My Online Crush Swore He Wasn't the Idol, Then His Song Sang My Secrets novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Man in Row F
On opening night Lena sees a man in row F with the face of Northline's hiding lead singer, blanks on her line in front of the whole town, and at midnight gets a message: "It was me. I'm not him."
The man in row F had the most famous face in the country, and he was looking straight at me.
I was on my knees on a painted porch, holding a tin cup of lemonade that was really apple juice.
It was opening night of Orchard Road at the Juniper.
Every seat was full, all two hundred and forty of them.
My mother was in row C with her work gloves still sticking out of her back pocket.
And in row F, seat 7, under a faded ball cap, sat Jasper Larkspur.
I knew that face better than my own.
It was on the poster on Gwen's bedroom door.
It was on every news channel since the Silver Mic Awards, when he stopped singing and his voice kept going without him.
The whole country had watched the lead singer of Northline get caught lip-syncing.
Then they'd watched him throw his microphone and walk off the stage.
Nobody had seen him since.
Now he was sitting in the Juniper Theatre in Millbrook Crossing, Ohio, eating peach taffy from the concession stand.
The boy playing the stationmaster said my cue.
"Train's leaving, Rose. You coming or not?"
This was my line.
The best line in the whole play.
I had said it in the shower and at the peach stand and in my sleep.
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
The man in row F stopped chewing.
The theatre went so quiet I could hear the ceiling fans turning.
Somebody in the back coughed.
Somebody else giggled.
The stationmaster said my cue again, louder.
"Train's leaving, Rose."
My eyes wouldn't leave row F.
He had a small scar through his left eyebrow.
Jasper Larkspur had that scar. Gwen had told me about it at least fifty times.
From the wings, I heard Gwen whisper-scream my name.
She was running the curtain rope tonight.
"Lena! Say it!"
The line came back to me all at once.
"I'm not waiting for the train," I said. "I'm waiting to see who gets off it."
It came out flat and fast.
The man in row F lowered his cap over his eyes.
At the curtain call he was gone.
Seat F7 was empty except for a crumpled taffy wrapper.
Backstage smelled like hairspray and hot lights.
The whole cast was crammed into the green room, which used to be a coat closet in 1946.
The board chair came in still clapping, then stopped clapping when she saw me.
She was seventy and ran the Juniper.
"Lena. A word."
She didn't take me anywhere to have it.
She said it right there, in front of all nineteen of them.
"Do you know what tonight was?"
"Opening night," I said.
"It was the night the bank sent a man to see if this theatre is worth saving."
My stomach dropped.
"He was in row B. He wrote something down when you froze."
"I'm sorry. I thought I saw..."
"You thought you saw a boy from a band," said Brynn Gildersleeve.
She was leaning against the mirror, still in her understudy blacks.
Brynn wanted Rose more than she wanted air.
She had auditioned for it against me three summers in a row.
She held up her phone.
"I got a picture. Look, everybody. Lena's boyfriend."
The photo was so blurry it could have been anybody.
A cap. A jaw. A hand with taffy in it.
Half the cast laughed.
The board chair didn't.
"One more slip, Lena, and Brynn plays Rose. We can't afford to look like amateurs. Not this summer."
"We are amateurs," I said.
Nobody laughed at that.
My mother found me in the parking lot.
She put her arm around me and didn't ask anything, which was how she always asked.
"I saw a man," I said.
"I know, honey. I watched you see him."
By the time we got home, Brynn had posted the photo to the Millbrook Crossing town page.
"Our star choked on opening night because she saw a boy band in row F. Somebody get this girl a poster."
It had ninety comments by eleven o'clock.
"Poor Lena's been in the sun too long."
"Jasper Larkspur in MILLBROOK? At the JUNIPER? Lol."
"Maybe he came for the peaches."
Someone had posted a picture of a peach with a cartoon microphone.
The bank man probably read all of it.
I turned my phone face down and lay in bed with my eyes open.
The stand opened at five.
I had to be up at four.
At midnight my phone buzzed against the nightstand.
A message request from an account with no picture.
The name was rowF7.
I sat up so fast I hit my head on the shelf.
"It was me," the message said.
Then another one, right under it.
"I'm not him. I get that a lot."
Then a third.
"You were the only real thing on that stage."
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