The Falling Between Us Read online

  Also by Ash Parsons

  Still Waters

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Ash Parsons.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Philomel Books is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  Ebook ISBN 9780698408425

  Edited by Michael Green.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  FOR ALL WHO STRUGGLE.

  YOU’RE NOT ALONE.

  CONTENTS

  ALSO BY ASH PARSONS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  1: INTO THE AIR

  2: SPINNING BEGINNING

  3: CONJURE A HOME

  4: INNER WORKINGS

  5: THE CLAWS OF BIRDS

  6: LOST ONES

  7: AERIALIST

  8: FAKE GIRLFRIENDS ARE REAL PEOPLE, TOO

  9: RADIO KILLED THE INTERNET STAR

  10: ONSTAGE

  11: THE FUN MARATHON

  12: ORPHEUS’S LAST LYRIC

  13: CAPSIZED

  14: ALTERNATE UNIVERSE

  15: A SONG FOR JOSHUA

  16: DESPERATE OR WANTING

  17: THE JOSHUA BLACKBIRD EXPERIENCE

  18: ACCOMMODATIONS

  19: THE HOLE IN THE NET

  20: THE HUNGER SONG OF THE LAZARUS BIRD

  21: HOLLYWOOD FOREVER CEMETERY

  22: THE FURTHER I GO

  23: FLYING OR FALLING

  24: JOSHUA’S STORY

  25: THE HEART APPARATUS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Not flying but falling . . .

  —“ORPHEUS’S LAST LYRIC”

  1

  INTO THE AIR

  The arena is almost dark, the crowd’s frantic shrieks louder now, managed by light cues. I stand in the dimness at the side of the stage, holding hands with Joshua. Peering past him and the curtain, a spinning, giddy joy fills me again as I see them, hear them, feel them.

  The crowd. Moving in the dark, waiting, screaming his name.

  Joshua Blackbird.

  “Is this real?” Joshua’s voice is a low rumble. The skin under my ear tightens and pulls, almost as if wanting to yank my neck under his lips and press there.

  I smile and steal a glance at him. In the dark his changeable hazel-green eyes are mostly pupil, fringed with lashes as dark as his shoulder-length hair, glossy as a raven’s wing.

  My voice is caught as I look at him. Is this real? I don’t know anymore. They scream for this boy I’ve known my whole life. Now he’s fifteen, nearly sixteen, and famous around the world.

  I spot Ty, Joshua’s little brother, in the front row. He’s beaming pride, a thirteen-year-old trying to act older and cooler. His smile is a spotlight aimed at the stage.

  Just eight months ago, we were all in tiny Marchant, Georgia. The only constant from then is the music. From the day I first met him, Joshua has always written songs. He used to lug around a thrift-shop guitar that was too big for him. He’d play for anyone who’d listen.

  Now over twenty thousand people fill one of the most famous arenas in the world, waiting to hear him perform.

  It’s the opening night of his first tour.

  “Band, go!” The stage manager’s call launches more adrenaline into my veins.

  The lights flick up and out, shooting across the arena before dimming. The massive screen above the stage starts to play footage of Joshua—behind the scenes, rehearsing, recording, all the while effortlessly smiling for the cameras.

  As the band takes their places, silhouettes just visible to the crowd, a roar erupts. It’s a sound I’ve never heard before.

  Twenty thousand screaming fans, mostly girls, their desperate voices collectively piercing the air like a siren.

  “Birdies,” the female fans were dubbed by a blogger, and the name stuck.

  Beside the stage, Joshua squeezes my hand before letting go. His hands come up and push back my razor-cut bright red hair. He kisses me, once.

  Then he’s gone. Onto the stage. Into their screams of love.

  As Joshua moves onto the stage in the near dark, the pitch and timbre of the screaming increases. Joshua’s hands rattle against his legs with nerves as Quinn, the lead guitarist, lifts the strap of Joshua’s guitar and helps place it over his shoulder.

  I still have to do a double take at the makeover transformation, remembering the Joshua of Marchant: the blunt haircut that Ty or I would give him, Joshua standing on the weathered wooden deck in front of their trailer as I snipped kitchen scissors in a nearly straight line along the tops of his shoulders.

  Now his long hair is cut into layers and is perfectly tousled, and there’s a stylist who travels with him to make sure it stays just so.

  In Marchant he wore plain jeans and whatever cheap, wrinkled T-shirt he picked up off their shared bedroom floor.

  Now he wears a sleek black-and-silver costume—tight pants with sneakers, a T-shirt, and a fitted jacket with accents on the back and arms that glint like dark chrome wing bones under the lights.

  In Marchant he was my boyfriend. The boy next door who lived three trailers down from me.

  Now he’s everyone’s imaginary boyfriend, an international star. It started with a handheld YouTube video that’s been viewed over twenty-seven million times. His debut album, which came out just three months later, went double platinum, exploding like a rocket. “Number one with a bullet,” his agent had said.

