MAY 12
Dallas stood on the porch wearing ripped jeans and a designer T-shirt, his blond hair artfully arranged in soft spikes. He was clutching a bouquet of coral-colored roses and a plastic soda bottle of bright yellow fluid.
“Look at you,” I said with a grin. “So smooth. Remember when we were both nerds?” I held open the door for him.
“You were never a nerd, Genna.” He stepped into the foyer. “Lucky for me you just liked engaging in nerd pastimes.”
I laughed. We met as freshmen in Premed Club, an after-school activity for kids who want to be doctors. We were still in that club, but finally we were seniors, which made us the automatic cool kids. Not that Dallas needed extra cool points. In the past three years he’d gone from “I started a YouTube channel to teach people how to play their favorite songs on the piano” to “I just released my first album.” Dallas had close to a million Twitter followers. I had seventy-eight.
My mom materialized in the living room as if summoned by the scent of roses. “How thoughtful of you, Dallas,” she said. “But tonight is your special night. You didn’t need to bring flowers for Genevieve.”
“Oh, these are for you, Dr. Grace.” He thrust the roses in my mom’s direction. “I appreciate how supportive you’ve been, working around my music schedule and allowing me to pick up occasional shifts in your lab. I’m still planning on declaring premed, so that experience is really important to me.”
My mom puffed up with pride as she accepted the bouquet, adding another inch to her already imposing five-foot-nine-inch frame. (I’m five foot three—not sure what happened there.) “If anyone can break records in the performing arts and medical fields both, I have no doubt that it’s you,” she said.
“Hey, what about me?” I said with pretend hurt. I actually have no interest in performing, unless acing my MCATs in a few years counts.
“Stick with medicine. We can’t all be entertainers,” Mom advised. “I’d better go see if I can find a vase. It’s been a while since a man brought me flowers.” She spun on her heel and headed toward the kitchen.
“I guess I could’ve brought her a vase too.” Dallas fiddled with the rubber bracelet he always wore. It was black and white, like a set of piano keys wrapping around his wrist.
“No need. Not counting the one I broke when I was seven, I’m guessing she has about fifty.” There was a point in my parents’ marriage when my dad tried really, really hard.
“Cool.” Dallas lowered his voice. “By the way, I find you plenty entertaining.”
I gave him a playful punch in the arm. “Good to know.”
He handed me the bottle of yellow fluid. “I know you don’t like flowers, so this is for you.”
I held the container up to eye level and sloshed the liquid back and forth. It resembled an unlabeled bottle of Mountain Dew, or maybe antifreeze. “You brought me a urine sample?” I joked.
“Yeah . . . no. Tyrell sent me a test batch of his energy drink to hand out to my friends. That’s called Barely Legal, and apparently it’s got enough caffeine and B-vitamins to keep you going for twelve hours straight. You’re still getting up at five to go running every day, right? Wouldn’t want you to fall asleep during your finals.”
I had to swallow back a yawn at the mere mention of the word “sleep.” “Barely Legal? Someone thought that was a good name? And you actually want me to drink this?” I unscrewed the cover and gave the fizzy liquid a sniff. “Are you sure it’s not a urine sample?”
“Don’t be a smartass,” Dallas said. “Tyrell thinks that’s going to compete with Red Bull. He and his brother are planning to go into production by midsummer to be able to market to kids by fall finals.”
“Well. He’s nothing if not confident,” I replied. Tyrell James is featured in two songs on Dallas’s album. I found it weird at first, the way a twenty-eight-year-old rapper from the north side of St. Louis wanted to collaborate with a teenage singer from what people who live in the city have been known to call “the sticks.” But apparently they had the same producer or manager or something—I couldn’t keep track of all the music industry jargon—and their sounds blended really well together. Plus, they both helped extend each other’s fan base.
“He says ninety-five percent of success is confidence.”
“What’s the other five percent?” I asked. “Actual talent?”
“Energy drinks, I think,” Dallas said with a grin. “You ready to go?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” I set the sample of Barely Legal on the coffee table and turned to follow Dallas out to his car. Like everything else about him, it was slick, shiny, and new. He swore he wasn’t going to go crazy buying stuff, but it was probably impossible not to splurge a little when he signed his recording contract and suddenly felt rich.
We buckled up and Dallas backed slowly down the long driveway. He navigated the twisting back roads of my Lake St. Louis neighborhood like he’d been driving the car for years. We wound our way through an area of dense trees and then merged onto Highway 40 and headed for the city.
Dallas reached over and wrapped one of his hands around mine. “Thanks for coming with.”
“You’re welcome.”
Dallas knew I felt uncomfortable going to parties with him. I liked his songs but I wasn’t a huge music person in general, so a lot of the industry conversation was lost on me. Not to mention I’m kind of introverted, so I usually killed time in some quiet corner, texting my best friend, Shannon, or pretending to be responding to urgent emails while everyone else danced and mingled. When I was lucky enough that the parties were at private residences, I sometimes ended up on the floor somewhere playing with a dog or cat, or once a frisky pair of ferrets.
This particular party was at Tyrell James’s house, which is in the ritzy Central West End neighborhood, between downtown St. Louis and Washington University. Dallas and I had both been accepted to Wash U for the fall. I had no idea how he thought he was going to manage our rigorous premed coursework with his new record label obligations, but my mom was right—if anyone could do it, he could.
