In this breezy novel from the author of Somebody That I Used to Know, one Iowa farm girl―a dead ringer for a global pop star―gets an unlikely shot at stardom. Will she choose fame…or the family farm?
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Dana L. Davis‘ Fake Famous, which is out November 7th.
Red Morgan is fresh out of high school. With signature red curls and a remarkable singing voice, the bubbly teenager is a devoted daughter and big sister. The world should be her oyster. But Red already knows exactly where her future lies: the family farm in Orange City, Iowa.
Zay-Zay Waters is at the top of her game. The Brooklyn-born singer has it all―talent, fame, even a smokin’ hot boyfriend. But life in the limelight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And when a video of Red singing in the mud―looking and sounding exactly like Zay-Zay herself―goes viral, the pop star begins to hatch a plan.
Red is the key to Zay-Zay’s scheme. With much-needed money on the line, Red agrees to step into Zay-Zay’s famous shoes for one week. But when planned appearances start to go off script, Red may be in over her head. Can she really pull it off?
One
Dear Universe. Show me something good. That’s pretty much what I say every morning. I’m not totally convinced the Universe is listening. Or, since the Universe speaks so many different languages, maybe today when I said good, the Universe thought I said, I’d like to be almost knocked unconscious by a metal hog feeder.
“See this bump?” I take a step forward, neck extended so the purple bruise on my forehead is on full display. “Outside the chicken coop? Becky attacked me during morning chores! I bumped my head running from her. Have a heart. Don’t be like Becky.”
Her lips curl into a snarl. Dang, that must’ve pissed her off.
“I mean, I wasn’t . . . calling you a chicken.”
She pulls her arm back, and suddenly a plastic bottle is soaring at me. I make an attempt to duck, but—BLAM!—it strikes dead center on my forehead, right on the same spot from earlier this morning!
“Ow.” I cover my throbbing bruise with the palm of my hand.
“Maybe you should wear a helmet in the morning,” Loren calls out from the top bunk of the bed we share, her long fuzzy ponytail flopping from side to side as she stares down at me with a sad shake of her head. “And you know Daeshya doesn’t speak English, right?”
“Oh, she understands me.” I reach into the crib to pick up the bundle of fat, slobbers, and soggy diaper that is our ten-month-old sister, Daeshya. She feels as heavy as one of our plastic grain bags stuffed to the brim with field corn. “Don’t you, Dae-Dae?”
Daeshya’s chubby fingers grab a handful of my messy, kinky curls. “Wed!”
“It’s Red. Rrrr. Red.” I peel her fingers open and bop her on the nose.
“Why is she sleeping in here, anyway?” Loren yawns, pulling her Stranger Things comforter under her chin with one hand and sliding on her thick square-framed glasses with the other. “You guys woke me up like seventeen times last night.”
“Helping Mom. You should try it sometime!” I hurl the baby bottle in Loren’s direction, but it ricochets off the wood of the bunk and lands on our dusty wool area rug with a thud.
Loren snorts. “Hope you’re not signing up for sports at your new college.”
“I meant to do that.” I reach to grab the bottle. “I’m gonna make sure our brothers are up and moving. Stuff your face with a Pop-Tart or a Cheerio and meet me behind the south barn. Manure drop-off in twenty minutes.”
“Why do we always get stuck with poop?” Loren whines. “Shouldn’t we be making needlepoint coasters, weaving spools of thread onto looms, mashing potatoes for shepherd’s pie?”
“We are not the cast of Anne of Green Gables.” I reposition Daeshya higher on my hip. “Also, what’s poop to you is actually—”
“Disgusting?”
“No, I was gonna say fodder for a healthy crop of oats.”
Loren groans. “Do you always have to sound like such a farmer?”
“I am a farmer. You are too. Now hurry up and get dressed.”
I move into the hallway just as my eleven-year-old brother, Elijah, stumbles out of his bedroom in a tank top, shorts, sunglasses, and a Minecraft backpack slung over his shoulder. His brown skin shines under the hallway lights.
“Elijah, why is your skin . . . shiny?”
“I’m wearing suntan lotion.” He rubs his tired eyes with one hand while the other fiddles with his phone.
