is Stacy Palter, from creative.”

“Oh, hi,” I said. This was the first time anyone from the label had ever called me on tour without going through Jane.

“I hope I didn’t wake you? It’s five-thirty here, so I figured you’d be up by now.”

“I’m up. Did you want to talk to Jane? She’s in room 1812.”

I was hoping she’d say, “Eighteen twelve, good year,” because even I knew there was a war then, but she said, “No, I actually wanted to talk to you.” She paused like she was about to drop bad news. “I saw the show last night. Your performance was great. And your interview was fine until that part at the end.”

“Uh-huh.” I was glad she didn’t mention my fuckup on “Guys vs. Girls.” Even professional talent evaluators don’t know what’s going on a lot of times.

“We don’t want to tell you how to conduct yourself in interviews,” she said. That’s how they talked at the label about business decisions no one wanted to take responsibility for. They always said we, even if it was only one person in the room or on the phone. “But we’d love for you to be more professional in the future. This has been a rocky tour, and we’ve had to devote a lot of PR resources to deflection. We want to be promoting you, not defending you from gaffes.”

“Uh-huh,” I said again, but I was thinking, How about you go onstage four nights a week for a month and a half, and on top of that do a bunch of interviews including with a TV host who’s making fun of you in front of a national audience, and everyone’s attacking your mother, and your best friends keep disappearing, and see if you can avoid any gaffes.

“And if this continues, it’s something we’ll have to take into account when your contract sunsets.”

Oh. All the times Jane said our career really was in jeopardy, I didn’t totally believe her. But if Stacy was calling me at 5:30 in the morning L.A. time, this was serious. Now I had to do really good tonight, to rack up a ton of live-stream sales, first so that my career trajectory pointed up again, and also so that Stacy would apologize, and when they wanted to re-up my contract, I could say, “Sorry, I didn’t feel you respected my independence, I want to go with a label that provides artistic, not merely financial, support.” Or even that I was through with this cutthroat industry and going back to school, or going to Australia where I could really have an adventure, and it was too bad they threw away millions in future revenue. Except they’d just find someone else. Besides freaks like MJ and Tyler Beats, even top-shelf talent can be replaced.

“I understand,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”

“Great!” she said. “I’m so happy we could have this dialogue. And there’s no need to talk to your mom about this. We just wanted to reach out to you.”

Right, I thought after we hung up. You know Jane would be seriously pissed you didn’t consult with her, and you went over her head to put a real scare into me. Still, though, I wanted to handle it on my own. And I guess Jane agreed with Stacy on this. Maybe she really would have been promoted at her marketing firm if she hadn’t had me.

If I kept this up, it wouldn’t be long before they’d have me and Lisa Pinto do a fake breakup, and since she’d be higher up the label’s food chain, they’d make it seem like she ended it. Her statement to the press would be like, “While I have decided that I will no longer ‘be his girl today,’ I remain dear friends with Jonathan and wish him the best in his professional and social lives.” Only they wouldn’t do it just yet, not with her album dropping and me getting tons of publicity lately, even if it was all negative.

Now I was even more wound up about my concert, but I was afraid to use the glossy again because Jane had access to my hotel room and she’d sit me down like they do on sitcoms and say, “We need to have a talk about the birds and bees,” and I’d have to say something like, “Jane, I have a song called ‘This Bird Will Always Bee There for You,’ I get it.” She wouldn’t be the one to have the dialogue with me, though. She’d ask Nadine to do it. Or maybe Walter.

Jane gave me a personal wake-up call at nine. “Make hay while the sun shines,” she said. “You have an estimated twenty-three thousand, three hundred and thirty-five days left on earth. Make this one worth it.”

The way she said it, I could tell she was thinking, This is the biggest day of your career, you’re about to be watched by tens of thousands of paying customers worldwide, but she was trying to sound like, Hey, time to get up, it’s just a regular morning.

She gave me the itinerary for the day. She was going to Madison Square Garden early to run through some logistical issues, but she wanted me to get a workout in with Walter without pushing myself too much, and to play Zenon and do whatever I wanted to help me rest and relax before sound check. I didn’t tell her that there was no way I could have relaxed normally, but especially not after Stacy’s call, plus I didn’t know if my father was showing up and how I’d even meet him if he did.

Me and Walter hit the executive hotel gym that was reserved for celebrities and super-rich people. That’s the good thing about New York, they have everything set up separately already for celebrities and rich people. They have it like that in L.A., too, but so many people are celebrities in L.A. it’s harder to divide them, so instead it’s more like keeping the A-listers from the B-listers and down. Jane had to remind Walter to run me through my cross-training cardio routine, though she didn’t say what we were all thinking, which is that Rog usually does it. I know all the routines by heart anyway.

Walter wanted to shower in the executive locker room instead of his hotel room since he didn’t like the water pressure there, and there was security for the gym so it was okay for me to be alone for a couple minutes. I waited there for him all sweaty because I’m never ever supposed to shower in a public place. A computer terminal for guests was near the door. Now at least I’d know if my father was coming, and if he couldn’t afford it, I could ask Walter for help. Walter would do it. He owed me still.

My pulse jumped like it always did when I saw there was an email from him from two days ago.

At your invitation I got a ticket for the concert. How do I meet you?

He left his cell number. So he really was coming. If I asked Walter to call him, he’d know something was up and would tell Jane because he was afraid of getting fired again. And even if I used my room phone and reached him, I’d have to get away from Jane somehow and he’d have to convince security that Jonny Valentine had asked to see him privately, and they’d probably be like, Certainly, sir, please get in line behind all the other child predators who want to molest him. I wrote

I am figuring it out. I can’t check this again before tonight.

At lunch I ate soup and nothing else that would make me throw up and drank tons of Throat Coat with honey. Even though I was near the end of the game, I didn’t play Zenon like Jane said I should, since I wanted to stretch more. I did vocal warm-ups on the way to the Garden the most carefully I’d done them in a long time. Walter didn’t even talk to me in the car like he usually does to calm me down. He could see how serious I looked. I might not have the raw and refined talents of Tyler Beats, but no one can get into the Jonny Zone like I can.

When we pulled up to the Garden for sound check there was a crowd of security guys waiting for me. That’s one thing New York is worse for than L.A., everyone still has to go through the same streets and entrances. But the car we took wasn’t flashy and it was early enough in the day that no one really noticed me, except having five huge security guys with headsets huddled around me made people stop and stare on the street since they knew someone important must be around, and that made more people stare. Sometimes I think if I walked around normally by myself for a day in regular clothes and my hair not in The Jonny, no one would pay any attention.

