Before He Was Gone: Starstruck Book 2 (2 page)

Hey guys,

Some of you may have heard, but I’m going to be fulfilling a Proactive Community Management role for part of my time every day for the next few weeks. We’ll be defining what this role means in our meeting, but I will be reaching out to low hanging fruit (users trying to make a cell phone decision) and searching for opportunities to create fun, exciting engagement outside of our community…

I look away from the screen, where K-Lame’s latest email is hurting my head. I don’t even know what he’s talking about. What’s a Proactive Community Management role? The opposite of a lazy one?

Most of the time, Kenneth uses words and phrases he’s made up because he thinks they make him sound more knowledgeable and important. Our jobs are mostly pointless and he knows it. Social media for a phone company is basically just apologizing to people who are pissed that their phones don’t work and that no one out there gives a crap; including us. The pay’s pretty good though. I’m saving for my Le Cordon Bleu Culinary course, otherwise I’d have been out of here months ago, obviously.

I pick up my cell:
what’s low hanging fruit got to do with anything?
I type at Chloe, laughing.

It buzzes in my hand. Sebastian’s name is flashing on the screen. I look around the office. I’m not supposed to take personal calls but K-Lame’s out on a cigarette break. I dart to the kitchen.

‘Hey baby,’ he says when I answer. ‘What’s up?’

‘Just planning what to cook for you tonight,’ I say, looking down at the blue heels I’d never tell him came from Target. ‘I’m thinking moussaka, your favorite, then homemade baklava with…’

‘Look, about dinner,’ he starts. ‘Noah’s got the new single to run through and we’re behind with everything ‘cause of the wedding. We’re going to have to fly back to New York early. HotFlush have spoken.’

‘Oh. Really? When?’

‘I’m at the airport.’

My stomach knots. 'What do you mean you’re at the airport? I thought we had tonight…’

‘I’m sorry, you know how they are, they sent the car and we had to leave. Denzel’s been on his back.’

‘You didn’t even say goodbye!’

‘I’m saying it now, aren’t I? Look,’ he sighs down the phone. ‘Alyssa, things have been so crazy lately. I don’t know if I can juggle all this.’

My throat dries up on the spot.

‘I don’t know if
you
can juggle all this,’ he adds and I freeze. 
My heart starts thudding as I hear muffled voices on the airport speakers in the background. 

‘I have nothing to juggle,’ I tell him.

‘The wedding was great, Alyssa. Seeing your home, seeing your family, really, I had a great time. But, I feel like I’m ruining your real life sometimes? I feel like I’m always leaving you.’

‘You’re not,’ I say, struggling to keep my voice level while my brain is screaming
no, no, no, no!
  ‘And what do you mean my
real
life?’

‘Your life is in Colorado,’ he says. ‘I’ve been thinking…’

‘What have you been thinking? Seriously, Sebastian, what are you telling me right now?’ 

I wish I could pause time, fast forward through the next part, because as he sighs down the phone I already know what he’s telling me, don't I? He’s telling me what the jealous fans have been telling me on Twitter since we were first pictured kissing on TMZ:

@AlyssaTheGreek It will never last. #sorry

I lean heavily against the bulletin board on the wall, feeling my knees start to give out from under me. I can picture Noah with the band in the departure lounge, probably listening to this playing out. None of them are telling him not to do this. Is this all it comes down to? A single moment? A blind slash to my heart like a freakin' knife through a hunk of meat on a chopping board, after
everything
we’ve been through?

‘I was going to talk to you tonight,’ he says.

‘Bullshit.’ Anger flares through me, followed swiftly by total humiliation. I slam my head against the bulletin board, just as Megan from accounts wanders in and eyes me quizzically. ‘You must’ve been thinking this for a while,’ I say, lowering my voice into the phone and turning away as she fills up her coffee mug
. ‘How long have you wanted to break this off? Honestly.’

