Documentary (7 page)

“Bob Dylan Carroll, I’ve been looking all over this campus for you,” he announced, sounding relieved. At first, she was utterly embarrassed when the camera crew turned
its focus to her, but the feeling was fleeting, and it bled into something more pleasant. She was touched and a little surprised. She also tried not to think too much about the blazing heat throbbing up from beneath her skin where his hands were.

“Um, what for?” Her voice had an unintentionally suspicious tone about it. Her gaze trailed him as he shifted to her side, and he slung his arm around her shoulders.

“This…” Kai pointed at her for the camera. “…Is the new director of my web series on Kai White dot com.” The crowd erupted with cheers, but Dylan was shocked. Her stomach plummeted and she eased out from under his arm. She faced him but could only shake her head with her mouth open as her thoughts were too twisted up to express. Her feelings bounced from one to the other, like the ball in a pinball machine—confusion, shock, excitement, and confusion again—and she was unable to hold on to any one of them long enough to really react beyond the deer in the headlights look. “But Nina said…”

             
Kai shook his head with a dismissive smirk. “I—”

             
“Fucking douchebag!” Everyone turned toward the sound of the loud, angry voice, even though it was impossible to tell who it had come from. Kai’s expression darkened and his jaw tensed in anger.

             
“You’re a douchebag, Kai White! You suck!” Kai’s eyes flared as he stormed off from her and broke through the mass; although, it had parted for him on its own. The camera crew started to shut down, and they asked the surrounding people to put their camera phones away. Dylan went after Kai. He had changed Nina’s mind, so it was the least she could do.

The tone of the crowd was changing, charging up, as they followed Kai. Some people looked concerned,
while others relished the chance to be spectators to some altercation. The distant blare of a siren didn’t even scatter them. Kai swiveled around with his fists clenched, not really focusing on anyone in particular.

“Yeah, it’s really easy to
yell shit when you’re anonymous!” he screamed to no one.

“Kamikaze Kai.” The guy finally stepped forward, walking within a few feet of Kai just as Dylan reached his side, and the nearby horde of people closed in around them. The guy probably went to her school but she had never seen him before. She eyed the group of guys behind the
provocateur, standing up on the short brick and stone benches that encased palm trees in the quad, with their camera phones aimed right at Kai. They were trying to bait him for Internet footage. The guy pierced Kai with a smug glare and Kai shot a menacing look back.

“I don’t get why anyone pays you to do anything. You’re a shitty singer,” the guy spat, and the crowd went wild with jeers
at Kai. Dylan was terrified and started to reach out to grasp Kai’s hand to pull him out of there. She had never seen the people on her campus behave like this. It was as if Kai’s being there had warped them somehow.

             
“Let it go, Kai. Let’s get out of here…”

Dylan retracted her hand before her fingers enclosed his wrist. It was one of his crewmembers pleading from behind them, but Kai’s temper was still smoldering as he jerked his head toward the man in his group. Before he could make a full rotation, his gaze landed on Dylan and his face softened. He looked mortified, stunned and a little embarrassed. She pressed out what she hoped was a reassuring smile, a smile meant to talk him down off the ledge. His gaze stayed hooked onto her and she imagined the noises falling away. It was cliché to think of them as the only two people in an energetic quad full of others out of blood, but for a moment, she heard nothing, and saw only the smile he returned. His blue eyes
flashed, as if to tell her that he was okay. She nodded.

“You’re a pussy, Kai!” the guy yelled angrily, but Kai stayed impervious to the taunt. He didn’t even look at him. Looping sirens were a lot closer now, and the edges of the crowd began to
break.

“Kai! Let’s go!
” a crewmember yelled again with more urgency and conviction this time. Kai obeyed and backed off slowly. Dylan turned to watch him go and the crowd groaned in disappointment. The belligerent guy, however, was still calling after him with aggressive verbal jabs. Kai broke into a jog toward the far end of the quad in the direction of the parking lot. Dylan wanted to kick herself for not saying anything before he left.
Like I accept. Thank you. See you in December.

