WHEN YOU WISH
By Kristin Harmel
Out now from Random House

CHAPTER ONE:

You can be perfect – if you want it.
You can be someone else’s perfect girl.
If you wanna change your mind,
If you wanna change your life,
You can be, you can be.
-- from Star Beck’s hit single “You Can Be,” from the album “Star Light.”

            I’m in the middle of a big photo shoot, and there’s a huge fight going on about whether my bangs should be swept to the left or to the right. You would think that this decision is as important as, say, world peace or finding a cure for cancer.
            Mariska (publicist): “Her best side is her right.”
            Don (hairdresser): “No, definitely left.”
            Marco Abruglio (the photographer): “Pgfnht tfdsh gsdhtr! Cghtrehty!” (Completely nintelligible yelps that I suspect are curse words in Italian)
            Mariska: “If her best side is her left, why did Jane shoot her right side?”
            Don: “Why did Seventeen shoot her left?”
            Unidentified fashion assistant: “Why don’t we sweep her bangs back?”
            Marco Abruglio: “Pgfnht tfdsh gsdhtr! Pgfnht tfdsh gsdhtr!”
            Aimee (facialist): “She’s getting a pimple on her forehead! Can’t you see that? We must have the bangs!”
            Mom (manager): “Can you pull the neckline down? Show a little more cleavage?”
            Me: “Can’t I just wear my bangs parted in the middle and swept to both sides?
            There’s dead silence in the huge studio where the photo shoot for Dial magazine’s cover is taking place. All eyes turn to me. Everyone looks shocked that I’m even here, although it is my hair they’ve been arguing about.
            “Star?” my mother finally says, her voice as tight as her surgically enhanced face. “Why don’t you just sit there and look pretty and let the adults handle this?”
            I stare at her for a moment. All I can hear is the steady whir of the massive fan that’s supposed to make me look windswept.
            “Won’t my bangs shift anyhow once the shoot starts and I start moving?” I ask, quite sensibly, I think, glancing at the fan.
            Again, silence.
            “I’m not really used to the talent making demands,” hisses Tiffini, the fashion director for Dial magazine. She turns and glares at Mariska. Then she smiles sweetly at me. “Star, dear, we’ll do anything that makes you happy. You are, after all, the star!”
“Star, honey, why don’t you just let us make a decision?” Mariska says. “You shouldn’t really be concerning yourself with this.”
            I sigh. I look at her and then ay Mom. I shoot death rays at Tiffini. I close my eyes.
            “Fine,” I mutter.
            Everyone in the room goes back to squabbling. Should I have a flower in my hair, or a barrette? Should my lipstick be pale pink or nude? Peachy blush or rosy? Should my dress expose lots of cleavage or a little?
            I’d like to say that I care. I’d like to tell you that I think I look prettier in pink lips and rosy blush. Or that I’d really prefer the barrette. But I’ve learned it’s useless to have an opinion. You want to dress me up in a bikini with my hair back in a ponytail? Fine. An evening gown with an updo? Whatever. Heck, if Marco wanted to paint blue streaks up and down my face and dress me in a muumuu, I’d probably agree, as long as everyone stopped fighting about it. Which would never happen. My entourage lives to argue.
            Actually, a muumuu might look better than what I’m wearing right now, come to think of it. For the cover of Dial, someone had the bright idea to debut the latest masterpiece from the House of Cassani (some huge, crazy-expensive fashion designer in Italy) on me. Unfortunately, the House of Cassani’s latest masterpiece just happens to be a huge, frilly dress that I can’t move in. It’s Pepto-Bismol pink. And yes, it’s covered in 10,000 feathers.
            I’m a giant pink chicken. And everyone is concerned about my bangs.
            Does this make any sense? Is anyone really going to be looking at the way my bangs are parted when the rest of me looks so ridiculous?
            But of course I learned long ago that just because you’re the pop star whose record-breaking career pays everyone else’s salary doesn’t actually mean that anyone listens to you at all.
           

