In Book 3 of the Finding Kali Trilogy, Kali struggles to sort out a mess of feelings. She previously held herself down under the weight of the story that her doctors told her. So much so, that Kali lost the ability to judge her own feelings. When she meets Andriy, a Canadian boy who went to Beverly Hills High School, she finds that she is in over her head. The feelings she's always wanted to have are there, but they bring with them a bunch of new emotions to sort through as well as the inevitable drop-out of the ecstatic (literally) feelings she had at first.
After three increasingly mellow trips to the North, she finds herself in a new world of producers and recording artists. Her audio school is in Hollywood and the process of learning this brand-new craft of engineering is looming. With internal conflict around self-worth and amongst veterans of the music industry, Kali struggles to keep her head above water: choking on the in between of trying to be professional and talented but continue to decipher who wants something other than music from her. It is harder for Kali than any of the other conflicts she conquered.
When things aren't as high, to feel alive again, Kali runs. She is coming down hard and this time there won't be a trampoline to break her fall.
Per her usual routine, Kali sabotages her dream romance with Andriy. Meanwhile, she is in the studio, singing a song about her times with him, begging the universe to give her something like the feeling of booking that first flight, against her mother's wishes, into a whole new world. It felt so good to throw herself so completely into the void, but now she can't seem to satiate her hunger for the feeling she so treasured.
The music industry is not free of leeches, nor is it a place to find feminism or even protection against the misogynistic undertones that sweep through the recording sessions.
She throws herself into learning her craft and in doing so falls upon a fellow indigo child, the first she'd met EVER, Christian. They spend hours upon hours laughing and drinking absorbent amounts of wine, reminiscing on his childhood raised in the industry and by a mother who had taught him what he already knew: the ways of the spirit they both inherently understood. The summer is filled with days learning how to engineer and nights testing Christian's mother's concoction of kumquat liquor from Shasta while writing songs into the early hours of the morning. Christian's mom, a sound healer, continues her healing sessions with Kali and offers up their grand piano to practice on when Christian moves away. The two of them introduce Kali to one of the most important people in her life today: a doctor that would change her direction completely.
In the end, Kali Rae walks onto the stage, center stage and into the accomplishment of not only making it through a pharmaceutical hell but maneuvering through all of the people that tried to take what wasn't theirs.
In that moment, all of the treachery flashes before her eyes. But, this time, it makes her smile a smile that no one could mistake for anything other than overwhelming bliss. The crowd goes nuts.
It was all for this.
For this moment.