He sighs again. I clench my fingers round the hem of my skirt as I sink to the floor, bringing half the papers on the damn board down with me. I saw it at the wedding. He couldn’t wait to get out of there. ‘I just bought baklava ingredients,’ I hear myself say stupidly as the tears threaten my eyes again.

‘I’m sorry, baby. Let’s speak in a few weeks, OK? Maybe we just need some time out?’

I refuse to cry. ‘No,’ I say. ‘
You
need some time out. Don’t pretend you’re going to change your mind if you’re not. I thought we were making this work, Sebastian!’

‘We were,’ he replies, and there’s a shuffle as someone takes the phone from him.

‘Alyssa?’ It’s Noah. Just hearing my friend is enough to make me crumble.

‘What the hell, Lockton?’ I cry.

‘I’m sorry babe, look, I just wanted you to know that we’re here for you, all of us. This doesn’t change our friendship, OK? Things are just difficult, you know? We’re on the road so much…’

‘It’s not difficult for you and Chloe,’ I tell him, swiping at my face. ‘How long have you known?’ But the phone’s taken off him again and Sebastian starts up with an apology. I hang up. I don’t want to hear it.

Megan’s hovering over me. She crouches down, fixes me with a look of concern. I put my head on my arms as she squeezes my knee. ‘I just bought baklava ingredients,’ I say again in a voice that doesn’t even sound like my own and she makes a sympathetic
aaaaw
sound that makes it all real and makes me want to vomit.

My cell buzzes again. It’s Chloe. I pick up, willing my voice not to break as I take my headband off and shove a hand through my hair. ‘News travels fast.’

‘Noah just said I should call you, what’s happened? Are you OK?’

‘Sebastian broke things off.’

‘What? Why?!’

‘Because he’s an asshole,’ I say, and then I regret it. ‘Sorry. No he’s not. But I knew this would happen. I just… I knew it. What am I gonna do, Chloe? The media will be all over this in like, an hour.’

‘No they won’t,’ she says, but we both know they will. Anything Noah Lockton’s band does is front-page news. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a photog outside already, waiting for me, waving a press release from HotFlush itself. My fingers are trembling as I grip the phone.

‘You saw it coming, didn’t you?’ I say, and Chloe sighs.

‘You were saying he’s been distant. At the wedding you barely spoke.’

‘Susan Miller saw it too,’ I follow, remembering my horoscope with a pang. ‘She said the lunar full moon eclipse would create tension in relationships. But I thought he was just overwhelmed… he’d never met my mom before.’

‘True,’ she says. I know Chloe’s thinking the same as me. Not only do we devour our scopes on the first of every month because they’re always so damn right, my mom can be pretty overwhelming. Sebastian had barely shaken her hand before she was sizing him up for
our
wedding. The photog shot of my underwear didn’t help. I heard he got a ton of hassle from the label after that. They’re supposed to be all wholesome and clean. 

‘Leave work early, I’ll come get you,’ Chloe says.

‘When’s your flight again?’ I ask. She’ll be leaving town soon, too, back to New York. Panic floods my body. 

‘Not till tomorrow night,’ she says. ‘Stay there, I’m coming now.’

‘Wait. What will I tell K-Lame? We have a meeting about low hanging fruit.’

‘Tell him you have a personal emergency!’

‘OK,’ I say, scrambling up and motioning to Megan that I’m OK. ‘But, what will I tell him after that?’

‘What do you mean?’

I turn to the wall, swallow another lump that’s formed in my throat. Noah would never do this to Chloe. Noah can make this whole crazy double life-thing work with Chloe. ‘Can I just leave the planet, please?’

‘Don’t be so dramatic. Look, we’re wasting time. I’ll be there in ten.’ She hangs up and I turn back around to where Megan’s now sipping her coffee, reading a flier that must have fallen off the bulletin board.

She looks at me, looks back to the flier and shoves it at me. 
I rub my eyes, look down at the skull and palm trees bearing up at me. ‘
Deserted?
’ I read in surprise. 
My head is reeling.

She shrugs. ‘They want season twenty-three applicants now. I’d apply myself if it wasn’t for the three kids and the fact that I’d look terrifying in a bikini. You want to get out of here, isn’t that what you just said?’

