“I...” Cecil began to say, but stopped short, looking across the hotel room and catching sight of Aster's scowl burning a hole in the newspaper.

“What a Disaster!” Sylvia whispered, peering over her shoulder. Aster jumped in surprise, crumpling the paper.

Sylvia giggled and laid on Aster a smile and stifled squeal which were her way of saying, 'I don't mean to laugh at you'.

“What they mean to say is it was a masterpiece!” she peeped, grabbing Aster's shoulders.

“No, what they mean to say is that the spotlight is Johnny Vallerie's, no matter what the fuck we do!” Aster snarled, deforming the paper further into a tiny little ball.

“What did you expect?” Cecil interjected, rifling through his sketches of notation. “You publicly accused one of the biggest musicians out there of far more than just not crediting us for the song. How is anyone gonna let that go?”

Aster threw the ball in his direction. “What was I supposed to do?” she shot back. “Just sit there and show them that we're exactly the kind of push-overs you can steal songs from?!”

“No,” Cecil replied, growing irritated. “But there's better ways to go about it than that, no matter how deserved. And what does reading every headline about it help? All that does is make you angrier.”

“Ah, give her a break, Cecil!” Sylvia cut in, hand on hip. “We're in like... every paper ever! Can you really blame her for wanting to see?!”

“I can when I hear her mumbling 'fuck you' every five minutes,” he quipped, and Sylvia tried to hold back a sudden fit of laughter.

“Easy to say when it's not your name in every headline!” Aster shouted, flashing a violent red at Sylvia's aborted giggles. “Our first press conference is nothing but a fucking...” She paused, reaching for a paper. “A fucking ad spot for him!” And with that she yanked it open and held it up, displaying a photo of Johnny Vallerie above which read the headline, The Love You Forevers: Johnny Vallerie's Master Plan? She pulled harder, ripping the paper in two.

“Holy smokes!” exclaimed Sylvia.

“Not a word about the obvious Estrucean-jazz influence on the first track or the modded Chamberlain all over the record which I definitely fucking know nobody else has used!” she whined, tossing the remnants of the page, and Johnny Vallerie's face, to the floor.

“Because their job is to spin a headline,” Cecil replied, watching uncomfortably at the shreds fell. “I mean, come on. The biggest song of last year just happens to be written by a no-name band whose antics are so out there people don't even believe they exist? You can't tell me that doesn't sound a lot better than 'Local band uses keyboard nobody's heard of'.”

Sylvia doubled over in giggles as a white-hot blush made its way across Aster's face.

“That's not the fucking point!” she exploded. “Can't they at least write articles without making puns on my name every goddamn headline?!”

“You say that like it's a bad thing!” Sylvia countered sheepishly, hopping in between the beds. Aster responded with a playful smack upside her head, which Sylvia took with a devious smile.

“Well, whatever, what's done is done,” Cecil groaned, falling back onto the bed. His gaze grazed the off-white ceiling and fell upon the notation scattered beside him. “We didn't decide to spend our day off in the hotel just to see Johnny's name stare back at us, did we?” he asked. “We wanted to write the song that will give the world no choice but to forget him.”

“Yeah, and knock their socks off!” chorused Sylvia, boxing the air.

Aster scowled and folded her arms but nodded. As much as it hurt to spend their single day off within the confines of a dingy hotel huddled over guitars and half-finished, ink-stained sheets of notation, the alternative was a present-in-stasis; a future arrested by a hunger for vengeance which only the perfect pop song could free.

And Sylvia saw this at work in Aster clearer than anyone. While Aster was hellbent against canceling their trip to Wally's Wacky Walleye Wonderland (an excursion which no doubt promised Aster her first glimpse at the madness that was the amusement parks of which Sylvia so often raved), Sylvia held her ground, adamant that she would not enjoy it one single peep if she knew that Aster was even the slightest bit sad. But Aster fought back, eyes moist with protest. She couldn't bear the thought of giving up their trip, which Sylvia had looked towards for so long and with so much eagerness, on the account of someone who had already stolen so much from them.

Yet, Sylvia was firmer still. “If writing a killer song would make you feel better, then what better way is there to spend the day?!” she asked her. “If a song needs to come out then that's not your fault; you can't choose when to be an artist!” And Aster, at last relenting, held onto Sylvia with all her might as she wept. This wasn't what she had planned. Their tour was supposed to be a momentous occasion, the moment where they declared to the world that they, the Love You Forevers, existed and were going to take it by storm. But instead of nights reeling from the immaculate pleasure of exhibiting her art to an ever-new group of faces, she spent them nuzzled in the crook of an unfamiliar pillow, staining sterile linen saline, haunted by her thirst for payback.