  And here he is onstage, headlining his first tour.

  In the near dark, you can feel the restlessness of the crowd. Expectation thrums in palpable waves. The glow of small screens, turned on and held up to thousands upon thousands of faces, aimed at the stage, each a pinpointed moment, a person, each a singular whole other world out there in the dark, twinkling together like a constellation.

  “Cue sixteen. Lights ready!” the stage manager shouts into his headset.

  “You did it, Shu,” I say in a whisper. Onstage, Joshua turns to me as though he heard somehow and flashes me the smile I’ve known forever, the one that still makes my stomach clench with butterflies.

  “Ready and go!” I hear behind me.

  The stage lights flash on and sweep down, like the illumination of an angel descending.

  I didn’t think it was possible, but the cheering grows louder, crests like a wave, ricocheting around the cavern of the arena, searching for Joshua Blackbird.

  The audience has one voice, and it crashes into us, a shriek of anticipation and desire.

  The drummer, Speed, counts in with his drumstick
s. Lights flash around him, backlighting the loose coils of his short Afro.

  The drumbeat and a guitar start together.

  The stage is awash with golden light, bright as an unending fall of stars. The scale of the room is unbelievable, the stage massive and yet swallowed by the space beyond it.

  The distinctive chords of Joshua’s first hit echo out, and the crowd starts bouncing—trying to dance in front of their seats, bodies and voices calling.

  Joshua joins them, jumping in place easily, steadying his guitar with one hand, pumping his other arm in the air in time with the music.

  Speed intensifies the beat, and then the familiar synth notes rise like bubbles, the hook in them so catchy I can’t help but join in the dancing.

  Even though I’ve heard this song a thousand times.

  Dancers enter the stage, crossing the front, all silver flash and gyrations, forming a shifting shield in front of Joshua. They glide forward, keeping him nestled behind their bodies.

  The immense screen over the stage both teases and reveals the object the Birdies all scream for as he moves closer to them.

  Then the dancers part and Joshua steps to the edge of the stage. Hands reach for him, fingers hungry, camera phones glowing and devouring.

  An enormous black-feathered bird crouches on the screen above. Then the raven lunges upward, opening ink-dark wings, a glare of light accentuating dark edges as it rises, wings sweeping wide.

  And just like that, Joshua Blackbird takes flight.

  2

  SPINNING BEGINNING

  eighteen months later

  We’ve seen both oceans now, Joshua and me. He insisted for once, a year ago, when we were on the opposite side of the country in Atlantic City. It was right after he refused to see his father, even though the press heard his dad yelling as he was denied. Heard him yelling about all the ways he was going to make it right. How he was sorry he’d ever left. Asking why Joshua couldn’t forgive.

  On the way back to the hotel, Joshua had commandeered the car, insisting that we detour to the beachfront. We drove by the boardwalk, lit up like Christmas, and kept going until we found a quieter spot.

  We held hands and pulled each other through the sand to the water’s edge.

  We were too tired to do anything but look at it, standing on the battered sand, palms pressed together, staring out at the vast Atlantic Ocean, endless and indifferent and powerful.

  Wave after wave, wearing the shore away by inches. Capable of eating holes into solid rock, depositing detritus on the shore, taking a part of what was there with each crashing arrival.

  It was near the end of Joshua’s first US tour, and it was all I could do to stand as the waves pulled solid footing from under my feet. It was one moment of peace in a frenetic ride that had taken over our lives.

  Now it’s time to start touring in support of Joshua’s new album, Flying Not Falling. A full year this time, a world tour including Europe and Asia.

  He’s seventeen years old.

  The opening night is tomorrow, here in LA. It’s been sold out for months, and resale tickets online are at record-breaking highs.

  Right now Joshua is finishing the last rehearsal at the arena, running light cues and costume changes, making the final adjustments before tomorrow night.

  Around seventy journalists and photographers wait for him in this gilt-and-glass ballroom of the luxury hotel where we’ve all been living until the tour starts.

  Joshua will arrive soon to answer their questions, like a prizefighter before the big match.

  The past year and a half, and longer, has been a blur. It’s like painting with smoke, trying to piece coherence together. Where we are. What came before.

  What comes next.

  Joshua’s manager, Artie, works the room. She moves from journalist to journalist like a queen, slender and sharp as an ice pick, with a personality to match. She’s impeccable, as always, wearing a dark suit and high heels, her face made up to perfection: mascara, blush, bloodred lips. Her bleached hair is woven into a braid, pulled over a shoulder. All-Business Rapunzel.

  I don’t bother with much makeup beyond eyeliner, preferably raccoon-smudged so it looks like I put it on yesterday and then slept in it.

  I like it when my clothes don’t fit or match, and it’s best if everything looks like it was once a piece of something else. Like it was part of a uniform or a nice suit or simply belongs somewhere else, looking some other way. Like the clothes got lost or separated somehow, abandoned in a thrift store or found on the sale rack, and then maybe they went through hell trying to get back where they belonged, dinged up, torn, ripped, shredded. And I found them. And they belong with me now.

