I can't believe it. Zoey holds my hand in hers and squeezes. We both got in. Her green eyes shine with so much joy. She's one step closer to her goal. A wavy happy dance I'm holding in reserve until I get home leaks out the side with my leg tapping. She's going to be a music star. That big journal of songs we made together. My jumble of thoughts flashes through my head. I'm blown away.

"We made me..." I whisper the words, and it feels almost like a foreign concept.

"We did," she whispers back. The cool RockStar chic fading into punk with a little R&B girl next door that I grew up with. I couldn't resist the urge to lean my head against hers. It's still thumping, but it's getting better minute by minute, not enough to drive but better. Brenda and another blonde contestant on Team Pop wave Zoey over. I let go of her hand and Zoey went to them.

Megumi the stage manager jogs by me going over the schedule. "Paulie interviews the judges on stage. After the one-on-one interviews are over, each judge will do a performance. Ending on Mr. Kells as the last part of the show. That's the end of the show. Make sure not to miss the limo bus to the hotel." She waves at a guy in all black for the next set-piece as they pull bits and pieces and clear the stage. The band gets their places on stage. And the crew set up for the interviewers. The big screen up top and the screen behind the first interview guest for the show was lit up with Paulie waiting. His title as the CEO of Slither Records in the lower third of the screen. The streaming light blinks red three times, and the interview started.

Adam Ben's leader of team Broadway's wholesome charm is on full display during his interview. He has a casual wholesomeness to him. His curls make him look ten years younger than his years. No matter how hard Paulie tried, couldn't get his weird question to sleaze up the interview. He was polite and kind. Gracious to all Paulie's invasive baited questions. The more Paulie asks this show choir wholesome type of guy questions. The more aww shucks he put out. Adam Ben's was a pro. I am not sure what Paulie was trying to get out of him. It's Adam Ben's. Even for a music nerd, he out musical nerds most musical nerds. But the way Paulie was fishing, you'd think the guy had some wonderful story he wasn't telling. A story with naked people and dicks swinging in the wind at wild Hollywood parties. Even though he was all smiling with Adam during the interview. The more salacious fishing question he asked, the less I like Paulie B, the carnival barker.

***

The Broadway judge finishes his song and everyone claps. He leaves the stage to finish for the day. The Pop judge interview starts. Asher Kells is on stage next to her. Asher's eyes are checked out, bored. Camille the pop judge looks about as bored.

With a casual glance at Asher, you would only see the well, dress man in a bespoke suit. He's covered in tattoos, but the urbane-controlled vibe is clear from Asher. You would completely miss his fingers twitch out air guitar chords if you look closely at his hands. The play-by-play of the interview is something I actively ignore to zero in on body language. Sometimes it's about what is unsaid that's more important than what's said aloud. But Paulie B's smile was getting wider, like looking into the maw of a smiling snake. It reminded me of the Broadway Judges interview when he started muckraking.

"Long time rumors have you and Asher as a couple. Would you be willing to confirm it here on The Tour.?" Paulie's attempt to pull Asher into the conversation.

Camille's cupid bow lips pucker at the question. Oh, she's not happy for sure.

"Paulie, I think that's between Asher and me. It will be our little secret," she smiles at Paulie. Camille steps towards the mic for her solo, leaving Paulie and the interview behind.

"I'll take that as a yes for the relationship," Paulie keeps fishing. That was more than rude. She already said she's not answering dick.

Camille glances at Asher, her eyes shifting quickly, "the show must go on." She says the hook line from her hit song. Then sings her song. The song was something pop with a lot of bubbles. She has a pink tone like a lot of young pop stars but without the high notes that go along with it. Her sound is underestimated. It just needs a little more. Live, she was complete bubbles to her sound, but she had more emotion and vocal range. In my head, I remix the song on my mac, bring up the vocal quality, and dump some of the auto-tune. It's a good song, but the live mix is too close to the album's boring mix. The music doesn't bring out this better live performance. It's bubbly pop but with a live vocal edge that reminds me of pink lilacs. Very underrated artist and I should have given her more credit. Whatever production team works on her song needs to give her something interesting.

My phone buzzes and a message from Zoey.

Zoey: After-party at the hotel.

Sabali: meet you at the hotel later.

I needed Zoey to drive me home. It looks like I won't be driving for a few days because of my head. The song ended for Camille and the clapping for her was louder than Adam. On the monitor next to me, The Tour. the title text was splashed over her face as the show went out for a commercial.

"And.... we're clear," Megumi announces.

"Ok, kid, you're next," Paulie says to Asher.

He's not a kid. The thought was automatic and so loud in my head, I almost spoke it. But the irritation on Asher's face was something that Paulie seemed to ignore. Not smart Paulie B.

****

It was as if the interview was between a snake and a Golden Eagle. Two predators and this shit weren't going to work out. The knife-edge that the interview sat on is devolving into barely kept in check ugliness. For some reason, Paulie was on a tear to make sure that Asher was "A Prince of Hip Hop." He kept asking Asher where he was on the list of greats.

Asher has had a lot of solid albums and Mixtapes. Putting him in the crosshairs of hip-hop heads by calling him a prince of hip hop. That's the greatest is a recipe for really ugly comments on every social media platform out there. The fan base is older and younger and they have a music library behind them. That's like Stan wars on crack.

"I don't think I would be on anyone's top five list at this point of my career." I've got to agree with him. Been a fan. I've been listening to him from almost the start of his career on music sites. Before there was The Kells' Mixtape when it was a single song popping off on SoundCloud.