I looked for my father in case he was hanging around outside the Garden, but there were a million guys who could’ve been him from a distance, and besides, obviously he wasn’t, and even if he was, Jane was with me.

The star/talent room was the best one I’d had on my entire tour. It was the size of our entire living room at home, and there was a big-screen TV set up with an eight-speaker sound system.

I was on Level 100 of Zenon, so I could’ve even finished the game before the concert started, but I also didn’t want to distract myself when I was in the Jonny Zone. Jane came in and told me I had an hour to kill and I should just relax. Her telling me to relax so much made me not relaxed. Someday before a concert she should tell me to get super-nervous, and then I’d probably feel totally relaxed. She was wound up, too, because I could tell she wasn’t looking up presale numbers today on purpose. They had to be low still, or else Stacy wouldn’t have cared about my late-show interview. The label doesn’t mind what you do as long as you’re moving product.

So I walked around the Garden tunnels with Walter, and barely anyone was in them yet. There were a lot of tunnels, but with maps everywhere telling you where you were so you didn’t get lost. Walter didn’t talk while we walked. In the middle we found a side entrance opening to a path to the stage, and I poked my head out for a second to take it in. It was the same size as any regular arena, but it seemed a lot bigger. Empty preshow arenas always look huge, though. In my head I ran through the set list for the night at first, but then I tuned out and didn’t think of anything besides my breathing, except every few minutes my brain would be like, I wonder if I’ll see my father tonight, or if he’s actually coming, or if it’s all a prank, or what I’ll say if I see him, and I’d notice I wasn’t breathing too good. I kind of wished we could keep walking around like that in the tunnels forever. Most of the time on tour, I went in cars from hotels to venues to the bus. I never got to explore.

I was lucky that so much more of my life now was recorded than a normal kid’s, so in the future, if I ever wanted to think back on something, I could find footage or an article about it. But there were some moments that no one was recording, and it was up to me to remember them, and maybe sometimes you had to tell yourself to freeze a moment in your brain or else it would just file it away with all the others. Most people would remember how it felt when they were about to debut at Madison Square Garden, but I told myself, Remember what it’s like to walk around these tunnels with Walter when no one else knows you’re there. When you’re not Jonny Valentine the singer. When you’re not even regular Jonathan Valentino. You’re not anyone, in a way.

And this could’ve been my last big show, if the label dumped me or I went back to school. Then I’d be not anyone again, in a different way. It could be nice, like walking in the tunnels the rest of my life.

I was happy Walter was with me, though. It’d be scary down there if I was on my own.

After what I guess was an hour, Walter told me we were due back. If I didn’t have my show, I bet he wouldn’t have minded walking around for a lot longer. I know he’s paid to hang out with me, and if I wanted to keep hanging out he basically had to until a certain point, but you never worried about wearing out your welcome with Walter. If he didn’t feel like talking, he said he was tired, brother, but he never needed to go away for alone time.

It took us a little time to find our way back to the star/talent room, and we ended up on the opposite side of the entrance in another hallway and I thought we had to go all the way around, but Walter noticed there was a back door into it, and he found a maintenance guy to unlock it. That’s something Walter’s good at, figuring out what to do when your first option doesn’t work, especially for building entrances and exits to avoid crowd interference. I should do those walks before all my shows, but not every venue has an underground level that’s hidden away like that.

My sound check was strong, and even Jane, who usually doesn’t say a sound check went good because she doesn’t want me to get lazy, said it was my best one yet. Before I went back to the star/talent room, she bent her knees to talk in my face.

“I know this has been a rough tour,” she said. “I want you to know I’m very proud of what you’ve done on it. And no matter what happens tonight, that’s what matters.” Her voice cracked at the end and her eyes crinkled up.

“I know,” I said, and I hustled away to the star/talent room before she might cry. That was the last thing I wanted to see before the most important night of my life.

On the hundredth level of Zenon, every character I met told me how the Emperor was on this level and was this invincible tyrant that no one could defeat. It was only a game, but it was sort of intimidating, the way they talked about it. I had a few hours until my start time, and if I didn’t play I’d get worried about if my father had made it and how I’d see him, which I still hadn’t figured out, since Jane was popping into my room every twenty minutes to make sure I had everything I needed, so I got into the Jonny Zone for Zenon. The Jonny Zenone, where you’re in a Zenon zone because you’re no one. I’d tell that one to Nadine for a Creative Stroke credit if she wasn’t already in Paris with her boyfriend.

Soon I’d worked my way through the level and up to the entrance to this dungeon where the narrator announced that the Emperor lived, which surprised me. First of all, I hadn’t found the level’s gem yet, but maybe the protocol was different since it was the last level, and second, I expected it to be a huge dungeon that takes days to find your way through, but it wasn’t. After you climbed down into the dungeon, there was a door right there, and when you walked a few feet in, the Emperor was in the middle of a room. He was just a normal-size soldier with a giant halberd in his hands and covered everywhere in armor. I couldn’t believe they’d make the Emperor this easy to get to. It’s funny how the tunnels under the Garden were more complicated than the final dungeon in Zenon.

But I soon figured out why. The second I ran up to the Emperor, he deflected my two-handed-sword attack, and with one swing from a halberd damaged me enough to depart the realm. I started over from my saved game and tried again, but the same thing happened. I tried casting spells, using invincibility potions, everything. He blocked my attacks or they didn’t affect him, my potions didn’t do anything, and he damaged me to zero percent with a single halberd stroke. Not everyone had a Major Vulnerability, but everyone had at least a Minor Vulnerability, except this guy. He was like Tyler Beats is as a performer, only Tyler does have a Minor Vulnerability, which is food and his metabolism, and also picking at his acne.

Before I could get too worked up about it, Walter knocked and told me 3 Days Dead was finishing up and it was time. I was sort of glad the Emperor was so tough, because it really did distract me, but once I remembered I had to give a show on live-stream to a ton of people, including maybe my father who I was somehow supposed to meet without Jane interfering, and if it wasn’t a ton of people then that was even worse, my stomach got queasy again and my legs shook like they were postcardio. Walter walked me to backstage, and he must have noticed, since before Jane came over, he said, “Who gives a fuck, right?”

Walter had a way of saying the opposite of what I was thinking and getting me to believe it. “Right,” I said.

Jane brought me over to Bill, who handed me the mike and had me do the last-minute microphone check. I was saying, “Microphone check one-two-one-two,” over and over as he fiddled with the sound device. Jane went to talk to the guy helping with the heart-shaped swing, like she did every show now. I quietly said into the mike, “Microphone check you like being my little slut.”