How could she sleep? The thought that people in the future would talk only of the Love You Forevers as the authors of Johnny Vallerie's comeback made Aster not want to believe in a future, such was the misery comparable to that of never starting a band in the first place, or even lurching through the doldrums of obscurity as she did in 2066.

She hadn't come to Peppermint Plains to be a one-hit wonder, trapped in the orbit of a chain-smoking dead dwarf star, or anything but the pinnacle of success. Yet the fact that Johnny Vallerie could still rise from the metaphorical grave showed clearly that they had not destroyed him. The Love You Forevers, regrettably, were still only seen as the insane band of delinquents who wrote one good song for a superstar, even though Aster knew that they were a constellation. It was up to her and Cecil, then, to write a song so good, so undeniably magnetic that it would tear his grip from their coattails, fingernail by fingernail. But Aster struggled to write. Whirlwind days following the unprecedented success of their press conference had so flurried her mind with considerations of follow-up records, interviews, dodging autographs, and the like, that her bushy little head could hardly keep track of that night's setlist, let alone write the pop masterpiece that would crown The Love You Forevers as untouchable.

It was like an open wound, the desire to avenge herself, which she had not the time nor the energy to close. And so like one, it began to fester and eat away at her acuity of mind. A sold-out string of four dates that featured the band's best performances yet were relegated to a dull hum in the back of her mind which throbbed away as she lay awake at night, gazing at the hotel ceiling. It was there, upon the off-white, unfamiliar geometry of the ceiling where the recollections and feelings of the past few days were projected; films for her mind's eye to marvel at in the twilight while Sylvia slept softly on the bed over.

She could once again see the faces of celebrities, local politicians, and others backstage, watching the band like some curious oddity who would bite them if they got too close. She could hear the tapping of pens on paper from beyond the curtain as a battalion of journalists waited for them to be trotted out before the world. It felt as though a cord had been wrapped around Aster's lungs and pulled tight, so hard did she find it to breathe that she thought this panic attack would actually kill her.

You've practiced for this, you've imagined this moment your entire life, she told herself, attempting to fight back her terror while gazing thousand-yard long at the floor as a whirl of people preparing for the event tossed about the band like a storm of leaves. Where was the Aster of that childish dream, shielded by jet-black sunglasses and an impertinent sneer that disarmed all critics, now? What were the years of daydreaming for if a single camera flash could petrify her like some halogen medusa?

I'm going to say something weird or make a weird face, and they're going to capture it for all time, she thought with horror and envisioned the stiff, awkward expression that would be tattooed upon history in black newspaper ink— a portrait of incredible social deficit to be hidden away in some drawer or attic, waiting for the day that she might possibly conquer her social anxiety, only to rise from the dead and set her back completely.

And she may have been lost to that moment entirely, the strain of someone so socially anxious undertaking such a Herculean effort as that of a press conference, if it were not for her band holding the unraveling bits of her together at the very last moment.

“Remember, we're here for you!” Sylvia's pacifying voice cheered softly beside her. She turned and saw Cecil and Marion beside Sylvia, looking back at her. Marion flexed his bicep in a show of encouragement, saying that this event was nothing, while Cecil tore his eyes away. A terse good luck came forth from his reddened face, and Aster, so surprised to see someone like Cecil as nervous as she was, momentarily forgot her own. It was in that moment that she realized, somewhat embarrassingly, that this event wasn't just about her; that though the world always feels as though it revolves around you, you are nothing more than a fragment of one great ring of humanity, trying as desperately as the rest to assert some wanton, clueless trajectory.

It was in their support that she found power, and she drew from it like from a well as the band's hands came together in a huddle, as the call for them to take the stage sounded out like the first gunshot of war.

—

Never before had Aster encountered the desire to flee in such primal form as she did walking out before those several dozen men, all dressed in their suits and smart attire, all wearing discerning, dis-emotive glances, and all incredibly eager to devour her life. They were neatly gathered in their seats like a checkerboard of eager scribbling, hurried discussion humming among them as the group entered.

What followed was an experience that could only be likened to a fugue-state; a waking-sleep paralysis where every inch of Aster's body seemed to be bound by the same cord that was pulling tight her lungs. Her eyes were glued to the table, and only every so often, under the umbrella of a remark of Sylvia's directing the attention of the room, could she steal a glance or two around it. When she did it felt as though she were looking at landscapes on the moon, so detached did the place feel from anything else happening in Peppermint Plains. The very dimension of time itself seemed to have been gelatinized like burnt sugar; the clock's hands refused to budge even an inch, no matter how many terrified, furtive glances Aster threw in its direction; she could not, even in her own simulation, command time. But even these concerns, monolithic in a vacuum, were trifles against that most imperious source of angst, that crown of humiliation that adorned her head and which she felt focused the attention of the room on her like the rays of the sun through a magnifying glass— her bobbed haircut.

