The Lonely Hearts Club Read online

  “What is she doing here?” I say, under my breath to Chloe, as Amber makes her way onto the step-and-repeat. Reporters are practically falling over themselves to talk to her, to get a sound bite. A photograph.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Why don’t you go ask her? If you get into a fight with her, it will make great press.”

  As I make my way toward Amber, all I can think is how angry Lola’s going to be at me—her mom wouldn’t let her attend the party since Lola’s too young (true), the party’s going to run too late (also true), and she felt that the themes of the evening would be too mature for Lola (definitely true). I may have also mentioned to Lola’s mom that there were various alcoves and little rooms throughout the venue, old offices, and that who knows what might be going on in them.

  “What are you doing here?” I bark at Amber. She’s holding a hot-pink evening clutch and I want to scream that the invite specifically said black clothing only. I flash a particularly vicious look Alan Golden’s way. He’s wearing a black suit with a coordinating hot-pink tie.

  But Amber’s such a pro. She doesn’t even flinch. “Why am I here?” she asks, incredulous, in her husky voice. She puts a perfectly manicured hand onto her chest. “I’m one of your biggest followers!”

  The crowd goes wild. Absolutely wild. I grind my teeth and try to think of something to say about her recent lip-synching scandal.

  “Let’s hear it for the woman of the hour!” Amber calls out, and grabs my arm. She holds my hand up, as if I just won a boxing match or something. “It’s good to see you again,” she whispers to me as the cameras are going off.

  The worst part is that I know that this is the photo everyone’s going to pick up tomorrow. This will be the photo that epitomizes the event.

  Amber insists on walking into the ball holding my hand. As if we’re sorority sisters or something, off to braid each other’s hair. But I can’t break away from her. The crowd loves it—that we’re together, that we’re holding hands, all of it. And there’s nothing I love more than to make a crowd happy.

  Once inside, Alan whisks Amber off to the VIP section.

  “Visit me later, okay?” she calls to me, over her shoulder. I find myself saying okay back, even though I don’t mean it. Not really, anyway. Chloe laughs at me, and I find myself looking up, trying to figure out which tiny alcove Max is holding court in. Since we knew we couldn’t be seen together, I gave him a bunch of tickets so he could bring his friends and have fun. When I told him about the tiny catwalks and the little alcoves that were scattered around the venue, he decided that he was going to hold court with his friends and make it their own private VIP section. I look up and can see he wasn’t the only one with that idea. I see the pale glow from cell phones in various alcoves along the wall. It looks like a million stars lit up in the sky.

  “Oh, my God, you’re in US Weekly already!” Chloe says, and hands me her phone. I take a peek and see that there’s a picture on the front page of the app—Amber and me at the step-and-repeat from fifteen minutes ago. “Love, Inc. will be happy,” Chloe says. “Amber’s head is right next to their logo. Isn’t that great?”

  “Me and Amber, at the Lonely Hearts Club Ball. Great.”

  The dance floor is a sea of dirty dancers. People are meeting, bumping into each other, making out…We all may have come in vowing to give up on love, but many of the party guests seem to have forgotten that vow. The band plays a cover of “Love Stinks,” and the party guests sing along as they pair off. Love may, in fact, stink, but apparently making out shamelessly with the person directly to the right of you is just fine. I lose Chloe in the crowd, and I figure that she must have found someone of her own to pair off with.

  I rush off toward the catwalk to try to find Max. It’s dark—almost too dark—on the tiny iron pathway that runs along the side of the bank. The Chalice dates back to the early 1900s—were people smaller back then? In order to pass another party guest on the catwalk, you literally have to brush up against them to get past. Perhaps that’s what’s leading to the amorous feeling permeating the Lonely Hearts Club Ball? I glance at my watch and see that I’ve got time. I need to be down by the stage at a little before the clock strikes twelve. That’s when I give my grand toast, with just enough time for my band to go on at midnight. For the grand finale of our set, a bunch of actors dressed up as 1920s-era gangsters will come out with fake tommy guns and stage the reenactment of the Valentine’s Day massacre that Chloe and I thought up.

