When in Rome by Sarah Adams
“I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.”
—Audrey Hepburn
Chapter 1
Amelia
This is okay, right? I’m okay?
I take a deep breath and wrap my fingers a little tighter around the steering wheel.
“Yes, Amelia, you’re okay. You’re fantastic actually. You’re just like Audrey Hepburn, taking your life into your own hands, annnnnd…you’re talking to yourself…so maybe not completely okay, but given the circumstances, semiokay,” I say, squinting at the dark road outside my windshield. “Yes. Semiokay is good.”
Except, it’s completely dark, and my car is making this noise that sounds like loose coins tumbling around a dryer drum. I’m not a car whiz, but I’m thinking that’s not a good sound for it to be making. My favorite little Toyota Corolla, the car that has been with me since I was in high school, the car I was sitting in when I first heard my song on the radio at age eighteen, the car that I drove to Phantom Records and signed my recording deal ten years ago is reaching its expiration date. It can’t die, it still has the smell of my old volleyball kneepads ingrained in the fabric.
No, not today, Satan.
I rub the dashboard like there might be a hidden genie inside waiting to pop out and grant me three wishes. Instead of wishes, I’m granted the loss of cell service. The music I’m streaming cuts off, and my Google Maps is no longer registering the little arrow that’s supposed to lead me out of this middle-of-nowhere-serial-killer-backwoods road.
Yikes, this feels like the start of a horror film. I think I’m the girl in the movie people yell “you’re an idiot!” at, while popcorn crumbs leak from their greedy smiles. Oh geez, was this a mistake? I’m afraid I left my sanity back home in Nashville along with my iron gate and Fort Knox security system. And Will, my fabulous security guard who posts up outside my house and stops people from sneaking onto my property.
Earlier tonight, my manager, Susan, and her assistant, Claire, downloaded me with information about my upcoming, jam-packed schedule for the next three weeks before we leave on a nine-month world tour. The problem is, I just finished my last day of a grueling three-month tour rehearsal. Almost every day of the last three months has been dedicated to learning the concert choreography, stage blocking, solidifying the set list, rigorous exercise, and rehearsing the songs, all while smiling and pretending that inside I didn’t feel like a rotting compost pile.
I sat silent as Susan talked and talked, her long, slender, perfectly manicured finger scrolling endlessly across an iPad screen full of schedule notes. Schedule notes I should feel excited to hear. Honored to have! But somewhere in the middle of it, I…shut down. Her voice took on the Charlie Brown wah, wah, wah tone and all I could hear was my own heart thumping in my ears. Loud and painful. I went absolutely numb. And what scared me the most was that Susan didn’t even seem to notice.
It makes me wonder if I’m too good at hiding. My days go like this: I smile this way at this person and nod. Yes, thank you. I smile that way at that person and nod. Yes, of course I can do that. Susan gives me a script perfectly crafted by my PR team and I memorize it. My favorite color is blue, much the same as the Givenchy gown I’ll be wearing to the Grammys. Why yes, I do owe much of my success to my loving and devoted mom. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t feel incredibly blessed to have this career and my amazing fans.
Polite, polite, polite.
A hot splotch of tears falls onto my thigh and I realize I’m crying. I don’t think I’m supposed to be crying thinking of those things. I’m a two-time Grammy winner and I have a signed contract for ninety million dollars with the top record label in the business, so I shouldn’t be crying. I don’t deserve to be crying. And I definitely shouldn’t be in my old car in the middle of the night driving frantically away from everything. The list of people I’ll be letting down runs through my mind like a scroll, and I can barely withstand the guilt. I’ve never not shown up for an interview before. I hate disappointing people or acting as if my time is more valuable than theirs. At the start of my career I vowed I would never get a big head. It’s important to me to be as accommodating as possible—even if it hurts.
But something about Susan’s parting words tonight wrecked me. “Rae,”—because she prefers to call me by my stage name rather than my real name, which is Amelia—“you’re looking tired. Get some extra sleep tonight so you won’t be puffy in the behind-the-scenes photos of the Vogue interview tomorrow. Although…the exhausted look is trending again…” She looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling and I half expected God himself to beam down an answer to her concerning the bags under my eyes. “Yeah, forget I said anything! It’ll stir sympathy from your fans and bring a little more buzz.”
She turned and left—her assistant, Claire, pausing only briefly to toss me one last hesitant glance over her shoulder. She opened her mouth like she was going to say something, and I found myself desperately hoping she would. See me, please.
“Good night,” she finally said and then left.
I sat in the ringing silence for so long wondering how I let myself get here. And how do I crawl out of this shell I’ve accidentally created? This hollowed-out feeling started to find me a few years ago, and I’d hoped it was because I was sick of the L.A. lifestyle and needed a change. I packed up and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where I could still be around the music business scene, but not quite as high-profile living. It didn’t work. The hollowness followed me.