Teddy Wayne - The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

“We got over a hundred thousand live-stream purchases. Nearly a third bought in at the very end,” she said softly, without turning to me. “Ronald says congratulations.”

I didn’t say anything, but we were both thinking the same thing, that all the bad press the last couple weeks had helped out, and me bringing my father onstage made us go viral. Sex sells, but controversy really sells.

I went to close the door, but before I did I leaned out in the hallway and said, “Jane.”

She spun around on her black high heels. I was with her when she bought them in L.A. But she didn’t buy them, she got them free, because I was with her and the boutique loved the publicity. She really did dress like a serious businesswoman. You’d never know she once bagged groceries in St. Louis with Mary Ann Hilford.

If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right. I’d work twice as hard. I’d sacrifice everything in my life that held me back. We’d get the best choreographer, the best producer, the best publicist, the best fake romances, the best scandals. And I already had the best manager. I was the only client she’d ever have.

“I want to do the tour,” I said. “You can start planning it now.”

I wasn’t just going to be the next Tyler Beats. I was going to be the next MJ.

A smile curled up on her face like she’d forgotten everything that happened the last few minutes, and I went back inside my room and swung the door shut, harder than I meant to.

I fell down onto the beanbag chair like standing another minute would kill me, and restarted Zenon and plugged my iPod into the portable speaker and set it to shuffle. I tried a few new weapons and spells, but got damaged by the Emperor each time. After a few songs, the lullaby came on the speakers. I don’t listen to it much on my iPod, so I can save it for when Jane sings it.

I went into the Emperor’s room and was thinking of what I could do and if there was another angle I could attack him from and how nothing worked against him. The lullaby was playing, but for some reason, in my head I heard that song “Stay,” and hummed its melody, and I remembered what I’d just told my father, how in Zenon you sometimes have to do the opposite of what you think you should do. And I thought, What if I don’t stay in the room with the Emperor, but just run away ?

So, before I could attack him, I ran back out the way I came in and closed the door behind me.

And in the tunnel leading up to the room was a gem, the last gem I needed.

I picked it up and my experience points kept climbing, which is different from normal where they go up a set amount, and soon the screen turned black and then white, and the narrator’s voice and screen said, “You have gained sufficient experience points. All other living beings have departed the realm. You can no longer be damaged. The Secret Land of Zenon is yours entire.” The screen flashed back to normal and I was on the first level again, except no one else was around, no people or animals or enemies.

The lullaby finished. I took the iPod off shuffle and went back to the song and put it on repeat and whispered along with the last verse while I played.

Go to sleep

Don’t you cry

Rest your head upon the clover

Rest your head upon the clover

In your dreams

You shall ride

Whilst your Mammy’s watching over

My character walked all around the first level of Zenon, and I could instantly transport myself to any level. I didn’t need gems or experience points. If I chose to go somewhere, I could.

Then I knew what I wanted to say for my final exam for Nadine. Normally I have a tough time outlining my essays. For this one, though, I could already see the beginning, middle, and end, and what my supporting evidence would be. I only hoped it would fit in a thousand words. But I could articulate it now.

The picture of me and my father at the baseball game was on the floor. I turned up the volume on my iPod and set it on top of the picture. It covered his body, right up to me sitting on his shoulders. The part you could still see with me had just my father’s head poking out between my legs, like I was a mother giving birth to a grown man. The opposite of a premature infant.

I jumped to a new level in Zenon. The land was mine to explore, all mine. I could go wherever I wanted, do whatever I wanted, no one stopping me, nobody else around, over the tall mountains and through the deep forests and into the dark dungeons. Just me.

I could no longer be damaged.

THE MRS. GILES WHITING Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts provided generous financial support that enabled me to complete this novel. Several people in other fields shared their expertise with me: for medical matters, Clara Boyd, Andrew Epstein, and Andrew Gassman; in the law, Josh Gradinger; and about the music industry, Morgan O’Malley and Matt Paget. Dr. Jane O’Connor’s The Cultural Significance of the Child Star, along with an article she sent me before its publication, proved to be my most fertile research resources. I am grateful to Kathryn Davis, Joshua Henkin, Marshall Klimasewiski, and Kellie Wells for their continued guidance and help. A cohort of selfless readers improved this novel substantially: Sarah Bruni, Maura Kelly, Eric Lundgren, Diana Spechler, John Warner, Paul Whitlatch, and my beloved retired agent, Rosalie Siegel. Jim Rutman’s unwavering confidence and sagacity would make him, in an alternate universe, a superior manager for Jonny Valentine. I am deeply indebted to Millicent Bennett for her brilliant editing, passionate advocacy, and consummate professionalism; her assistant, Chloe Perkins; Sarah Nalle; publisher Martha Levin and editor in chief Dominick Anfuso; Meg Cassidy, Jill Siegel, Carisa Hays, Nicole Judge, Suzanne Donahue, Jackie Jou, Erin Reback, Stuart Smith, Karen Fink, Wendy Sheanin, Nina Pajak, and the rest of the robust sales and marketing departments; Carly Sommerstein, Ellen Sasahara, and Beth Maglione in production; the innovative video team at Studio 4; Jonathan Karp; and everyone else at Free Press and Simon & Schuster for their enthusiasm and faith. Thank you, Jenna McKnight, for being a good kid. And, lastly, my ongoing gratitude to my parents.

Teddy Wayne is the author of Kapitoil , for which he was the winner of a 2011 Whiting Writers’ Award and a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the PEN/Bingham Prize, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He writes regularly for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, McSweeney’s , and elsewhere. The recipient of an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship and a graduate of Harvard and Washington University in St. Louis, he lives in New York.

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