No.

Hearing that word never got easier. It never felt numb or meaningless when someone said it to me. The way their eyes looked me up and down when I walked into a room…the way they judged me for everything I was and everything I wasn’t…the way they whispered as I stood still.

No. No. Sorry. No, thank you. It’s a pass this time.

I’d just turned sixteen, and I’d known rejection more than the average person. I’d been trying to get discovered in the music industry for years, and nothing had ever come from it except rejection.

No.

No.

Sorry. No, thank you.

It’s a pass this time.

That didn’t stop Mama from driving me from meeting to meeting, from audition to audition, from one ‘no’ to another. That was because I was her star, her shining light. I was going to do everything she’d been unable to accomplish, because that’s what kids were supposed to do, she told me.

We were supposed to be better than our parents.

And I would be better, someday. All I needed was for the right person to tell me yes.

I walked out of my third audition that week in New Orleans and I looked at all the other girls who were auditioning for the girl group. I thought I was more of a solo artist, but Mama said I should be happy with any kind of forward movement.

“Girl groups are in right now,” she told me. “Pop music sales are big.”

I never wanted to do pop music, though. My heart bled for soul but Mama said there was no money in soul music for a girl like me—only disappointment.

All the other girls auditioning each looked like me, but better somehow. Across the way, Mama’s eyes were wide with hope as she stared at me. A ball of guilt knotted in my gut as I forced a smile.

“Well? How did it go?” she asked me, standing up from her chair in the waiting room.

“Fine.”

She frowned. “Did you fumble your song? I told you to keep rehearsing the lyrics. This school thing is taking too much time from the real work you should be doing,” she said disdainfully.

“No, no. That’s not it. I didn’t forget my lyrics. They were perfect,” I lied. I had fumbled the words, but it was only because of the way the casting director looked at me, as if I was the exact opposite of the part they wanted to fill, but I couldn’t have Mama knowing I’d messed up because that could’ve jeopardized me staying at Canon High School.

“You should’ve tried harder,” she scolded. “We’re spending so much on singing, acting, and dance classes, Jasmine. You shouldn’t be walking out of auditions saying it was ‘fine’. You must be the best. Otherwise, you’ll be nothing. You need to be a triple threat.”

Triple threat.

I hated those words. Mama was a singer, but her career had never taken off. She said right before she would have been discovered, she’d gotten knocked up with me, and no one wanted a pregnant superstar.

She believed if she hadn’t put all her eggs in one basket, she could’ve made it in another field. Therefore, she made me a triple threat. I couldn’t just be a great singer, I needed to be the best actress and dancer out there, too. More talents meant more opportunities, more opportunities meant more fame, and more fame meant Mama might be proud of me.

That was all I really wanted.

“Well, we better get a move on,” she told me. “You have ballet practice across town in forty minutes, then your singing lesson afterward. Then I have to get home and have dinner ready for Ray.”

Ray had been Mama’s boyfriend for as long as I could remember. There wasn’t a memory I had that didn’t include his face. For a long time, I’d thought he was my father, but one night when they both came home hammered, I listened to them fighting over how I was being raised, and Mama shouted about how Ray didn’t get a say in my life since I wasn’t his daughter.

But still, he loved me like I was his own.

He was the reason we moved around so much. He found decent success as a musician and was able to make a living touring around the world. Sure, he wasn’t a household name to a lot of people, but he did well enough to support himself, Mama, and me. We were Ray’s biggest groupies, and he made it his priority to take care of us.

Mama never worked a real job. She bartended some nights, but not often. She said her job was making me a star, which included her homeschooling me so I wouldn’t lose focus. Being homeschooled was my only option, and I never complained. I was certain other kids had it worse.

Yet, for the first time, when we’d stopped traveling for a while, Ray and I had both convinced Mama to let me go to public school. When I learned we’d be in New Orleans for a bit of time due to a gig Ray had gotten offered, I begged Mama to let me start my junior year at an actual high school, with kids my age. God, what I wouldn’t give to be surrounded by kids my age who weren’t just auditioning for the same roles as me.

A chance to make real friends...

I was shocked when she agreed to it, thanks to Ray and his way with words.

It meant the world to me, but to Mama it meant time away from studying the craft of music. To her, high school was child’s play, and I was too old to still be playing.

“I still don’t think public school was a good idea,” she said scornfully as we walked toward the city bus stop. “It’s distracting.”

“I can do it all,” I promised, which was probably another lie, but I couldn’t give up being in school. It was the first time in such a long time that I felt like I belonged. “I’ll work even harder than ever before.”

