We lay on the sand a little while later and Luther said, with his sloppy grin, “You know, Jack, I do think that your whole wet shirt thing will add to the performance, but I don’t think I’ve seen you without a shirt once in my life.” Joel grinned, “He’s just self-conscious. The whole lanky arms and legs and skinny stomach thing works for the rock star look, but he probably doesn’t have a muscle on his body.” I frowned slightly and then faked a grin, “Yea, well, even if I did have a muscle on my body, it would still be impossible to look impressive next to you ripped freaks.” Luther laughed, “True that. Even I look like a wimp next to Kevin here.” Luther walked down to the water. “Dude,” he said, looking down at something in the water with disbelief, “Is that a bat?” Joel jumped up and joined him by the shoreline, looking down at whatever they were seeing. He laughed loudly, “It is, man! Check that out!” So Kevin and I walked down to the shore, too, and we watched the amazing swimming bat crawl along on the shore for the last ten minutes of our time before we headed back to the bus.
“Good crowd tonight,” Kevin said as he lay down in bed next to me and we started the drive down to LA for tomorrow’s midday performance. I nodded, my arms clasped behind my head as I stared up at the roof where Luther had taped up magazine articles and posters of and about our band. One in particular caught my eye, a section of a magazine called, “They’re Just Like Us” that showed celebrities- myself included- living ordinary human lives- picking up groceries, walking their dogs, getting fast food. The section itself was ridiculous, making it seem like celebrities were a different species from everyone else, but it was the picture of me that bothered me the most. It showed me in black jeans, a grey t-shirt that was obviously more expensive than it looked, flip-flops, and dark aviator sunglasses. I was mid-stride, crossing the street, and I was pressing my phone to one ear-probably talking to Jeanette, as the readers of this magazine would expect- and carrying a grocery bag that was clear enough that you could see the ice cream inside even though the picture was in-motion and obviously taken from a distance. There was a circle around the grocery bag that had the words, “Jackson’s fav treat!” above it. The sad thing about it was that it was posed. I was sent out to the grocery store, with my costume on, just so that people would see me, take pictures, and never suspect that I had an alternate identity who did all my normal human things for me. Kevin was staring at the posters, too, and he pointed to an article that had a big picture of my face next to it and said, “Check this out- Aepatt was discovered auditioning for his school’s talent show with the song “Uprising” by Muse.” He looked over at me, “Is that true?” I looked at him, but no words came. I was sort of in shock that my agent had admitted that to the media. Unless... I stood up and grabbed the magazine, searching for the sentence Kevin had just read. I found it, and, as I had hoped, there were quotation marks around the sentence. Unfortunately, though, all that the article told about the informer was, “A source close to Aepatt told us”. Kevin rose an eyebrow, “Something wrong, dude?” I looked over the magazine page and said, “Um. No. I just...didn’t know anybody knew that.” He laughed, “Tell me about it. I mean, you read these articles that make up all this random crap about you that you wonder how they came up with, and then you read articles that have information about you that you thought you’d never told anyone.” He put his hands up by his head and waved them, “It baffles my mind.” Joel shook his head, “Not mine. They dig in and find anyone and everyone that does or has ever known you and ask them a million questions.” He shrugged, “Thing is, though, they don’t really care if the answers are true or not. So sometimes they put random stuff that a person who walked by you once told them, and then sometimes they put in stuff about you that was told to them by your ex-best friend who actually knows a lot about you.” He took a swig of his Pepsi, “Which is why it’s important to know who you can trust.” Luther rose an eyebrow at him, “What do you mean?” Joel glanced over at him, “Well, I mean, how great would it be if someone you thought you could trust spilled your deepest darkest secret to the public?” Luther winced, “Man. That would suck.” Kevin nodded in agreement, and I just stared down at the article in my hand, at that one sentence that didn’t seem important, wouldn’t really change anything, but at the same time, told me something horrible: there was someone out there who knew too much about me...and wasn’t afraid to share it with the world.
© 2010
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