“He’s my boyfriend,” I said needlessly.
“Yeah,” Cal said.
Bitter. Bitter. Bitter.
I didn’t mind. I actually liked it.
Which I knew made me a bad person.
But Cal was right. Ryan cared about Ryan, and ever since CrushZone had started, I’d noticed that he’d been focused more and more on getting himself as much of the spotlight as possible. Everything else was secondary.
Even me.
“It’s strange, isn’t it?” he asked.
“What?”
Cal gestured to the general space around us.
“This,” he said.
I didn’t understand.
“You. Me,” he said.
My breath caught.
“Katee Rose. CrushZone,” he continued.
I didn’t know what I’d been hoping for him to say.
“It’s strange, right?” he asked.
“I guess,” I said. I still didn’t get it.
“It’s just”—he frowned—“this whole thing. It’s all a bunch of pretend.”
I didn’t like how that sounded. As if I was being deceitful. Lying.
Even though, in a way, I supposed I was.
“We’re the all-American teens that everyone is supposed to aspire to,” he said. “We’re not even teenagers.”
“We’re not role models,” I said.
I was so fucking tired of everyone assuming that.
“I know,” Cal said. “And we shouldn’t be. Because it’s all made-up.” He turned toward me. “I mean, we have a song called ‘Prom King.’ ”
“You could have been Prom King,” I said.
Cal gave me a look. “My point is that Ryan didn’t even go to high school, let alone prom. None of the guys did. And yet, we’re all out there, every night, singing songs like we’re just regular guys with regular lives.”
“That’s what I do too,” I pointed out, feeling a little hurt and a lot judged.
“It’s not the same,” Cal said.
“No?”
He thought about it for a moment.
“No,” he said. “Because you’re real.”
“Katee Rose is literally invented,” I said.
“But you aren’t,” he said.
“No one sees me when I’m onstage,” I said. “They see a dumb blonde with big boobs that jiggle when she dances. Who can’t sing.”
“So make them see you,” Cal said.
As if it were that easy.
“What about Harriet’s songs?” he asked. “Wasn’t she writing, like, a whole bunch of songs for you?”
Harriet was back in New York living a “real life,” though she’d promised to join up with us again for my birthday. The songs she’d written were on a CD at the bottom of my suitcase.
I tapped my nails against the brick.
“They don’t want to hear them,” I said.
I’d tried to play them for Diana, but she was always too busy to listen. It took a while for me to get it, but I finally understood that “too busy” meant “not interested.”
Even Ryan was too busy.
“Are they good?” Cal asked.
“Yes,” I said. “And I sound great singing them.”
“Then make them listen,” Cal said.
“How?”
He shrugged. “They need you, don’t they?”
Did they? Ever since I’d gotten signed—before that even, back when I was basically Ryan’s backup dancer—I’d believed that I needed them. That I had to do everything they told me to do or I’d never get what I wanted.
But now I had it and I wasn’t sure if I wanted it anymore.
“You have more power than you think,” Cal said.
I laughed. “Do I?” I asked. “I mean, they made me change my name. Said Rosenberg wasn’t universal enough.”
Cal didn’t respond.
“They wanted me to change my nose too,” I said.
“What? When?”
“When I got cast on Show N Tell,” I said. “And before the first album.”
I was gratified by the disgusted look on Cal’s face. I decided not to tell him that Diana brought it up before every other album and tour as well.
“Just a minor adjustment.”
“They’ll just shave a bit off of the bridge.”
“We’ll tell everyone you had a deviated septum.”
Weird how there wasn’t any time in the schedule for a limited Broadway run, but apparently there was plenty of time for major surgery and recovery.
“I’m glad you stood up to them,” Cal said.
I wanted to cry. Because the truth was that I hadn’t resisted because I disagreed with my management. I’d refused to have it done because I was terrified of needles and blood, and everything associated with something like that.
It wasn’t bravery. It was cowardice.
And I still thought about doing it. Every time I saw an article that pointed out how much prettier I’d be if I fixed it or whenever a blogger drew unnecessary arrows pointing to it, I thought about going to my management and saying, “Okay, let’s do it.”
I knew it would help my career.
“They want me to do a Christmas album,” I said.
Cal waited for me to continue.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “I mean, I perform at some Christmas concert or show every year. And I did plenty of Christmas specials on Show N Tell. Of course, they’d want me to record a Christmas album.”
“Do you want to record a Christmas album?” Cal asked.
“No,” I said. “Yes. Maybe.”
I leaned my head back against the wall.
“I mean, there’s just something weird about it,” I said. “It’s not enough that I had to get rid of my last name—now I have to do an entire album about a holiday I don’t even celebrate?”
“What did you tell them?” Cal asked.
“That I’d think about it,” I said. “They were not pleased.”