Famous in a Small Town(28)
With Pleasant’s reality-show roots—was there ever a feeling of having to prove herself within the industry, of having to work twice as hard to be taken seriously? Pleasant shakes her head quickly. “It’s not a competition,” she says with a wry smile. “At least, not anymore.”
Pleasant dreamed of stardom from a young age, singing in talent shows and the church choir in her rural town of Acadia, Illinois, which she immortalized in her first breakout hit, the hometown tribute of “Gave You My Heartland.” “Heartland” was a salute to Pleasant’s small-town roots, a theme that is woven throughout her first and second albums.
The juxtaposition with “Steel Highway,” the lead single from Foundation, is stark. With lyrics like “burn it down salt the earth you’ll never see my face again,” and “Lord help me, I’m never going back,” “Steel Highway” is perhaps Pleasant’s darkest track to date, a far cry both lyrically and musically from the sweet simplicity of her previous albums. Pleasant’s self-titled debut features odes to “morning glories and summer nights,” “true love’s kiss,” and “love on the wind.” “Steel Highway” represents a clear departure.
The question on everyone’s mind: Is the place that put the “heart” in “Heartland” the very same subject of Foundation’s scorched-earth anthem? Is the girl who penned a towering salute to her hometown now a woman vowing never to return?
“You could interpret it that way,” she says. “Although in this case, there’s not much to interpret. It’s pretty specific.”
I refer to an interview with MTV from several years prior, in which Pleasant spoke of hoping to one day raise a family in Acadia. Her response?
“Everyone thinks things when they’re young that end up being untrue, don’t they? Here’s a great scoop: your favorite singers might too.”
We are into our second beverages when Pleasant turns the questions on me—what did I want to be when I was younger? Did I always want to live in Los Angeles? Did I ever think I would write for a magazine? And the question that makes her eyes light up over her coffee mug—when did I experience first love? (Tenth grade, for the record.)
“You felt like you would love them forever, right? Like they were the be-all and end-all of your entire existence? She—were they a she? She was probably the light of your life, wasn’t she? And what does she do now?” I hadn’t seen her in years, and I say as much. “If you could get in a time machine and go back to high school and tell yourself that there would be a day on this earth when you didn’t know where she was, or what she was doing—what made her smile, what broke her heart, how she did her hair, what perfume she wore—if you told yourself that, you would never have believed it. Right? But everyone changes. The way you feel about people changes. Same goes for places, I guess.”
We have steered back to “Steel Highway,” and I hate to break the quiet calm, but I have to press on—what caused the rift with Acadia?
Pleasant just smiles and takes a sip of her drink. Almond milk steamer, two pumps of vanilla. Her eyes shine. “What was her name?”
nineteen
We decided to start our official investigation on Saturday with a trip to Megan’s mansion. Brit was free, and bored, so I told her we’d swing by her place on our way out there.
First I went over to Kyle and Heather’s to collect August.
Heather’s car was in the driveway, so I crossed around to the back door. Shepherd barked like crazy whenever anyone came to the front.
As I approached, I could hear voices wafting out the screen door—Heather saying, “No. For real. It’s not necessary.”
“It’s fine,” August replied gruffly. “I don’t mind pitching in.”
“I don’t want you to feel like you have to earn your keep here, though.”
“I don’t feel like that. And it doesn’t have to be … weird or whatever. Whenever I get paid, I’ll just leave it here. In … the most horrifying cookie jar on earth—”
“Creepy Cookie,” Heather said. “Cady was terrified of it when she was a toddler, that’s why we had to keep it up there.”
“You could’ve kept it in the garbage. Or … sent it back to the depths of hell.”
Heather snorted. “It was a present from Kyle’s grandma. But yeah, I agree.”
A pause. “I’ll just put it in Creepy Cookie,” August said. “We never have to talk about it.”
Another pause, and when Heather responded finally, she sounded resigned: “Not everything, though. Keep at least half. At least. For … going out with your friends, or … saving for school.”
“Yeah, okay,” August replied, and then it was quiet again.
When I tapped on the door and stuck my head in, August was alone, stuffing a roll of cash into the hideous cookie jar that sat atop the fridge. I was fairly certain it was the money Heather had just told him to keep, the at least half he had agreed to. He turned, and for a brief moment a complicated series of emotions flashed across his face before settling into something neutral.
“Ready to go?” I said.
He turned back to Creepy Cookie, which was a gray clay jar fashioned into a weird humanlike shape with a large bulging stomach and small hands and feet sticking out of it. The top of the jar was Creepy Cookie’s head, which August moved back onto its neck.