Chapter Thirty-Six

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I'm far from the first pop star or celebrity to get fed up with the paparazzi. My outburst at the airport probably doesn't rank in the top ten from the last five years. But screaming at them is out of character for me and my carefully-crafted Cayden Indigo image, and the number of chirps and dings that come from Mom and Elton's phones during the drive home tell me the scene at LAX has already become news. I don't bother to check my own phone to confirm it. I already know.

Mom glances at her screen a couple of times, but she mostly ignores her phone. Elton concentrates on driving. Neither of them mentions what just happened, and Mom seems more worried about not having food at the house. She asks if I have any special requests and gets to work on an online grocery order, swiping away the notifications she gets while she shops.

"The air here isn't great," I remark to no one in particular. The sky's brownish haze is visible in the dwindling light of dusk, and the air smelled of smoke outside at LAX. I'm a world away from the fresh air and clear blue sky I woke up to this morning.

"Wildfire season is in full swing already," Elton answers. "It will be bad for a few weeks."

What he really means is it will be like this on and off until October or November. This makes me miss being at the lake even more, but I withhold my comment. Guilting Mom won't change anything, and I'm sure she'll be dealing with enough grief from other people over the next day or two. She doesn't need me piling on.

My gut tells me a request for damage control is coming from my record label. It might already be sitting in Mom's messages. I've always been the label's perfect little pop star who is poised and polite with the paps. They'll want to set up scripted interviews, or to have me create cute videos for my social channels, or something along those lines.

What they won't anticipate is that I'm not having it. Not this time. I'm not sorry for losing my temper or for anything I said, and I'll yell at the paps all over again if I have to. Hunter is off limits to them, even if he never speaks to me again.

If there's a silver lining in this, it's that I've finally been pushed far enough to find my voice and stand my ground. What the cameras saw today was my authentic self. It went against all the media training I've had, and everything I've been advised to do. Video of me screaming at the paparazzi will likely be on entertainment shows and replayed across the internet for the next few days, but it's almost like a weight has been lifted from me by expressing how I really feel.

"He was right, you know," I say.

"Who was right?" Mom asks. She's still scrolling through the grocery app, tapping once in a while to add things to her cart.

"Hunter, when he told me he doesn't like celebrities because they're fake and manufactured. I didn't even see it."

Mom sets her phone down in her lap and turns around in her seat to look at me. "Whatever generalizations Hunter made about celebrities, you have to know you're an exception to it. You're one of the most genuine and sensitive people I know. There isn't a fake bone in your body."

"No?" I challenge. "My voice is real, sure, and I've put a ton of work into my albums and tours and career, but what about the rest? It's all fake. Everything I've said to the media until now has been in line with what I've been told to say and how I've been told to behave. My appearance on stage and in interviews is completely different from my everyday life, to the point where people didn't recognize me without my wigs, makeup, and stage clothes until Bowie told everyone who I was."

"Performers wear costumes sometimes," Mom points out. "It doesn't mean you're fake."

"Tell me something," I say. "How many of the notifications that have popped up on your phone since we left the airport are messages from my PR rep and someone at the label, asking to give a statement and brainstorming how to spin this into something that puts me in a good light?"

"A few of them," she admits. "I only scanned them, though. They can wait."

"Don't you see it, though?" I continue. "I can't be human and get upset about something in public without an entire team feeling like they need to swarm in to get the sweet and bubbly image of me back out there, as if I'm a one-dimensional puppet. That definitely borders on fake. Is it really so bad if my fans see I'm a human being with feelings and moods and bad days?"

"I don't think it is at all, and I have your back on this. We'll say no to whatever they ask if it's something you don't want to do."

Mom picks her phone up, but then changes her mind and looks at me again. She's silent for a moment.

"What?" I ask.

"I like Hunter, and I know he means a lot to you, but you don't need his validation. I don't know if he would have taken back what he said about celebrities being fake if he'd known about your music career at the time, but it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that you like who you are and are proud of your accomplishments. Got it?"

"Got it." I know she's right. But sometimes knowing something and putting it into practice are actions that are worlds apart.

Elton doesn't say anything, even though he can't help but overhear our conversation. He seems to sense it's not the time to state his opinion or to ask questions about our time at the lake. He keeps his attention on navigating us through the usual crush of traffic, and asks us if we'd like to listen to music after we've been quiet for a few minutes.

"Anything but Pop2K," I tell him from the back seat. He doesn't ask why I don't want that station, and neither does Mom. It might be a while before I stop associating it with my highway drive with Hunter and the last time I felt truly happy, before everything came tumbling down.

I'm not surprised to see more paparazzi waiting for us when Elton turns onto my street, but I'm too drained to listen to the questions they hurl at us when we drive past the gates. All I can think about is how I'm going on lockdown for a few days, just like I did after The Domino, with my bedroom being my main refuge again. I don't want to deal with the outside world.

