Dreamland: A Novel (14 page)

At the sound of the opening bars, Morgan seemed to come alive. Her limbs suddenly loosened; her face glowed as if incandescent. Before she reached the end of the first stanza, I was electrified.

Adele, Taylor, or Mariah had nothing on the voice emerging from the petite young figure before me. Her range and control were incredible, and her sound was
huge.
I couldn’t believe that delicate frame could produce the deep, soulful sound of a diva in her prime. I was stunned. Forcing myself to concentrate on the accompaniment, I struggled to make sure I didn’t miss a cue. Morgan’s performance, on the other hand, appeared effortless, as though she’d been singing the song for years. She made adjustments on the fly, riffing on the lyrics and rounding out the chorus with trills and vibrato I hadn’t anticipated. Her presence filled the room—yet as she stared into my eyes, I felt as if she was singing just for me.

People wonder what it takes to be a star, and every successful musician has their own story. In that moment, however, I knew without a doubt that I was in the presence of a world-class talent.

“You’re incredible,” I finally said as her voice died away.

“You’re sweet,” she deflected. “I said the same thing about you, remember?”

“The difference is, I’m being honest. Your voice…It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before.”

She set her notebook on the table, then moved toward me. Bending over, she tipped my face toward hers and kissed me softly on the lips. “Thank you. For everything.”

“You’re going to be a star,” I murmured, believing it.

She smiled. “Are you hungry?”

The change in subject brought me back to earth. “I am.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where to get a good cheeseburger, would you?”

I watched her saunter around the coffee table, and the day we’d spent together came back in a rush—the kayak excursion, the sun in her hair, the feel of her lips at the picnic table, the sight of her eyes closing as she sang. When I stood from the couch, my legs felt curiously unsteady.
I’m falling for her,
I suddenly realized.

Or maybe, just maybe, I already had.

I cleared my throat, almost in disbelief. “I know just the place.”

Leaving the condo, we moseyed
in the direction of the beach, waiting to cross at the ever-busy Gulf Boulevard.

The sky was continually changing colors, and there were still hundreds of people out and about, wading in the surf at the water’s edge and slowly gathering up their belongings. I walked beside Morgan, studying the way the rays of the sun brought out red-gold highlights in her dark, lustrous hair. I couldn’t help feeling that something in my world had shifted in the short time I’d known her. I’d more or less thought I had my life figured out; spending time with Morgan had changed all of that. I couldn’t say why or when it happened, but I felt undeniably different.

“You’re thinking about something,” Morgan offered.

“It’s been known to happen.”

She nudged my shoulder, like she had at the hotel the other night.

“Tell me,” she urged.

“I’m thinking about the song,” I hedged.

“Me, too,” she agreed before turning to study me. “Do you
want to work on more songs together? I’ve worked with other songwriters before, but it’s never been like it was today.”

I watched her pick her way forward, the breeze flattening her clothes against her willowy figure. “Sure,” I said. “I’d like that. But I think I’d like doing almost anything if it meant spending time with you.”

My words seemed to catch her off guard. Staring out over the water, she took a few steps in silence and I realized I had no idea what she was thinking. “So,” she said brightly, as if to cover her unease. “Where’s this place with the cheeseburgers?”

I pointed a little way up the beach where a thatch-covered roof behind the dunes was barely visible. “Right there.”

“Do you think we’ll be able to find a seat?” She wrinkled her brow. “Since it’s sunset hour, I mean? Or will it be too crowded?”

“You do know you tend to ask me questions that I have no idea how to answer, right?”

She threw her head back and laughed, baring the brown expanse of her neck. My mind flashed to the feel of her lips on my own.

“Okay, then let’s go with something you
do
know. Do you have any funny farm stories?” she asked.

“Like what?”

“Like…there was this chicken once, and his owner chopped off his head because he was going to eat the chicken. But the chicken lived for over a year afterward. I guess the brain stem wasn’t affected? But, anyway, the farmer fed it with an eyedropper since it had no head.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

“It is! I saw the video once when I was in New York City. It was at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in Times Square.”

“And you believed it, obviously.”

“You can google it. The farmer even did a traveling show with
the chicken, which was named Mike, by the way. I’ll show you when we’re eating, okay?”

I shook my head. “I don’t have any headless-chicken stories. I could tell you about tobacco worms, but they’re not funny.”

“Gross.”

“They definitely are,” I said. “So why don’t you tell me something I don’t know. Like…I know you used to come here with your family, and you went to the lake house in Minnesota, but did you take vacations to other places?”

“Why does that matter?”

“It doesn’t. Since this is my first vacation, I’m trying to live vicariously through your childhood. So I know what I missed.”

“You didn’t miss much,” she assured me.

“Humor me.”

She kicked up a bit of sand, making whirlwinds in her tracks. “Well,” she began, “we traveled a lot when I was a kid. Once every couple of years we’d visit the Philippines, where my paternal grandparents live. When I was little, I hated it. I don’t speak Chinese or Tagalog—my dad’s family is ethnically Chinese but has lived in the Philippines for generations—and it’s so hot there during the summer! But as I got older, I came to appreciate the visits more…seeing my cousins, and the food that my grandma cooked. They always spoiled my sister and me, since we saw them so infrequently.” She paused, a nostalgic smile on her face. “My parents love to travel, so sometimes we took trips to Hawaii or Costa Rica, but the biggest trip I took was after my freshman year in high school, when my parents took my sister and me to Europe. London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Rome.”

“That sounds exciting.”

“At the time, I wasn’t as excited as you might think. Mainly we toured museums and churches, and in retrospect I can understand the value of seeing works by Da Vinci or Michelangelo, but
back then I was bored silly. I remember staring at the
Mona Lisa
and thinking,
This is it? What’s so great about it?
But my parents believed such cultural things were important in the molding of young minds.”