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“I tried to talk him out of dressing like he’s going to a pool party, Red.” Jaxson’s moving down the hall now. The reclaimed floorboards of our old, rustic farmhouse creak and moan underneath him. Thankfully Jax is dressed appropriately for a day out in the fields—in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. His coiffed dreads are pulled into a ponytail and somehow maneuvered through the opening of a straw hat, so his hair flails out in all directions on top of his head. “But he said he wanted to get a tan because ‘Black people can tan too.’”
Elijah nods like, yeah, that’s exactly what he said. “What? They can.”
Jax turns to me. “By the way, best sister in the world. I need a favor.” He rubs his hands together. “You know my friend Chris, right?”
I switch Daeshya from one hip to the other. “Is that the guy with one green eyebrow or the one who barks at people in the hallway at school?”
“Green eyebrow.” Jax leans on my shoulder, and his Axe body spray burns my nose. No idea why he thinks he should drown himself in it before detasseling corn, but . . . whatever. “He’s working at Wacky Waters all summer. He said he can get me a job there as a lifeguard.”
I nod. “But you can’t swim.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Jax asks. “It’s the kids’ section. Two feet of water.”
“You’re a farmer, not a lifeguard,” I point out. “Mom and Dad will say no.”
“That’s why I need you to ask them for me.” He grins, exposing a mouthful of silver braces. “They like you better than the rest of us. For real.”
“Jax, stop.” I roll my eyes. “Mom and Dad like their children all the same.”
Elijah and Jaxson exchange looks, then burst into laughter.
“Good one, Red.” Jaxson slaps his knee. “Only you can make me laugh this early in the morning.”
“Sis, I swear.” Elijah lays a hand on my shoulder. “You got major jokes.”
I shake him off. “Whatever. You guys suck. And not to make you feel worse than you already should, but if I happen to see Green Eyebrow at Wacky Waters today, I’ll say hi.” I slide my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans and show Elijah and Jaxson a text from my best friend, Melissa. They both lean forward to read.
Wacky Waters today!!! Can’t wait to see yoooou!
“What?!” Elijah screeches.
Jax shakes his head. “See? The clear favorite!”
“Mom and Dad have nothing to do with this.” I laugh. “My a cappella class is celebrating. We graduated. Most of us are off to college. We deserve a day of fun. Now move. Get to detasseling, detasselers.” I stick out my hand. “‘Go Farmers’ on three. One . . . two . . .”
“I swear, man.” Elijah pushes my hand away. “Humans have invented Wi-Fi, but nobody thought to invent a machine that detassels corn?” He moves off, muttering under his breath.
Jaxson trails behind, muttering as well.
I watch them go. “Should we tell them there is a machine that detassels corn?”
Daeshya blows a spit bubble.
“Good point. Don’t tell.”
I continue, then push open the bathroom door at the end of the hallway to find Mom. She’s already dressed for a day of work at our store, running bathwater and tossing plastic toys into our claw-foot tub. The floor still has the same green and pink tiles from when this house was built in the 1940s. Though Mom calls the colors avocado and rose and says we kids should be thankful we live in such a historically decorated home, I think historically decorated is just a phrase she made up.
“Special delivery,” I sing, adding fancy runs to the end of my made-up song. “Deliveeery. Eeee. Oooooh yeah.”
Daeshya squeals, kicking her little legs and extending her hands with glee, nearly jumping into Mom’s outstretched arms.
“Hi, my little ball of sunshine.” Mom hugs and kisses Daeshya. “And geez, Red . . .” She glances up at me. “You sound good. Make me a playlist of you singing.”
“Oh staaahp it, Ma.” I pretend to flip my hair over my shoulder. “And when would I have time to make a playlist? After I empty the compost buckets, open the coop, water the plants, candle the eggs, take care of the chicks, wash the pigs, and clean out the barn . . . it’s time for school.”
“You do way too much around here.” Mom groans.
“Wish I could do more.” I lean up against the wall and sigh. “You and Dad are the ones who do too much around here.”
Mom snaps her fingers. “Hey, here’s an idea. Let’s go see Zay-Zay Waters, live. Wouldn’t that be fun? A break from all this hard work?”
“Last time I checked, tickets to a Zay-Zay Waters concert were like five hundred dollars. At least for the seats where you can actually see her.”
“Oh.” Mom frowns. “How much are the tickets where you can’t see her?”
“Free.” I whip out my phone, tap the YouTube icon, and find a clip from an episode of Oh, So You Think You Can Sing Live? Zay-Zay sometimes sits in as a guest judge. “Check this out.”