I shake my head at her incredulously. ‘Do you really think I want more people looking at me like I’m a tool? Besides, people like
me
don’t apply for shows like this either, Megan.'

‘Alyssa,’ she squeezes my arm with a smile. ‘Honey, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think people like you are
made
for shows like this.’

Two weeks later

The pimply seventeen-year-old trailing my ass is getting on my nerves. He hasn’t left my side since he showed up in the car at L.A.X and accompanied me to the hotel. I found him parked outside my bathroom when I came out of the shower in just a towel and he jumped when I opened the door. He eyed up my tattoos and shaved head in suspicion, like we were already marooned on an island and I was about to cut his throat for some rice.

I’m not supposed to talk to anyone else here. They would’ve confiscated my cell phone on arrival if I had one, and if I didn’t know better I’d say the production team have bugged the room’s telephone, too. Call me paranoid, but it’s all a little more serious than I was expecting - this audition process.

The pimply kid barked that I should divert my eyes whenever we passed someone else in the hallway and I’ve heard other people being ordered around, too. But we’re halfway through the three-day interviews and so far, so good, I think. I hope. A production assistant called Lanie was very nice when they made me stand in front of them yesterday and fired some kind of verbal personality test at me:

‘A logical decision is always best, even if it hurts someone’s feelings. Agree or disagree?’

‘Agree.’

‘You need to retreat and spend some time alone after spending too much time with other people. Agree or disagree?’

‘Agree.’

‘You don’t mind being the center of attention. Agree or disagree?’

‘Disagree.’

They all said they loved my application video. ‘We’ve never actually seen anyone quite so dedicated to saving the human race before,’ Lanie grinned through glossed lips as she held up a photo of me shooting at three walking dead guys.

Seeing as I only had a week to pull the three-minute video together, I filmed myself talking over footage I thankfully already had from Zombie Survival Camp and a couple other trips I’ve done in the last year or so. My cousin Evan and I stitched it all together on iMovie. There I was on their big screen in the hotel’s boardroom on the first day, shooting up some cardboard cut outs, and in another shot, dressed in flowing linen pants and prayer beads, blowing smoke over hippies at the ayahuasca ceremony Rainbow and I did in his backyard.

That retreat, which saw twelve people drinking boiled up jungle roots imported from the Amazon and passing out for eight hours straight, was almost as intense as the zombie stuff. He paid me pretty good money to round up the recruits. There’s a surprising number of people in this world who are willing to pay to lose their minds.

I’m not one of them.

I’m sitting here now with the pimply kid beside me, waiting for my IQ test. I’m not particularly concerned about this one. It’s the ‘I’m not crazy’ test that bothers me but I decided before they flew me here that honesty was the best policy. Over the past two weeks I’ve watched countless hours of YouTube footage from contestants who’ve been on
Deserted
before. I read everything I could drag up on the Internet. For a night I tossed and turned, drove around the neighbourhood at three a.m, wondering if I was doing the right thing. This show has on average twenty million viewers per episode. That’s a lot of people looking at me.

But then… I’m not doing this for the fame, the glory, the recognition, am I? I’m doing it for that money, because if Evan is right and we’re going to have to pay out, I’ll do what it takes. No question.

‘Joshua Brenner? Ready?’

Lanie’s smiling at me again from the boardroom doorway. Today she’s in skinny jeans and a sky blue tank with a cloud on it. She’s so L.A - the perfect irony with her yoga-toned arms and green juice in a non-biodegradable plastic cup. 

‘Yes ma’am, ready,’ I say, following her into the air-conditioned room, where three guys and one woman are sat behind a table with iPads and what I guess are our application forms in piles. I heard there were almost one hundred people at the interviews, all competing for just ten places on the show.

‘Welcome back, Mr Brenner,’ one of the guys beams, motioning for me to sit in the wooden chair right in front of them. ‘These questions are designed to test your intelligence and will take roughly two hours. Please feel free to request a break and help yourself to water.’