Suddenly, Kai stopped running, did an about face and ran back, straight up to her. “By the way, the job’s still yours…if you want it.”

Yes. She definitely still wanted it. An
d that’s what she told everyone: both Kate and Winslow on the way back to her dorm, her parents later that night, and Professor Jordan the following class period. Kai made it official with an email welcoming her to the team, and she was severely disappointed when Nina took over the email reins with documents to fill and information on housing on Maui. Dylan would have to pay weekly rent for the time there, but Nina would locate the place and send some options her way. Nina also insisted on meeting her in person before Dylan’s travels, so they scheduled a meeting in Palo Alto, an affluent town outside of San Francisco and near Silicon Valley, where Nina was courting a few potential tech clients. Nina explained that she ran Kai White, LLP, as Kai’s partner, but she also ran a management and public relations firm that oversaw careers across various industries, though her roots were in talent management.

Dylan
’s class work slowed down significantly by the time Thanksgiving break arrived. After the gathering at Winslow’s, she and Kate left the next day for their respective homes. Dylan spent most of the holiday in her room outlining her notes for her exams to lessen the workload when she got back. She was in the middle of Psych when a request for a video chat from Nina popped on her screen. She wanted to impress her so she accepted, only to discover Kai White on the other end. Dylan’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Busy?” Kai asked.
He was so casual with her.

“A little…” she said, biting her lip, unsure of what to say a
s she tried not to look so starstruck. Her heart was bouncing around in her chest. “Getting my Psych notes in order. Exams are coming up.”

“Nina and I have a bunch of meetings with some label execs in L.A. I had a break and she made the mistake of leaving me with her laptop. I saw your name in her contacts,” he explained after a half-smile. “What are you studying in Psych?”

“Intro to Social Psychology,” she said.

“I thought you were a film major?” he asked.

“I needed the credit to round out my schedule, and my best friend begged me to take it with her,” she said. “Or coerced, rather.”

“Is this the ‘Screw Your Roommate’ friend?” he asked.

“Yes!” she said, laughing. Kai furrowed his brow in silence.

“So, like, studying people…and how we interact with each other?” he asked, leaning back a
little. His face stayed serious like he was really interested.

Dylan smiled and nodded. “Yup. And how we see ourselves and others and how we’re influenced by all the information we pick up in the world.”

“Ah. And perception often dictates behaviors and beliefs,” he said. His lips slipped into another half-smile. “So the film student likes to study people too. Sounds cool.”

“Cool only in theory,” she joked, sliding her pen behind her ear. “Only when a GPA isn’t on the line.”

“You plan on only studying over the holiday?” he asked. “I think J.Kutch is performing in D.C. this weekend. Are you gonna go?” He was a popular rapper she was familiar with.

“No…” She tried to think of a reason to explain away her lack of a social life. Everything besides what it really was: her refusal to do anything fun anymore. “Lots of family stuff.”

“Oh…yeah...right,” Kai said, rubbing the back of his neck. “‘Cause if you want to, just let me know…he’s a good friend of mine.”

“Thanks, but I just don’t think I’ll have the time.” Dylan
gave a gracious grin. “And are you namedropping?” she teased.

Kai leaned in
to the camera as though he were about to whisper into her ear. “Definitely. How else am I going to impress the girl filming my series? It’s a bribe, actually. My career is essentially in your hands!”

“Oh,” she said, holding one of her hands up
then smirking. “No pressure or anything.”

“None…except…what’s your middle name?”

Dylan furrowed her brow in confusion. “My middle name? Kimberly.”

“Dylan Kimberly Carroll. The name I’ll drop when I’m sitting at the same bar every night when I’m forty
, screaming at anyone who’ll listen to how my career got completely derailed. The fight won’t be discussed, just Dylan Kimberly Carroll.”

“Oh, great,” she said, smacking herself on the forehead. He was kind of funny.

Kai looked away from the screen for a second. “Well, I hear my overlords heading my way,” he said after a laugh when he twisted his head back around.