Bill jerked his head up, with his eyes narrow and wide at the same time. “What’s that?”

“Microphone check one-two-one-two.”

He stared at some equipment a couple seconds and chuckled and made some final adjustments and said I was all set. “Break a leg,” he added.

“If the swing messes up again, maybe I will,” I said, which was stupid, because he probably could screw the swing up if he wanted and make it look like an accident, but it wasn’t worth him getting sued and losing his job and ending up in jail and getting raped by adult predators who were more muscular than him. Maybe he didn’t leak Jane doing cocaine to the press, either. It was probably just some lower-tier staff. People will sell anyone out for money, whether they work for them or not.

I could tell the house lights dimmed as the countdown timer ticked to zero and I heard the announcer go, “Now, what you’ve all been waiting for—”

The crowd buzzed and the tech guys backstage were more worked up than usual since it was the Garden and it was going to be seen everywhere, and I bet even that asshole Bill was getting excited and wanted the show to go perfect.

“—on his last concert for his Valentine Days tour, singing tonight on the day of the year dedicated to love and romance, please welcome…”

“Go!” Bill said, like we’d practiced, and I ran out through the entrance.

“Jonny Valentine!” the announcer boomed, but I hardly heard it because my fans were already chanting my name and the piano of “Guys vs. Girls” was louder than usual since the audio engineers expected the ambient noise to be so high. It’s got a strong instrumental buildup, eight bars where the crowd gets more and more amped to hear my voice, and by the time I get to the first verse, they’re insane. Musical foreplay, Rog used to say. Stroke the crowd. It’s easier live, when you can dance and use your charisma, but the best songs find a way to drive the listener wild with anticipation in the studio version, too.

So I danced in place while waiting for the lyrical explosion, and sniffed the candy in the air mixing with that sweaty arena smell, and thought about the iconic concerts that were held here and now I was part of that, and felt the hot spotlights on just me that were saying, You’re the most talented singer and dancer in the world, everyone loves you, and I unleashed my instrument:

Girls and guys, burgers and fries

All gets ruined with a coupla lies

They couldn’t even hear me sing, I’m sure, but it didn’t matter. My blood was pumping hard and I was as excited as I was on my first tour, not the nervous excitement I normally get but the kind where you’re like, I can’t believe three years ago I was busking in the Central West End and now I’m singing at Madison Square Garden. A few things can still do that.

The same way I wanted Zack to somehow see me with that girl Dana, I wanted my father to be there to see this. Even if we didn’t meet, I hoped he saw what I’d become, and not just on the Internet, but in person.

When it was time for my banter interlude, they’d written me some stupid lines I really didn’t want to say, so instead I was like, “New York City! Will you be my valentine?” They all said yes, and I got down on one knee, like I was proposing to the crowd, and said, “I’m so in love with all of you, but it’ll break my heart if you’re not in love with me. Are you?” They hollered yes again, louder this time, so I said, “Then let me know… by sending an—”

I held out the mike and together we all went, “ ‘RSVP (To My Heart)’!”

A lot of times when I told girls I picked out in the crowd that I loved them, I’d get caught up in the moment and convince myself I did, but I never believed it when I told a whole stadium that I loved them. This time, I sort of did. Like, for a few seconds I had this crazy idea of what it would be like to be in love with twenty thousand people and have them love you, if we all lived together in this stadium and ate the vendor food inside it and wore the clothing merch and every night I’d sing to them and we’d all sleep out here wrapped up in Jonny Valentine beach blankets. We’d never have to leave the stadium.

I kept telling the crowd how I loved them during the interludes and that I’d dreamed about performing here since I was a little kid, which was a lie because I only heard about the Garden before my first national tour when Jane was trying to book it, and I almost told them about the fantasy of us all living there together, but I checked myself. Even my most rabid fans would probably be like, Um, Jonny, we can’t spend all our time with you, we have to go to school and see our families.

If it wasn’t my best work of the tour, it was close to it. But about halfway through, I realized for the first time that every single one of my songs makes me sound like a real loser. In all of them I’m either asking a girl if she likes me or sad that a girl turned me down. Even on “Summa Fling,” it’s a fling because the girl wants it that way, not me, and she dumps me at the end when school starts. It’s never me telling a girl I can’t be with her anymore or saying I’m sorry for breaking up with her. I guess most songs are like that, and it helps craft my one-girl image for my fans, but still, it’d be nice if in one song I sounded like a cool guy who was fighting off girls and kept moving on to the next one. That’s what every song is like in Mi$ter $mith’s library. I didn’t want my father to go from thinking his son was this famous singer at the beginning to a lame whiner whose songs were all about girls telling me I got served.

I was getting near the end of the show and I had no clue, even if he was there, how I’d be able to meet him. Just saying “Al” again wouldn’t work, because there was no way he’d have gotten a front-row seat at the Garden. It was such a stupid idea, emailing him. It could’ve been a child predator who made a fake ID on his computer, or anyone else faking it, and if it was my father, we could be breaking the law by writing to each other. And it was all Jane’s fault. If she’d let him see me, or even talk to me, I wouldn’t have to do it this way. I could just meet him, like taking a regular business meeting.

Then I knew how to do it. It would mean Jane would figure out I’d been in contact with him, but it was the only way. And I realized I didn’t even care anymore if she knew. Stacy wouldn’t like it, either, but who gives a fuck. I was just another client to her.

When it was time for the final medley, right before I stepped in the heart-shaped swing to sing “U R Kewt,” I ignored the interlude banter I was supposed to say as the swing descended. “I’m looking for someone,” I said, which was a mistake, because a line in “Summa Fling” is “I’m looking for someone, someone I can crush on,” so the crowd sang, “Someone I can crush on!” even though I already sang “Summa Fling” earlier in the show. But crowds love repetition, the way really young kids do.

“No, seriously, I am,” I said. “I’m looking for Albert Valentino. If your name is Al Valentino, please show your ID to security and come onstage.”

Everyone in the Garden started talking and looking around. Not everyone would know or piece together that Al Valentino was my father’s name, so that was a smart move. Except Jane would be pissed. If my father was there, he could get onstage at least while I sang the medley.

I scanned for him, but it was too dark and the lights were all on me. The swing lifted me up and I had to focus. I got through “U R Kewt,” but I kept worrying that if my father was trying to get up onstage, Jane would intercept him. Or if he was there, I bet he was in the cheap seats and it would take him forever even to reach the floor.

