The Spotlight

Chapter Three

THREE

I’ve been in the hospital for two weeks now.  I am going crazy.  The only time I’ve ever been to the hospital before was from “exhaustion”, when I passed out on stage about a year ago at the Staples Center in LA.  I wanted to keep going but they rushed me to the hospital.  

Becka knew I needed some time off and yelled at Alan in the hallway.  He was trying to do his mind control thing on her, which worked on almost everyone else.  He stared into her in the eyes without blinking, telling her that she didn’t understand why I had to perform the next night, the complexity of the music business.

“You stupid wanker!”, lashed Becka, not even a little bit afraid to get fired.  “You’re going to kill him.  Don’t you even know what you’re doing to him?  Have the doctor  call the the promoters.  The hell with the money.  When is enough money for you, Alan?”

Alan looked totally heroic at the press conference later, saying that be damned, he was looking out for my health before anything else, and if any promoter had a problem they could be sue him and deal with the fallout from the Martinis.   Everyone called him to say what a great manager he was.

I would pace my room all day long if I could walk.  Right now my leg is in this huge contraption but they tell me I’ll be in a brace/boot combo tomorrow, then I start physical therapy.   My internal injuries have all mostly healed and I’m not on any machines any more.    Everyone here is really nice but I think they want me gone as much as I want to leave, mostly because of my fans and the press. 

The Martinis camped out in the park across from the hospital for the week that I was in a coma, crying and singing my songs and stuff.   Sheila-with-the-clipboard won’t let me on the internet, saying that a lot of what I could read about the accident is “too traumatizing” for me to see right now.  Also I don’t have a phone, except the regular land-line one, which is so useless that I’m not sure how people went centuries without texting.  

Weirdly, it’s been a relief not to have to think about checking gossip sites or 7,000 texts.  It took a minute, but I am glad that I don’t have to explain everything to everyone, or wonder who is going to use me in order to get tabloid love.   

I’ve used the plugged-in Flinstones phone to talk with some of my friends back in LA and they’ve told me that in the media it’s been all-Max, all of the time.  My friend Miga, who was supposed to be my opener but canceled (“Still trippin’ that it could be me out there yo”) says that TMZ got a picture of me in my hospital bed, while I was in the coma.   They got it from another patient’s dad, who took it with his phone and probably made $50,000.  There has been a bounty out on any information or picture of me, from what I’ve eaten to anything that I might have said.  I don’t even need to read the rags to know what the rumors are. 

Alan went back to LA.  A couple of his minions have come to town, but mostly I keep them out of my room because all they want to do is talk about work, fan requests and “getting it out there on the social networks” that I’ll be back in action soon.   They hate the press blackout, because it only makes the demand greater for anything.   I don’t really trust any of them.

I guess maybe I should explain something.  Yes, I’m sixteen.   I like girls and Snapchatting and driving fast and all of my sixteen year old things .   But I have been a grown up since I was five, when I got the first TV show, when I learned about The Business.  So I’m not really like a sixteen-year-old because I have a career and an attorney who has to walk me through my contracts.   Most people have talked to me like a 40 year old since I was young.  My dedication has paid off and I’ve maintained longevity, because of my maturity and devotion to my craft.

My father has been here the whole time.  That’s been weird.  He won’t leave and we’re having some kind of silent war.   The State of California ruled that he is my guardian and there’s nothing I can do to kick him out.  When he asks me a question like “What are you reading?” I completely ignore him.

We don’t talk about all of the bad stuff from when I was a kid.  We don’t talk about the fact that I didn’t talk to him for ten years. We don’t talk about that he is my only living relative and is now my Father, a guy who once threw a television set at my mom.  My mom who is now dead.

I don’t feel anything yet except just being mad.  Sheila tells me this is normal, and that it’s almost like my brain is doing this to protect me, and I shouldn’t feel bad about it.   She’s the only one who is really allowed to tell me what’s happened, and the way she does it always seems better than if anyone else had.

They cremated her.  Mom.  I didn’t really know what that meant before and I sure am not going to tell you the details.  The media frenzy was so insane and I was in no condition to attend a funeral, so they thought that after the circus died down we could have a private ceremony.  So, my mom is now in a 24 Karat gold box with 41 diamonds, for how old she was, like birthday candles.   I told them to make her the nicest one, even the gaudiest one, because that’s Mom.  She always wore sequins and big earings and outrageous colors.   I don’t really know what it means that my mom is in a box, and why I needed it to be a box that she'd like to be inside.  I think I know that I’m a little crazy right now. 

They flew Becka back to Australia.  I can’t talk about it yet.  I just can’t.

I think what everyone is trying to protect me from the most is Cammie.   I am only guessing what is going on but I am sure that the media has created dozens of phony stories to sell their magazines.  That she died flying from my arms and into the glass as the bus turned over, that’s not horrible enough.  They’re going to say that we were having a fight and I crashed the bus, or that my mother caught us having sex and screamed at the bus driver to pull over or that she was pregnant or that we were engaged or that I was cheating on her.  Inside my hospital room, I’m safe from the web of lies that is spreading. 

I find out when I get to leave tomorrow, after the brace-boot goes on.  I’ve told Alan that he’s fired if he doesn’t figure out way to get me back to LA, back to my house.  And alone, without the man who is pretending to be my father.