Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

To my wonderful mom, who has encouraged me, supported me and inspired me through everything

Acknowledgments

A huge thank-you:

To all the teachers who encouraged my writing, especially Mr. Dorsett, Mrs. Vann and Ms. Marcotte from Northeast High!

To my super editor, Wendy Loggia: Working with you is such a pleasure. You’ve helped me to grow so much as a writer, and I can never thank you enough for that.

To my fantastic agent, Jenny Bent; her lovely assistant, Victoria Horn; my awesome film agent, Andy Cohen; cover designer Marci Senders, editorial assistant Pam Bobowicz, and the whole Delacorte family.

To my great family, including Mom, Karen, Dave and Dad, and to all my wonderful friends, including three of my favorite teenagers: Cole, Carly and Luke Pearson.

To the best and most supportive writer friends in the world: Sarah Mlynowski (to whom I owe a great deal), Melissa Senate, Alison Pace and Lynda Curnyn, and to the talented fashion designer Amy Tangerine.

And to the three coolest rock stars I know: Ben Bledsoe, Courtney Jaye and Michael Ghegan. Star Beck’s world would be a lot more fun if she could tour with you guys!

Chapter 1

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.

—“YOU CAN BE,” STAR BECK
ALBUM: STAR LIGHT

Chapter 1

I’m in the middle of a big photo shoot, and there’s a 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 (hairstylist): “No, definitely left.”

Marco Abruglio (the photographer): “Pgfnht tfdsh gsdhtr! Cghtrehty!” (Completely unintelligible yelps that I suspect are Italian curse words)

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: “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 studio. All eyes turn to me. Everyone looks shocked that I have an opinion.

“Star?” my mother finally says, her voice as tight as her Botoxed forehead. “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 I start moving?” I ask, 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. “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 at 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 with pink lips and rosy blush. Or that I’d really prefer the barrette. But 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. Someone had the bright idea to debut the latest masterpiece from the House of Valerio (huge, crazy-expensive fashion designer in Italy) on me. Unfortunately, the House of Valerio’s latest masterpiece just happens to be a frilly Pepto-Bismol-pink dress that I can’t move in. And it’s covered with ten thousand feathers.

I’m a giant pink chicken—yet 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 I learned long ago that just because you’re the pop star whose record-breaking career pays everyone’s salaries doesn’t actually mean that anyone listens to you at all.

Five hours later, with my blush (peach),my lipstick (nude), my bangs (swept to the right) and my outfit (hideous) replaced with my normal costume for the first set, I’m standing backstage at Madison Square Garden, waiting to go on for the second-to-last show of my Simply Star autumn tour.

“Star! Star! Star!” the audience begins to chant. My heart is racing, but it’s not because of nerves. I never get nervous anymore. It’s from the pure adrenaline, the pulse-pounding excitement of having twenty thousand fans screaming my name, singing the words to my songs, waving banners that read I LOVE YOU STAR! and wearing T-shirts with my face printed on them.

“You ready?” asks Ben, my spiky-haired guitar player, nudging me playfully in the shoulder with the neck of his Les Paul as we wait in the wings.

At 24, Ben is the only one of my band members who’s even remotely close to my age (one of the guys is so old he could be my grandfather). He’s like the big brother I never had.

Out in the arena, the roar of the crowd has reaching a deafening decibel. The opening band—the girl group Sistahs Three—has come and gone, and the audience is getting restless.

Ben winks at me as the guys all nod at each other and head out to their positions onstage. There’s another roar from the crowd, more high-pitched screams. I wait thirty seconds for Dave to get his bass hooked up; Ben to adjust his guitar; Jay to settle in behind the keyboard; Casey, Michael and Al to get their horns tuned and Cash (the old guy) to slide in behind his immense drum kit. Then another thirty seconds for them to play the opening riffs. I close my eyes for a moment and let the roar of the crowd course through me. Then I begin my own trot out, smiling my big stage smile and waving my big stage wave before I even emerge from behind the curtains.

The roars and screams go up an octave as soon as I appear. I’m wearing a midriff-baring white tee, skintight gold, shimmery hot pants and gold, sparkly knee-high stiletto boots. Like every other night, I manage to dance in this because I’ve trained for years. (I could probably dance in a big clown suit if I had to—although I really hope my career never comes to that.)

Every time I bring my onstage wardrobe up with Mom, she instantly dismisses me. “You’re crazy,” she says, which seems to be her favorite word for me lately. “That’s what your fans want to see you wear.”

Okay, so maybe they do. But that doesn’t mean I’m okay with it.

I have a body that I’m pretty confident about, thanks to my personal trainer, my dietician and two hours of dancing onstage each night. I just don’t see why I’m expected to flaunt it quite this much.

“You know, normal moms try to get their daughters to dress less sluttily,” I pointed out to her the last time I asked her why I couldn’t perform in some less revealing clothes. Like maybe the cool cargo pants Fergie wears. Or the black pants and pretty dresses Kelly Clarkson gets to rock out in. But Mom just laughs.

“We’ve never been normal, Star,” she says, wrinkling her nose like normal is a bad word. “You know that. You have to look perfect. You have to be perfect, Star.”