  I’m glad I switched back to my usual uniform of old concert tee, ripped jeans, and motorcycle boots. Most of the women in stilettos are getting their heels stuck in the catwalk. But me? I’m able to skulk around easily.

  I check the first level of alcoves and don’t find Max. I climb up a tiny flight of steps to reach the next level. I look down at the view and the party looks amazing. I take out my cell phone to snap a picture. I put it on Instagram with the caption #TheLonelyHeartsClubBall.

  I did it. I really did it. The party is a success. The music’s amazing, the alcohol’s flowing, and the dance floor’s been packed from the second we opened the doors. My mother’s having the time of her life, seeing how the crowd is responding to the décor she’s designed. (Now, to be clear, the crowd is mainly drunk, but she interprets this as sheer bliss over her design choices. Let her have this one, okay?) Green Day called my father on stage for their final song, so he’s in pretty good spirits, as well. (Though he’d never heard of Green Day before. But he still enjoyed himself, regardless.)

  It’s almost time for the Lonely Hearts Club Band to go on stage, so I take a shot of liquid courage. It’s not that I’m nervous, but I haven’t been on stage with the band in years, and I wonder if it’s possible to go back. To get something back that you once had. I’m not sure if you can, but I certainly will try. Chloe’s insisted that I make an announcement, some sort of grand proclamation about the Lonely Hearts movement, so I’m going over my notes. Vodka in one hand, note card in the other.

  I feel a set of hands around my waist. Max spins me around and kisses me.

  “Someone will see us,” I whisper.

  “Then let’s go hide,” he says. We make our way down a catwalk and find an empty alcove. He kisses me and I forget all about the set I’m supposed to do, the speech I’m supposed to give.

  “I wanted to do that all night,” he says.

  “Me too.”

  We kiss and we kiss and we kiss, and I can’t get enough. I can never get enough of Max.

  “I love you,” he says.

  “I love you, too,” I say back.

  “You’re going to kill it tonight,” he says.

  I kiss him again and I forget all about the set I’m supposed to do. A bright light blinds us, and for a moment I think it’s Chloe, taking a picture. Max and I break from our embrace and turn to face the light. Only it’s not Chloe. It’s a news camera.

  “We’re here with the founder of the Lonely Hearts Club movement, and it looks like she doesn’t have a lonely heart anymore,” the reporter says. I can’t even see what station he’s from, that’s how bright the camera light is.

  “This isn’t what it looks like,” I say.

  “I’m Kel Kavanagh from Channel 4 News and I’ve got Jodi Waldman, a girl from Long Island who’s reinvented herself into a rocker persona—Jo—and started the Lonely Hearts Club movement. Jodi, what do you have to say to the fans to whom you preach your anti-love message? Would they be surprised to know that you yourself are in love?”

  “I’m not in love,” I say.

  “That certainly looked like love,” the reporter says, stifling a laugh. “Young man, what’s your name?”

  Max doesn’t say a word. He’s smart enough to know that if he doesn’t say a word, doesn’t offer a sound bite, Kel’s got nothing. No story. Nothing to report. I, on the other hand, am not that smart.

  “He’s no one,” I say. I mean to take the focus off Max, to get him out of this mess I’ve created, but it come
s out sounding like something else entirely. “He means nothing to me. You want me, right? Leave him out of this.”

  “Just to be clear,” Kel says, “you’re saying that you’re not in love with this guy?”

  “I am not in love with this guy,” I say. “I barely even know him.”

  “Then who is he?

  “He’s just the rebound guy,” I say. “As anyone who follows my blog knows, Jesse was the love of my life and he tore my heart out. Think I’d be dumb enough to fall in love again? I don’t think so.”

  The reporter signals for the cameraman to shut off the light, and finally, I can see again. I turn around to find Max, to explain myself, but it’s too late.

  He’s already gone.

  37 - I Can’t Explain

  Chloe’s announcing that our band’s about to start, so I race back down to the stage. Max is waiting for me, in the wings.

