“Can I ask a personal question?” he asks.
It makes me happy he’s starting to open up. “Of course.”
“So you didn’t want Mark to put you in a recording booth, but you want to become a musician?”
“I do. More than anything.”
“Then why not let us record you so you could have the experience? I thought that’s why you wanted to spend today with me.”
“I’d love to be recorded, but I need a band for that.”
“What for?”
“I can’t do solos.”
He stops pumping his legs, and his swing begins to slow. “You sang just fine on your own this morning.”
“But that was just for you and Holly. When I’m in front of big crowds, something always goes wrong. I like it when the audience has somewhere else to look besides me.”
“You have a good voice. You don’t need a band to perform.”
“You don’t get it. You’ve always performed solo. I like being part of something, you know? That’s why I started The Fringe.”
“Which turned into a heavy metal band?”
“Yeah…”
“Do you even like heavy metal?”
“No, not really,” I say quietly.
“Then why were you playing it?”
Okay, so maybe I don’t want him asking hard personal questions. “Because I love performing.”
“Then why can’t you do it by yourself?”
“I just can’t.”
I jump off the swing and go over to the hopscotch court. He follows me. I start skipping through the numbered squares to try to escape, but Jesse reaches out and grabs my elbow. He puts his hands on my shoulders and bores into me with those caramel eyes.
“You okay? I talked to you about my life. You can talk to me.”
Do I really want this big star to know the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me? No, I don’t, because I’m ashamed of what happened. I don’t want him to think I’m a talentless loser and decide I’m not worth his time. But he told me about his ex-girlfriend and his parents…and when you think about it, what happened to me is nothing compared to Jesse’s ex telling the tabloids that he gets freaky in bed. As someone who has had his secrets shared, I bet he’ll keep mine.
“In seventh grade, I was singing a solo at a concert at school. It was awful because I locked my knees and fainted.”
Jesse cringes but gestures for me to keep talking.
I take a deep breath. “When I fainted, I busted my chin on the stage and had this terrible bruise for a long time. But what really hurt was how much kids made fun of me. After that, I never wanted people to look at me while I was performing. I quit the choir for a while too, but I ended up rejoining.”
“What made you go back?”
This is embarrassing to admit, but I told myself I would tell the truth. “I kept with it because of you.”
“Me?” he blurts.
I suck in a deep breath. If Nate or Hannah or anybody from The Fringe heard me say this, they’d make fun of me for all time. “Your second album came out around the time I fainted. ‘Agape’ was on the radio all the time, and my dad said, ‘if that boy can do big concerts for thousands of people, you can sing in the choir.’”
Jesse turns his gaze away from mine and rubs the back of his neck, furrowing his eyebrows. “I had really bad stage fright when I first started performing. But I worked through it. Did you?”
“I rejoined choir,” I say. “But I didn’t sing another solo until the talent show last spring. I was upset that my band wouldn’t perform, so I decided to go for it by myself. But my voice cracked…and I felt like this big joke. I sucked.”
“Your voice isn’t a joke. Up until it cracked, your performance in the talent show was pretty good.”
I trip over my feet as I’m hopping from block number 4 to 5. “How do you know that?”
He grins. “At first I wasn’t sure about you shadowing me, but then Uncle Bob showed me your ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ video.”
I groan. “He showed it to you?”
“Yeah—it was big-time. You should put it on YouTube.”
“It’s already on YouTube. It’s called ‘The Siren.’ Ugh.” I jump through the hopscotch blocks again. “So when did you see the video?” I ask.
“Right after you left my dressing room last week.”
“You were so mean to me that night!”