1st 5 Pages February Workshop - Soares Rev 2

Name: Maggie Soares
Genre: #OwnVoices Contemporary Young Adult
Title: What You Have of Me

Pitch:
As the only daughter of rock legend Apollo Knight, seventeen-year-old Echo parties her way through the A-list in a series of short-lived flings. When she’s not posing with her latest leading man, she shares her perfect smile in sunny selfies the media eat up. Everyone with a social media account wants her life. No one ever questions the illusion.

After years of dealing with her father’s career, Echo’s an expert at selling the right story to the public. The right story means no one will look closely enough to notice the anxiety that makes her chest ache, or her girlfriend, Nora. Each faux-relationship and fabricated scandal buys her and Nora more time to go public before their senior year, just like they’ve always planned.

That plan screeches to a stop when an anonymous source reveals to the media that Apollo is the father of four other children. Stretched thin, Echo juggles her growing anxiousness, her love for Nora, and the paparazzi hungry for her new siblings’ secrets. When she learns why she was the only child publicly claimed by her father, however, she must choose between the safety of the family she’s always known, and protecting her new one.

Chapter One

Places I’ve heard my dad sing: an incomplete list.

1. Backstage at the Staples Center (five years ago)

2. Over the radio at the dentist (last week)

3. After my last exam, through Carly Smithers’ shitty headphones (right now)

Apollo Knight shifts from crooning about keeping a secret to shouting about the way someone makes him feel tonight, which means it’s his third studio album. It was born the same year I was, and people call it confused and rank it at the bottom of round-ups of his discography. I try not to see it as a metaphor.

Carly feels my eyes on her and lets out that awkward chuckle people do when I catch them listening to my dad’s music. She takes out the headphones a little hurriedly and gestures to the door we just came out of.

“That was impossible, right?”

I hum in vague agreement, even though the exam was ridiculously easy. She might be the type of person to run and tell some reporter I walk around thinking I’m smarter than everyone. Carly glides beside me and I’m miniature under her dancer’s-body shadow, the curls piled on top of my head the only thing giving me a boost.

My buzzing phone saves us from actual conversation, but when the ominous notes of the Jaws theme start playing, I cringe. That could only be one person.

 “Echo,” My dad’s PA has a voice like a tapping foot. “I’ve sent a car. Get down here as inconspicuously as possible.”

Mary hangs up before I can respond, and I clench and unclench my toes in my dirty uniform shoes so I don’t lose it with Carly still around.

“I have to go,” I tell her, but she’s distracted by something on her phone. She looks up at me, eyes wide, and nods.

If Carly already knows what’s going on, Mary showed real discipline by not pulling me out of my exam. I make my escape, nodding at a couple of people along the way. Malcom’s outside the school, but inside my dad’s least-flashy car, our standing arrangement.

“How’d it go?” He asks once I’m inside.

“What’s going on?” I ignore his question. He knows that class was my easiest A.

Malcom just shrugs, because nothing we do surprises him at this point. His hair’s greying at the sides, or maybe it’s always been that way.

“Thought Mary was going to explode. Y’know that vein on her forehead?”

If Mary’s forehead vein has made an appearance, we’re in the danger zone.

My phone is suspiciously quiet, and I resist the urge to throw it when I realize I have no service. Mary only cuts off my data when something apocalyptic happens. It’s easier to be annoyed than worried, which is how my gut’s starting to feel, so I allow myself ten seconds to glare out the window at the palm trees that line the road. Palm trees don’t have to put up with this shit. I shove my phone back into my bag and try to shove the fear down with it.

It’s probably not drugs, since Apollo Knight’s been famously clean for the past fifteen years (a voice in my head reminds me that would just be a juicier scandal). I don’t think he’s been dating, so it’s not some gold-digger coming after us. If it had something to do with my mom, she would have called me first, so I rule her out, too.

There’s a chance it’s about me. There’s always a chance it’s about me, and the longer I think about it the faster my heart starts to pound a rhythm of caught, caught, caught. I pull out my phone without thinking, squeeze my thigh hard enough to hurt when I remember I can’t use it. My knee shakes anxiously and dust and glitter and other arts school shrapnel fall from my tights onto the otherwise-spotless tan car mats.

“What’s the plan?” I ask.

“Security waiting at the gate.”

“Seriously?” I lean forward until my head almost touches the back of Malcom’s neck. His shoulder twitches.

If I have to walk up my dad’s driveway, that means three things. One, paparazzi are camped outside his house. Two, he wants people to see me there, so, three, whatever this is, it can be improved if people think we’re a happy family. A united front.

I dig through my backpack for my emergency pair of jeans, letting out a little noise of accomplishment when I find them buried under a stack of posters Nora asked me to put up ages ago. The thought of Nora sends my hands shaking along with my knee, and I internally mutter a few choice words at my useless phone.

“Mary wanted you to stay in your uniform,” Malcom eyes me in the rearview.

“Mary’s gonna have to live with the top,” I wiggle into the jeans under my skirt. “Every time I wear a uniform skirt in public I end up on niche porn blogs.”

He doesn’t have anything to say to that. My heart’s in my throat and I breathe cautiously around it, sure if I’m not careful I’ll bite down and destroy myself. My tapping foot’s crept up my body, a low-level tremor going through me by the time we make it to my dad’s house.

I’ve never seen it like this.

My dad’s A-list status rides on obnoxious guys my age who think he’s the Last Real Rock Star and the handful of number ones his label’s produced, but everyone knows Apollo Knight is not exactly at his peak. He might get papped grocery shopping sometimes, but we all know in a few years he’ll be surviving or dancing or racing with The Stars.

With the crowd outside his house, you’d think it was twenty years ago. There’s at least fifty of them, yelling and waving cameras and trying to swarm the car. My dad’s head of security pushes through the crowd. Dylan offers his arm, and I allow myself to be pulled up. I squeeze my eyes shut behind my sunglasses, swallow my heart, and step into it.

I know how to handle a paparazzi scrum. Head up, shoulders back, sunglasses on (no anti-glare: anything you can do to ruin a photo is good). Hands relaxed: clenched fists means the internet’ll be speculating about what has you so angry within the hour. You look straight ahead and you never, ever stop walking.

My name’s being called from thirty different directions, but I don’t turn to any of them. I don’t smile up at Dylan like I want to. Someone would write an article claiming we’re having an affair, and by the look of things, we can’t afford another scandal right now.

I try to pull my face into a placid smile. Anything too happy and it’ll look like I’m not taking this seriously. Anything too angry and I’ll look like a bitch.

“Hi Echo,” Greg Peters’ smarmy voice says. He’s recording, and if I don’t say anything I’ll be public enemy number one on his livestream tonight.

“Hi,” I try to keep my voice from going completely flat.

“What do you think about all of this?” Greg’s chasing after me now that I’ve opened my mouth. I press my lips together, tight enough that Greg seems to notice. He gets this look on his face like he’s about to go in for the kill.

“Are there any others?”

I stop walking.