“All I really want is you,” I sing as I dance onto the stage, shielding my eyes for a moment against the glare of the spotlight and waving to the packed arena. A giant roar rises 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 behind the band, 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, I close my eyes for a second and breathe deeply, taking it all in. “Thank you all so much!” I yell into my microphone. “You’re a great crowd! I love . . . New York!” Another roar rises from the crowd, none of whom noticed, apparently, that I almost forgot where we are.

In the past seven days, we’ve played Philadelphia, D.C., Pittsburgh, Boston and now here, New York, the last stop of a thirty-city tour. It’s really hard to keep track of where we are. I live in constant fear that I’ll one day yell out the wrong city name and the audience will 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 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 sixteen, I can afford to be more elite than Madonna.

I launch into the “Fight Fire with Fire” chorus, tossing my waist-length curly red hair around the way my award-winning choreographer Lance Mojave taught me. I can almost hear his irritatingly squeaky voice in my head: Oh yeah, work it girl. 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 the peppy, upbeat, Latin-flavored hit, “Your Love Is the Air I Breathe,” a number-one 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, my grumbling stomach and I are a little disappointed to see only a basket of 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 threw 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.”

Chapter 2

Seems like everything’s
the same with you and me,
Locked in a game, days on end.
I look around,
I look around,
We’re picture perfect, baby,
yeah, yeah, yeah.

—“PICTURE PERFECT BABY,” STAR BECK
ALBUM: THIS LIFE

Chapter 2

I love my mom, but we don’t exactly have a typical mother-daughter relationship. Most sixteen-year-olds work a part-time job or get an allowance from their parents. I work full-time while my mom sits around in spas and hotel suites and lawyers’ offices all day. She controls me and my money because I’m only a minor and she’s my guardian.

But here’s the funny thing. People think my life is perfect because I’m a famous pop star. And sure, life’s different. I basically live in five-star hotels. I know how to drive, but I don’t have a car because I spend most of my life being chauffeured around in limousines. I support my mother with my earnings and haven’t seen the inside of a classroom since I was ten (a tutor toured with us until my sixteenth birthday, when I took the GED and was pronounced a high school graduate). I don’t have to worry about being popular, and I don’t have to apply to colleges (even though I kind of want to go to one someday), because I’ve already made gabillions of dollars.

But just like most other teenagers, I fight with my mom. All the time.

No, scratch that. Not all the time. I can’t even find her most of the time. Most of the time, she’s out getting her nails done or her hair dyed or her face poked and prodded, or she’s meeting with publicists and lawyers and trying to sign endorsement deals for cosmetics or jeans or books or whatever she happens to be into that week.

And you have to actually be able to locate someone in order to fight with them, don’t you? Sometimes I think I’d prefer the constant fighting, because at least it would mean I’d get to talk with her.

You name it, we’ve argued about it. My hair. My complete lack of days off (“Slacking off isn’t going to win you another Grammy,” she always says.) My slutty stage outfits. Even boys. Not that there are boys to fight about. Contrary to what the tabloids say, I’ve never even had a real first kiss. Really, I’m utterly, pathetically clueless when it comes to guys (despite several kissing scenes in music videos and the few movies I’ve starred in). But Mom is always insisting that I have to act like I have all sorts of experience.

“Girls look up to you,” she says. “They want to be you. No one aspires to be innocent anymore. And the second they find out you are, well, they’ll think you’re a loser.”

Thanks, Mom.

Sure, fame, fans, money and all the other perks of being a pop star make some things easier. And yeah, it’s awesome to be called “the next pop queen” by Entertainment Weekly and “America’s favorite teenager” by Teen Vogue. But I’m alone all the time, I don’t have any friends, I haven’t had a decent conversation with my own mother in more than two years. And a boyfriend? Forget it.

Who’d want a life like that?

Fortunately, when you’re famous, the money and attention that cause you problems can also solve some of them. And that’s where Jesse Bishop comes in.

If I’m the most famous female teen pop star in America, Jesse Bishop is my male equivalent. We’ve known each other forever. We costarred on Family Business, and later, he guest-starred on my Disney Channel show, Secrets of My Teenage Life. We took acting lessons together when we were six, right after I got my first big break, which means that I’ve know him longer than pretty much anyone else in the industry.

As far as America knows, I’ve been dating Jesse for the last two months. The truth is, although he’s a nice guy, it’s made my skin crawl each of the six times he’s kissed me (which were all in front of dozens of cameras), because I don’t have romantic feelings for him. That and, well, he’s just a really bad kisser. Not that I have much to compare him to, but I am pretty sure that your lips aren’t supposed to hurt after you finish making out with someone. I’m also pretty sure that I’ve never seen anyone’s teeth smashing awkwardly together in any kissing scenes in movies.

I’m guessing that Jesse probably never had to learn to kiss right. He’s always making out with random fans. His manager encourages it (Jesse has a bad-boy image to maintain). Most girls are probably so thrilled to make out with him that it’s not like they’d stop in the middle and say, “You’re really bad at this.”

Bad kissing aside, Jesse is undeniably hot, with his floppy, sun-streaked surfer hair, his dimples and his broad shoulders. His management team has done an amazing job of creating a mystique around him; he’s always slightly evasive in interviews, and instead of answering personal questions, he just arches his eyebrow at the camera and winks one of his beautiful green eyes, and girls swoon. I’m not kidding; I’ve seen girls faint.

It doesn’t hurt that his last three singles—two dance hits and a romantic ballad—hit number one. He’s in People almost every week and is a frequent TRL guest host.

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