Break It Up Part 15

"I got my feelings hurt."

"Well, I'm sorry."

"By someone I trusted."

"With the initials Z.W."

"It hurt."

"I can tell."

I sniffle into the phone. "We got in a fight."

"I sensed that with my keen powers of intuition."

"He really hurt my feelings. He was so cold, and he said just totally awful stuff about Chloe."

"Well, thank you."

I lift my head. "For what?"

"For loving Chloe that much."

"Enough to ditch Zach over her, yeah."

"Yeah, not easy for you to do, huh?"

Yeah, I don't want to talk about this with Jason.

A knock on my door startles me. "Who is it?" I call out.

"It's Zach," says Jason.

"Shut up," I tell him.

"It's Zach," says that unmistakable voice on the other side of the door.

My sniffle cuts short in a sound rather like a gasp.

"Was I right?" says Jason.

"I gotta go."

"All right. Kiss and make up."

"You don't know what you're talking about." I hang up my phone and go to open the door.

Zach stands in the hallway, hanging his head. He looks at me through his lashes then at the phone in my hand.

I turn to toss it onto my bed before I turn back to face him.

He stands stock-still and says nothing. The moment stretches on and on until I begin to wonder if I'm supposed to say something.

"Um..." I begin.

"Okay," he says, "tell me what you know about film contracts." His posture is pure resignation, as if he's had a fight with himself and lost.

"I know nothing about them. I can call around and ask, though. Or maybe you should talk to your lawyer about what rights you have under your contract."

"Our lawyers would probably tell us off."

"Why?"

He bites his lip hard enough that it's a wonder he doesn't draw blood. "They didn't review the contract before we signed it."

A panic rises in my chest. I feel like I'm watching someone I care about ride on a car hood on the freeway, certain they're about to get squashed. "You didn't have them look at the contract at all?"

"That was the decision, yeah." He shrugs. He motions for permission to come in, which I grant. He saunters through the door and I shut it behind him.

I go to sit down on my bed and rake my fingers through my hair. "Where is the contract? A copy of it at least?"

"I dunno."

Don't yell, I think to myself. You've fought with him enough already. "Can you find one? Let me show it to my grandparents or my uncle."

"Vanderholt has time to read contracts?" Zach sidles over to the one chair in the room and sits down.

"I meant my other uncle. Steve. He's a lawyer like my grandparents."

"Well, they'd be your step-grandparents."

I roll my eyes. "You sure do have a lot of opinions about my family, whom you've never met."

He ducks his head, chastened. "I'll try to find a copy of the contract." After a pause he adds, "Thank you."

"You shouldn't ever sign stuff lawyers haven't read. Every word counts in a contract." It's not like I ever really paid attention to Steve babbling away with Doug and Lillian about this, but I guess I noticed how much time they spend in their discussions. Sometimes it seems to take a whole afternoon to hash out one paragraph.

Zach looks down at his hands as if his fingernails have suddenly become fascinating. "I know."

"Then why did you-"

"It was Ben and Logan's decision. The whole concert movie was. And yeah, it made me nervous to sign the contract, but Rick was so positive about it."

"Does Rick know anything about contracts?"

He won't look at me.

So I wait. I don't just want to sit and lecture all night.

"I screwed up, didn't I?" he says. "I should have forced the issue. The thing is, Logan and Ben don't listen to me like they listened to my mother, and I get tired of being the bossy one."

"You don't know that you screwed up," I say. "I just think you should be clearer on what Aidan can and can't film. I a.s.sume you approved the teaser clip he put up the other day?"

"No."

"No?"

"What teaser clip?"

I clasp my hands together, my nails biting into the skin on the back of my hand. "The one on YouTube."

"I didn't even see it."

"Did Rick? Did anyone?"

He picks at a nonexistent piece of lint on his jeans. "I have no idea what I'm doing."

I gouge the skin of my hand with my nails as I try to think of an appropriate answer. My window, I now realize, isn't covered. The view is of inky blackness punctuated by a row of windows, their yellow lights like eyes peering in. I get up and pull the curtain, hoping that I would have seen anyone taking pictures. Surely the flash would have given them away? I check and note that Zach is sitting out of line of sight. They might have photographed him coming in, but they wouldn't have seen much else. All he and I have done is talk.

This is messed up, having to think about this kind of thing all the time.

"I'm just...I have no actual skills," says Zach. "I'm no musician. I can't dance."

"Please don't have a self-pity moment," I beg.

