“Like Beyoncé is.”
“Like Beyoncé is,” she confirmed. “I think it’s only morerecently that you get women writing and producing their own stuff in a meaningful way, so you get, like, the more defiant ‘girl’ songs. ‘Hollaback Girl.’ ‘Girl on Fire.’”
I thought about Anna’s “Take It Easy” cover.
“I have an idea,” I said. “Hear me out. I know you’re only… what? Seventeen?”
“I’m flattered, but fifteen—sixteen next month, though.”
That gave me pause. The closest thing I had to a peer at this camp was too young to drive.
Hell, the closest thing I’d had to a peer in a long time.
I told myself to get over it. She was a prodigy, OK?
“You could do a whole album of cover songs like you did with ‘Take It Easy.’ You’re making me see that if you change the pronouns in a lot of songs and sing them today—like, in the modern era—it changes everything. Can you imagine a whole album of those songs?”
She laughed but sobered when I didn’t. “Oh, you’re serious.”
“I don’t want you to get a big head, but you’re very talented.”
“But I’m fifteen.”
“Sixteen next month!” She laughed. “Anyway, wasn’t Taylor Swift around that age when she started?”
“How am I supposed to make an album?” she asked incredulously.
I wanted to say that I would help her. But the truth was, I had the same question. How wasIsupposed to make an album?
“Anyway,” Anna said, “If I ever get to make an album, I wouldn’t want it to be all covers. I hear what you’re saying, and clearly you got what I was going for with that ‘Take It Easy’ cover, but a whole album of that would be repetitive, don’t you think? I think one song makes the point as well as ten would. I don’t want to be a one-trick pony.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“But…”
“Yeah?”
“I do hope I get to make an album someday,” she said quietly, almost sheepishly, as if it were presumptuous to voice such an ambition. I thought about Tristan, wondered how he was getting on with the dance girls.
“You will.” I had no doubt.
“But I need a record deal for that. And, what? A manager? Agent? I don’t even know.”
“Manager first, probably. They manage your overall career and are more engaged on the creative side of things. Agents do the actual booking of tours and negotiating record deals.”
“How do you find a manager? Do you have one?”
We hadn’t spoken about the Hilton Garden Inn debacle, but I had to assume she knew about it. “You know what? I don’t know. I might be between managers.”
Back at my cabin, I decided to call him to find out.
I was half-surprised when he picked up. “Hey, Brady,” I said. “Are you still my manager?”
“And a good evening to you, too, Teddy.”
“Yeah, yeah. Are you still my manager?”
“Do you want me to be?”