Zay demonstrates a complicated part of a song to a young singer. Her long blue nails tap out the rhythm while she sings.
Mom studies the screen. “I know you think I’m way off when I say it, but I swear you two look alike.”
“Mom, bye!” I laugh. “She has waist-length black hair. I have curly red hair. She has millions of dollars. I have ten cents. She’s uptown; I’m down on the farm. She also has a smoking-hot boyfriend, and I . . . do not.”
“Who cares about all of that? You have similar bone structure. And the skin tone is a perfect match. Besides,” she goes on, “that’s not even Zay-Zay’s hair!”
“But that’s definitely her boyfriend.” I sigh dreamily. “Koi Kalawai‘a and Zay-Zay Waters. They’re perfect. Relationship goals.”
“Nineteen-year-old-millionaire love is the new goal?” Mom laughs as she sets Daeshya gently into the tub. The kid plops right into the water without Mom taking off her diaper. “By the way, how’d Dae sleep?”
She woke up fourteen times.
Threw a bottle at my head fifteen times.
Ripped curtains off the wall.
Stuck her finger in a light socket. I thought she was dead.
“’Twas a peaceful night,” I lie. “I think she only woke up . . . once? Maybe? And at sunrise, she hugged me and gave me a kiss.”
Mom beams. “How come she always behaves so well with you?”
“I have the magic touch?” I change the subject, since lying makes my elbows itch. I scratch at them. “Oh yeah. Eli has on shorts, a tank top, and suntan lotion, and is headed out to detassel corn, and Jax wants to be a lifeguard this summer at Wacky Waters.”
“Eli will be burnt up and eaten alive by mosquitos.” Mom digs Dae’s wet diaper out of the tub. “And Jax is a farmer, not a lifeguard. He can’t even swim.”
“I tried to tell him.” I wave at Dae. “I’m off to help Dad with the manure delivery. Bye, Dae. Stay sweet.” You little terror.
She picks up a plastic bath toy and is about to toss it at my head, but I quickly duck into the hallway.
#
The sun is blazing, though it’s early morning. Tiny beads of sweat form at my brow as I move around the corner of the farmhouse toward the south barn, where the manure drop-off is happening, my leather boots kicking up dust along the way. Soon, the peaceful quiet of this place will be replaced with a flurry of activity. I can almost hear the kids screaming with glee, smell the many food carts we’ll have on the property, and inhale the thrill in the air as pretty much all of Orange City, Iowa, makes its way to the Morgan Family Farm for the three-day event that is the annual Summer Strawberry Festival.
Up ahead, I see a man in a flannel shirt, Levi’s, and mud-splattered rubber boots leaning against a dump truck near the fence of the barn. I rush to him. “Hiya.” I extend a hand. “Hope you haven’t been waiting long.”
“What else do you hope?” He pushes off the rear bumper of the truck and sort of scowls at me. “I got a delivery for Ellis Morgan. Been calling his phone. No answer.”
I see the fresh pile of manure dumped near the fence.
“I can sign for it,” I say.
He glares at me, as if a girl signing for two hundred pounds of manure seems . . . off to him. “You work here or somethin’?”
“If you don’t get paid, can you really call it work?” When I take the clipboard out of his hands, I notice Loren moving toward us, holding her phone, staring at the screen like she’s watching something brand new and exciting. I scribble my signature on the line. “There. All good.”
“Is that what you think?” He picks at his teeth and runs a hand through greasy hair that’s possibly blond under the thick layers of grime. “I got two more deliveries today. Gon’ be late for both now, thanks to y’all.”
He snatches back the clipboard, grunts, and climbs into his truck. Before I have a chance to sarcastically tell him to have a nice day, he’s driving off. I move to where Loren now sits on our wooden fence, her leather boots dangling off the side as she watches a clip from Oh, So You Think You Can Sing Live?
“C’mon, sis. Put that away. The sooner we get started, the sooner we get done.”
“One sec.” The light from Loren’s phone reflects in her glasses as she stares like she’s stuck in a trance. “Oh my gosh!” she gasps. “He got the platinum buzzer. He’s going to New York City! Look!”
I peer over her shoulder. Sure enough, silver confetti rains down on the boy as he jumps up and down.
I dig my gloves out of the pocket of my jeans. “Let’s grab shovels from the barn and start mixing the soil into the manure before Dad gets here.”