She cocked an eyebrow, unsure. “If you say so, but the minute I think it’s too much, I’m pulling you out.”

“Okay.”

It was six o’clock on Saturday evening when we stepped on the bus, and instead of going home, we headed to my ballet class. Mama handed me a bag of measured out raw nuts to eat beforehand, because otherwise I’d end up feeling faint. I wasn’t the best dancer in the class, but I wasn’t the worst. There was nothing about my body that read ‘ballerina’, though. My body was made like Mama’s: small waist, thick hips. I had curves in all the right places, except ballet class. In ballet class, I was the oddity.

“Have you been eating clean?” the instructor asked me as she fixed my posture.

“Yes. I had lemon water this morning then Greek yogurt with berries.”

“And lunch?”

“Salad with nuts and thin chicken slices.”

She raised an eyebrow as if she didn’t believe me. “And snacks?”

“I just had nuts on the way over here.”

“Ah…” She nodded and placed her hands on my waist to straighten me up. “You look bloated. Maybe skip the afternoon snack.”

A few of the other dancers giggled at her comment, and my cheeks heated up. They all looked at me as if I were a fool for even being in the class. If it weren’t for Mama, I wouldn’t have been, but she thought dance lessons were a very important part of becoming famous.

It just made me feel like a failure.

“Well, that was humiliating,” Mama barked after rehearsal, barging out of the studio. “You haven’t been practicing.”

“I have.”

She turned to face me and pointed a stern finger my way. “Jasmine Marie Greene, if you continue to lie, you’ll continue to fail, and your failure isn’t just yours. It reflects on me, too—remember that. Think of this as strike one of three. Three strikes means no more public school. Now come on, we must get to the studio.”

Acme Studios was a tiny place on Frenchmen Street where I could get behind a microphone and record some of my songs. I always wanted to write my own lyrics, but Mama said I wasn’t skilled enough with the written word to ever do it on my own.

It was an amazing studio, and most people wouldn’t have been able to record there, but Ray had a way of making great connections. I sometimes wondered if that was the only reason Mama stayed with him.

I couldn’t understand what they had in common other than loving music.

We made it to Frenchmen Street, and the moment we stepped foot there, I smiled. There was something about the energy of it that made me feel alive. Bourbon Street was famous to many tourists, but Frenchmen Street was where the magic of the locals existed. The music you could stumble onto always shocked me. It was amazing how a street could be filled with so much talent, so much soul.

When Mama’s phone started ringing, she stepped aside to take the call, and that’s when it happened.

That’s when I saw the boy who played the music.

I’d always say I saw him first, but he’d argue that was a lie.

Technically I didn’t see him at first—I felt him, felt his music crawl along my skin. The chords and bars of his saxophone sent chills down my spine. It sounded magical, the way the notes danced through the air, so hauntingly beautiful.

I turned on my heels to see a skinny boy standing on the corner of Frenchmen and Chartres. He was young, maybe my age, maybe a bit younger, with thin-framed glasses sitting on his face. He held a saxophone in his grip and he played as if he’d die if the music wasn’t perfect. Lucky for him, it was more than perfect.

I’d never heard anything like it. I got emotional listening to the sounds he was crafting, and I couldn’t help being on the verge of tears.

How had he learned to play that way? How could someone so young possess so much talent? I’d been surrounded by musicians my whole life, but I’d never witnessed anything like this.

He played as if he were bleeding out into the streets of New Orleans. He left nothing on the table and gave his music his all. In that moment, I realized I never gave anything my all—not like him, not like that.

People started surrounding him on the street, tossing change into his open instrument case. They took out their cell phones to record his sounds. It was an experience to watch him stand on that corner. His confidence was high, and his fingers danced across the keys as if he had no fear of failure.

Failure was probably not a part of his vocabulary.

His music was beautiful, and kind of painful, too. I hadn’t had a clue that something could be painfully beautiful until that evening.

Once he stopped playing, it was interesting what happened: the confidence he’d exuded completely melted away. His once strong stance dissolved as his shoulders slumped over. People complemented him on his music, and he struggled to make eye contact.

“That was amazing,” a woman told him.

“Th-th-thank you,” he replied, rubbing his hands together before packing his instrument away. The moment I heard his shaky voice, I realized who he was.

Elliott.

I knew him—well, knew of him. He went to my school and was extremely shy. He was nothing like the boy who’d just played the music. It was almost as if he had two distinct personalities—the powerful musician and the bullied teenager.

The two looked nothing alike.

I stepped forward, wanting to speak, but I was uncertain what to say. As my lips parted, and I searched my mind for words, nothing came to me. He deserved something, a compliment, a smile, a touch of congratulations—anything—but I couldn’t even get him to look my way.

