Page 199 of Broken Lines
And then, we’re off.
The words pour out, and my heart grows ten times bigger than it’s ever been before. And then it’s over, and the crowd is losing its mind.
A million cameras are flashing
The House of Rock producers are shaking their heads and making a quick exit.
Jackson slides his hand in mine, and we take a bow together. And then he pulls me into him, and kisses me, and tell me he loves me.
Then?
Then it’s over.
And it’s also just beginning.
Epilogue
Melody
“You ready?”
No. Maybe. I don’t know.
But the real answer is “yes”. With nerves. With a pit in my stomach. But, it’s time, even though I’ve been putting this off for the last three weeks.
In my defense, though, it’s been awildthree weeks. I mean where do you even begin?
With Judy, I guess, who by all accounts is having a complete mental breakdown. And my only response to that news is that I’d honestly love to hire the smallest violin in the world to softly playCry Me A Riveron repeat outside her window for the rest of her life.
Judy can go fuck herself. Because we’re officially done, and she’s officially out a daughter. Full stop.
She’s also out this empire of hers she was so hell bent on building by any means necessary, at any price. Because in the wake of what happened at the Beacon that night, the whole thing has come down in ruins around her.
House of Rock has been shelved indefinitely. First, it was just real shitty PR surrounding everything that came out that night. But as the PR turned into legal battles—like mine, for instance—the producers pulled the plug.
Ten of the absoluteshittiest, most scripted, most cringe-tastic reality show episodes ever filmed, and they will never see the light of day. Thank God.
With the show went the home-goods line. And the fashion line. And the rest of it. Her book got yanked, too, after Jackson’s lawyer went at it with a blowtorch and a tire-iron. Cliff ended up leaking the whole situation to a few media outlets, and Judy’s PR disaster went from awful to “change your name, maybe get a surgeon to change your face, and then hide off the map for the rest of your life” bad.
InThe New York Timespiece on the whole saga, their in-house legal expert called the book “the single most egregiously libelous piece of fiction ever penned”.
So, there’s that.
In further uplifting news as it pertains to journalistic integrity, both Becca Santori and Chuck Garver were summarily fired from Ignition Magazine. Becca for the obvious theft and plagiarism; Chuck for enabling and purposely not fact-checking any of it. Jackson and I even got a published apology letter in the last issue of Ignition from their parent company, Clearsite Publishing.
And that brings us to Kurt; my now-slain monster, who I no longer fear.
Judy’s in trouble. Becca and Chuck got what was coming to them.
Kurt is getting royallyfuckedand you can go ahead and pass me the fucking popcorn.
At first, after what Jackson did to him backstage, Kurt tried to sue. What he should have done was slink away into a hole in the ground somewhere, because he would have had a better time doing that than what’s happening to him now.
When he decided to go public with his version of Jackson’s assault on him, I decided that two could play that game.
I went public, too.
And yeah, it was hard. It wasreallyhard, actually. But I’ve had an amazing man at my side, holding my hand through the whole ordeal of bearing the worst part of my past to the public.