Note: I'm moving into my dorm room today. Classes start next week. I'm in a new state. Everything is weird and terrifying and exciting and incredibly overwhelming.
PREVIOUSLY ON THE CLASSIX: Lex took that method acting a little too seriously and pushed Emeray off the train platform while filming. It was an odd moment.
emeray
"Wait, explain it to me again."
Cartney Kirk's voice is nearly inaudible. Raised a good six feet above me on a stage built for his tour, he fiddles with a jet black microphone, the static sounds of his fingers on the windscreen booming shrilly through a dozen amplifiers. Dancers stretching their long limbs around him cringe at the noise, but if Cartney notices (or cares) about their discomfort, he gives no indication.
After a few more loud taps, he appears to find the sound he wants. Bringing the microphone to his lips, he looks to me. "So, she pushed you off a platform?"
I wince as the dancers and technicians turn toward me with question, confusion. This wasn't something for them to knowââI'd told Cartney about what happened on the Onward Train set back in his dressing room. Nobody had been listening in through the crack in the door, much less through his stage speakers.
"Cartney," I warn.
He meets my scowl with his trademark innocent faceââthe same one he wears on the cover of his upcoming album, freshly (and near eponymously) titled, You're Impossible. Since the photo released last week, the media has been speculating whether or not his expression, paired with the title, is a reference to how taken aback and self-reflective he was after finding out Kaytee was cheating on him.
Nevertheless, Cartney is well aware of how many times I've seen him concoct this look for the cameras at the drop of a hat at his photoshoot earlier today. He's only putting it on now to mess with me.
"What?" he asks.
"Can we talk about this later?"
"You tell me someone put you in harm and expect meââ" He pauses, beating the microphone against his chest like an actor in a soliloquy. Just in case everyone in the stadium wasn't watching us already. "ââto dismiss the subject and talk about it later?"
He shakes his head, hopping off the stage and tossing his microphone haphazardly at the nearest staffer. Making a real scene of it, Cartney kneels down at my seat to meet my gaze head on, grabbing my hand.
"Never," he concludes. To the crew, he shouts, "I'll take a break now."
A ripple of grumbles and groans follow his statement. The dancers had just come out to start choreographyââtwo hours late, too, since it took much longer than expected to set up all of Cartney's microphones. But even though they're on a time crunch to get these performances perfected, they comply regardless. After all, it's Cartney's world tour, not theirs. What he says goes.
A bowl of popcorn awaits Cartney back in his dressing room. I can smell it down the hall before we even enter. Making an excited noise, he gravitates toward it immediately, collapsing into the spinning chair by the vanity with the bowl in his lap.
Watching on, I narrow my eyes. "You just played the defensive boyfriend card to get a break, didn't you?"
He looks up from the bowl with his album-cover face. "Hmm?"
"Oh, stop giving me that look, Cartney." When he breaks into a grin, my frown hardens. "Why did you have to bring up Lex?"
"It was a way out of practicing!"
"Cartney."
"C'mon," he says. "All that calibrating was exhausting."
"That doesn't mean you can reveal confidential things to an entire stadium of people just because you're tired."
"You looked like you wanted a break just as much as I did."
"You realize it'll be in the tabloids now? Someone's going to jump at the opportunity to tell the press about a Fanatix/Classix clash."
It's a serious issue, but he flicks his wrist like it's nothing. "They're gonna see whatever happened on set in theaters anyway. Who cares if the people get a bit of a preface to it now?"
"Norax? Carstan? All of us?"
"It only paints Lex in a bad light, anyway, right?" He takes another handful of popcorn, tossing a piece at me. "But truthfully, I'm still confused. What happened?"
I sigh, going through it again: The method acting claim from Chapter. The way Lex started changing in clothes and dialect as the week went by. The actual filming when she pushed me off the platform.
"Yikes," Cartney says, shivering. "What did Norax have to say about all that when you guys got back?"
"Not much, actually."
The repercussions when we returned to the Hideaway were nearly nonexistent for Lex. There's no way to prove her actions or threatening words to be anything more than ad-libs, so Norax and Carstan didn't seem to find much problem in it. In fact, Chapter had to go out of his way and apologize to Lex for the way he snapped at her afterward. He was sure to her to steer clear of method acting next time she found herself on a movie set.
As for meââI was left with bruised shoulders and no apology. Lex's addition ended up improving the scene, and above all, Shailey had only praise for the way our filming turned out. For the rest of our time on set, I steered clear of Lex whenever I could. There was something about just looking at her that seemed to recall back to life the things she'd said to me while the cameras were rolling.
"But you know, those changes don't actually change a thing. You're never going to be any different than the person you used to be."
It was as if she knew something. I could see it in the way her eyes glinted. And when she pushed me . . .
I remember too well the last time someone pushed me into something. That time, I'd been pushed into Clarus Creek.
Carstan.
Before the Famoux.
Cartney seems to notice her absence. He gestures to the empty couch in the corner of the dressing room. "How'd you manage to come here alone?" he asks. "I thought your members had to tag along behind you on leashes wherever you go."
"Gerald and Lex stayed behind today," I say. "They're figuring out what career path would be the best for Gerald to take."
