I was pissed. Too angry to sit still, I paced from one side of the suite to the other. My cashmere scarf kept slipping off my throat, and I was about to rip the damned thing off, or tie it into a noose to keep it on my neck. My vocal coach had advised keeping my throat as warm as possible, but the scarf was driving me insane. Everything was having that effect on me, even this herbal tea that my manager Toby had found for me. I wanted to throw the cup across the room. “God damn,” I said in a harsh whisper.

Meanwhile, Toby looked cozy enough, sitting in a chair next to the fireplace, staring at me as I walked the length of the room. Smug bastard. He was the only person I trusted in the entire world.

“Why can’t I make whatever music I want?” I whispered. “It’s my name on the album cover. Who are they to say anything about it?”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Toby. “You can’t sing right now anyway, so it’s really moot.”

I stopped at the window and stared down at the beach. It felt so distant. Not at all how I thought I’d feel, coming back. Maybe it was the height. I’d grown up down there on the ground, after all, running, riding bikes with friends; I hadn’t spent those years up in the penthouse suite of a hotel, staring down at the faraway shore.

“It’s nice of you to take my side,” I said.

“That’s what you pay me for,” said Toby.

“But you agree with them.”

The tea was disgusting, it tasted like grass clippings, but the heat of it soothed my raw throat. Angry whispering hurt so much more than calm whispering.

“Brand dilution,” said Toby. There was a hint of exhaustion in his voice. We’d argued over this a thousand times. “You know why they’re worried. The world needs a constant stream of love songs. They think this new idea is going to take your focus off the stuff that makes them money.”

The label had been polite about it, of course. They knew they had to be careful. I had two more albums on my contract, and they didn’t need me recording something that would go straight into the bargain bin. If they fought too hard against me, I might dig my heels in.

But once the idea had captured me, I couldn’t shake it. I didn’t have the whole thing in my head yet. Just snippets of melody, phrases. Maybe a title: Ghost Stories.

Or, as Toby kept calling it, The Ransom Pope Halloween Album.

“I deserve the fucking key to every fucking city in the world,” I said, keeping my raspy voice as quiet as I could. “Everywhere I go, I make money for people. I go to a restaurant, suddenly a million people want to eat there. I put clubs on the map just by showing up. The label has been printing money thanks to me. They could give me a little freedom here.”

“I know that. And you know I believe in you. But you know how quickly everything can change. The industry is conservative. They want the same album, again and again, just a few changes to keep things fresh. They don’t want Twelve Melancholy Songs About Sorrow and Loss or whatever the hell.”

“They don’t want real emotion.”

“Of course they don’t. People who buy candy aren’t looking for nutrition, they’re looking for a hit of sweetness.”

I groaned. Toby wasn’t the first person who’d compared my music to candy, and he wouldn’t be the last.

“Anyway, they’re nervous,” said Toby. “The label has everybody on standby, waiting for you. Every day I get emails from the team. New hooks for you to listen to, some ideas for choruses, album concept art, and you don’t pay a bit of attention. That’s a problem, Ransom.”

I tried another sip of tea. As much as I trusted Toby, there were some things I could not say to him. Things I couldn’t say to anyone.

Like: I’m so tired of writing songs by committee. I’m tired of focus groups and rewrites and five hundred people getting credit every time I sing a note. I’m tired of how expectant everyone is, like they can never get enough of me.

“I’ll read the fucking emails,” I said. “I’ll listen to the fucking hooks. Fine.”

“I’m glad you’re being reasonable,” he said. He pushed his thin-rimmed glasses back up his nose and looked down at his phone. “Meanwhile, since literally no one in the world cares about Ransom Pope’s Grimdark Goth LP, I’ve got to get some additional buzz around your name. I’ve got our social media people standing by, and I’ve been in touch with Giselle Richter’s people. She’s single again, and I think we need to romantically link you to her. The news will eat that up, and by the time you two have been seen at a few premieres, everyone will be asking what’s next for Ransom Pope.”

I groaned. Romantically linked. My entire career, I’d been linked with one woman after another, models, actresses, aspiring singers. Everyone bought it, so I guess I can’t complain. Giselle and I had known each other a couple of years now but had never been linked. She’d probably laugh about it.

Turning, I took in the entire penthouse suite, the Versailles-inspired decor, the rich furnishings, all the elegance and comfort Oceanside had to offer. It wasn’t much. It was nothing compared to my house, or the resorts I generally stayed at. Yet it was the best you could get in Oceanside. My career paid for all this. When I’d first started, I thought singing would be the major part of my career. I hadn’t realized how many other tasks were wrapped up in being a star. The fake relationships, the paparazzi, the meetings with brand designers and social media gurus and marketing executives.

“Maybe this was a mistake,” I whispered. “Maybe I shouldn’t have ever come back here.”

“Nah, nobody is saying that. Everybody knows you needed a break. Personally, I wish you’d decided to vacation somewhere with a little character, but it’s not that bad here. It’s like one of those little seaside towns on TV, the ones where little old ladies solve murder mysteries. Not a bad place for your retirement. Maybe you could take up crime-fighting.”

I glared at him. “I’m not retiring, I’m recuperating.”

“Of course. I misspoke.”

“Give me time,” I rasped. “My voice will come back.”