Loren’s eyes are glued to her phone. “He’s about to start crying. I can feel it. I love when they cry.”
“You have five seconds to put that thing away.” I climb onto the fence and stand slowly, lining up my boots on the thin wooden plank like I’m standing on a tightrope. “One . . . two . . . three . . .” I stomp, holding out my arms to keep my balance.
“Hey!” Loren grips the fence with one hand so she doesn’t fall. “What’s your problem?”
“Four . . . four and a half . . . four and three-quarters.” I stomp again. Harder.
“Stop counting! I’m not Daeshya.” Loren slides off the fence and lands with a thud. “And you look like Black Dorothy up there. Hey, be careful. Or a tornado is gonna blow you off to Oz.”
“I’m down for that.” I start singing. “Somewheeeeeere over the raiin-bow.”
Loren positions her phone in my direction as I sing. “I’m recording this, Mariah Scary.”
“Waaaay up hiiigh.” I jut out my hip and hold my hand exactly the way Zay-Zay Waters does when she really goes in.
“I know you’re only joking, but you sound sooo good.” Loren pulls at her fuzzy ponytail with her free hand, looking up at me like I’m something special. “I wish I could sing like you.” She points. “But be careful, sis. The fence is broken in that sp—”
Her warning is one second too late. The portion of the fence gives way, my foot slips, and I fall. And honestly, I never thought falling in slow motion was a real thing outside of movie magic. Until this very moment. I fall ever so slowly, and after what feels like minutes instead of seconds, where I’m contemplating the meaning of life—SPLAT—I’m splayed out in the pile of freshly dumped manure, staring up at the sky.
“Oh. My. Ga,” Loren whispers.
When I turn to look at her, I can hear the manure squish underneath me. Ewww. We stare at one another in total silence. Her, with her eyes stretched as wide as I’ve ever seen them stretch, and me, with my eyes burning from the stench of manure in my lashes. In spite of her jaw-dropped gaze, she’s actually still holding up her phone, recording me. For reasons beyond my understanding, I decide to be a good sport and . . . keep on singing.
“Somewhere over the rainbow, smells real bad.” I force myself onto my feet so the manure goes squish, squish beneath my boots. I strike Zay-Zay Waters’s popular pose with my hip jutted out. “There’s some stuff that I landed in. Oops, wish I never haaad.”
Loren howls, bending over in a fit of hysterical laughter. “Screaming!”
“I’m Zay-Zay Waters, ya’ heard me.” I imitate Zay-Zay’s super-strong Brooklyn accent. “Comin’ to you live from the Morgan Family Farm in Orange City, Iowa.” I shake off a clump of manure. “Lemme know if you think you can sing live!!”
“What on earth?”
We turn to see Dad.
“What the heck are y’all doin’?” He yanks off his old, worn Iowa Hawkeyes baseball cap and pulls on the strands of his short fro. The light-brown skin on his face twists to form a disgusted scowl.
Uh-oh.
Loren lowers her phone. “Red . . . fell.”
“I did.” I clumsily climb my way out of the pile and make a pitiful attempt to shake some off, but it’s sorta stuck to me like glue. “Sorry.”
“Go on and hose off behind the barn, Red.” Dad steps back, like he’s afraid I might get manure on him. “Then shower inside before you get some sort of incurable bacterial infection.” He turns to Loren. “I’m gonna hose down the greenhouse and come back to help.” He moves off, his heavy leather boots kicking up dust as he mutters and mumbles to himself. When he disappears around the corner of the hayfield, I turn to Loren.
“That went well.”
“If by well you mean . . . smell.” Loren pushes her glasses back onto her nose. “Then yes. I agree.”
I extend my arms, which are covered in manure. “Is it weird that I have the sudden, overwhelming urge to give you a long hug and never let go?”
“Don’t you dare touch me!” She stumbles back. “Go hose off and shower, like Dad said! Hurry, before the stench of you makes me drop dead.”
“Fine. But you better delete that video.”
“You kidding?” She stares down at her phone. “Black Dorothy never sounded so good. I’m gonna edit this and save it for forever.”
I extend my arms again. “I’mma hug you. Tight.”
She recoils. “Fine! I’ll delete it!”
“You better!” As I take off toward where we keep the hose behind the barn, a clump of manure slides down my back. I wonder if I’m the first human to fall from a fence into a pile of manure. With the way the Universe works . . . probably not.