Aster was, of course, as familiar with the Beatles' early press conferences as art is with Mona Lisa, and knew that these early interviews were dominated by snide remarks and jocular questions about their attitudes, personalities, beliefs, and most of all— their hairdos. And so it was with this in mind, harboring the great fear that she, and her messy hair, would receive the same kind of attention, that she succumbed to Sylvia and Sísí's assertions that a bobbed haircut typical of the period would look great on her.

She had never felt more mortified in her life. The embarrassment was so visceral that she even found herself looking to her train wreck experience fronting the register as a symbol of better days gone by, marveling at the depths to which humiliation could drag her while all the while believing that she, steaming from both the residual heat of the hair-styling machine and scalding blush across her face, would promptly die from these wounds to her self-image. That the group would receive her with such unfiltered pomp, particularly Sylvia who screeched so loudly upon seeing her that Floyd thought there was a robbery, and Cecil whose brain seemed to short-circuit at the stupidity of her look, showed Aster that there was no hope of her ever resembling anything like a put-together human, much less something that could be called 'cute', and hurriedly undid her hairdo in a haze of panic minutes before the conference started.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

This messier hair received even more attention than her normal hairdo ever would have, and though she tried her best to withdraw from reality while the interview was underway, she could not shake off the subconscious feeling that eyes were crawling all over her, not excluding Sylvia's and Cecil's, who kept turning to look at her as frequently as they did the reporters. Never again, echoed regret through the hollows of her mind. All thoughts and considerations had gone away for the winter, sheltering from the storm of anxiety that was currently throwing her battered psyche about like a rag-doll.

Eventually, though, the conference passed, and the storm became a hurricane. A meltdown of biblical proportions met the band backstage, as Floyd, colored a shade of purple only found in the richest vineyards, declared that the band would be an excellent fit for submarines, for they had just torpedoed their chances with a proficiency he could have never believed. It was only Mareby-Roquefort, with his assertion that 'any press is good press', who was able to curtail Floyd from unleashing total armageddon. He assured him that the papers would eat this up, that it didn't matter what they said about the band so long as they had them in their mouths, because it was the word which ultimately converted to the dollar, and Floyd could not argue with that.

He could not argue with it even though Mareby-Roquefort, who called on all his powers and connections from the Peppermint Plains Gazette to pack the crowd with journalists he personally knew or knew to be limp-wristed with the stones they threw, had utterly fallen flat. Willie Cooper, who, believing himself to have been the first to give the band 'a voice' and to have thus earned it, had christened himself 'headmaster' of the event, and countered Mareby-Roquefort's efforts by employing a fleet of his own disc-jockey pals, eager to see fireworks fly.

And fly they did; no sooner than later that night, while stopping at a local diner for dinner (where Aster's fugue of mortification quickly became one of wonder as she experienced true fast food service for the first time in her life), Floyd received no less than an armful of telegrams— pre-copies of headlines for tomorrow morning's papers, fresh from Mareby-Roquefort's contacts.

The message was clear: the Love You Forevers were a mystery, and the world wished to solve them. Floyd could now not have been any happier if you had told him that the band bled gold, for in a way they already did— every word from their mouths seemed to be imbued with an almost otherworldly ability to captivate anyone, and Kyrietone, Floyd, and Mareby-Roquefort, rather than recoil in horror at Aster's litigious statements, saw the band as the conquistadors saw the heart of Tenochtitlan; an opportunity for riches to which there could be no conceivable end.

—

The price of success is paid in life rather than gold, and Kyrietone, smelling blood in the air, immediately moved to taste every last drop of it. The second that headlines were out to print the demands rolled in; a follow-up record in three months, a second single in one, and a weekly radio appearance on Willie Cooper's program were just a few of the stipulations Aster had heard leak out of a conversation between Floyd and Mareby-Roquefort one late night after the conference.

“What?!” Cecil exploded upon hearing this second-hand. “Where do they think songs come from, the end of a fucking rainbow?”

“That'd be so cool!” added Sylvia. But Cecil did not concur and told Aster in worried confidence that things would only get worse if they did not find a way to pump the breaks.