So after “U R Kewt,” to buy some more time and to make sure the security people knew what to do, I forced an interlude, which I’m not supposed to do to keep the momentum going, and said again that security should let a guy named Al Valentino onstage. I sang “Roses for Rosie,” and I threw all the petals down. Some of them could have been falling on my father’s head as he walked toward the stage.

There was still no sign that he was coming when I finished it. I switched to “Guys vs. Girls,” and I was looking down the whole time to see if anyone was coming up onstage. No one was, not even any impostors pretending they were named Al Valentino, though there weren’t many guys at the show anyway, and the ones who were were probably child predators and the last thing they’d want to do is offer themselves up to security. I got annoyed, which constricts your vocal cords, that he’d made me all worked up for this and hadn’t figured out a way for us to meet. I was eleven years old, it shouldn’t have been up to me and I definitely shouldn’t have had to interrupt the biggest concert of my career, he should’ve just called Jane and worked it out with her instead of making me sneak around on computers.

The swing set me down with no sign of my father. The dancers and singers and I took our bows, but instead of going offstage with them before coming back for my encore, I stayed where I was and let them go, because I didn’t want to run into Jane. “I’m gonna sing an a cappella song to y’all,” I told the crowd, even though the set list called for me to do “Love Is Evol” and “Kali Kool” as encores, so that the band wasn’t with me and I could sing as long as I wanted in case he showed up. I launched the first verse of “Crushed”:

Like an empty can of pop

Like snow and sleet and slush

Girl, with you I can’t stop

From feeling like I’m crushed

And when I was about to switch to the chorus, four security guys walked as a group in the darkness of the stands toward the stage. They got closer, and I waited a few seconds as they came down an aisle, but I couldn’t make anything out. My breathing and heartbeat sped up, which was bad since this song had slow pacing and I could feel myself rushing the lyrics. I sang the chorus:

I got a crush on you, it ain’t funny

Got a crush on you, under your pinkie

You do what you want, girl, it’s plain to see

I’m not on your mind, but you’re crushing me

People think good singers are just born with strong pipes, but the best singers are creative interpreters, too. Like with the last line of the chorus, I emphasize the hard c in crushing, like ka-rushing, so it’s like the pain when you first get hurt, then I soften and draw out and deamplify the rest of the word, ruuusssshing, like, This is what’s left of me, this gooey inside that you’ve beaten up, and so I whisper me where you can’t hardly hear it, because you’ve destroyed me and you probably don’t even think about me anymore.

By the time I finished it, they were at the base of the floor, where all the other security guys were lined up, and one of the four new guys discussed something with one of the guards who was lined up. There was a person in the middle of them, and just enough light from the stage that I could make out the purple bags under his eyes. Our purple bags.

I stopped singing. “Let him come up,” I said into the mike.

My father’s face was still in the shadows. One of the guards put his hands on his back and walked him around the stage to the little stairs and past a set of security guys, over to my elevated stage and through another line of security, up a last short flight of stairs, and finally over to me. The Garden has top-shelf security.

“I have to stay here between you,” the guard said to me. I nodded. I don’t think I could have spoken right then if I’d tried.

The crowd was talking now, and I was in danger of losing them if I didn’t sing again soon. But I couldn’t do it yet. I had to look at the guy standing four feet away on the other side of the security guard.

He was better-looking than he was in his driver’s license, which most people are. His chestnut hair was thin but he had all of it, which was good for me even though Jane says what matters most is what her father had, and he went bald young, so we’ll explore medication for me eventually. And he dressed kind of cool, with these beat-up black boots and a brown leather jacket that was sort of like Zack’s except more rugged and warmer and not as stylish. He looked like someone who could hitchhike anywhere and be fine.

I got nervous over how bad it’d be if Jane interrupted the show and how not only was my father watching me perform, but he was in the performance. I blocked it out the best I could and picked up the second verse of “Crushed” as if nothing major had happened and I hadn’t met my father for the first time in years and an entire stadium plus an Internet live-stream audience had watched it happen. It was almost like doing it in front of thousands of people was easier than if we’d met one-on-one in a room for face time by ourselves.

For a second, even with what had just gone down, I found myself wondering how many last-minute and in-progress Internet viewers we had. We needed about seventy-five thousand total to break even, after all the marketing and advertising expenses. Over ninety thousand would be considered a triumph.

And when I wrapped up the final chorus, I realized this would be the last song on the tour, and I wanted to draw it out. So I pulled out the melismatics on the words you’re crushing me so long, the audience kept cheering and clapping for me to go on, and my lungs felt like they were inhaling the applause and they could roll with it forever. Dr. Henson did a test on me once, and I have the lung capacity of a marathon runner. My father was smiling the same way he might if he was watching me sing in a concert at school, like those dads who used to videotape our crap chorus.

The set list called for one more encore, but I’d already switched it up, and if I did another it might give Jane the chance to interfere, so I told the crowd I loved them and would see them again soon, but didn’t say we hadn’t figured out when or where my next tour would be, or if I’d even still do one.

“This way,” I said away from the mike while the crowd cheered. My father followed me. He was still smiling.

I didn’t go to the main entrance, though. I went to the side one that I’d found with Walter earlier, on the opposite side of the stage. There was one security guard behind the door there now, and I walked fast in case Jane had told security to grab me before I went off. He didn’t stop us, probably since I looked like I knew what I was doing. Support staff is always afraid of losing their jobs.

We were back in the tunnels again. There were so many, it would be a long time until Jane could find us.

Then I got really scared, because what if after all this time he was a child predator who looked enough like what I remembered my father looked like and had made a fake driver’s license? Or what if he was my father and was also a child predator? I couldn’t straight up ask him if he was one. Not many would be like, Yeah, I’m glad you asked, I actually am a child predator. Instead I said, “So, you’re Al.”

“I am,” he said. “Thanks for inviting me. You were incredible.”

He put out his hand for a high five. It didn’t feel dorky the way it did with Dr. Henson. It felt like the way a baseball player congratulates his teammate at home plate on a homer, like, I’m not surprised you did this, but it’s still cool.

His voice was baritone and gravelly. It sounded like the narrator in Zenon if you lowered the treble and some of the frequencies. I thought he might have a Kansas or St. Louis or even an Australian accent, but he didn’t have much of one. He sounded like he was from nowhere, really. Maybe he spent a lot of time in tunnels, too. “Let’s keep walking,” I said, though I didn’t mention it was so Jane wouldn’t find us.