  “There you are,” I say, out of breath. “I was looking for you.”

  “What the fuck, Jo?”

  “I can explain everything,” I say.

  “That was the time to come clean,” he says. “People are hooking up left and right, clearly everyone’s moving on. Everyone but you. Now I get it. That’s why you wouldn’t sell the site, isn’t it? You do believe everything you stand for. I thought you meant it when you said you loved me.”

  “I do love you,” I say. “I do.”

  “I don’t know you at all,” he says. “Never did. I don’t even know your real name.”

  “And now,” Chloe announces from the stage, “the woman you’ve all been waiting for, the one who created it all—Jo Waldman!”

  The crowd erupts in applause, but I’m frozen where I stand. I can’t leave until everything’s okay with Max and me.

  “Your fans want you,” he says, and he points to the stage.

  “I’m not leaving,” I say. “I’m not leaving you until we’re okay.”

  “Jo?” Chloe says into the microphone and the crowd starts chanting my name. My band’s already up on stage, waiting to play.

  “I’ve got Jo Waldman for you right here,” a voice says from nowhere. It’s not Chloe; it’s not even coming from the stage. It’s like the voice of Oz or something. Then a light shines out—and there I am, kissing Max, on all three stories of the Chalice’s concrete wall.

  The News 4 reporter has figured out a way to broadcast the footage he just took of me—there’s a light shining from one of the alcoves two stories up. I hear Chloe tell security to find them and to turn it off.

  “This is who you’ve been following all this time,” he says. “But she’s a total and utter fraud. Look at her.”

  Then the footage cuts to me saying that I’m not in love, that Max doesn’t mean a thing to me. Back to Max and me making out. Looking at us, seeing us kiss, there’s no mistaking how I feel about him. There’s no mistake that I’m a liar. That I’m in love. And then to the big reveal of who I really am—just a plain, regular girl from Long Island. Jodi Waldman, the class outcast. Not Jo Waldman, the cool rocker who inadvertently started a movement. As my high school yearbook photo flashes on the wall, the security team finds the reporter and turns the video off.

  But it’s too late. The damage has already been done.

  Part Three: The Show Must Go On

  “Inside my heart is breaking.”

  38 - I Hate Myself for Loving You

  I’m front-page news. It’s all I ever wanted, but not the way I wanted it. The New York Times has me headlining the Styles section, and every gossip site has got it on their front page.

  LONELY HEARTS CREATOR OUTED AS A FRAUD, the Styles section announces. Page Six puts it a bit differently: NOT-SO-LONELY HEARTS CLUB, they call it. The picture above the fold in the Styles section is the one that appeared on US Weekly’s site during the party—the shot of Amber and me holding hands. Best friends forever and all that. But Page Six has got another photograph entirely. Above the fold, they’ve got a collage of all the bands that played that night—a veritable who’s who of punk and rock music. But toward the bottom of the page, so small you’d almost miss it if you weren’t looking, is an old photo of my band. An ancient artifact of the Lonely Hearts Club Band. The photo credit reads Chloe Park. Did they contact Chloe to get permission to use the picture?

  LONELY HEARTS CLUB TOTAL SHAM, the front page of New York Magazine’s online site declares. I click on the article, but can’t bring myself to read it. More pictures of Amber and me, more pictures of the bands. For a second, I wonder if they got quotes from any of the bands that played that night. The thought of that is just too awful to bear, so I try not to think about it too much. My favorite bands and my rock idol condemning me would really set me over the edge. And I’m in bad enough shape as it is.

  I run downstairs to grab a cup of coffee from my favorite newsstand—some fresh air will do me good—but headlines blare out at me: LONELY HEARTS CLUB MUSIC FESTIVAL ENDS IN SCANDAL, says The Observer. Even Newsday, my home paper, gets in on the action: THIS GIRL IS NOT LONELY, the headline reads, right over a picture of my face. “Don’t let her tell you otherwise.”

  All this media attention, and my band didn’t even get a chance to play.