"It takes an education in music to make a top five." I agreed with Asher Kells on that one. That's the best part: you have to listen to the old stuff and the new stuff. You can't just plop someone on the top five for the Greatest of all Time list. It isn't the greatest of this week. GOAT means GOAT for a reason.

With Asher's rock-influenced style of hip hop, it's not mainstream but sells very well. As they went back and forth Asher gave a music education. Through a library of better Rappers than he and his brother. Saying what was good about them. What they brought to the game and how it was when he found it. It wasn't the interview Paulie wanted. You could tell by the flashes of a sour expression on his face, but it's the interview he got. It was cool.

What Paulie was doing was probably a market gimmick. But I didn't like the undertone of willful ignorance about it. An example of crowning a King or Prince of someone by people who may not know enough at the time is probably Elvis. He was The King Rock-and-roll, Elvis is when most folks lack the music education to know what was up. If you had listened to everyone, then said it, that would be one thing.

This will get him called a culture vulture and it's simply setting him up. Fucked up, Paulie.

That's not how the culture crowns its kings. You can be braggadocious and have cockness. It has to be backed up with a body of work. Queens and Kings are crowned by creating and owning the sound. Music was payola and highly segregated for a long time, so Kings aren't picked that way. A person could hear a song on one station and never hear it again. They didn't know it had already been made somewhere else. For you, it's new, interesting, and inventive. For music educated, it's this person's style or that person's style. It's not like now when you see all the covers and all the songs with one click. So most folks lacked the music vocabulary to know to sort through a long list of greats. And that makes it a marketing gimmick. If you watch old videos of Ray Charles he was asked about Elvis in an interview. Ray Charles was a famous musician of the same time and he'd tell you Elvis wasn't the King of Rock-and-roll. So Asher's stance was right. He's got time to change that, but not now. The GOAT isn't necessarily the best list to be on. It's a list notably filled with a lot of dead people because they only love you when you're dead or gone.

"I grew up in my grandfather's house in Crenshaw, California. It has a sea of great rappers," Asher says. Then he starts talking about California rappers, Midwest wrappers, New York Rappers, Southern rappers.

I nodded my head along with Asher's list, making note of the few rap artist call-outs that I didn't know, downloading later. He finished up Paulie's sour face. Paulie rushed to the next question.

"Tell me about your next album. It's going to be a solo?" He said solo like a threat, and I wasn't sure if he was for the solo album or against it. Dustin Kells, Asher's brother, died four months ago. The Tour. has been advertising with Secret judges and hype for the last year when we got the invite to audition for the show. Maybe he couldn't get out of doing the show?

"It's The Kells album." Asher's reply was curt. I leaned in, expecting him to say more, but more didn't come.

Paulie didn't look too happy with the answer, either. They bounce back and forth with quick question responses. It was like watching a boxing match and the fighters were trading probing jabs. All those probing jabs would add up to a knockdown instead of one big knock-out punch.

Asher went over the next album and some of his goals. "Complete The Kells Legacy." I wonder what that means? But by the screwed-up smelled a fart look on Paulie's face, he knew the meaning.

Then Paulie's expression changed to a snake-like wide smile again. "Does that mean The Kells Greatest Hits album is coming out?" He said it with such joy. You would think he was like one of those 70s girls in the old movies. The ones with teen idol magazines waiting for the signature of the music star.

"No," Asher says and the bright, happy, snakey light in Paulie's eyes went out. Again, Paulie B wasn't happy at all. The greatest hit albums were always a last-ditch cash grab for most music artists' labels. Like scraping out the last bit of peanut butter from the jar. It wasn't always the grand sign of respect music labels made it out to be.

The interview felt like it was coming to an end. They were two punch-drunk fighters going in for one more round. When someone should have stepped in and stopped the fight. The two guys who had tried to take chunks out of each other came out even then. Then the unexpected happened.

"Before Asher's performance, let's play a clip from the last concert of The Kells. On sale and coming to a movie theater and streaming service near you," Paulie said. The color drained from Asher's face.

Dustin, who almost never sang on any of the songs, was in front of the mic. His blown-out bloodshot brown amber gaze was striking. Dustin's eyes were dark amber like heroin and red red blood swirled in the needle. The kind of color seconds before the hot toxic liquid plunges back into the vein. It hurt to look at him. Because it was the last time he was alive publicly. It hurt because Asher Kells was looking at his brother on the large screen. It was like watching someone die inside in slow motion.

Painful.

Heartbreaking.

Naked.

We shouldn't be watching this. None of us. If destruction had to come, it should have happened in privacy. Desperately needed privacy Asher wasn't getting.

It was the reality TV vultures circling him, looking for what scraps they could find. On the large screen behind him, the greedy camera moves into his face in a slow zoom. Every blink of the red recording light drinking him in.

It was so damn ugly to watch. I wanted to turn away from him even though I was only a few feet away from him on stage right. The curtains on the stage swung slowly next to me. If I could have buried my face in them and looked away, I would have. But I couldn't. I was stuck between wanting to look away to give him privacy. But seeing that wild, destructive aloneness in his hazel eyes, it was impossible to look away.

My heart broke with him.

A/n: I don't know why but Dustin Kells is one of those... moments in the story that makes me want to write an even longer story. I can't wait to keep sharing more of the show.

Thank you for reading and please remember to vote and comment on the book. Also, share the book it helps new people reach it :).