He wouldn’t look anyone’s way.

“Jasmine,” Mama called, breaking my stare away from Elliott. “Will you come on already?”

I glanced over my shoulder one last time, feeling a knot forming in my gut before hurrying over to Mama. “Coming.”

After my studio session, we got on another bus to head home. On the way, Mama told me everything I’d done wrong. She informed me of all my missteps and mistakes repeatedly as she cooked dinner. Then, we sat at the dining room table with the food untouched because we wouldn’t eat until Ray was home.

Of course, he was late, because Ray never knew how to leave the studio on time, so Mama’s temper grew, and she took it out on me. She never took it out on Ray, and I never understood why. Everything he did wrong was taken out on me.

I didn’t resent him, though. If anything, I was thankful Ray chose to love Mama, because it meant I was able to love him. He was a safe haven of sorts. When he wasn’t around, Mama was dark, lonely, empty, and mean. When Ray walked into a room, her eyes lit up.

“I’m late,” Ray said, walking into the house with a cigarette hanging from his lips. It was half smoked, and he put it out in the ashtray by the front door. I hated the smell of cigarettes, so he always did his best not to smoke in the house. Mama said he was a grown man and could smoke anywhere he pleased, but Ray wasn’t a jerk like that.

He loved me enough to respect my wishes.

“You’re not late,” Mama told him. “I just cooked too early, that’s all.”

“Because I said I would be earlier,” he said with a smirk.

Ray was always smiling, and it made everyone around him smile, too. He was the kind of man who looked effortlessly handsome. He was masculine in so many ways, from his build and physique to his mannerisms. He was the first to pull out a chair for a lady, the one who’d hold a door open for forty women to walk through before he stepped foot inside. A very old-school, charming gentleman, he was also soft in many spots, like his eyes and smile. His grin was so beautiful and made everyone feel safe when they looked his way.

His eyes kind of felt like home.

“It’s fine.” Mama smiled and lied. “We just sat down a few minutes ago.”

We’d been sitting for forty-five minutes.

Ray approached us and patted me on the top of my head. “Hey, Snow White.” He’d given me that nickname a long time ago when I was just a kid, and I loved it. I still loved it just as much at sixteen.

“Hey, Ray,” I replied.

He raised an eyebrow. “You have a good day?” Which was code for ‘Did your mother drive you insane today?’

Sometimes, even when she wasn’t trying to be, Mama could be a handful.

I nodded. “I had a good day.”

He wrinkled his nose, unsure if I was telling the truth, but he didn’t press for more information. He’d never ask what was wrong in front of Mama, because he knew how sensitive she got if she felt she was being judged. Ray kissed her forehead. “I’m gonna go wash up quickly and change outta these clothes. Then we can eat.”

“Okay,” Mama replied.

With that, he left to wash his hands. I sat leaning on the table, watching Mama’s eyes follow Ray as he disappeared down the hallway. When she turned back to me, the love she held in her stare faded, and she sat up straighter.

“Elbows off the table, Jasmine, and sit up straight or you’ll get a hunched back.”

Ray joined us at the table, and we chatted about how recording his album was going. “I love it here in New Orleans because there’s an authentic feel to the city. People around the world don’t make music the way they do down here. It’s not as real, as painful.”

When Ray talked about music, it made me want to only focus on that.

“Did you ever reach out to Trevor Su for me?” Mama asked, referring to a producer.

Ray cringed. “No. I told you this already, he’s not a good guy. We don’t need him for Jasmine’s career.”

Mama didn’t like that answer, based on the way her nose wrinkled. “Trevor Su is one of the top producers in the world, and you have an in with him. I don’t see why you would think Jasmine isn’t good enough to work with him.”

“No,” Ray barked, shaking his head. “Don’t twist my words. That’s not what I said at all. He’s not good enough for her.”

“And why not?”

“Because he’s a snake.”

Mama huffed. “Who cares if he’s a snake, as long as he gets the job done?”

Ray disagreed, “No. The way he uses people to climb the ladder is disgusting. I’ve watched him trample good people just for money. It’s disgusting.”

“It’s business, Ray,” Mama groaned. “And maybe if you understood that, you’d be more successful than you actually are.”

“Mama,” I gasped, shocked by her comment.

Ray didn’t even flinch. He’d become used to her harsh words. He was pretty much numb to her judgments.

That didn’t make it easier for me to hear them.

He and Mama were completely different when it came to the world of music. Ray led with his heart and Mama with her brain.

“It’s called networking,” she’d say.