“Oh…okay,” she said, trying not to sound so disappointed. Twice now, she had gotten sad when he had to go. She pressed out a strained smile.

“So, um, good luck with studying,” he said weakly, looking disappointed as well.

“Thanks. Bye.
” She released a heavy breath after he disappeared. Were she and Kai becoming friends, or was he just being friendly because they had to work together? Either way, as she continued to prepare for finals, she developed a giddy feeling that was still gripping her when she went to bed. Dylan assumed that it was the last time she would hear from him, but Kai video chatted with her for the entirety of her vacation. Their talks continued on the same trajectory. They started with school or the film project but usually ended in more personal conversation about favorite movies or music. Thanks to Taylor, she discovered that the incident at her school had ended up on a celebrity gossip website with another Kamikaze Kai headline, and she was glad that her parents thought the Internet existed only for checking email and forwarding Aunt Mabel’s pictures of her knitting group. They might’ve had second thoughts about letting her spend several weeks with him, which was a situation that already seemed as fragile as a floating soap bubble.

By the time she returned to school, the job was less susceptible to vanishing now that her parents seemed to understand
that the job was important, and why she didn’t want to come home again. She would miss Christmas and her twenty-first birthday with her family. It might’ve felt like abandonment, but she wasn’t just accepting the job for herself, this was for Mac, too. Part of keeping his memory alive meant putting several other aspects of her life on hold so that she could completely focus on seeing her dreams through. She was alive; he wasn’t. It was the least she could do.

Kate clicked through the list of recorded shows on Winslow’s DVR. She was the only one who had cable, but 90% of the shows on the DVR were Kate’s. She stopped on
Behind The Music: Jeremy Bunyan.
She selected it and fast-forwarded through most of the show. “I recorded this ‘cause it aired, like, a week after the fight. Okay, I wanted you to see this part,” she said to Dylan when she clicked play. They were both sitting in Winslow’s living room. They had moved into her apartment because the three of them would not see each other after finals until the following semester, and their particular study habits would’ve made their roommates homicidal. Before Kate put the TV on, fiery Latin music had been shaking the walls of the place.

A still image appeared on screen of the four members of Evernight, with Kai and Jeremy in the middle smiling, arms over each other’s shoulders, on stage presenting an award.
“Shortly after their appearance at the MTV EMAs, Evernight announced that guitarist Kai White was leaving the group,”
the narrator’s ominous voice said.
The scene transitioned to a flood of photographers descending upon Jeremy as he exited a hotel in the days after the announcement. They were shooting questions at him as he was rushed toward a dark SUV.

“Have you spoken to Kai?
” one of them shouted.
“What’s going to happen with Evernight? Will you be leaving the group too? Does Kai plan to go solo?”

Jeremy froze before entering the backseat of the vehicle, bracing his hand against the outside edge. His face was pale and his eyes were hidden behind sunglasses.
“My best friend just left my band. Hasn’t been a great few days. Sorry, guys.”
Jeremy climbed into the car without another word.

“Within a year of White’s departure, Evernight completely disbanded without releasing another album,
” the narrator said, picking up the story again.
“The rumors of internal discord that had plagued the group for almost a year had finally proven true.”

A female writer for a music magazine materialized on screen.
“Kai White’s exit was like yanking the rug out from under Evernight, maybe even like pulling the cornerstone away. Jeremy may have been the voice and the face, but Kai, as young as he was, was the songwriter and sometime producer behind the first and second albums. He shaped their sound and producers wanted to work with the band because of what he was doing for the group musically. Between the first and second albums, he had negotiated a higher than normal royalty rate for the songs he wrote, and he was writing songs for other artists as well. He was apparently gearing up a lot of new things for their third album. When leaks of some of the music they were working on after him hit the web, the reviews were ‘mixed,’ to put it kindly.  Without him, they knew Evernight was over, and Jeremy was really, really crushed.”
Kate stopped the show and lowered herself down to the carpet, back to her circle of textbooks.