The Funeral Singer (7 page)

Except Andrea didn’t want to interview us together. She said the shots would be better, tighter, if we went one at a time. Great.

Andrea asked if they could film us downstairs in the studio, with the rest of the band and their instruments in the background, but Zed talked her into staying out on the porch. Guess he figured walking a TV news crew through the basement haze might not be a good idea.

First Andrea filmed her intro. It took two takes, because Bruno opened the front door halfway through the first take, looked out and then slammed it shut.

“A few days ago, Fairfax’s Melanie Martin was just like every other high school junior, worried about her grades, the prom and her after-school job. But now, she’s practically a household name, thanks to a news video that first aired on this station and now has millions of views on YouTube. This afternoon, Channel 4 caught up with Melanie at the home of Ty Walker, a drummer for local rock band The Grime.” Andrea walked over and stood beside me. I smiled at the camera, just as she’d instructed me. “Melanie, who works as a singer at her father’s funeral home here in Fairfax, performed a heart-wrenching version of ‘Amazing Grace’ at the burial of The Grime’s late keyboardist, Mick Nolan. It was the video from that service that propelled her to fame.”

Andrea turned off her ‘announcer’s voice.’

“That was perfect. At that point, we’ll cut to the clip of you singing, and then we’ll come back to the interview. From this point on, do not look at the camera. Keep your eyes focused on me. And try to speak in complete sentences, because we’re not going to show the part where I ask the question.”

She hooked a mic up to me, stood right beside the camera lens and motioned for the cameraman to start filming.

“How do you feel about all of the attention you’re getting from the video?”

I swallowed. This was surreal. “A little overwhelmed, I guess. It was so unexpected.”

Andrea rolled her eyes and dropped her hand down by her side. “No, no. You need to say, ‘I’m a little overwhelmed by all of the attention. It was so unexpected.’ Get it? Complete sentences.”

The next few questions went a little more smoothly, until she asked what I was doing at Ty’s house. Should I say I was trying out? Joining the band? I still wasn’t quite sure where things stood.

“The Grime invited me here this afternoon to sit in on their rehearsal.” I doubted Andrea would let me get away with such a vague answer, but she let it go. Maybe because her next question was the real zinger.

“According to the program for Mick’s funeral service, you weren’t originally scheduled to perform at his graveside service. How did you end up singing?”

“Um, well,” I stammered as I tried to think. I didn’t want to say anything that would make the band members look bad, but I still had no idea why they’d blown off the burial. “I ended up—”

Zed interrupted, rescuing me. “Actually, Andrea, I think you should save that question for my interview. The answer will make more sense coming from me.”

I nodded. “Yeah. It would be better if you asked Zed that one.” I raised my eyebrows at him. I was dying to know the answer myself.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“It was my idea for Mel to sing at Mick’s graveside service.”

Zed answered in a complete sentence, with a smile as innocent as though he were stating that the sky was blue.

My jaw dropped. His idea? Good thing Andrea had insisted on interviewing us separately. If I were on camera, it would show all over my face that he was lying.

“When we first visited the funeral home a few weeks ago, I heard Melanie rehearsing in the chapel,” Zed said. “Her sound is so … genuine, I knew we had to make her a part of the service.” He glanced up at the sky and then looked back at Andrea. “I think Mick would have liked it.”

I walked over to the far edge of the porch so no one could see me shaking. How could he lie like that?
Why
would he lie like that? My mind flashed back to the sight of the limo behind the cemetery trees. What was he trying to hide? I leaned over, gripped the porch railing, and closed my eyes.
Calm down and think.

I took a few deep breaths and cleared my mind. Okay, first of all, Zed had called the station to come here tonight and interview us. He wouldn’t have done that if he and the band had some huge secret, right? So there had to be another explanation. Yes, of course there was. Probably something simple. Like, maybe—

“Hey.” The sound of Andrea’s voice directly behind me made me jump. “Why didn’t you tell me you were their new backup singer?”

I straightened and turned around. “Did Zed tell you that?”

“Yep.”

I felt a small thrill. So it was official.

“You must be a huge fan to know all their songs so well.”

“What do you mean?” It was true, but I hadn’t said anything about that.

