“It was … we were just kids, at first. I didn’t understand what it would become, so I didn’t try to make it into a thing.” A pause. “She didn’t end up finishing school with us. Recording and promo and all that, it became too much. She was traveling more and more. A few years later, after the second album … she came back. They were building that house … she was in the middle of a tour, but she was playing in Indianapolis, had a day off between shows. Early on, she would invite me out, any time she played close by, but I heard from her less and less … I knew how busy she was. But she showed up at Darby Court, where we were living at the time. Cadence was really little then.
“She seemed … distracted. She came and sat in the living room and she took out a checkbook. Said she’d pay me right then and there, for everything, so long as I never told another person that I had written those songs. Said she was turning over a new leaf or whatever … starting a new chapter in her career. That we wouldn’t write anything else together, and that was … fine, I guess, it wasn’t like … I wasn’t setting out to be some big songwriter, like she had become this big musician. But really, I think … she knew that things might change between us. That she was getting successful, so she thought I would come along asking for money, or—or blackmailing her or some shit.” She shook her head. “It was never about the money for me.”
“Even though she was getting famous? And rich?”
“We wrote those songs when we were kids. For fun. I never thought of it like that.”
“You’re a better person than most,” Kyle said. “Because she should’ve fucking paid you from the start, even if you didn’t care about credit.”
“She was my best friend,” Heather said simply. “I loved her. I would’ve done anything for her.”
“So she offered you money?”
“She did. And I was … I was insulted, I guess. Not at the money itself—God knows we could’ve used it—but at the thought that I would betray her like that. That I would … sell her out on the internet or whatever, just for some notoriety. And also, I guess … I was hurt that … it felt like she was cutting me out. It felt … final, like in terms of our friendship. She didn’t even ask about Cadence, you know. Didn’t even want to see her.” Heather shook her head. “So I got mad. We fought. She left, and … we never talked again. The third album came out, and it was …” A shrug. “She was doing what she wanted, finally. I guess. And it worked out for her.” There was something final in the way she said it—this was the end of the story. “I’m happy for her.”
* * *
I told August the whole thing on the phone that night. They never actually swore me to secrecy, but I didn’t think it would apply to August, even if they had.
I didn’t know what to think. How to feel. Megan wasn’t exactly who I thought she was. Neither was Heather. I had to renegotiate both of them in my mind.
At least it prepared me—slightly—for a few nights later, when there was a knock at the door when I was babysitting Harper and Cadence.
And there, on the doorstep, was Megan Pleasant.
fifty-two
I don’t know why—maybe TV and movies—but I thought famous people always had entourages. Like she should be standing there with a driver and a security guard and a manager and her makeup artist/stylist/best friend who would be holding a palette out, brushing a bit of highlighter onto her cheeks. There should be a reality-TV film crew—two cameras and a sound guy holding a boom or something.
But Megan Pleasant stood on the Conlins’ front steps all alone, in a pair of ripped jeans and a faded T-shirt, a leather bag slung over one shoulder. Her hair was as long and shiny as it had been the day I met her, and she was undeniably beautiful—dark lashes, Cupid’s bow lips. Alongside the initial shock, I was instantly seized with that feeling—I wanted to be her, but I also wanted her to be My Girl—and for a moment I just stood there, frozen.
Was it—could it be possible? The social media outreach had worked? Megan had gotten one or some or all of my messages, and now she was here somehow, she had found me here at the Conlins’ house to tell me that, yes, she would play at the fall festival—
“Hi,” she said. “Is Heather here?”
IT’S ME, SOPHIE, FROM THE EMAILS, my brain yelled.
“Uhhh …” I said out loud.
“Sorry to just show up like this, I know it’s late … if she’s not here, I can come back …”
“Uhhh …” Just as eloquent.
It was then Shepherd got up abruptly and bounded to the back door, and I heard it swing open, the sounds of conversation between August and Heather filtering in. I looked toward the kitchen, and when I looked back I half expected Megan Pleasant to have vanished, a figment of my imagination.
But she was still there.
“I should’ve called,” she said.