My instincts pique at his words as I take my seat and he appraises me through thick-lensed glasses. They haven’t given me any water, though I note the cooler at the other end of the room. I know my ability to handle intense situations is an asset in this case and if I get up for a drink I’ll be viewed as weak. Thank god I gulped an iced tea back just ten minutes ago in my room, though I may have to pretend I don’t need a bathroom break sometime soon.

‘Got it,’ I say with a salute and they all tap on their screens at once.

‘Joshua, there are twelve pens on the table. You took three. How many do you have?’

‘Three. I just took them.’

‘Take a thousand and add forty. Now add another thousand. Now add thirty. Add another thousand. Now add twenty. Now add another thousand. Now add ten. What is the total?

‘Four thousand, one hundred.’

‘You’re taking part in a race. You overtake the second person. What position are you in?’

‘First. No, wait. Second. Sorry. I’m second.’

More tapping on the iPads. There are over three hundred multiple choice questions, some of which are more difficult than others and some of which they tell me are worth more points. Roughly forty minutes into their interrogation my head starts pounding and I wish I’d drunk more water instead of just the iced tea.
Damn.
I keep my face neutral until the buzzing in my ears makes me miss some of what Lanie’s saying and I’m forced to ask her to repeat herself.

‘Are you feeling OK, Joshua?’ she asks, cocking her head and making her ponytail flop comically.

‘I’m feeling great,’ I lie.

‘Good. So, how many animals of each sex did Moses take on the ark? Three, five, fifteen or zero?'

‘Zero. Moses didn’t have an ark, Noah did.’

‘Excellent. We’re almost halfway through. You’re flying through these! Tina’s father has five daughters. Lana, Lene, Lini, Lono. What is the name of the fifth daughter?’

‘Tina,’ I say, but the cloud on Lanie’s shirt looks like it’s moving. The A/C feels like it’s sucking out my soul. I shut my mouth, bite the insides of my cheeks as the nerves block everything else out. It’s time.

‘Actually,’ I continue, leaning forward in my chair and making them all look up from their iPads, ‘there’s something I should probably say to you all before we go any further.’

“What is it?’ Lanie asks, raising perfectly waxed brows, and as I explain I watch as their faces work through a range of emotions. They’ll never know how many are raging through me, but I keep my face straight, my mission clear, and when we’re done Lanie’s smile isn’t any less bright.

’We appreciate you sharing, Joshua,’ she says, sincerely. ‘We’ll see you soon, I’m sure.’

I nod, stand, keep my back straight, adrenaline still pulsing through my veins.

On the way out of the boardroom, right before the pimply kid gets up in front of me and orders me to keep my eyes forward, I see a girl. Her brown eyes lock onto mine as I step over the threshold and in the space of a millisecond I take in her short black hair, pushed back with a green band; her knee-length purple dress bunched in at her small waist. I recognize her.

Time slows for a second as my sidekick closes in and I nod surreptitiously in her direction as I pass, keeping my face straight. A look of amusement crosses her features; the kind of animated expression that would usually make me turn back out of intrigue, but I’m frogmarched back down the hallway just as she’s called into the boardroom. Where have I seen her before?

I can still see her face in my head as I’m led back to my room. I shut the door on the kid, head to my backpack for some Advil. I’m already picturing her on an island with the turquoise sea behind her, standing there in some bikini and vine leaves, holding a spear. It’s stupid, but the vision makes my pulse throb and my palms sweat. She bothers me.

I down two pills with a mouthful of water, study my face in the mirror as I grip the basin. I’ve had no one else to bring this dream to life with so far. I’ve told no one I’m applying for
Deserted
; not Harri, not Mitchell, not even my mother. Out of nowhere now though, the way is clear but there’s another human standing in my path.

Maybe it’s the pimply kid; maybe it’s the intensity of everything I just had to go through, but as I stare at my reflection, survival mode kicks in. From out of nowhere an indelible line is drawn between myself and a girl I haven’t even met.