I stayed a few feet ahead of him as we turned through the tunnels. A few more Garden workers were moving around now, but I don’t think they knew who I was, because they were mostly Mexican guys. Mexican guys never know who I am. They’re too busy working to follow celebrities. And celebrities are too busy being celebrities to pay attention to Mexican guys. It’s like neither one knows the other exists.

“How did you get a ticket?” I asked.

“I bought one off the Internet,” he said. “They were hard to find. You’re a hot ticket.”

“I can pay you back.”

I pictured him going on the Internet and refreshing the site until a ticket was available and buying it right away. The tunnels were cold, but I felt warm inside, thinking of that.

“No way,” he said. “I would’ve paid a thousand bucks to see you. I bet scalpers can sell them for that much, too.”

The most I’d heard of anyone paying for a regular single ticket was around six hundred dollars, and there were some charity seats that went for more, but that didn’t count. “Not that much.”

“Well, they should. You’d be worth every penny.”

I wondered again if he had another family now, or at least a girlfriend. If he’d had a kid in Pittsburgh, maybe the kid and his mother moved to New York, which is why he came back. And I had the same thought about him playing catch with his kid, in Central Park, because you couldn’t do it anywhere else in New York. The strange thing is, I suddenly really hoped he did and that he brought them and I could meet them. I’d have a half-brother, or a half-sister. “Did you come with anyone?” I asked without looking back at him.

“Nope. Just me. Some of my friends wanted to come, but I didn’t want to ruin your concert with a group of rowdy construction workers.”

I was a little disappointed I wouldn’t meet this family I’d invented for him. Then I got happier that he might not have one, but I was even more disappointed he hadn’t brought his rowdy construction-worker friends. It would be much cooler to have them at my show than a crowd full of tween girls. “You want to play a video game?” I asked. “I have this game, The Secret Land of Zenon, and I’m close to finishing it. It’s in the star/talent room.”

He looked behind us and ahead of us, but there were only a few Mexican guys moving stuff around. “You sure that’s all right?”

“Yeah. They always put a game system in my room. It’s in my rider.”

I told him we had to use the wall maps. We studied the first one to figure out where we were, and I was about to head one way, but he said, “Hold on. It’s the other direction.” He walked ahead of me, and I followed behind. I liked how he figured it out so quickly and wasn’t like, “I think it’s the other direction,” but was just, “It’s the other direction.” Jane’s always getting lost, even in L.A. and with the GPS. Maybe I’d get his sense of direction. I don’t know how mine worked in cities yet, because when I was in St. Louis I was too young to go out on my own, and I can’t do it now.

“Do you have a good sense of direction?” I asked.

“Usually,” he said.

“When you went on that hiking trip, did you use a map?”

“Hiking trip?”

“In Australia. With your friend Dave.”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “You shouldn’t hike without a map.”

“When was that?”

“With Dave? I guess about a year ago. But I used to hike in Kansas growing up, and we never had maps.”

I imagined him hiking a year ago in Australia with the guy in that picture, being attacked by kangaroos and meeting a tribe of those Australian black guys who gave him and Dave food and water. A year ago, I was in L.A., gearing up to record Valentine Days, probably getting spray-tanned and drinking sugarless pink lemonade.

We turned into the next tunnel and looked at the new YOU ARE HERE sign on the map. We were going in the right direction, and I let him lead us.

“Is it true that toilets flush in the opposite direction there?” I asked in one of the tunnels.

“Where?” he asked as he checked out another map.

“In Australia. I read that they flush opposite how they flush here.”

“I never really noticed. But summer and winter are reversed. When it’s hot here, it’s cold there.”

“That’s like in Zenon,” I said. “A lot of times, the opposite of what you think you should do works best.”

He asked me more about the game, and I told him how to play and what it was like as we got closer to the star/talent room. It felt like when you’re in a party of adventurers in Zenon, which happens a couple times on certain levels, and you each have a specific skill. My father would be the cartographer, even though he didn’t bring maps when he hiked in Kansas. I’d be the bard, I guess, which wasn’t really a skill, but sometimes you did meet bards in Zenon, only I didn’t play any instruments. It reminded me of that time we were in the car after Richard’s birthday party, when we drove on the highway, except this time we knew where we were going. And it also was like when me and Zack ran through the hallways in the Memphis hotel. But Zack was only using me to get into the nightclub, just like he used my Walmart fans to broaden his base. Me and my father were on a real adventure together. And hiding from Jane and venue security in the Garden tunnels was way more like the Underground Railroad than the Memphis hotel was.

“Maybe we could go there someday,” I said. “I don’t have a foothold in the Australian market yet, but we’d probably still bring along my bodyguard, Walter, for security. You’d like him.”

“That would be nice,” he said.

When we got close to the star/talent room, I realized that Jane might be waiting outside for me. So I told my father that we had to go around to the rear. I don’t think he knew why I said that. We found our way to it, and the hallway was empty. I listened in at the door for a second, since I didn’t want him noticing it and asking me why I was being so careful.

I didn’t hear anything, so I turned the knob and cracked it open. Me and Walter had forgotten to lock it, which was stupid because anyone could’ve come in when I was playing Zenon and kidnapped or killed or molested me. It was empty and the front door was closed. “Stay here a second,” I said.

I went inside and ran to the front door and locked it, and opened the back door for my father. “Are you inviting me in?” he asked.

I didn’t know why he was asking such an obvious question, and why he kept using the word inviting, like I was going to say, No, I’m just opening the door to show you how cool the star/talent room is and then I’m closing it on you. But I said yes, and after he did, I locked the back door.

Man, if he was a child predator, this was like hitting the jackpot: Jonny Valentine locking himself in a room with you without a security presence.

He looked awkward in the star/talent room, sizing up the buffet table and beanbag chairs and flat-screen like he’d never seen anything like it before. I went over to the buffet and grabbed a plate. “You want some food?”

“Are you having any?”

I wasn’t even hungry, but I could tell he’d feel weird about eating if I didn’t, so I piled some pasta on my plate. It didn’t matter anymore now that the tour was over. I could gain ten pounds of chub and then me and Jane would go on a maple-syrup-and-cayenne master cleanse for two weeks. “Yeah. They’ll throw it out if I don’t.”

“Then I’ll have a little.”

He started with a small serving of the pasta, but then, just like Tyler, he took some of just about everything, the steak and salmon and quiche and all the rest. Even Walter didn’t eat this much at my concerts, and that includes days he’d lifted when he needed to replenish with carbs and protein. My father didn’t look like he lifted, but like he had lean muscle from his construction work, which probably toned specific zones, like how Peter’s forearms were so defined from cooking. Maybe me and him and Walter could squeeze in a session at the hotel gym together.