Elton helps us bring our suitcases and my guitar inside the house. I stick around downstairs for a minute to thank him for getting us at the airport and for his support through everything the summer has brought so far. Then I excuse myself and retreat upstairs, leaving him and Mom alone to talk and respond to the people who won't stop calling and texting them.

My bedroom is just as I left it, minus the stale air that's the result of no one being here for more than a month. I would open my window, but this would only let in the smoke from the air outside, so I plunk myself down on my bed.

I take in the familiar sight of my bookshelves, along with the framed photographs that hang on my walls. My gaze lands on an owl plush toy that's been on a shelf since the night of my one-month anniversary with Bowie. He won it for me while we were on our date at the arcade, and for some reason I didn't have the presence of mind to get rid of it before I left for Canada.

I get up from the bed and grab the owl from the shelf, then march into my bathroom so I can put it in the trash can there, out of view. I can't do much, but I can remove all visual reminders of Bowie from my life and pretend he doesn't exist.

I just wish I had visual reminders of Hunter I could put somewhere. Even if we didn't leave things on good terms, the fact that he exists in the world is still comforting to me.

I should find the video. The thought is like having a devil on my shoulder, leading me into the temptation of turning on my phone and diving back into the online world. But if I search for the video, other things I don't want to read will also surface. There will be comments about me, speculation about my life and current frame of mind, and about Hunter. Lord help anyone who has passed judgment on him in a social forum if I can't keep myself from typing and posting a reply. The scene at the airport with the paps will pale by comparison.

I remove my phone from its case and power it on anyway. It takes about half a minute for it to find the cellular network here and to connect to my house's WiFi. That's when my notifications come to life. All of the new messages were sent between late Friday night and today, which makes me recall what Mom said about blocking Bowie's number on Friday. I wonder how many other messages from the last few weeks are waiting for me past the lock screen.

I scroll through the recent messages. A few are texts from my bandmates checking in on me, and there's one from Sawyer.

I got a message from your Mom today that you have your phone back, and that you're headed home to L.A. Text me when you get this.

There's no indication he knows what happened at the airport yet. I'll reply to him in a minute or two to find out if he does. First, I want to read the two messages from Paisley.

One text is what she sent me yesterday, so I would have her phone number. The timestamp on the second text is from ten minutes ago.

OMG, I can't believe you were ambushed at the airport. Are you okay? Thank you for wanting to protect my brother. You're the best, you know. He'll think the same thing when he gets back tomorrow and finds out what happened.

Paisley is the eternal optimist, and I admire this about her, but I can't help thinking about what it will be like for Hunter when he returns from being off the grid. The situation he left has escalated from photos and video of him being out there and people asking who he is, to his name also now being everywhere, and he'll soon discover I've left the country and have been yelling at the paparazzi to leave him alone.

I won't blame him if he finds it a lot to digest. He'll have the support of his family, though. And he'll have my support, too, if he wants it and is open to talking to me.

I'm home now, and I'm okay, I type to Paisley. I'm so sorry Hunter's name got out and I hope no one hassles him or you or your parents. Please tell him that for me. And, if he wants it, can you please give him my number?

Her response appears on my phone less than a minute later. I already sent your number to him. He'll see it when he gets home and checks his phone. You might also want this.

A contact card with Hunter's phone number appears below her message. I stare at the screen, a sense of relief washing over me at having a way to communicate with him.

I'll send him a text tomorrow when he's back from his fishing trip. No, scratch that. I'll call him. Paisley will give him my message and tell him why Mom made me leave, but I also want him to hear these things from me. And I want to hear his voice, even if I'm not certain he wants to hear mine. I'm not giving up on us, no matter how many miles we have between us.

Thank you. I add the folded hands emoji and hit send, then go back to my message list to answer Sawyer.

I just got home. Things went down with the paps after I landed.

Sawyer replies almost instantly. I just saw that. Good for you for telling them to back off. Are you all right? I'll come give you a hug tomorrow after I get back.

I sift through what I can remember of my last conversation with Sawyer, but nothing about him being in L.A. this week rings a bell. That's strange, considering he's touring on the other side of the continent right now.

You're going to be in L.A. tomorrow? Don't you have shows on the east coast?

It takes a couple of minutes for Sawyer's next message with an explanation to come through.

The rest of the tour is canceled. Bowie's parents are making him check into a rehab facility after our tour manager found him choking on his own vomit last night. There should be a statement about it going out in the morning, minus the graphic details.

"Wow," I exclaim, even though Sawyer can't hear me and there's no one else in my bedroom.

I don't ask if what Bowie overindulged in was booze, drugs, or both. I'm more surprised that someone is laying down the law with him than I am about the potentially life-endangering situation he caused for himself. And while I know I could get revenge for the pain he's caused me by opening Twitter right now and sharing the news and the details before his people can spin it, I don't.

I understand now why people say the opposite of love isn't hate, and that it's indifference. The only thing I feel toward Bowie is indifference, and it fuels my desire to put what happened on Friday behind me and move forward in my life, forgetting he was ever a part of it.

I only hope that indifference isn't what Hunter now feels toward me.


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