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Chapter 11: And So It Begins...

Over the next few weeks, Dylan's new road to super-stardom began. First things first, he'd found himself a manager. Her name is Cindy. I'd only met her a few times at this point but she seemed really nice and ready to get down to business. After signing a whole bunch of contracts, Dylan went to a recording studio in Miami to "lay down some tracks", as they say. This meant that he missed the last week of school, but it didn't matter too much as it was close to the winter holidays.

And so the semester ended and Christmas began. Annie and Brian came down to Parkland to spend the festive season with us. My family and Dylan's had a joint feast, but there was plenty of food and presents to go round. The rest for the holiday season was pretty much a blur because before I knew it the lights and trees were being taken down, the snow was thinning and Dylan was jumping back into the studio.

Dylan spent New Year's Eve in Los Angeles, which was a little strange. For the past few years, our usual tradition had been to welcome in the new year by sitting atop of one of the local abandoned towers and watching the fireworks go off all over town. It turns out that Fuchsia Records held its own New Year's Eve bash for their artists and since Dylan was a fresh newcomer, it was imperative that he attended. I, on the other hand, decided not to continue the tradition without him and stayed indoors as the countdown began.

***

The best thing about time away from school? Breakfast at three in the afternoon. Yes, three PM.

About a week into the new year, I found Dad doing a crossword puzzle in the living room on the way to the kitchen. "Hey, kiddo." he called.

"Hey, Dad."

"I take it you just woke up?" he said, taking in my dishevelled, pajama-clad appearance.

I smiled and nodded.

"Are you doing okay?" he suddenly asked.

"Yeah. Why do you ask?"

"Because you haven't left the house in the past eight days."

I shrugged. "What's wrong with that?"

Dad looked at me condescendingly, his head tilting downwards so he could peer at me over his glasses. "It's the holidays. You're a teenager. You should be going out while you still can."

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Was my dad actually telling me that I need to get out more? But as I thought about it, I knew he was kinda right. I usually didn't spend this much time at home when I was out of school. And even when I was at home, Dylan was usually over to hang out. Actually, come to think about it, the times that I did leave the house during the holidays were to hang out with Dylan. Very quickly, it hit me just how much of my social life revolves around my best friend.

For the past few days I'd been calling Dylan, but his phone was either off or he was too busy to talk. When I did manage to get through to him, he said he wasn't allowed to say much, but that things were going very well so far. He had met with a lot of super important people who gave him loads of advice. (Apparently the studio was once used by Michael Jackson himself.) I definitely needed a new pastime. I sighed.

So in the meantime, I decided to go to the hospital to talk to Xander and see how he was doing. We were sitting in the games room, surrounded by little kids throwing around soft toys or watching the small TV in the far corner.

A short while into our conversation I noticed that Xander wasn't really concentrating on what I was saying. His eyes seemed to be glued to something over my shoulder. I turned around to see what had caught his attention.