“He said you went up to him after the funeral and told him you knew every single word to every single Grime song. That’s what gave him the idea to ask you to sing backup.”

I
went up to
him
? Okay, so maybe the explanation for all this
was
something really simple. Like maybe Zed Logan was a compulsive freaking liar. I nodded. “Right, sure. I … whatever.”

Andrea’s eyes narrowed. “I seem to recall specifically asking you what you were doing here tonight, and you failed to mention this rather significant piece of news.”

“Yeah, I was—”

“Listen, Mel,” she interrupted. “There are lots of talented people in this world who never make it big. And do you know why that is?”

I shook my head.

“It’s because no one discovers them.
You
, however, have overcome that hurdle, because
I
discovered you. Without me, you’d be just another pretty face waiting for the right people to notice her—stuck in your small-time job with all that potential going to waste.” Andrea’s voice cracked on the word “potential,” and I got the feeling she wasn’t talking about me anymore.

“You’re right.” I decided not to remind her that she hadn’t even managed to get my name right in her report, or mention the fact that her clip had the fewest views of all the videos online now. No sense ticking her off even more, and anyway, much as I hated to admit it, she had a point. “I’m grateful for what you’ve done, Andrea, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about joining the band, but it’s … it’s complicated.”

Andrea nodded. “Complicated. Of course it is.” She took a step toward me. “Let me tell you something. What you do with your fame from here on out is up to you. I hope you make it. I really do. Just don’t forget who gave you your big break. And don’t ever hold back on me again.”

I nodded. “Right.”

Andrea glanced at her watch and squeezed my arm. “Good girl. Now, I need to run. If we make it back to the station by seven-thirty, post-production should have this ready in time for the eleven o’clock edition. Watch for it.”

I avoided Zed’s eyes as the crew packed their cameras and lighting equipment into the van. What was I supposed to say to him?
Thanks so much for hiring me to sing at Mick’s service. And by the way, did you notice that the sky was green today?

Zed walked over to me as the van pulled away. “Great job. I have a feeling that clip’s going to end up in syndication.”

“Syndication?”

“Yeah. Stations all across the country will pick it up. Maybe even the national news. And of course, I’m sure it’ll do well on YouTube.”

Oh, great. Because we wouldn’t want his lies to be confined to Channel 4’s viewing area. I pulled myself up to sit on the porch railing and rubbed my temples.

“You okay?” Zed asked.

“I don’t know. I’m—” I took a deep breath and looked him in the eyes. “Why did you lie?”

Zed flinched. “Lie?”

What, he thought I wouldn’t notice? Or care? “Yeah, lie. About Mick’s service, about … me.”

Zed sat down beside me and placed his hand over mine on the railing. His palm was warm and dry, not cold and sweaty like mine would have been if I’d just fed the world a big bowlful of Never Happened. “I’m sorry, Mel,” he said. “I know you’re new to this. The thing is, it’s not really lying. It’s … image management.”

Image management? I tried to pull my hand away, but Zed tightened his grip. “It’s better if people think we discovered you before this whole thing with the videos. You don’t want people to assume the only reason you’re singing with us is because you’re on YouTube, do you?”

“But that is how you found me, right? You said you saw me on the news.”

“Well, sure, but nobody needs to know that. I mean, otherwise, it might seem a bit … opportunistic of us to sign you on.”

I nodded. “Opportunistic. Good word.”

Zed leaned toward me. My heart fluttered as for one strange, wonderful, horrible moment I thought he might kiss me. Instead, he spoke, his voice almost a whisper. “It’s not like that. See, the truth is actually closer to what I told Andrea. Your voice is so genuine, it reached out and grabbed me and made me want to hire you. Where and when I heard it doesn’t matter.”

I bit my lip. “For real?”

“Yes, for real. Your voice … it’s like a soothing drizzle and a thrashing downpour and a booming thunderstorm all wrapped into one unbelievable sound. A guy could lose himself in a voice like that.” Zed’s voice cracked and he pulled away a little, but he continued holding my hand. “The longer you’re in this business, the more you’ll understand. People assume the worst and start all sorts of crazy, screwed-up rumors. I just … massaged a few of the details so the real truth gets out there.”