“I’m sure it will,” he said, and I hated the soothing tone in his voice. I didn’t want to be placated. “But come on, Ransom, this is why you need to give the label what they want. Cash in while you can, just in case--”

“I don’t care--” My voice ceased without warning, my throat dry and raw. I took another sip of the tea, trying to lubricate my vocal cords.

He knew what I was going to say, anyway: I don’t care what the doctor says.

Everyone had noticed the strain in my voice during my last tour. We’d put it down to exhaustion, to a virus, but by the time we got halfway through the tour, I sounded bad. We’d canceled the remaining appearances, much to the label’s chagrin. After running tests and scans, the doctor called it vocal overexertion. No polyps, no lesions, not yet, but it was a real risk.

When my fans would flock to concerts to hear me belt out the ballads that brought tears to their eyes, they only heard the music, only saw the show. They didn’t know that every sustained note put just a little bit more mileage on my vocal cords. They didn’t know about the damage the music was doing to me.

Long, long conversations with the doctor about it. He was so confident. You’d be surprised who is getting vocal cord surgery these days, he’d told me. Everyone was getting it. A little snip, a little healing, a few weeks with a new vocal coach, and I’d be right back in the studio.

It sounded great, right? But what stuck with me was the disclaimer the doctor had given me. Now, any surgery has risks. If I had the surgery, it might not cure my voice. In fact, one wrong move and there could be permanent damage to my vocal cords. I might never sing again.

Toby was staring at me with sympathy in his eyes. Half his job was to kick me in the ass and make sure I made the right decisions. But the other half was to understand my fear and hesitation.

“I’m just being practical,” he said. “You’ve got a trillion fans right now, but it’s all ephemeral. If you don’t put out a hit album this year, they’ll forget all about you.”

I shook my head. The tea had brought my voice back, a little. “They’re all a bunch of fakes,” I whispered.

“I’d call them fickle, rather than fake,” said Toby.

“Maybe it was a bad idea to pitch my music at them. Sweet syrupy commodity pop.”

“Oh no,” said Toby, “you’re not going to quote that Rolling Stone review again--”

“The Sultan of Safe Sincerity, they called me, Toby. Ransom has smoothed down every rough edge. He goes down easy, like a pill you’re forced to take because it’s good for you. Who the hell writes something like that about a pop singer, man?”

But my voice was cutting off again. In frustration, I threw myself into a chair and drank more tea.

“Critics criticize. That’s what they’re there for,” said Toby. “They don’t buy your albums. They don’t download your singles and watch your videos and scream when they see your car going by. It’s the fans, man. That’s why you do this.”

The fans. The fans worshiped something artificial, something we’d built out of computers and autotune and hair gel. A Ransom Pope who didn’t really exist, who was always falling in love, caught in that perpetual first moment of attraction.

I would never put it this way to anyone, but losing my voice had made me scared. That was putting it mildly: It terrified the fuck out of me.

After those conversations with the doctor, I’d done a lot of soul-searching. A lot of thinking about real versus fake. The artificial superstar Ransom Pope, versus...whoever was left, underneath all the stage makeup.

I’d run home, to Oceanside. It was an instinct, it was a gravitational pull.

I came back here to try to recapture something real. Get back to my roots, and see if I could heal here.

Funny how you can run away from something as a kid, then come running right back to it as an adult. But this is where my memories were. Spending some time with my folks, who had aged a hundred years while I’d been gone, yet who were so happy to see me--even my dad. The pride in his eyes over my accomplishments made me tear up. For most of my life, I had assumed I would be a perpetual disappointment to him.

But it’s not real, Dad. It’s money but it’s not real. He’d never understand. But the warmth in his handshake was real, and the interest in his eyes when I described how the business worked.

It still didn’t feel real, being back. Everything was far off, at a distance, like staring down at the beach from the windows of the suite. Chauffeured through town, staring at the buildings through tinted glass. Even returning to the last place I remembered being “real” was made untouchable by who I had become. I could look, but I couldn’t touch. I couldn’t connect.

Pacing around the suite wasn’t healing me. I suddenly felt claustrophobic. Trapped. I needed to escape the artificial high-rise, limousine-ensconced popstar confines. I needed to get out, down on the ground, to be part of it all. To be anonymous, to reconnect with the places I had hidden from all these years. I’d hidden, yet their memories had haunted me for years.

Ghost stories.

The boardwalk. I hadn’t allowed the driver to take me near there. Did it even still exist? I’d been almost afraid to ask.

There was some force there, some pressure from history keeping me out.

I glanced over at Toby, who had gone back to his laptop, shooting off emails to the million people who owned Ransom Pope. “I’m going out,” I rasped.

“All right. I’ll have the car brought around.”

“No. I’m going to walk.”

His eyes tightened with skepticism. “Walk? Ransom, if anyone out there hears you speak, or god forbid, records it and puts it up online--”

“I’m not going to talk to anybody. I’ll wear my scarf and sunglasses. Nobody will know it’s me.”

“At least let me get the security detail--”

“Toby. I’m just going for a walk. I know these streets. Nobody’s going to bother me.”

One of the advantages of being a superstar is that, in the end, nobody can tell you no. Toby let out a long sigh. “Try to be careful, won’t you? And promise me, no talking to anyone.”