  I rip them more and make them mine that way.

  Artie glances at me. It’s the same look every time. One part oh God, her again. And one part what is she wearing?

  The only thing Artie and I have in common is that we match in stature and height. Slender and average respectively, with chemically treated hair. Although hers is supposed to look natural, unlike mine.

  Bleach Blonde and Chemical Red. We should be superheroes saving Joshua.

  We’re not, but like superheroes, we spend a lot of time fighting each other.

  Artie keeps moving through the ballroom, greeting her favorites among the waiting journalists. She likes her PR planned to perfection, and that can take careful massaging.

  Artie had hoped the past weeks would be only about the buildup before the tour. The rigors of rehearsal, the growing artistry of her star. Even the devotion of the Birdies, or answering endless questions about Joshua’s bubblegum pop girlfriend, Angel Rey.

  I made a useful part of the story at first—the childhood sweetheart who followed Joshua Blackbird to the Big Time. Artie loved it once. She felt I made Joshua look authentic. Down-to-earth.

  But the need for authenticity ended once Joshua’s first album went double platinum. It was time to move on to something—and someone—more glamorous.

  Angel Rey as Girlfriend is a publicity stunt that Artie dreamt up, manages, and uses. The fans of both stars devour every morsel of “news,” not knowing that their on-again, off-again drama is completely manufactured.

  I’m not his girlfriend anymore, officially. I’m now the “loyal friend” who sometimes causes Angel to feel jealous because of our history. Some teens identify with me, apparently. Most would rather be Angel Rey. Either way, the mill gets its grist.

  The journalists call me “the girl from home” or “the other woman”—if I rate a mention at all. They say, “She’d be pretty enough if she smiled.” Like there’s a measurable scale of pretty that’s allowable, and if I smiled, I’d tip over onto the “enough” side.

  As if I’m ever going to smile just because someone told me it would make me pretty.

  Artie walks past the journalists, a shark lording over barracudas. Each stiletto click of her heels is barely audible on the floor. I don’t know how she does that, walks with near-predatory silence in heels over marble.

  She climbs up the steps of the dais and moves behind a table covered with a white cloth. Several microphones are spaced evenly across the surface.

  Artie takes a seat behind a microphone and turns a megawatt fake smile out to the audience of reporters.

  “Joshua Blackbird is en route.” She smiles bigger, a magician presenting a sudden bouquet. “He will take your questions. But”—she raises a red-lacquered nail—“all questions are to be limited to the topics of the new album and the upcoming tour. Or Angel Rey.”

  There is a collective groan from the reporters.

  “Come on, Artie,” someone calls out. “Everyone wants to know about the Boom Room—”

  Artie leans over her mic, a bird of prey looming over a tiny, furred creature. Each word is a spike. “No. Questions. About. The club.”

  More murmur
s of disgust. Someone yells, “That’s why I’m here!” and someone else calls, “I got readers to feed!” sparking a round of derisive laughter.

  “Artie!” a woman calls from the front row. “We love you, but this is a bunch of crap. You know we’re here because of—”

  “Let me be perfectly clear.” Artie cuts her off as well. Artie’s proven management technique: don’t let the other person finish. “If anyone asks about the incident at the club, they will be frozen out from future press events. That’s it. That’s the deal.”

  Welcome to Artie’s headache. Instead of the tour or the AngelBird romance, all anyone has wanted to talk about recently has been the Boom Room incident, which happened five days ago.

  Even Artie’s perfectly staged day at the beach for Joshua and Angel, all sunshine kisses and salt waves and perfectly mussed hair blowing in the breeze, wasn’t enough to steer attention away from Joshua’s two A.M. meltdown at an LA nightclub.

  The paparazzi had been there, of course. They’re camped outside anywhere Joshua goes, waiting for any sellable glimpse of America’s boyfriend. They’d gotten more than their money’s worth that night, even if no one is entirely sure how it went down inside.

  The bandaged hand, the bloody lip. The strange, vacant look in Joshua’s eyes as he slipped away from the handlers, his “entourage,” and actually stood still for the cameras. Waiting for them to capture him.

  But this is Artie’s milieu. She cut her teeth on a press badge. And after having to manage what happened in Dallas last year, what happened at the Boom Room is simple enough. Not welcome, but easy enough.

  The new normal.

  “And now, before Joshua arrives, a special treat to reward your patience,” Artie breathes into the mic, voice soft like she’s speaking in church instead of in a hotel ballroom packed with journalists.

  “The private premiere of Joshua’s new single, ‘Forever or Never,’” Artie says. “One-minute teaser.” The speakers on the dais hiss and crackle, the manufactured sound of a vinyl record starting. Then a sampled loop of a woman singing three rising notes. A drumbeat and synthesizer start before Joshua’s remarkable voice cuts in.