“The same thing happened with me and Sylvia's group when we were kids,” he confided in her one night after a show. “Floyd couldn't handle all the requests, even before his dad canned the thing. If we're not careful Kyrietone is going to be demanding an album every month.” And Aster agreed although Cecil had no clue he was preaching to the choir— a girl who knew all too well about the historical outcomes of massively successful pop artists. She was aware that Kyrietone saw the band as no more than a workhorse, which was already evident in the ban placed upon their interacting with any of Magnolia Haus' roster; the band's feelings drew the least concern.

To them, the Love You Forevers were nothing but a bullet being fired at Magnolia Haus in the hope that the giant would stagger enough to lose the lead. Aster knew that no thought was being put into what a force to be reckoned with the band could become if given the proper resources and time, for this was a world that had yet to know of the rock band who were artists in their own right. This was a universe absent The Beatles, the Velvet Underground, CAN, and all the other trailblazing artists who emerged out of the primordial soup of rock's nascent days to show that an electric guitar could do anything that Chopin did. Thus, they would be disregarded with all the care of a spent casing once Magnolia Haus' fall was complete, for they were only a weapon, and there were always other bullets with which to reload.

It stung all the more to think that she of all people should stagger back from their predictable greed, despite understanding that record companies were little more than vampires with registered titles. But in a way the burgeoning war between Kyrietone and Magnolia Haus was unprecedented; there was not a single historical parallel Aster could think of that matched the promised scale of the coming conflict, should both their coffers be fully mobilized. To think that all of this, tribulations of the band's newfound fame included, was only the beginning, utterly dumbfounded Aster. She stood in awe of the future's horizon as she laid it out in her mind, unable to discern anything but the white sun peeling over the rim. For the first time in her life in Peppermint Plains, Aster had no idea what to expect.

Magnolia Haus themselves were still silent about the opposition, concentrating on a massive media push to begin Godiva's world tour. Her name and image were quickly becoming ubiquitous, and soon TV, media, and print all bore the call that Godiva was coming to your town, and that nothing else, as far as your ears and eyes were concerned, mattered. She and Magnolia Haus still held the top spots in the charts, filled the biggest venues, and as far as they were concerned, operated solely in an industry completely their own; to them, the Love You Forevers did not exist. And it would remain that way, Aster thought bitterly, for as long as she was with Kyrietone, she would never see, let alone meet her.

How Aster seethed as they passed each town, their welcome signs another goodbye on a chance to ever see Godiva. How long would their contract with Kyrietone last? Four years minimum, she recalled with a sickening turn in her guts. January 1970 marked the earliest opportunity at which the contract would be void if they didn't renew it. How many acts lived and fell from grace in that short of a time span? Godiva was young, younger than Aster; that vitality and raw energy is as transient as the pre-dawn dew; in four years' time, it will have almost certainly been consumed.

There was then the idea of just disobeying Kyrietone and receiving whatever punishment might come. This was Aster's chief consideration; she couldn't care less what they thought and would never let them have any real power over her; they needed the Love You Forevers too much in this particular moment to be able to drop them in retaliation. But Sylvia was horrified at Aster's instance that she didn't care, recoiling when Aster stated that she'd go if she wanted.

"But Aster, you can't!" Sylvia exclaimed. "You saw what Floyd and Mareby did to Marion for talking about the mob thing!"

Cecil moved to speak but didn't say a word when Aster turned to him with fire in her eyes. If one more person told her what to do, if any wall should remain erect between her and art, she would destroy it.

“Isn't it unfair, Cecil?!” Sylvia cried, gesturing at Aster. “Look at her, how can they make her have such a sad face?!” and Aster flushed with a red that made it seem as though every pore on the surface of her skin had filled up with blood and embarrassment. She wanted to shrink from existence but was so caught off-guard by the attention that all she could do was shirk back in an expression of awkward pouting, like a cat caught wearing its cute outfit by an excited family. Sylvia screeched in delight at the sight while Cecil remained silent, grimacing as if a golf club had struck his knee.

—

Aster truly wondered if there were any limits to this anger which seemed only to increase with each passing day. Never in her life had she ever been so disrespected, attacked in such an intimate spot as that of her love for art. It was, after all, the well from which her being sprung and from which was drawn the meaning that constructed the world; to deny Aster her appreciation of it was to strike at the very heart of the universe— to become her ultimate enemy.

It seemed impossible, then, as it always did, that hope would come, until Aster spied two indistinct slips of paper between Cecil's fingers.

"What are those?" she asked.

Cecil did not immediately answer. He seemed to be very carefully choosing his words and was beset by a look of anxiety she had only ever known herself to make, which began at once to flood her with concern as her mind began to deal the horrible possibilities before her. Was he handing in his resignation? Had she not given him enough credit on the album after all? This couldn't happen now, she thought, her stomach lurching. Not now! Not as they were finally on the way up.

