I Have Lost My Way(22)
“Probably because she responds to all of their comments,” Sabrina said dismissively. “Every. Single. One.”
I blushed and looked down, embarrassed and ashamed. Because Sabrina was right. I did read every comment and I responded, in the early days, to nearly all of them. It was the only thing that made me feel like I was part of this.
Though we called ourselves the Sisters K, it was really the Mom and Sabrina show. Sabrina and I might have sung together, and we sometimes wrote songs together, but she and Mom discussed every aspect of the business, and she went to Mom with every new song we wrote. They conspired. They plotted. And our family went back to being a three-legged chair.
The comments, however, were all mine. When I started replying to fans, they began addressing me directly. While Mom and Sabrina sat in front of one computer, analyzing engagements, talking about me, I could quietly open my phone and really engage, knowing someone would be there for me.
“Actually,” the publicist told us, “that’s a really smart strategy. It makes the fans feel like they’re a part of your success. Those kinds of superfans are the ones that’ll take you from a novelty act to the next level.”
“Wonderful!” Mom said. “Freya, keep doing what you’re doing. Sabrina and I will keep up on our end.”
* * *
— — —
We began to earn more advertising money from our videos. Mom went from full-time to part-time at her job as a hospital administrator. She read articles about the highest-paid internet celebrities. “Some of these people make millions!” She was convinced we could make some good money from this. Enough to get out of debt, pay for college, and—who knew?—maybe even get a little rich.
But Hayden Booth. Not even Mom, deep in the throes of dream it, be it, imagined Hayden Booth would come knocking.
When his office called to request a meeting, Mom was shaken. Almost scared. Like she’d been summoned by God.
When you read articles about Hayden Booth—which Mom did, obsessively, after he called—he was sometimes described as a music producer, other times a talent manager, other times a social media aggregator. “There wasn’t a word for what I did before I came along,” he bragged in one of those articles. “I just call myself a creator.”
His origin story had become a thing of myth. Ten years ago he’d been a scrappy club kid from London, broke and backpacking through Berlin, when he saw this girl busking on the U-Bahn. He’d listened to her sing and play guitar and seen her entire trajectory right away. It was like a vision. He didn’t know how, but he knew she could be huge, and he could be the one to get her there. When she finished singing, he approached her, not even knowing if she spoke English, and said, “I’m going to make you famous.”
And he did.
He told us a version of that story at our first meeting, when, after having us wait for two hours in the reception area, he finally invited us into his office and sat us down on a bench that felt like concrete while he sat in his throne, backlit by the bank of windows behind him.
When he finished telling us how he’d made Lulia, and then Mélange, then Rufus Q, he said he was always on the hunt for who was next. He looked at me, eyes open and unblinking. It was terrifying. I cast my gaze around his office, in search of a safe haven, looking out the window, at the wall, at his weird graffiti art print that read: Art is personal. Business is not—anywhere but at Hayden.
Finally he asked: “Do you know what it means to be famous?”
Mom started to answer, but Hayden held up his hand and she went quiet. “From them.”
There was a pause. Sabrina looked at me, her face uncharacteristically uncertain. “To be known for what you do?” Sabrina said at the same time I said, “To be loved.”
“My CPA is known for having creative ways of hiding money from the IRS. Is he famous?” he asked Sabrina.
Sabrina shook her head.
“And my granny was beloved. But I bet you’ve never heard of Pauline Howarth, have you?” he asked my mother.
She shook her head.
“Most people don’t know what fame is. They confuse fame with celebrity, celebrity with buzz. But I’m going to tell you how it works.” He said this like he was divulging a secret.
He stood up and stalked around the desk, leaning on the edge of it closest to Sabrina. “First, you’ve got buzz.” He cupped his left hand into the shape of a C. “You girls already have that. But buzz is cheap. It’s your fifteen minutes of fame. It’s what a daft woman in a Chewbacca suit gets. It comes and it goes. Unless . . .” Here he cupped his other hand into a C. “Buzz sustains enough to become celebrity. Which lasts a bit longer, but it’s still built on quicksand. Now, if celebrity can be translated into commodity, you’re onto something. You can dine out on that. Sports stars. B-list actors. Reality TV stars. Second-rate musicians get this far, an endless loop of buzz, celebrity, commodity.”
Here he joined his two hands together so they made a circle, the fingers not quite touching. “You can ride that train pretty far, make a living that way, but it’s still not fame.” He paused. His fingers began to flutter, like wings of a bird wanting to take flight. “Mum here has done a bang-up job getting you girls this far. You two might even make some good money for a while, get some decent endorsements and revenue, but I promise you this: it won’t last more than a few months or, if you’re really lucky, years. But sooner or later—probably sooner—people will be on to the next shiny thing, and it won’t be you. When that happens, your fans will forget you. Your numbers will drop. And you’ll go back to being like everyone else.”