He looked around the room again. “I used to think you were special, the way you’d sing around the house,” he said. “But I figured all fathers think that about their kids. I had no idea how right I was.”

In some ways that was better than hearing we’d broken ninety thousand in Internet sales.

We were chewing while standing, so I booted up Zenon and plopped down on one of the two beanbags in front of the TV, and he sat on the other. I explained how I was finally at the Emperor but I couldn’t beat him. I put the TV on mute so no one would hear me playing.

The same thing as before happened when I went into the Emperor’s lair. I attacked, he deflected, and he fully damaged me with one cut from his halberd. My father kept saying things, like “Whoa!” and “Watch out!” and “Nice try!” Before my fourth try he suggested, “How about letting him attack you first and wear himself out?” which was a smart idea, but I still got damaged with the first hit. I kept trying and getting damaged to zero percent and restarting from my saved game.

“Did you do construction in St. Louis, too?” I asked.

“Yeah. Most of the time. Don’t you remember?”

“No.”

“And your mother never told you?” I shook my head. “Did you tell her I was coming tonight?”

“Do you remember that time I went to this kid Richard’s birthday party?” I asked. “You picked me up and drove on the highway for a few hours and we went to a diner?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “But did you tell Jane I was coming?”

I didn’t answer his question again. “They lived in this super-nice house with a huge lawn. I was the last one at the party. You let me order French toast for dinner.”

“There’s a lot I don’t remember from those years,” he said. “It’s nothing personal. I’m sure we had a good time.” He watched me get damaged again by the Emperor. “Aw, I thought you had him!”

As my character was departing the realm for like the seventh time in a row and my ghost slipped up into the air, I said, “Why’d you have to go.”

I didn’t say it like a question. I just said it like it was too bad we couldn’t restart our life from then, from that time at the diner, and he could know I’d become famous and rich later on, and he’d stick around. I didn’t turn to watch his reaction, but I could tell he didn’t know how to respond, even though he’d probably practiced answering it. He didn’t say anything while my saved game restarted.

Finally he said, “It’s very complicated, Jonathan.”

It was the first time he’d said my name. Plus Jonathan sounded super-strange out of his mouth and not Jane’s, even if he’d called me it in emails and probably called me it when I was little. “Why?”

We both watched my character run into the dungeon and get damaged again. I didn’t know how I was ever going to beat this Emperor. “We had problems.”

“Like what?”

“Like money problems, for instance.”

“I thought you said you had a job.”

“You can have money problems even when you have a job.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know. It was a long time ago.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m very sorry. You deserved better. Every day I’ve been gone I’ve thought that.” He pulled an envelope out of his jacket. “I brought you something. I know it’s not your birthday for about a month, but in case I don’t see you then.”

He took out a four-by-six photo of me as a little kid in front of the Cardinals’ old stadium, wearing a Cardinals hat way too big for my head, sitting on top of his shoulders like I was at the riverfront concert. Maybe he always did that after the concert so I couldn’t get lost in crowds. “Remember this? The first game I took you to?”

“No. I only remember watching a game once on TV with you while it was raining.” I didn’t ask if he remembered the riverfront concert.

“Well, we went. A couple times, even.” I couldn’t remember going with him the other times, either, probably because I went with Michael Carns’s family on their season tickets all the time after he left.

He handed it to me. I had a big smile in the picture, and he did, too, like he was excited to show his son a real baseball game for the first time. “If I get to see you again for your birthday, I’ll buy you something nicer.”

I wanted to tell him to visit for my birthday, that I could take him to the fanciest restaurants in L.A. and get him brand-new clothes and we could drive around in whatever car he wanted. But I couldn’t say it. I guess it was like what asking a normal girl out might be like. Even if you know she’s going to say yes, there’s a part of you that’s probably afraid she’ll turn you down.

I put the picture down next to the beanbag chair and returned to Zenon. Right as I opened the door to the Emperor’s lair, I looked at it again. It was the only picture I had of him except for his old driver’s license. Maybe he was right. People make mistakes. In life, you can’t restart from a saved game to undo them.

I dropped the controller in my lap and threw my arms around my father’s body and buried my head in his chest. His leather jacket smelled like Zack’s, without the cigarettes. He didn’t react for a second. Then he curled one arm around my back and the other over my head. His heart thumped lightly against my forehead in a one-two-one-two rhythm and his chest moved in and out from his breathing like a metronome.

But because I’d already opened the door to the Emperor’s lair, he’d run up to the edge of the room and attacked me, and my ghost departed the realm for like the twelfth time. I squirmed out of my father’s arms and yelled, “Fuck you, you fucking Emperor!”

That was a mistake. A few seconds later the front doorknob tried to turn but couldn’t and there was loud banging and Jane’s voice was all high-pitched shouting, “Jonathan? Jonathan, are you in there?”

My father stood up. “Don’t let her in,” I said.

“I have to.”

“No, you don’t.”

“If I don’t, it’s considered—” He took a step toward the door. “I just do.”

“She’ll make you go away,” I said. “I saw the letter from her lawyers.”

He seemed kind of surprised. “I know. But it’s worse if I don’t talk to her now.” He unlocked the door while the knob was jittering from the outside. When he opened it she looked at him like she was about to smack him.

“Get out,” she said, calm and low.

“Jane,” my father said, “let me explain—”

“Let’s not make this ugly. I can have security here in two seconds.” I could tell part of the reason she didn’t want to make it ugly was she didn’t need another tabloid story.

His body shifted. It looked like he might leave. If he did, I didn’t know how I’d ever see him again. “Let him stay,” I said. “He’s not doing anything bad.”

Jane stepped out into the hall and swiveled her head in both directions. She came back in and closed the door. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk to you both,” he said. “This was the only way.”

“How’d he know you were here?”

I answered before he could. “I emailed him,” I said. “I found him on the Internet and emailed him, and I told him to come to the show.”

The side of Jane’s lips twisted like she’d been punched but was trying not to show it. “And what do you want out of this?”

“I don’t want anything except a chance to see my son.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Jane said.

“It’s true,” I said. “He was in Australia the last few years. That’s why he wasn’t in touch.”

Jane looked at my father first, then at me. He didn’t look at either of us.

“Jonathan,” she said slowly. “He’s a drug addict. He’s been one for years. I didn’t tell you because you didn’t need to know what a lowlife you have for a father. He hasn’t been to Australia. I bet he doesn’t even have a passport.”

My father didn’t say anything.

“Is that the truth?” I asked.