Perhaps it was something else; news that he was delivering covertly? Had Johnny Vallerie stolen another song? No, why would he deliver that news and not Mareby-Roquefort?

Her eyes locked on to the paper, regarding it like a gun to the face.

Cecil glowered as Sylvia began to race around him in excitement. His face was flushed red as he held on to the two pieces of paper.

“Come on, Cecil! Stop teasing us!” she exclaimed, dancing. “What are they?!”

Aster's voice croaked; she had to apologize before it was too late. She couldn't let him—

But Cecil spoke and her world went still.

"Tickets to Godiva," he at last answered. Her despair immediately felt like it had been nothing but the smallest streak of gray across the blue, sunbleached sky. A tidal wave of joy, a supernova of white-hot disbelief surged forward, obliterating all the anger and misery inside her. She began to tremble; her body was not adapted to processing such elation.

“How did you get those?!” Sylvia erupted, splaying her arms outward in an attempt to snatch them. Cecil threw his hands up in defense while Sylvia bounced on her tippy toes like a child trying to crown the Christmas tree.

“Sylvia, stop!” he reprimanded, rising to his feet on the bed. His glance crossed the room and met Aster's astonished eyes. “I... Willie Cooper was giving them to the band after the press table,” he admitted.

Sylvia stopped and looked up at Cecil as he continued.

“And Mareby took them. I dug them out of his coat while he was sleeping.”

Aster and Sylvia's eyes went wide. “You stole them?!” the pair cried in unison. Cecil flashed red and disembarked from the bed, moving away from the girls. “He stole them from us,” was his defense, delivered to the door.

“But Cecil!” Sylvia whispered in astonishment. “If Floyd and Mareby find out!”

“So what?” he countered. “We have free will, don't we? Who are they to tell us what to do with it? Who are they to say we can't do something as simple as enjoy a show?”

Sylvia's exuberant smile flattened. Aster, wearing her halo of disbelief, darkened, and turned her dejected eyes towards Cecil.

“These are for tomorrow,” Sylvia said sadly, examining the ticket as she received it. “We have to meet Mr. Applegate in the evening.”

Aster looked down at the ticket and held the date in her eyes as dark patches blossomed on its paper. Why was it always that happiness drew near enough to kiss her neck, only to vanish at being beheld? Was peace that elusive?

“Forget about it,” Cecil said.

Aster looked up at him. “Forget about what?”

“The meeting,” he answered, his voice now resolute.

Aster confusion remained. “How can we do that?” she asked. “Everyone's going to be there; there's no way that we can—”

“I'll distract him,” he said, still not facing them. Aster and Sylvia's eyes grew yet larger.

“What are you going to do?!” Sylvia asked in a hushed awe, disbelieving that Cecil of all people could be involved in anything even remotely be considered an adventure. “We can't take them on!” she clamored, waving her arms. “They got Marion and Marcy!”

“You think Floyd can say no to a personal interview?” he replied.

“What do you mean?! Someone wants to interview Mr. Floyd?”

“No, but if someone told him anyways that his favorite journalist and part-time variety show host Arlington Eves was looking to interview him I figure the entire hotel could burn down and he wouldn't notice. And if you two happen to disappear while he's waiting, what can they do?”

A squeal that sounded like hot steam out of a kettle emanated from Sylvia as she bit her lips and held her hands to her face, as she boiled over with thoughts of mischief and adventure.

“Like spies!” she cried, grabbing Aster's hands. “We're gonna be like spies, Aster!” But Aster was in another world, a hazy, blossom world, staggering from equal parts delirium and bliss. She looked at Cecil how one looks at the sky after an eclipse; how did he suddenly defy all expectations, and how was she to perceive him now? In all her short, small life had never a graciousness been bestowed upon her like this; the deepest compliments she had ever been paid outside of Sylvia were those of her father's love. She didn't think she was worth the sacrifice, and so the question trembled on her lips like the first precipitous call of the morning quaking in a bird's breast; what had someone like her ever done to deserve this?

"Why...?" she asked as delicately as sugar string.

"Because it's fucked up that they think they can control you like that,” he answered, turning away. “They pay for your records, not your chains. And if there's one thing I've learned about you it's that nothing matters more than music; I'm not going to let them do that to you."

She cursed her quiet self and the insurmountable, already established norms of their relationship which prevented her from showering him with 'thank yous'— the only display of gratitude that Aster felt wouldn't be a pathetic insult towards what in her world was the equivalent of Moses being handed the commandments from God.

“Thank you,” her heart sang. Even un-vocalized gratitude echoes through the fabric of the universe.