Believers Never Die Pt. 1

I may as well have signed my contract in blood.

I didn't know what I was doing, what was in store for me. How could I? I was four. I was trusting my parents to act like mature adults and do what was best for me. Unfortunately, what I missed was that my father was a little bitch and my mother's puppet. My mother, on the other hand, was only there with me because she could cash in on my newly discovered talent. She bought an apartment in Los Angeles for us. She has left Carolina and Brooklyn with a nanny in Orange County. I hadn't questioned it at the time. I didn't know them. Why should I care? I had my mother. Nothing else mattered to me, other than the fact that she finally wanted me. For the first time, I felt satisfaction. Unfortunately, I would spend the next fifteen years trying to find it again.

Everything was fun at first, especially recording. I didn't exactly know what I was supposed to do. It seemed simple enough to me. All I had to do was sit there and sing into this circular thing, and I had to wear these big headphone things over my ears that made me feel deaf. I remember sitting in the booth on my stool, pretending I was deaf. I saw mouths moving, but I had no idea what they were saying. I titled my head to the side and watched everyone. Somebody looked frantic. Another looked as though they didn't care. Another guy was just pressing a bunch of buttons to pretend he was doing something important so nobody would yell at him for not doing his job.

Eventually, I got bored, and I took the headphones off just so I could hear what was going on. The guy sitting at the sound board pressed a button and spoke into a little microphone. Suddenly, his voice was booming into the booth. "You're a lucky kid, you know that?"

I just blinked and shook my head. "No..."

The guy chuckled. "Charlie doesn't personally supervise everyone's recording sessions. You're a lucky kid."

"Oh," I said, and I nodded. I didn't know what he meant, so I just put the big headphones back on my ears. Being deaf was intriguing. I wondered what it was like to be blind.

I put my hands over my eyes and let the feeling sink in. Wait, no. This was too hard. I didn't like this. Quickly, I removed my hands, and there stood a grinning Charlie wearing a black leather jacket, tight jeans, and a deep v-neck shirt. At the time, he looked insane. I would later realize that Charlie was way ahead of the fashion curve. He leaned into the soundboard and hit a button, looking right at me. "Hey, kid, sorry I'm late," he apologized. I just nodded. He shrugged his shoulders. "Don't ever have sex in an elevator. It's not worth it, kid, it's just not."

Sex? What was that? Well if I asked him... No, I would look stupid. I simply furrowed my eyebrows and nodded, like I agreed. I saw Brad Pitt do it in movies all the time. Upon Charlie's instruction, I turned to the microphone-looking thing in front of me and waited for the track to start, and I sang. For a month this continued. By the time I was five, my album was finished.

It blew up.

Max J was a sensation. I always had a hard time believing that people liked hearing me sing. It was even harder to believe that people as important as Diana Ross wanted to meet me. I climbed the charts faster than any act to ever come out of Hot Fuss. Charlie called me his little money-maker. He threw a huge party at Hot Fuss for me. Everybody came. Even people I didn't know showed up. My record had gone multi-platinum. I didn't know what that meant, but Charlie made a huge deal out of it.

The party was beautiful. There were so many people, and there was food, and a lot of drinks, but Charlie said I couldn't have the bottled stuff because I was too young, so he just kept giving me sprite, even though I told him a hated sprite. After the third can, he finally got me some orange soda. Charlie toted me around all night, telling everyone how proud he was. He told everyone I had the best voice he'd ever heard for a kid my age. He said I was going places. I had never felt so adored.

Around nine, Charlie sat me down and got me some pizza. "I don't like that fancy food either, kid," he told me, grinning as he sat down across from me with his own pizza. "Looks expensive, tastes like shit," he joked, taking a bite full of cheese and pepperoni.

I picked at my pizza with a fork, looking at it for a moment. "Charlie," I said. "When are my parents coming?"

Charlie paused and looked up at me, swallowing the wad of pizza in his mouth. "Uh..." I saw him pause, and he just smiled. "I dunno, but who cares kid? Who needs parents? We got ice cream out the wazoo!"

I furrowed my brows. "Charlie, what's a wazoo?"

Charlie snorted. "Nothin', kid. Nothin'."

When the party cleared out, I still didn't see my parents. I sat up on one of the tables, quiet as I watched everybody cleaning up. Charlie came towards me from the other side of the room, and he sunk to my level and looked me in the eye. "Kid, you're really somethin', you know that?" I gave him a weird look. "Kid, these people love you. They think you're great, kid. So you know what?"

I shook my head. "No."

"You, my little friend, are going on tour."

I gave him a confused look. "What's that?"

Charlie laughed and put his big hands on my shoulders. "You are going to go all over the world, kid, and you're going to sing. You're going to get on stage, and you're going to sing for millions of people."

My eyes widened with shock. "Millions?"

"Yeah, kid," Charlie said with a nod. "And they're all there to see you."

I was five years old, and we were all getting into a bus. My mother, my father, Ingrid, my brother, and I. All the pictures i have of this day show us squinting, shading our eyes with our hands and headed east.