HAZEL FINE SINGS ALONG (WATTYS 2022 Winner!)

Chapter 21: Family Values

When Hazel's phone shattered her sleep the next morning, she was glad she'd stopped at one glass of Champagne. It was the start of a new week, and she was going to have to learn not just one song, but two. There was also a group number where there was going to be choreography, never her strong suit. She needed all her faculties, and then some.

She'd never truly appreciated when she watched all those seasons of the Sing Along how hard the contestants had to work. Not that she was complaining. This was her dream, and she was prepared to work as hard as necessary to get it. In addition, they were finally getting paid more than a per diem, and she was socking away as much of it as she could so that she'd have a cushion if this all failed to work out.

The show also uploaded their performances to iTunes and Spotify each week and they got a small cut of the royalties, though it was shocking how many streams it took to get any real money. Hazel was both pleased and amazed to see that two of her performances already had over a million streams. Someone outside the bar the night before had even asked for her autograph.

It had been a long time since Hazel had felt like the center of anyone's attention, and she could admit she liked it. It also created danger signs, a tickle at the back of her neck that was a warning that something bad was coming.

She should've paid more attention to that feeling.

Because the call she was about to miss wasn't from a friend or even Chris.

It was from her mom.

She stared at the phone vibrating on the nightstand with that accusatory word lighting up the screen: Mom. She hadn't talked to her mother in over a year, after their last blowout fight where she'd made it clear that she wasn't coming back to Austin, that she was taking a chance in LA. Her parents thought she should walk away from the industry, that she should do something safe and boring like teach music or work in a library. Mostly, they just wanted her to live with them, so they could go back to controlling everything about her.

But Hazel had had enough of their control and manipulation in her life. She'd made a lot of mistakes, too, but she wanted to be the one who made them.

The phone stopped buzzing and the call went to voicemail. Hazel breathed a sigh of relief. But then her mother called back.

"You going to get that?" Zoey said groggily from her bed as Brooke groaned quietly beside her.

"Getting it," she said. She picked up the phone. "Hold on one second."

"Hazel?" her mother's shrill voice set her teeth on edge.

"Just wait a second. Jesus."

Hazel slipped on a pair of shoes and grabbed her room key while holding the phone against her chest. Brooke was spooned around Zoey in their bed. They looked so adorable that Hazel felt like she might cry. But she knew that this was a pre-reaction to her call with her mother.

She opened the door and went into the hall. She leaned against the wall and raised the phone to her ear. "I'm here."

"Jim! Hazel is on the line. Jim!"

"Mom, can you just talk to me? I can talk to dad after."

"Jim? Are you picking up? It's Hazel!"

Hazel sank down the wall to the carpet. It was scratchy and smelled faintly of chemicals. Hazel wanted to hang up, but she knew that now that her parents had it in their mind that they were going to talk to her there was no escaping it. They'd call and call until she changed her number.

"Hazel?"

"Hi, Dad."

"Where are you?"

"How are you, Dad?"