He took a few seconds. “I’ve been clean six months,” he said. “I didn’t want to reach out while I was still using. But I swear to you, I haven’t touched anything in six months. Here.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a big copper coin. Inside a triangle it said “6 Month Recovery.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he bought that off some junkie he’s friends with,” Jane said.

I ignored her. “What about Australia? Didn’t you live there? To have an adventure?”

“No,” he said. “A friend did.” He put the coin back in his pocket. “I guess I wanted to impress you. You’ve got this life, and I didn’t want you knowing I was strung out on drugs, living in halfway houses, and that’s why I was ashamed to get in touch all these years. All I wanted was to see you.”

Jane laughed a mean laugh. “Just like you did when you left after Michael.”

I thought she meant Michael Carns, which didn’t make sense. But the way Jane’s face looked, ready to break apart like an egg even though she was angry, and the way my father’s face fell down to the ground for the millionth time like he’d done something really bad, I could tell it wasn’t.

So his name was Michael, too. And he really was my little brother. I must’ve been too young to understand what was happening and they never discussed it and I wasn’t old enough to really remember anything.

He said, “I’m sorry, Jane. I’m very sorry.”

I thought about me and my father in that diner again, and him telling me to order whatever I wanted, he didn’t care.

Jane kept staring right at him like she was either going to cry or punch him. “Six years later, and I finally get an apology,” she said.

“People change, Jane.”

“Right,” Jane said. “Jonathan changed a lot, so now you conveniently want to see him.”

And Jane in her hospital bed, holding the baby with my face.

“I’d want to see him no matter what,” he said. “I don’t like what happened any more than you do. My life’s back on track.”

Everything happens for a reason.

“Anything else you have to say, you can say it to my lawyer,” Jane said. “If you don’t leave immediately, I’m calling security and putting you in jail.” She took her phone out of her purse like it was a weapon.

“Janie,” he said.

She dialed. “Don’t you dare sweet-talk me. It doesn’t work anymore.”

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

“Now, wait a minute.” He pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his jacket pocket, the same pocket that had my photo. “First of all, the restraining order hasn’t been approved yet. I’m well within my rights to talk to Jonathan, especially if he’s invited me, which he has, to the concert and on the stage and into this room.” He smoothed it out and gave it to her. “Your lawyers are receiving this tonight.”

Jane’s eyes bulged out like after I’d fainted as she got further down the page, but she kept her cool. When she finished, she folded it crisply in half, like it was just any old piece of paper. Complete control.

“If you believe you’re financially entitled to all this, you’re very mistaken. You owe thousands in child support. You probably think coming here and charming Jonny is going to make it easier than if you’d gone through your lawyers, but you’re wrong.” She handed the paper back to him. “He’s mine, Al. Not yours.”

“We’ll see,” my father said. “We’ll be releasing a statement to the press this week if your lawyers don’t talk with us.”

He really did look a lot like me in the face. If he had my talent he could’ve been a star. Except maybe not, because a lot of being a star was about sacrifice and work ethic. There was something about my father you could pick up that made him look like someone who did what Rog called the bare minimum. The bare-minimum singers who were lucky were one-hit wonders. The ones who were less lucky never made it at all, they only played small clubs and were bitter and eventually burned out of the industry. The real stars didn’t kill themselves only when they liked the work, which anyone can do. They killed themselves when they hated it, when they’d rather be anywhere else. You don’t get to ten thousand hours just by having fun.

Jane finally cracked, getting up in my father’s face and calling him an asshole and a bunch of other curses, much angrier than when she’d yelled at Kevin the TV producer after the morning-show concert, and he took it without saying anything.

They were about a foot away from each other, near the door, and I was still on the beanbag chair in front of the TV. I could slip out the back door and they wouldn’t even notice. They were arguing over me and they’d totally forgotten about me at the same time.

After half a minute the front door opened again. Walter.

“Calm down, calm down,” he said as he wedged himself between them with his hands out, like they were paparazzi hounding me postshow, but they wouldn’t, or at least Jane wouldn’t.

Walter looked over at me while he was in the middle of them like, Should I kick him out? and I shook my head no real quick. But another part of him was looking at me more like, Sorry about this, brother. It could be all right to live with Walter. He didn’t know how to take care of me or understand anything about the industry, but at least he was savvy about protection. It was a stupid idea, though, because if he was going to take care of anyone, it would be his own daughters, just like Nadine had her own boyfriend and she’d marry him and have her own kids soon.

Jane was all I really had. And I was the only thing she had. Just the two of us.

“Stop it,” I said, and no one heard me, so I used my diaphragm more but without shouting and said, “Please stop it.” This time they all shut up like they’d finally remembered I was there.

My father’s eyebrows were pinched together, waiting for me to say something. “Show me the paper,” I said.

“You don’t need to see this, Jonathan,” he said.

“Show it to me.”

He unfolded the paper and held it out like it was a bad report card. I didn’t understand any of it. Except for a dollar amount at the end. It was a lot of money, more than my father could make in a hundred lifetimes doing construction. But I’d seen the figures from my record deals, gate receipts, and merchandising. We could afford it.

And in a funny way, maybe I wouldn’t have had a career at all if things had been okay with Michael and if my father hadn’t left. Jane wouldn’t have needed to make me busk for extra money, wouldn’t have put my videos up on YouTube, wouldn’t have pulled me out of school and moved us to L.A. I would’ve just been some kid in school who lived in Dogtown and was a super-talented singer who joined a rock band in high school like his father did. And I would’ve had a younger brother around I could play Zenon with and teach how the double switch works in baseball.

“I’ll make sure her lawyers talk to yours,” I said. “We’ll work out a deal. You’ll get enough money to last you a long time.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Jane said to me. She looked at Al. “He has no idea what he’s talking about. I’m in charge of all the finances.”

“You might be in charge of it,” I said. “But I can walk away from all this if I want. This can be my last show.”

That shut her up. I’d never said anything like that before. She looked afraid of me, even.

That time we watched the Cardinals game on TV, my father was all sweaty and talking fast. Now he was calm, and he didn’t look like he was a drug addict, at least not like the ones in movies. He looked like if you cleaned him up and had him lift for a few months, you could put him in a catalog for men’s clothes. Like a guy who got a lot of girls when he was young and women could sense that so he still got a bunch of them.

Jane was an addict, too. Not to drugs, because she couldn’t do as much as she did if she was. That was the difference between addicts like Jane and addicts like my father. Some addicts could still turn their son into a pop star in L.A. and be a successful music manager. Other ones got in fights outside bars in Pittsburgh and stayed in halfway houses and lied about living in Australia.