“It’s called selling out,” he’d disagree. “Plus, he’s too much. He’d push her to her limits.”

“Her limits need to be pushed.”

“She’s just a kid, Heather.”

“And she could be extraordinary if you allowed it.”

A few minutes went by with the two of them arguing over if it was disrespectful for Mama to meet with Trevor or not. She was a driven manager when it came to my career, and she never thought any idea was too extreme. She was the momager of all momagers, determined to do whatever it took to make me a success.

Ray was the opposite. He believed in my music, but he also believed in me being a kid, too. Having a life outside of music.

“Maybe we should not talk about work at the dinner table,” Ray said, clearing his throat.

“Music is all we talk about,” Mama argued.

“Well, maybe that should change. We can talk about anything else,” Ray offered, moving his food around on his plate. “When I get home, I just want to unplug.”

“You’re the one who sat down and started talking about music in the first place!” Mama snapped. “But when I start talking about Jasmine’s career, it’s too much?”

“Mama,” I whispered, shaking my head.

“Jasmine, hush and eat your salad.”

“Why are you only eating salad?” Ray questioned.

I parted my lips to reply, but Mama stepped in before I could. “She’s on a new diet.”

Ray laughed. “She’s sixteen and the size of a stick, Heather. She can eat whatever she wants.”

Then, like clockwork, they started arguing about the ins and outs of how Mama was raising me. By the end of the conversation, Mama had told him he didn’t have a say because he wasn’t my father.

I hated how she threw that in his face whenever she didn’t get her way.

I always noticed how sad Ray’s eyes grew whenever she said those words.

Maybe on paper he wasn’t my father, but there was no doubt in my heart that he was my dad.

“I’m gonna take a breather,” Ray said, pushing his chair away from the table. He left the apartment with his pack of cigarettes to clear his head, which meant he was going to watch live music. Music always helped when Mama stressed him out.

It helped when she stressed me out, too.

After dinner, I headed straight to my room and started my homework. I was so behind on everything, but it was really important for me to seem as if I had my life together. Otherwise, I’d be forced back into being homeschooled, and that couldn’t happen, not after getting a taste of what being a true teenager felt like.

“You have a good day, Snow White?” Ray asked, standing in my doorway hours later with his arms behind his back.

I looked up from my math book and shrugged.

“You don’t have to lie—your mom’s sleeping. Was she hard on you?”

“It’s fine. It’s my fault, really. I started slacking.”

“She puts too much pressure on you,” he warned me.

“‘Pressure makes diamonds,’” I said, mocking Mama’s words. Then, I smiled because Ray was beginning to frown. “I’m okay. Just tired today.”

“You want me to try talking to her again?”

I shook my head. If Ray told Mama I was stressed or overwhelmed, she’d be embarrassed, and whenever she felt embarrassed, she took it out on me.

“Why just salad for dinner?” Ray asked.

“Not hungry.”

“That’s too bad.” He grimaced and pulled out a bag of takeout. “Because I just picked up a burger and fries from down the street.”

My stomach growled the moment I saw the bag.

“But since you’re not hungry, I’ll toss it—”

“No!” I shouted, shaking my head back and forth. I cleared my throat and sat up straighter on my bed. “I mean, I’ll take it.”

He laughed and tossed me the food. “You’re perfect the way you are. Don’t starve yourself for the dream, Snow White, and don’t starve yourself for your mother. Neither are worth it.”

“Thanks.”

He nodded. “And whenever you want me to talk to your mom, let me know. I got your back.”

“Ray?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you love her?” I asked, my voice low. The two of them never acted like they were in love. Not as far back as I could remember, at least. Maybe there was a time they were, but it wasn’t something that existed in my memories.

Ray gave me a tight smile. Which was a clear no.

“She’s mean to you,” I told him.

“I can handle it,” he replied.

“Why do you stay with her? Why would you stay with someone you don’t even love who treats you the way she does?”

He cleared his throat and stared at me with the gentlest eyes I’d ever seen. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “Come on, Snow,” he softly spoke. “You know the answer to that question.”

Because of me.

He stayed because of me.

“I love her because she gave me you. You may not be my blood, Snow White, but don’t for a second think that you are not my family. I stay for you. I’ll always stay for you.”

My eyes glassed over. “I just want you to be happy, Ray.”

He snickered. “You know what makes me happy?”

“What?”

“You being happy. So, just keep being happy—and eating—and my heart is full, Snow. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Your happiness.” He walked over to me, kissed my forehead, and stole one of my fries before he headed to bed.

Ray might not have been my biological father, but there was no doubt in my mind that he was my dad.