I smiled as we veered toward Sandbar Bill’s. Though every table was filled, we lucked out, catching a couple leaving their seats at the bar, which also happened to offer a view of the sunset.

“Look at that,” I said. “It must be our day.”

She smiled. “No doubt about it.”

We ordered iced teas,
making us the only two who weren’t drinking beer or cocktails. When the bartender put the menus in front of us, we both ordered cheeseburgers without bothering to examine them.

As we waited, she showed me the video of Mike the headless chicken on YouTube, and at my urging, she told me more about her childhood. She’d attended private school the whole way through—no surprise there, since her parents obviously valued education. She described the familiar cliques and insecurities and students who surprised her in both positive and negative ways, and while our experiences couldn’t have been more different, it was clear that—like me—music was the underlying thread in all her experiences. Music was, I thought, a way for both of us to take charge of shaping our identities and to escape our traumas, and when I said as much to her, her brow furrowed slightly.

“Do you think that’s why Paige became an artist, too?”

“Maybe.” I scratched my chin, remembering. “She used to
sketch the most amazing animals or nature scenes, but then one day she drew my aunt and uncle, and they were so lifelike it could have been a photo. I remember asking her if she would draw our mom, since I didn’t really remember what she looked like, but Paige said that she didn’t remember her, either.” Thinking about Paige, I added, “Maybe that’s a good thing.”

I felt Morgan’s eyes on me as she took a sip of her tea. She leaned a little closer. “I wish you could come with us to Busch Gardens tomorrow. It should be fun.”

“I’m sure it will be. But duty calls and all that.” Then, glancing over at her: “Maybe we can see each other when you get back? After my show? I can either make us dinner or we could go out.”

I saw the flash of her dimples. “I’d like that.”

“Good,” I said, already knowing I’d count the hours until then. “And I’m definitely going to make it to your dance performance on Saturday—if you’re willing to tell me the time, so I don’t have to camp out all day, I mean.”

“It’ll be at noon or maybe a few minutes after.”

“I know you have a gazillion followers, but how many videos have you posted?”

“Probably a few hundred,” she said.

“You’ve done that many dance routines?”

“God, no,” she said, with a quick shake of her head. “I don’t know how many we’ve done. But basically we create routines to one or two songs, then break up each one into ten or fifteen segments.”

“So…how are you going to keep it going? Since you’re all going your separate ways?”

“We’ve been talking about that a lot lately, especially this week. They’ve known for a while that Saturday is my last performance
with the group. And until recently, Holly and Stacy also said that they were planning to move on with their lives, too. But now that there’s some money in it, I think they’re trying to find a way to keep it going, at least through the summer. Maybe figure out a way to rehearse on FaceTime and then get together in person on weekends. They’re still trying to figure it out.”

“But you’re done for sure?”

She was quiet, and I had the sense that she was trying to choose her words carefully. “You already know how I feel about being an influencer, but more than that, I don’t want to make a mistake when it comes to launching a music career. Like…I don’t want people to think that the
only
reason I made it was because I had a social-media following. I’ve worked too hard for that. I mean, I studied opera, for goodness’ sake. Maybe a manager—if I get one—will tell me what to do. For now I’ll just post what I’ve agreed to post, and that’ll get me through the next month or so, but after that, who knows? We’ll see.”

“Will you miss it?”

“Yes and no,” she admitted. “I love my friends, and in the beginning the routines were tons of fun, and obviously it was thrilling to watch our accounts blow up. But lately it feels like everything has to be even better—perfect—whenever we film, so it’s a lot more stressful. At the same time, I try to remind myself that I learned a lot. I’ve reached the point where I think I might even be able to choreograph my own music video.”

“Really?”

“Maybe. But if not, I’d just call Maria.”

I smiled. The bartender brought our cheeseburgers, and we dug in while watching the sunset bloom across the sky. “We’ve been talking so much about me, but what are you going to do when you go back home?” she asked between bites. Unlike me,
she’d removed the bun and was using a fork and knife to eat the burger; she did, however, dig into the fries with gusto.

“Same thing I always do. Work the farm.”

“What’s the first thing you do in the mornings once you start work?”

“I make sure the eggs are collected, and then I move the prairie schooner.”

“What’s a prairie schooner?”

I thought about how best to describe it to someone who’d never seen one before. “Remember when I told you that chickens like shade? That’s what a prairie schooner does. It’s like a big, open-sided tent that’s mounted on skids, with nesting boxes along one side. But, anyway, chickens like to eat bugs, and they also poop a lot. So we have to move the prairie schooner every day to make sure they have a clean and fresh environment. It also helps to fertilize the soil.”

“Do you move it with a tractor?”

“Of course.”

“I want to see you drive a tractor.”

“You’re welcome at the farm anytime.”

“Then what?”

“It depends on the season. I’ll check the greenhouse or the crops or see how harvesting is going or work with a new batch of chickens or turn the fields over, and then there’s the whole management and personnel side of things, as well as interacting with customers. It goes without saying that something is always breaking or needs repairing. I wake every day with what feels like a thousand things to do. You’d be amazed at what it takes to move an egg or tomato from the farm to a grocery store.”

“How do you pull it all off?”

“My aunt does a lot, as does the general manager. I’ve also learned to prioritize.”

“I don’t think I’d be cut out for a life like that,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean, I’m responsible, just not
that
responsible.”

“You don’t have to live that life. You’re going to be famous.”

“From your lips to God’s ears.”

“Trust me,” I said, knowing I’d never been as certain about anything.