What my father said was true. People did change. But there was some part of them they could never get away from, no matter how hard they wanted to. He was a bare-minimum worker, then and now. He’d probably always say his friend was guilty and he was innocent, in a logic test and in real life. And he still looked like the type of guy who left his wife after her baby died to raise their other son on her own.

“And whatever’s in this thing sunsets.” I handed him back his legal letter. “Deal?”

He seemed scared, like this was the last thing he expected and he didn’t know what to do. It was the first time I’d ever proposed a business deal, so I should’ve been the one who was scared. Only I wasn’t. I felt like I knew exactly what I was doing. I guess I’d learned from Jane. I bet she was kind of proud, even.

“Yeah. If this doesn’t happen, my lawyer talks to the press about how you’re shutting me out.”

“It will happen.” I thought it would be a lot harder to say the next sentence out loud. It wasn’t, though. “But the deal is going to be that I don’t want to see you anymore.”

You could see him turning it over in his mind.

“No,” said my father. “I want to see you. That’s more important to me than the money. I didn’t come back to charm you so I could get the money, I came back because all I want is to have you in my life so we can do all the things we never did together. I want to take you to Cardinals games again and play video games and travel to Australia and drive you to diners and order French toast for dinner.”

Except that’s not what he really said. I could restart from a game saved right there a million times and he’d never say that. He nodded once. That was it.

“Please leave,” I said, without any diaphragm this time.

He put his lawyer’s letter back in his pocket and stared at the floor and shuffled out. His boots didn’t make a sound on the floor as he left, like he was a ghost in Zenon. I’d waited half my life to meet my father, and after I’d spent half an hour with him, I was never going to see him again. And I’m the one who’d made the deal.

Me and Jane and Walter stood there for a few seconds. Then Walter did something he never did, probably because he was afraid someone would call him a child predator, but he came over and put one of his meaty arms around my shoulders and palmed the top of my head and patted it once.

“I’ll be outside if you need me,” he said.

He left, and Jane moved for the first time in two minutes. She took a while to talk, and when she did, her throat sounded froggy. “I wish you didn’t have to hear all that.”

I shrugged. If she’d just told me everything about my father before, I never would have had to hear all of it right now.

“I know I’m not the perfect mother, but your father…” She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were a little watery. “I’m sorry, baby,” she said, the same way she’d said it in the hospital, and she clutched me to her chest and hugged me and I let her do it but didn’t hug back. I closed my eyes. What I was thinking about instead was the picture in my bedroom in L.A. of us on the seesaw in St. Louis. I imagined us going up and down on it a few times, then her slamming down hard and me flying off into the sky, up past the clouds and airplanes and into space and floating away in all the blackness, with Jane holding her arms out to reach for my body but me departing the realm away from her.

“It’s okay, Jane.” I slid out of her arms and moved back a couple feet. “I think I want to be by myself for a little while.”

She swallowed and rubbed her eyes even though there still weren’t any tears coming out and told me to get her when I was ready. Her phone pinged on the way out, and she looked at it. She started to talk, stopped, and started again.

“We got over a hundred thousand live-stream purchases. Nearly a third bought in at the very end,” she said softly, without turning to me. “Ronald says congratulations.”

I didn’t say anything, but we were both thinking the same thing, that all the bad press the last couple weeks had helped out, and me bringing my father onstage made us go viral. Sex sells, but controversy really sells.

I went to close the door, but before I did I leaned out in the hallway and said, “Jane.”

She spun around on her black high heels. I was with her when she bought them in L.A. But she didn’t buy them, she got them free, because I was with her and the boutique loved the publicity. She really did dress like a serious businesswoman. You’d never know she once bagged groceries in St. Louis with Mary Ann Hilford.

If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right. I’d work twice as hard. I’d sacrifice everything in my life that held me back. We’d get the best choreographer, the best producer, the best publicist, the best fake romances, the best scandals. And I already had the best manager. I was the only client she’d ever have.

“I want to do the tour,” I said. “You can start planning it now.”

I wasn’t just going to be the next Tyler Beats. I was going to be the next MJ.

A smile curled up on her face like she’d forgotten everything that happened the last few minutes, and I went back inside my room and swung the door shut, harder than I meant to.

I fell down onto the beanbag chair like standing another minute would kill me, and restarted Zenon and plugged my iPod into the portable speaker and set it to shuffle. I tried a few new weapons and spells, but got damaged by the Emperor each time. After a few songs, the lullaby came on the speakers. I don’t listen to it much on my iPod, so I can save it for when Jane sings it.

I went into the Emperor’s room and was thinking of what I could do and if there was another angle I could attack him from and how nothing worked against him. The lullaby was playing, but for some reason, in my head I heard that song “Stay,” and hummed its melody, and I remembered what I’d just told my father, how in Zenon you sometimes have to do the opposite of what you think you should do. And I thought, What if I don’t stay in the room with the Emperor, but just run away?

So, before I could attack him, I ran back out the way I came in and closed the door behind me.

And in the tunnel leading up to the room was a gem, the last gem I needed.

I picked it up and my experience points kept climbing, which is different from normal where they go up a set amount, and soon the screen turned black and then white, and the narrator’s voice and screen said, “You have gained sufficient experience points. All other living beings have departed the realm. You can no longer be damaged. The Secret Land of Zenon is yours entire.” The screen flashed back to normal and I was on the first level again, except no one else was around, no people or animals or enemies.

The lullaby finished. I took the iPod off shuffle and went back to the song and put it on repeat and whispered along with the last verse while I played.

Go to sleep

Don’t you cry

Rest your head upon the clover

Rest your head upon the clover

In your dreams

You shall ride

Whilst your Mammy’s watching over

My character walked all around the first level of Zenon, and I could instantly transport myself to any level. I didn’t need gems or experience points. If I chose to go somewhere, I could.

Then I knew what I wanted to say for my final exam for Nadine. Normally I have a tough time outlining my essays. For this one, though, I could already see the beginning, middle, and end, and what my supporting evidence would be. I only hoped it would fit in a thousand words. But I could articulate it now.

The picture of me and my father at the baseball game was on the floor. I turned up the volume on my iPod and set it on top of the picture. It covered his body, right up to me sitting on his shoulders. The part you could still see with me had just my father’s head poking out between my legs, like I was a mother giving birth to a grown man. The opposite of a premature infant.

I jumped to a new level in Zenon. The land was mine to explore, all mine. I could go wherever I wanted, do whatever I wanted, no one stopping me, nobody else around, over the tall mountains and through the deep forests and into the dark dungeons. Just me.

I could no longer be damaged.