It wasn't easy to convince Norax that my Fanatix members didn't need to be with me for something as closed-off as Cartney's tour rehearsals. I ended up having to go through Carstan to get approval, which was almost worse than looking Lex in the eye. Either way, I'm only spared for half the day. Carstan made certain that I return home in time to compare my schedule with the one they'll be making for Gerald. As he warned quite clearly, this freedom from my members is not going to become a regular thing.
"Well, let's hope he doesn't choose acting," Cartney says, laughing. "I don't want to hear about another mishap on a movie set."
"I don't think Gerald's interested that."
"Good. There are way too many actors in the Famoux, anyway. What's up with that? Why is Kaytee the only musician?"
"We sort of have to act all the time," I point out.
"Oh, right. The whole used-to-be-someone-else-entirely thing. You know, it's really frightening to me that I forget about that sometimes."
"Hey, Cartney?"
A crew member pokes his head in the door, startling the both of us. Cartney hurls a fistful of popcorn at him, which he doesn't register quick enough to deflect.
"What the hell, man?" Cartney exclaims. "Don't you know you have to knock before you enter a room?"
The man, flurried, apologizes ten times at once. "The choreography practice is going to start in around five minutes," he informs. "Just wanted you to know about it so you're ready to go."
"Fine then. Now leave."
When the crew member rushes out of the room, I throw Cartney a glare. For every step forward he takes in becoming an actually decent person, he always finds an opportunity to jump right back.
"Why are you so rude to everyone on this set?" I ask.
"What? It's my set."
"You didn't have to be so mean to him."
"We were talking about your past life, Ray. People can't go barging in like that. Imagine what he might've heard!"
"Your room is soundproofed." He'd told me how he ordered for that out of paranoia. As he says, DEFED's always listening. "Plus, that's not the only time you've been demanding. Everyone on your staff thinks you've titled your album after yourself." I grab one of the empty CDs from a table. "You're Impossible."
Cartney scoffs. "Everyone obviously knows that's about Kaytee. But I could tell them it's about you, too, if you're not careful."
"I'm not the one stretching everyone's schedules a few hours longer whenever I get too tired to work on something!"
I expect some sort of banter back from him, but he isn't listening to me anymore. He's looking down at the bottom of his popcorn bowl with a blank expression.
"Oh," he says. "Would you look at that."
"What? You're finished?"
He shakes his head, lifting up something that glints. For a moment I'm confused, but it becomes clear quickly.
The engagement ring.
Cartney looks up from the bowl, meeting my gaze. "Do you think they poisoned that popcorn?"
xxx
Their voices leak into the hallway as I make my way to the sitting room. Lex's regular, non-Stephanie voice giving different suggestions, and Gerald offering numerous variations of refusal.
"Singing?"
"No."
"Maybe dancing?"
"No, thanks."
"Modeling?"
"Nope."
"C'mon, that'd be an easy one! You just need to stand there and pose!"
Hearing the way they rib at one another, walking into the room feels like inviting myself to a party nobody wanted me to show up to. Nevertheless, Gerald looks relieved to see me. While Lex has proven herself to be quite serious about the Fanatix members' career ventures, I've been in the Famoux for months and still haven't actually chosen what my occupation is. Actor, singer, modelââit changes week to week.
"Emeray." Gerald waves for me to sit down. "You need to help me before I start losing my mind over here."
"I could say the same about myself," I murmur.
Cartney, ever-paranoid, completely freaked out finding the engagement ring in the popcorn. His dressing room was supposed to be a safe zone, soundproofed and all, and somehow DEFED found their way inside just to taunt us.
He ended up hiding the ring in a cabinet when he left for choreography. I watched him and the dancers go through steps for around half hour until it became time for me to get back to the Hideaway. Before leaving, I checked the cabinet.
Sure enough, the ring was gone.
I take a seat closer to Gerald, further from Lex. She notices, exhaling defeatedly. Unlike Chapter with Elle, it seemsââat least, it did in the beginningââthat Lex is actually my member because she's a fan of mine. Giving her the cold shoulder like this, even after leaving the Onward Train set, appears to be taking a lot out of her.
My posture while sitting down makes the bruises on my back ache. Watching me adjust in pain makes Lex fidget.
"Emerayââ"
"No, it's fine," I interrupt. "Not now."
"Butââ"
"Let's just figure this out."
With strained civility, we go through a dozen different categories for Gerald's career. He and Lex argue more on the positives and negatives of certain activities, and I have to act as a parent breaking them up from a scuffle. After an hour of weighing his options, Lex coaxes him into going back to one of they initial choices:
Modeling.
The decision makes the room go stillââif not for them, then just for me. We schedule a few fittings and meetings for him to attendâânothing too packed to begin with. He doesn't even seem interested in his career choice, anyway. All the while, my hands shake as I write the dates down in a planner.
I'm not entirely sure what the other Fanatix members have chosen for their occupations. For all I know, half of them could've chosen the exact same career path as him. But in this moment, in this room, Gerald is about to be the first model the Famoux has had for months.
The first model since Foster.
xxx
I'm sorry that this wasn't the most exciting chapter in the world. More excitement to come! In the meantime, tell me your thoughts.
I'm sending you good vibes for this next week. As I saw in my last update, a lot of people are starting or have started school by now, so we all need some good vibes! Now, I have to get back to setting up my room. WHAT IS COLLEGE???
Remember:
Sticks and Stones may break your bones, but haters make you famoux. Stay classy, stay classix.