Read Online The Funeral Singer by Linda Budzinski - Free Book Online Page B

home, signed by Jon Marks. One night last winter, Lana and I had waited for hours by the back door of Jaxx in the freezing cold in the hopes of catching the band as they came out. Well, more specifically, in the hopes of catching Zed and Bruno as they came out, but Jon was the only one who did. I remembered feeling silly being such a groupie, asking for his autograph, but there was no way I was going home with nothing but a pair of semi-frostbitten feet that night.
    That shirt still hung in a corner in my room. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me until now that I could get the whole rest of the band to sign it. And that my signature belonged on it, too.
    “Just anywhere on the back,” Annika said, tapping her shoulder impatiently.
    “Sorry. Hold still.” I scribbled my name across the top. It was harder to write on cotton than I’d have thought.
    As Annika walked away, Lana smiled at me. “It just hit you, didn’t it?” She knew me too well.
    “Weird, huh?” I was part of The Grime. I wasn’t with the band, I was the band.
    The first bell rang, and Lana took off down the hall. “Still waiting to meet Bruno,” she called over her shoulder.
    “Soon, I promise!”
    For the next few days, my life was like a carnival ride. The centrifical force of my rising fame shoved me against a wall and everything flew by in a blur, out of my control. My YouTube views ran well into the millions. One of the late-night shows aired a montage of them along with a top-ten list of “Songs You Don’t Want the Funeral Singer to Sing at Your Funeral.” It was actually pretty funny for funeral humor. Number one was Elvis Costello’s “Tramp the Dirt Down.”
    My Facebook fan page went crazy, with all kinds of rumors about me joining this band or that TV show or dating such and such celebrity—some hot, some not, and some way, way too old. Johnny Depp? Seriously? I finally posted to say that (a) I wasn’t dating anyone and (b) I’d joined The Grime. That started a huge argument about whether The Grime “deserved” me. I noticed the band had added my photo to their group page, which nearly tripled in fans after my announcement.
    On Friday, The Washington Post ran a huge story, “Rising from the Depths,” complete with a color photo of me leaning against the Aegean Bronze in my dad’s casket selection room. I’d tried to convince the photographer to do the shoot on the balcony, but she insisted that having caskets in the background would “really tell the tale.” Which I guess it did, since the reporter’s “tale” was all about a girl whose life was a Big Fat Creep Show until she somehow managed to stumble into stardom. My favorite line was a highly out-of-context quote where I called funeral dirges my “one true passion.” Could I sound any darker? I was beginning to appreciate Zed’s image-management philosophy more and more.
    By the time I got to school Friday morning, I couldn’t walk three steps without having someone stop me in the hall to ask me to autograph their notebook or backpack or clothes. One guy even brought in a huge poster he’d made using a photo of me singing at Mick’s service. He’d touched up my face and hair and altered the background so I looked more like a fashion model in a steamy rainforest than a singer in a cemetery, and I had the disturbing suspicion he’d lowered the neckline on my dress a couple of inches, too.
    After third period, I arrived at my locker to find none other than Homecoming Princess Hannah Massey waiting for me.
    “Hey, Mel,” she said. “You’re quite the hot ticket these days.”
    Hot ticket? Who talked like that? I nodded. “Sure. I guess.”
    “It’s all so exciting—the videos, The Grime. Whoever would have thought, our very own Melody Martin?”
    “Melanie.”
    “What? Oh, sure, Melanie.” She said this as if it made no difference. Which I guess to her it didn’t. “Anyway, I’m glad I caught you. I wanted to ask, who are you going to prom