* * *

* * *

            “All I really want is you,” I sing as I dance onto stage, shielding my eyes for a moment against the glare of the spotlight and waving to the packed arena. A giant roar rises up from the crowd again. Just as I hit the third line of the first verse, blindingly bright white fireworks shoot off from each end of the stage, and the audience collectively gasps. Two giant video monitors rise up from behind the band’s staging area, and scenes from the video shoot for You’re The One start pulsating to the tempo of the song.
            I belt out the chorus. Kick-step. Kick-step. Shake butt. Jump-turn. Stage-wink at boy in audience. Kick-step. “Even if you’ll never love me. You’re the one, you’re the one. And it’s breaking my heart to know.”
            The lights dim slightly, more pyrotechnic flashes explode in time with the music, and the crowd screams at the top of their lungs.
            While the band finishes the song and the crowd roars in appreciation, I close my eyes for a second and breathe deeply, taking it all in. “Thank you all so much!” I yell into my microphone over the roar of the crowd. “You’re a great crowd! I love . . . New York!” Another roar of appreciation rises up from the crowd, none of whom noticed, apparently, that I almost forgot where we were.
In the past seven days, we’ve played Philadelphia, D.C., Pittsburgh, Boston, and now here, New York, the last stop of a 30-city autumn tour. It’s really hard to keep track. I live in constant fear that I’ll one day yell out the wrong city name and the audience will just kind of stare at me, like What’s her problem?
            But, as my on-tour psychologist says, I probably worry too much about what other people think anyhow. And yes, I have an on-tour psychologist. Just one of Mom’s many brilliant ideas.
            The band starts playing the opening chords for Fight Fire With Fire while a giant torch rises up from the center of the stage. Just as I start singing the first verse, an enormous flame erupts from the middle of the huge beacon, casting an eerie glow over the stage. The crowd goes wild; they always love all the dramatic staging stuff my tech guys do on tour. There are fireworks, crazy video displays, this huge torch and even a male model who rides onto stage on a white horse to literally sweep me off my feet during Prince Charming, one of my biggest hits. The Boston Herald, the L.A. Times and the New York Post have all compared my stage show to Madonna’s most recent over-the-top tour, and the Chicago Tribune even said that mine was more exciting. 
            Good thing, because it’s almost $120 a ticket for the cheapest seat to see me play. (That’s why I begged Mom, Sarah and Mariska to see if we could tape an ABC concert special after this tour for people who couldn’t afford to come. But as usual, I was outvoted. “You’re so much more elite than broadcast television,” Mom had cooed, apparently forgetting that Madonna herself had recently done a broadcast concert. No matter how famous I am, I seriously doubt that at 16, I can afford to be more elite than Madonna.)
            I launch into the Fight Fire With Fire chorus, tossing my waist-length red, curly hair around as my award-winning choreographer Lance Mojave taught me. Oh yeah, work it girl, I can almost hear his irritatingly squeaky voice in my head. My hair is my signature. It’s the one thing everyone associates with me first. My mom once hired someone to do a focus group, and 82 percent of Americans checked the box marked “waist-length red hair” when asked to say what they thought of first when they thought of Star Beck. So cutting it is totally out of the question. According to my mom, at least. She promptly nixed my plans when I begged for a bob in July.
            By the time the show ends, I’m out of breath, exhilarated and starving. We do two encores, ending with a peppy, upbeat, Latin-flavored hit Your Love Is The Air I Breathe, a #1 single off my third album. It’s the most complicated dance number of the whole show, and I’m backed up by two dozen dancers in brightly colored flamenco outfits. Fireworks explode all around us as I sing the last words. Then, with one final wave to the roaring crowd, I run offstage, while my band continues playing until the curtains go down.
            When I get back to my dressing room, me and my grumbling stomach are a little disappointed to see only a basket of a fruit, a veggie tray and six diet sodas. Not that this should be a surprise. A few years ago, when I’d toured with the boy band Six Degrees of Separation, those guys had a dressing room filled with candy bars, chips, sandwiches and every kind of soda you could imagine. But noooooo. Not my dressing room. Mom always makes sure to explicitly request that my dressing room at each venue be stocked only with “healthy, calorie-conscious options.” Yuck.
            “You don’t want to get tubby,” my mom says, as if reading my hungry mind, coming into the room behind me, dressed in a flowy white designer dress, her blond hair done up in a tight twist and her makeup thick and dark. She kisses me on the cheek and then swats me lightly on the butt. “No one likes a fat pop star,” she adds cheerfully.
            “Right,” I mutter. I reach resignedly for a celery stick and a can of Diet Sprite.
            Yeah. As if a few M&Ms would make me fat after I’ve spent almost two hours dancing under 120-degree Klieg lights. But I live in a diet dictatorship run by my mom.
            “Off to bed within an hour, Star,” she says sternly after I’ve eaten three more celery sticks, a carrot and a piece of cauliflower. Did I mention she had thrown out the ranch dip too? Seriously, I can see it in the trash can. She can be really cruel sometimes. “You have your date with Jesse tomorrow. You want to be on.”
            “Yeah,” I say glumly. “Heaven forbid everything not be perfect.”….

* * *

Look for the rest of WHEN YOU WISH , now in stores!
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