Teddy Wayne - The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

Kevin said me and Michael would go in a car with each other so we could catch up off-camera. It was a town car, not a limo, so the crew guy who drove us could hear us in the backseat.

“What’s new?” I asked Michael as we pulled away from the school.

“My parents adopted a baby boy last year,” he said. “From Ethiopia, in Africa. His name is Justin. He’s pretty fun, actually.”

I couldn’t imagine Michael with a younger brother. We always said we were like brothers and it was better than having a real brother since we got to choose each other.

“From Africa,” I said. I didn’t really want to look straight at him, and I tilted my head down. Under my unzipped winter coat and jacket, my black graphic T-shirt had a picture of Brangelina as farmers standing in front of a house with a pitchfork, but they’ve got white makeup and jet-black hair and lipstick and mascara, and it says AMERICAN GOTH. “Cool. Like Brangelina.”

He looked at my shirt and the rest of my outfit. “They give you those clothes?” My jeans were distressed and my jacket under my winter coat was shiny black leather with metal studs and my sneakers were custom-made red Nikes with heart shapes on the tongue.

“Who?”

“The TV people.”

“No. This is from home.” He didn’t say anything, so I added, “Well, the designers give them to me. They send me stuff and pay me to wear it. There’s a lot of contracts involved. I have to wear certain pieces a certain amount while out and at photo ops.” As I was saying it I was wishing I wasn’t, but I couldn’t stop myself. It got quiet again, so I asked him, “Is Jessica Stanton still the hottest girl in our class?”

“No, she got fat. Luann Phelps is now.”

“Luann?”

“Yeah. She got contacts this year and became hot,” he said. “She has a crush on you.”

“For real?” I got a little tingle. I don’t know why I was so into the idea of Luann Phelps having a crush on me. She used to be this dumpy girl with thick glasses and a lisp. For a second it was like she was the celeb and I was the fan.

“All the girls do. Whenever you say your songs are about this one girl, they all say that they’re your ex.”

I had to stop using that line so much. Or maybe I should use it more. “They didn’t used to,” I said. “Have a crush on me.” I knew I could date any girl at one of my shows, but somehow it seemed cooler to be able to go to a school and date any student I wanted to. If there was ever a dance, I could ask whoever, and I wouldn’t call attention to myself with a dance-off or anything, but everyone would know I was the best dancer there.

“You left in the middle of fourth grade. They didn’t get crushes till the fifth grade. The boys didn’t get crushes till this year.”

I wondered if he’d hit puberty yet, or if any of the other boys did. If I asked him in the back of a town car if he had any pubes, though, then I’d be like a child predator.

“Who do you have a crush on?”

He played with the string on his sweatpants. “No one, really.”

“Does anyone have a crush on you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Girls don’t talk to me much. Except when they want to know about you.”

“Oh.” Neither of us said anything. The more I tried to come up with things to say, the less I did. All I could think of was, “My record label wants me to date this actress and singer Lisa Pinto. You know her?”

“She’s on that show,” he said. “So what do you do? Like, go to a movie or something?”

“No. Not real dates. Fake ones, for publicity. That’s how most people do it in L.A. Celebs, I mean.”

He didn’t respond but he sort of smiled to himself, so I closed my eyes and pretended to fall asleep. Soon the crew guy told me we were there. I looked out and we were at our old apartment. And I got that feeling I don’t get when I come home in L.A., times a million, but right after, for some reason, and it’s not like I would really do it, I felt like I wanted to throw a rock or something at the windows.

I wondered for a second if maybe the third surprise would be that they’d found my father and brought him to meet me where we all used to live together, but then I saw Jane standing outside, stamping her boots in the cold while talking to Kevin, and there was no way she would have signed off on that. She said, “Hi, Michael, what a nice surprise,” and made a little face to me that meant she’d just found out I was hanging out with him, but she didn’t say anything because he was still there. She probably wished my old best friend was more telegenic. Me and her were going to do a quick tour of the apartment before I’d throw a football with Michael in the park like we used to.

Our apartment was in a row of buildings that all looked the same, two floors each with pinkish concrete on the outside and a short walkway leading up to a red door. We were on the upper floor. Kevin said we had to be careful not to mess anything up inside or the family that lived there now would charge the show even more. I would’ve thought they’d be happy enough that their apartment was on TV and they could say they lived in Jonny Valentine’s old apartment, but people are always trying to find ways to monetize you.

Robin took me and Jane inside with a few crew guys. I was glad Michael stayed outside. The place looked different with the new furniture, but it felt familiar, with the pipes clanking and the way the floor creaked under your feet when you took your first step inside and how it always smelled like something had burned a little.

Jane showed them around, fast, since there was only the bathroom, the living room, the kitchen, and the bedroom. Nothing in it was that nice. They’d put in an ugly tan wall-to-wall carpet that wasn’t there before. Jane said to the camera, “So, obviously, the new tenants have decorated it their own way.”

It felt like I was a burglar in our old home, and I was scoping it out to steal from the younger Jonathan and Jane from two years ago. I could almost see myself sleeping in my bed, with me from now creeping around the room and taking sports equipment and schoolbooks and clothes from Jonathan Valentino and replacing it with Jonny Valentine merch.

The whole strategy with footage like this was stupid. It was like, Let’s see how you’re like a normal person behind the scenes, but the more we want to see you acting regular in private, the more you have to hide there and throw up a bunch of public buffers, so if we really saw you behind the scenes, it wouldn’t look normal at all, that’s why we have to show you pretending to be normal in your old apartment.

There was one picture up on the wall near the kitchen. It was a man and woman in their thirties, and they were holding a baby between them in the hospital bed after she’d given birth and was all sweaty and tired. There was a crib in the corner. The baby was cute, but for a second I thought, Fuck you, baby.

Robin asked me if it brought back any memories. I knew I should come up with something, but nothing from the past hit me when I was in the main rooms. Nearly the first ten years of my life had happened there, so it’s not like it was easy to pick out one thing. When we went into the bathroom, though, I thought about the time I’d gotten sick from eating crab cakes at Ben Marton’s birthday party at Captain D’s, and I spent all night vomiting, and Jane stayed up with me rubbing my back and giving me water even though she had the six a.m. shift at Schnucks. Probably I remembered it because of my preshow routine with her.

“I used to come home from school every day and have a snack before starting my homework,” I said.

“What did you eat?” Robin asked.

“Peanut butter and jelly with the crusts cut off. Jane would make it.” That was another clue for my father, since she’s afraid to go near peanut butter because of her allergy. She actually made tuna sandwiches with a ton of mayo and the crusts on and left them in the fridge for me, but she doesn’t even let Peter buy mayo anymore since it’s so fatty.