I allowed myself to relax. So there was a simple explanation. Simple and … awesome.

The sun had long ago disappeared behind the mansion across the street and the air had taken on a chill, but I felt warm sitting so close to Zed. I had the brief thought that now might be a good time to ask why he and the band had skipped Mick’s burial and what exactly they were doing while I was filling in for them, but I pushed it away. I didn’t want to ruin the moment.

I’d wait for a better time to ask. And when that time came, I was sure he’d have a simple explanation for that, too.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Image management? Are you kidding?” Lana’s tone was half annoyed, half amused. She’d seen the report on the late news and was waiting for me at my locker the next morning.

“I know, I thought the same thing at first. But it made total sense the way Zed explained it. If we don’t manage our own image, someone else will do it for us—and then it might not be pretty.”

Lana gave me a poke. “Look at you, with your
we
and
us
and
our image
. Soon you’ll be ordering the roadies to remove the black jellybeans from your snack bar.”

I laughed. “Shut up. Besides, the black ones are my favorites. It’s the yellow ones they’ll have to pick out.”

“Excuse me. Melanie? Could you sign the back of my shirt?”

I turned to see a girl from my gym class, Annika Harper. She was wearing a Grime t-shirt.

“Sure.” I took the marker from her hand as she turned around. I had a shirt exactly like this at home, signed by Jon Marks. One night last winter, Lana and I had waited for hours by the back door of Jaxx in the freezing cold in the hopes of catching the band as they came out. Well, more specifically, in the hopes of catching Zed and Bruno as they came out, but Jon was the only one who did. I remembered feeling silly being such a groupie, asking for his autograph, but there was no way I was going home with nothing but a pair of semi-frostbitten feet that night.

That shirt still hung in a corner in my room. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me until now that I could get the whole rest of the band to sign it. And that my signature belonged on it, too.

“Just anywhere on the back,” Annika said, tapping her shoulder impatiently.

“Sorry. Hold still.” I scribbled my name across the top. It was harder to write on cotton than I’d have thought.

As Annika walked away, Lana smiled at me. “It just hit you, didn’t it?” She knew me too well.

“Weird, huh?” I was part of The Grime. I wasn’t
with
the band, I
was
the band.

The first bell rang, and Lana took off down the hall. “Still waiting to meet Bruno,” she called over her shoulder.

“Soon, I promise!”

For the next few days, my life was like a carnival ride. The centrifical force of my rising fame shoved me against a wall and everything flew by in a blur, out of my control. My YouTube views ran well into the millions. One of the late-night shows aired a montage of them along with a top-ten list of “Songs You Don’t Want the Funeral Singer to Sing at Your Funeral.” It was actually pretty funny for funeral humor. Number one was Elvis Costello’s “Tramp the Dirt Down.”

My Facebook fan page went crazy, with all kinds of rumors about me joining this band or that TV show or dating such and such celebrity—some hot, some not, and some way, way too old. Johnny Depp? Seriously? I finally posted to say that (a) I wasn’t dating anyone and (b) I’d joined The Grime. That started a huge argument about whether The Grime “deserved” me. I noticed the band had added my photo to their group page, which nearly tripled in fans after my announcement.

On Friday, The Washington Post ran a huge story, “Rising from the Depths,” complete with a color photo of me leaning against the Aegean Bronze in my dad’s casket selection room. I’d tried to convince the photographer to do the shoot on the balcony, but she insisted that having caskets in the background would “really tell the tale.” Which I guess it did, since the reporter’s “tale” was all about a girl whose life was a Big Fat Creep Show until she somehow managed to stumble into stardom. My favorite line was a highly out-of-context quote where I called funeral dirges my “one true passion.” Could I sound any darker? I was beginning to appreciate Zed’s image-management philosophy more and more.

By the time I got to school Friday morning, I couldn’t walk three steps without having someone stop me in the hall to ask me to autograph their notebook or backpack or clothes. One guy even brought in a huge poster he’d made using a photo of me singing at Mick’s service. He’d touched up my face and hair and altered the background so I looked more like a fashion model in a steamy rainforest than a singer in a cemetery, and I had the disturbing suspicion he’d lowered the neckline on my dress a couple of inches, too.