Page 242 of Haunt Me

“I don’t give a crap what they will do,” James says. His eyes have gone completely black on his pale face. He is dripping with sweat, but somehow he manages to make even that look absurdly cool. “It’s only you I care about. Tell me what you are on. What kind of performance was that? You composed an entire movement in front of my eyes. You left me miles behind, I couldn’t follow you.” He swallows. “I had to stop playing. That’s never happened to me before. I have never seenanyoneplay like this. Not even Mom—least of all you.”

“Thanks,” I wince.

“No,” James frowns even harder—I didn’t think it was possible. “No. We are not going to be funny right now.” He grabs my elbow, right there, on the stage, under the pink and black spotlights. “We are going to tell the truth. Tell me.”

“I haven’t taken anything.” I meet his gaze fully. “I don’t know how it happened.”

“You—” He looks completely confused.

I take a deep breath.

“I thought I saw Eden in the audience,” I tell him and regret it the same second. Now he’s definitely going to think I’m on something.

But instead, he smiles wryly and wraps me in a hug. The crowd goes out of its mind, but neither of the Pan brothers are paying it any attention right now.

“I think I’m going out of my mind,” I say into his shoulder.

“Happens to everybody,” he replies. “Well, not me. But if it stops you from crying, then feel free imagine whatever you like.”

I step away abruptly. “I was not crying,” I hiss at my brother.

“That’s something a crying person would say,” he says. Gosh, he’s insufferable.

I know what he’s doing. He is trying to rile me up because he is tired of seeing me so sad all the time. Or maybe he has seen me fall apart one too many times on this stage. Maybe he’s scared. So I turn to my brother and, like the completely mature twenty-two year old superstar I am, I retort:

“Would your face like to be a crying person?”

…

We singBeethoventogether, and then James exits the stage amid a cacophony of deranged love declarations frommyfans. Idiot. Then Jude and Miki come back up and seamlessly keep the music alive.

I start the next song.

The show must go on, right? Right.

I sing like I’ve never sung in my life. I hit notes and pitches I never have before. Ever. I can feel it in my bones that this performance is on another level. Better than anything I’ve ever done before. Rare, even. If the mere idea of her does that to me… What would the reality of her do?

I sing the four singles from my new album, and the fans know every single word already. Finally, after all the surprises and the new songs, the crowds as well as Jude, Miki and me, are exhausted. It’s time to end the show. My eyes keep going to the section I imagined Eden in, but I can no longer see anything but a constellation of purple lights from the fans’ bracelets.

The last song isEnough Love. Jude and I picked it so that we’ll send the audience home good and heartbroken. As I finish theending, fireworks explode above our heads, making this first Paris night even more magical, like a scene from a movie.

My voice is drowned by applause and the sound of fireworks exploding, and there is a brief moment filled with chaos, screams and people clamoring to get to the stage. I shout to the security staff, but they’re already handling the situation. The surge of the crowd is contained within seconds, and I heave a sigh of relief.

Then it’s time for our first encore.

We playChemistry, and when the music stops, I look up in the direction I imagined I saw Eden. I’m not ready to let go of the daydream. The minute I step off the stage, I’ll lose her all over again—even though she only existed briefly in my imagination.

Still, something pushes me to keep the delusion going.

I lean in and say softly into my mic:

“Meet me in the woods.”

The crowd loves it—but this one wasn’t for them.

It was for Eden. Even though she will never hear it.

Eden’s poetry

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