Wrong thing to say. He hangs his head and scrubs the back of his neck with one hand. He looks like he's just been rejected in the first round of auditions. Which makes no sense. He's Zach Wechsler, and right now, his lack of confidence is annoying.

"I used to just sign whatever Mom put in front of me. I never even thought about where a contract came from. I mean, this'll sound completely stupid, but I didn't realize you even could sign a contract that a lawyer didn't look over first. Rick took us out to dinner with Aidan and he handed us the contract and Ben and Logan didn't even want to read it. They signed it. It didn't occur to me that something like that could happen. It was the first time anyone other than Mom handed me something to sign."

He looks up at me. "For the next week I felt like I'd pulled the pin on a grenade," he goes on. "Any minute this was going to blow up in our faces. But the deal went forward. Aidan joined our tour. I stopped worrying about it."

"It might still all be fine," I say.

"Except that they film us fighting. They film Ben drunk. I have no idea what to do if they decide to edit this thing to make us look like a bunch of screwed-up, self-ent.i.tled idiots. I don't know what my rights are. I haven't got a clue."

"So you talk to a lawyer." I feel like a broken record.

"And if the contract's no good?"

This is unlike any problem anyone's ever put to me before. The stakes are real. This isn't a hypothetical or a test. Wrong moves make a real impact on Triple Cross.

I guess this is what it's like to be an adult. There are no training wheels to keep us steady, no obnoxious teacher to call time and take the blame for the problem being so hard. Mistakes actually count for something.

I'm hollow inside with fear, and this isn't even really my problem. I take a moment to calm my racing pulse. Maybe this is too much for me, but I can at least bluff a little. "First things first. You call your lawyer. Call them right now. It's evening in the US."

"I don't have their number."

"Who would have it?"

"Rick who'll be asleep right now."

"And your mother."

"I'm not gonna make her violate her restraining order over this." He pulled out his cell phone. "Yes, this is me being an obnoxious celebrity."

"I won't film it," I deadpan.

"Thank you." He puts his phone to his ear, waits, then taps the screen to dial the number again. "Hey, it's Zach...I do know what time it is. I need something...The number of the lawyer we use for our contracts...Never mind why. I need their number and I need it now. Uh-huh. Uh huh. Thanks." He hangs up then stares at his phone until it chimes.

"Text?" I say.

"Yep. I have the number now." He taps the screen a few more times and puts the phone back to his ear. "h.e.l.lo? Hi, I'd like to speak to Mark Wilc.o.x please? This is Zach Wechsler. I'm one of his clients. The singer, yeah. Uh-huh. Triple Cross."

Judging from Zach's smug smile, whoever's on the other end of the line has scrambled to put him through. I glance at my watch and do the math. It's approaching five o'clock in California, so the lawyer should still be in the office.

"Mr. Wilc.o.x, hi. I was wondering if you could review a contract for me? Yeah. A week is too long...Well it's already signed. I just need to know-"

He winces as a voice shouts loud enough for me to hear, "What do you mean it's signed? By whom? By you?"

"Yeah, I-"

"You signed a contract without consulting me?"

Zach gives me a helpless look.

"Just tell him to review it," I say. "You're the boss. You pay him. He works for you."

He sits up a little straighter. "Just review the contract and tell me your thoughts on it. You can lecture me then, all right? If I have to pay extra to have you do it by tomorrow, then fine. Three days?"

That is clearly longer than Zach wants to wait.

"You're Zach Wechsler," I press, "of Triple Cross."

He nods to himself. "I'm going to have to insist on tomorrow. Impossible?" The knuckles of his hand holding the phone turn white.

"Hang on," I say. "Just let him take the three days."

"Why?" Zach mouths to me.

"Because anyone who can say no to Triple Cross has some serious clout." That theory is a shot in the dark, but it sounds credible to me.

"Okay, three days," he says. "I'll wait for your call." He hangs up, looks at me, and says, "I still need to find a copy of the contract."

Oh, right. This being-an-adult business is no fun at all. Right now I really wish my dad or a teacher or someone would step forward, wave the contract in our faces, and make some snide comment about how we should be better prepared. I'd give anything for that.

RICK IS not happy to be woken up for the second time in the middle of the night. He flings his door open and stands in one of the hotel's luxurious bathrobes, his hands on his hips. His room's on the same level as the band members' and I wonder if that's normal. "What?" he snaps.

He doesn't notice me. I'm down the hall, trying to stay inconspicuous because in order to stand where I can see him, I'm standing where he could also see me if I called attention to myself, so I don't even dare move.