  Next, HGTV gets in on the action. Everyone wants to cash in on my misery. David Bromstad does an interview with my mom (her lifelong dream! To finally be on HGTV!) about the décor of the Lonely Hearts Club Ball. They film on site at the Chalice, and she walks him through her various design choices, how the design complimented the anti-love theme. She even has the posters we commissioned of the anti-love couples hung up behind her as they conduct the interview. I had no idea we’d kept them. But then again, I left the party in such a rush, without even giving my band a chance to play, that I have no clue what happened at the end of the party. I can see from the HGTV special that the cleanup crew Chloe and I hired did not make it to the Chalice.

  By 5 P.M., there’s a segment on News Channel 4 where Kel Kavanagh interviews people on the street about the Lonely Hearts Club Ball. A few people never heard of it, but most of the people are outraged. They loved me; now they hate me. They trusted me; they poured their hearts out to me. And now it turns out I was just a liar. Just like everyone else they ever loved. Just like everyone else they ever trusted. Just like every other person they ever gave their hearts to.

  “What really pisses me off,” one guy tells Kel, “is how she pretended she knew how I felt. She made it seem like she was just as lonely as I was. Just as hurt. Those tickets to the Lonely Hearts Club Ball weren’t cheap, but I bought one because I believed in Jo. I believed in the Lonely Hearts Club.”

  “And who’s this?” Kel asks. The camera pans out to show the woman who’s standing next to our interview subject. The guy’s got his arm around her, and she giggles.

  “This is Samantha,” he says. “We met at the Lonely Hearts Club Ball.”

  I don’t know what I’m more upset about—that I’m being outed as a total and utter fraud, or that all the people interviewed are total hypocrites. Out of one side of their mouths they’re saying that they’re disappointed in me, but from the other, they explain how it all worked out in the end, since they found someone amazing at the ball or on my site. Don’t they realize that makes them total frauds, too?

  The Web site traffic’s up. But the comments are deadly. I can’t take my eyes off them—they rip me apart, calling me a fraud and a fake and a phony, but I can’t stop reading. Every time I tell myself to shut my computer, I somehow find myself back on the site, reading about how awful I am.

  E-mails start coming in from advertisers—exercising their option to not renew their ads. I guess I’m not the only one reading the comments section. In a week, I’ll have no money coming in from the site.

  Zilch. Nothing. Nada.

  But none of that matters. Everyone’s got someone, got something, except for me. Max won’t return my calls, and even Chloe is spending an inordinate amount of time outside of her apartment. It’s like she’ll do
anything to spend less time alone with me.

  How do I fix all of this? I decide to start from scratch, just like I did a year ago. I made something out of nothing then, so maybe I can get a little of that fairy dust and make it happen again.

  I pick up my cell phone and dial. “I’d like to schedule that meeting,” I say. I can’t even remember the guy’s name, but that doesn’t stop him from taking my call.

  “About what?” he asks. I can tell he’s surprised to hear from me. I’m surprised to be making the call, so that makes two of us.

  “I’m interested in selling the Lonely Hearts Club site,” I say. I know that the offer’s a bit old by now, but maybe it’s still on the table. If I can just sell the site, start over again, maybe I can make things right. Make amends with Chloe, start over with my music without any distractions, and get Max back.

  “Jo, the site’s worthless now,” he says. “The time to sell it was before the Lonely Hearts Club Ball. Before the scandal, certainly. The site’s over. Everyone’s moved on. You should, too. Call me when you come up with your next idea for a Web site. I’d love to be in business with you, and I know you’ll come up with something new.”

  I don’t know why I’m disappointed. I knew that no one would want the site now. I knew it was all over. I’m back to where I was last Valentine’s Day—no money, no boyfriend, only now I don’t have family and friends to help me pick up the pieces.

  Amber Fairchild pops on the TV—some second-rate entertainment reporter wants to know what she thinks of the Lonely Hearts Club Ball debacle (their words).

  “I thought the party was a big success!” she cries. “I had the time of my life. I danced so much my feet hurt the next day!”

  “How can you say that?” the reporter asks. “The founder of the whole thing was outed as a complete and utter fraud.”