My brain was short-circuiting. Instead of calling out for Heather, I yelled “Megan Pleasant!” in a high and strangled voice, and on the front stoop, actual Megan Pleasant physically recoiled.
“What’s up? Why do you sound unhinged?” Heather said, poking her head through the door. Then she froze.
“Hey,” Megan said.
Heather blinked. “Hi.”
August appeared beside her on his crutches. “Hey, Soph—” Then his eyes grew wide. “Holy shit. The ritual worked.”
fifty-three
August and I sat on the window seat in the kitchen with the back door ajar. We could hear Heather and Megan through the screen door.
It started with awkward small talk. Megan said the house was nice. Heather said they’d been there for three years now. Megan asked about her little girl—“Katie?”—and Heather told her about Cadence and Harper. Both snuggled up in bed, both unaware that Acadia’s most famous export was sitting on their back patio, next to Cadence’s pink Power Wheels Jeep.
Eventually it grew silent.
“Do you want a drink or something?” Heather said. “I could make coffee.”
“I’m here to apologize,” Megan said.
* * *
“My entire career felt fake,” she began. “At first … you know, it was a whirlwind, of course it was. Being on TV and people knowing my name, doing shows and stuff, it was … an absolute dream. I didn’t really think about it, what it would become, what I would become, using the stuff we had written. Pretending—not pretending, okay—but … never admitting that there was someone else involved. Is that the same as pretending?”
I thought of Brit and the greenhouse—I didn’t mean to break it. I just meant to break something.
Heather didn’t respond.
“Everybody praised me for, like … my authenticity or whatever. But it wasn’t me who was authentic. It wasn’t me who loved Acadia and the boy next door and all that. It was you.
“I didn’t even know what it was I wanted after a while. What I sounded like. I didn’t know how to sing something that you hadn’t touched. We started working on the third album and they were putting me in the studio, having me meet with producers and talk about my sound and the landscape of my career and all that, and I just … I wanted to be who I was. I wanted to figure it out, at least, but how could I tell them now that I hadn’t known it all along?
“I know it’s no excuse, but I just … I needed a clean break. I needed to start over. And it felt like … to me, it felt like the only thing I could do was try to cut you out. It was shitty from the start, Heather, I know that. I know it. You should’ve been credited on everything. Forget that we were kids. Fuck it, I should’ve said it from the beginning, I should’ve insisted.
“So last time, when I came back … I thought I was making it right, but I also … it was selfish, I know that, but everything just seemed like … like it had gone on for so long, I didn’t know if I could ever get out from under it. And it seemed like the only thing to do would be to cut ties, you know?”
Silence.
And then a cry came from Cadence and Harper’s room.
“Lemme check on her.” There was the sound of a chair scraping against concrete.
“Kiss me,” I said, and reached for August. He hesitated for just a second, before pressing his lips against mine.
Heather paused in the doorway, eyebrows raised as we quickly broke apart.
“Subtle.”
“We were just—”
“I know what you were just.”
“I’ll, uh, walk Sophie out,” August said.
“Yeah, right. And do that thing where you pretend to say bye and shut the door and then sneak Sophie downstairs? If you’re gonna fool around, just go fool around. But—BUT”—she held a finger up to August and me in turn—“use your brain. Both of you. And not the little brains. The big brains.”
“Both my brains are big,” August said solemnly.
“I swear to God, you are just like your brother sometimes, it’s terrifying.” She nudged August gently toward the basement door. “Go.”
We went. August had to go down the stairs on his butt, but he was pretty quick at it. I carried his crutches down, handed them to him at the bottom of the stairs.
He led me through the door to his new room. It had changed a little since Kyle had shown me—now a mattress and box spring were pushed up underneath the little window on the far wall, and a set of shelves sat against the opposite wall, the contents of August’s window atop it. The pink-and-white quilt was among the blankets twisted up on the bed.
Overhead I could hear Heather moving around—footsteps back and forth, like she was bouncing Harper.
“If we crack the window, we should be able to hear,” August said, leaning over the side of the bed to reach the small window.
“No, don’t.”
He paused, eyeing me questioningly.