The drive took us a little over an hour. Tyrell’s assistant, Tricia, answered the door and ushered us into the great room, where most of the guests were hanging out. The room was a mix of old architecture and slick modern furnishings, the vaulted ceilings and crown molding blending surprisingly well with the black leather sofas and glass fireplace.
Tyrell sauntered over and greeted both of us. “What’s up?” he asked.
Dallas gestured around at the crowd. “Pretty epic scene you’ve got going on here.”
Tyrell laughed. “This is all you.” He held out his fist.
As I watched Dallas execute an awkward fist bump, his pale freckled knuckles colliding with Tyrell’s dark skin, I smiled at the idea that two musicians who were so different had created a song loved by so many people. Maybe there was hope for the world after all.
The two of them made the rounds along a string of strangers who pumped Dallas’s hand and pressed business cards into his palm. Shaking my head at a couple of servers handing out hors d’oeuvres and glasses of champagne, I wandered toward the back of the house, where a set of stairs led down into the basement. I figured Tyrell had probably locked up his surprisingly lovable Rottweiler, Sable, in the laundry room as usual. I glanced back over my shoulder. My boyfriend was smiling his professional entertainer smile and nodding as a silver-haired guy showed him something on an iPhone. I opened the door to the basement with a creak and closed it behind me. Dallas would text me if he needed me.
Sable was smart enough not to bark when the door opened. Instead I heard the sound of her nails clicking across the cement floor as I flipped on the light. I’d only been there two other times, but either the dog remembered me or she was lonely enough to cuddle up to a stranger. She butted her head against my hand and then loped off into the darkness.
“Come here, girl.” I sat on the floor and patted my legs to get her attention. “What are you doing?”
Sable found a ball behind the washing machine and trotted over to me, dropping it next to me with a hopeful look. I rolled the ball across the floor and Sable caught up to it in about two strides. She brought it back and deposited it into my lap.
“Gross. You drooled on it.” I held it up like I was going to throw it and her mouth curled up into a smile. I smiled back—I’ve never been able to resist a smiling dog—and then flung the ball the length of the laundry room.
We played fetch until Sable was exhausted, and then she lay down on her side and looked up at me, her pink tongue dangling out of the corner of her mouth. I scratched her behind the ears.
“I’d much rather party with dogs,” I told her. “I don’t know why Tyrell locks you up. You are the cutest thing ever.”
She chuffed in agreement, her dark eyes falling closed. I leaned my head back against the wall of the laundry room and stroked Sable’s fur repeatedly. Above, a familiar beat started playing—Dallas’s first single, “Younity,” one of the tracks featuring Tyrell. The song is about kids and teens learning to support each other regardless of gender, race, wealth, etc. Fusion Records leaked the video in early spring and now it had more than seven million views.
When Dallas first transitioned from making instructional videos playing other people’s songs to showcasing his original music online, he shot his own videos to upload to YouTube. I’m even featured in a couple of them. He wanted me to be in the video for “Younity” too, and I tried—I really did—but after one day on set, I quit and told him he’d be better off hiring a professional model.
Shannon said I was crazy, but she’s a mega-extrovert. The idea of spending three days being dressed, made-up, and judged by strangers sounded fun to her. There is nothing fun about a group of people shaking their heads in exasperation because they hate the shape of your lips or the way your hair moves when you walk.
Dallas didn’t seem to care about me bailing on him, especially when they replaced me with a willowy Swedish model named Annika Lux, and I was only too happy to escape to the sidelines, where I could snap pictures and share them with Shannon when no one was looking.
But a few weeks after the shoot, Dallas and I got into a fight and he told me that my dropping out of the video made him upset and embarrassed. Not only was it last-minute extra work for the producer, but he’d been tweeting about how excited he was that his beautiful blond girlfriend was going to be in his video, and suddenly everyone seemed to think he and Annika Lux were a couple.
Sable stirred in her sleep. I realized I should leave the dog alone and go find Dallas. I should want to go find Dallas, anyway.
I checked my phone to make sure I hadn’t missed any messages and sighed when I saw that it wasn’t even ten o’clock. Still, I’d been down there for almost an hour. I knew I should probably at least check in.
I headed back upstairs and cut through the kitchen area and back into the great room, where Dallas’s album was still blaring and people were dancing, talking, or smashed onto the sofa playing video games. I didn’t see Dallas anywhere. I pulled my phone out of my purse and started to tap out a text. Before I finished, a boy about my age wearing red leather pants and a black T-shirt so tight I could see the outline of his abs asked me to dance.
“Sorry. I don’t dance.” I tried not to stare at his overly defined muscles.
“That’s cool,” the boy said. “How about a drink?”
“I don’t really drink either,” I said. “Do you know where Dallas is?”
“Out there with some of his fan club.” The boy gestured toward a set of French doors that led out onto the deck. “Too bad. You don’t really look like a Kadet to me.”
“Believe it or not, I’m the queen of the Kadets,” I said.
I stepped out onto the deck, where a group of teens and twentysomethings were packed a little too tightly into Tyrell’s hot tub. Behind them, a sprinkling of people stood clutching drinks. I scanned the crowd, but I still didn’t find Dallas.
I approached a guy with a beer bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “Have you seen Dallas by any chance?” I asked.
“Out there maybe?” The guy gestured toward the backyard with his beer.
I wandered to the edge of the deck and peered out into the night. The manicured lawn faded into blackness beyond the house lights.
“Dallas?” I called.
No one answered.