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“You didn’t miss much,” she assured me.
“Humor me.”
She kicked up a bit of sand, making whirlwinds in her tracks. “Well,” she began, “we traveled a lot when I was a kid. Once every couple of years we’d visit the Philippines, where my paternal grandparents live. When I was little, I hated it. I don’t speak Chinese or Tagalog—my dad’s family is ethnically Chinese but has lived in the Philippines for generations—and it’s so hot there during the summer! But as I got older, I came to appreciate the visits more…seeing my cousins, and the food that my grandma cooked. They always spoiled my sister and me, since we saw them so infrequently.” She paused, a nostalgic smile on her face. “My parents love to travel, so sometimes we took trips to Hawaii or Costa Rica, but the biggest trip I took was after my freshman year in high school, when my parents took my sister and me to Europe. London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Rome.”
“That sounds exciting.”
“At the time, I wasn’t as excited as you might think. Mainly we toured museums and churches, and in retrospect I can understand the value of seeing works by Da Vinci or Michelangelo, but back then I was bored silly. I remember staring at the Mona Lisa and thinking, This is it? What’s so great about it? But my parents believed such cultural things were important in the molding of young minds.”
I smiled as we veered toward Sandbar Bill’s. Though every table was filled, we lucked out, catching a couple leaving their seats at the bar, which also happened to offer a view of the sunset.
“Look at that,” I said. “It must be our day.”
She smiled. “No doubt about it.”
We ordered iced teas, making us the only two who weren’t drinking beer or cocktails. When the bartender put the menus in front of us, we both ordered cheeseburgers without bothering to examine them.
As we waited, she showed me the video of Mike the headless chicken on YouTube, and at my urging, she told me more about her childhood. She’d attended private school the whole way through—no surprise there, since her parents obviously valued education. She described the familiar cliques and insecurities and students who surprised her in both positive and negative ways, and while our experiences couldn’t have been more different, it was clear that—like me—music was the underlying thread in all her experiences. Music was, I thought, a way for both of us to take charge of shaping our identities and to escape our traumas, and when I said as much to her, her brow furrowed slightly.
“Do you think that’s why Paige became an artist, too?”
“Maybe.” I scratched my chin, remembering. “She used to sketch the most amazing animals or nature scenes, but then one day she drew my aunt and uncle, and they were so lifelike it could have been a photo. I remember asking her if she would draw our mom, since I didn’t really remember what she looked like, but Paige said that she didn’t remember her, either.” Thinking about Paige, I added, “Maybe that’s a good thing.”
I felt Morgan’s eyes on me as she took a sip of her tea. She leaned a little closer. “I wish you could come with us to Busch Gardens tomorrow. It should be fun.”
“I’m sure it will be. But duty calls and all that.” Then, glancing over at her: “Maybe we can see each other when you get back? After my show? I can either make us dinner or we could go out.”
I saw the flash of her dimples. “I’d like that.”
“Good,” I said, already knowing I’d count the hours until then. “And I’m definitely going to make it to your dance performance on Saturday—if you’re willing to tell me the time, so I don’t have to camp out all day, I mean.”
“It’ll be at noon or maybe a few minutes after.”
“I know you have a gazillion followers, but how many videos have you posted?”
“Probably a few hundred,” she said.
“You’ve done that many dance routines?”
“God, no,” she said, with a quick shake of her head. “I don’t know how many we’ve done. But basically we create routines to one or two songs, then break up each one into ten or fifteen segments.”
“So…how are you going to keep it going? Since you’re all going your separate ways?”
“We’ve been talking about that a lot lately, especially this week. They’ve known for a while that Saturday is my last performance with the group. And until recently, Holly and Stacy also said that they were planning to move on with their lives, too. But now that there’s some money in it, I think they’re trying to find a way to keep it going, at least through the summer. Maybe figure out a way to rehearse on FaceTime and then get together in person on weekends. They’re still trying to figure it out.”
“But you’re done for sure?”
She was quiet, and I had the sense that she was trying to choose her words carefully. “You already know how I feel about being an influencer, but more than that, I don’t want to make a mistake when it comes to launching a music career. Like…I don’t want people to think that the only reason I made it was because I had a social-media following. I’ve worked too hard for that. I mean, I studied opera, for goodness’ sake. Maybe a manager—if I get one—will tell me what to do. For now I’ll just post what I’ve agreed to post, and that’ll get me through the next month or so, but after that, who knows? We’ll see.”
“Will you miss it?”
“Yes and no,” she admitted. “I love my friends, and in the beginning the routines were tons of fun, and obviously it was thrilling to watch our accounts blow up. But lately it feels like everything has to be even better—perfect—whenever we film, so it’s a lot more stressful. At the same time, I try to remind myself that I learned a lot. I’ve reached the point where I think I might even be able to choreograph my own music video.”
“Really?”
“Maybe. But if not, I’d just call Maria.”
I smiled. The bartender brought our cheeseburgers, and we dug in while watching the sunset bloom across the sky. “We’ve been talking so much about me, but what are you going to do when you go back home?” she asked between bites. Unlike me, she’d removed the bun and was using a fork and knife to eat the burger; she did, however, dig into the fries with gusto.
