Here is another bonus chapter for you. All thanks to — GrasshopperNZ
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Another blank sheet found its place beneath his hand. Marvin didn't look at the clock.
He didn't notice the hours slipping away. There would be time for sleep later.
Right now… There was only the next scene.
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Oh… you don’t wanna lose that love…
It’s only gonna hurt too much…
I’m telling you… you don’t wanna lose that love…
The song, released under the massive distribution umbrella of Columbia Records, hit the global market like a tidal wave.
Titled *That Girl* by the label and the fans, the single reached record stores from New York to Tokyo within days. By lunchtime, long queues had formed outside music shops, general stores and supermarkets, and before evening, many had already sold out.
Store managers who had confidently ordered what they believed were generous quantities found themselves on the telephone, demanding emergency shipments from distributors. CD singles vanished first. The vinyl pressings, produced in far smaller numbers, disappeared almost instantly.
The surprising part wasn't who was buying them, but why. CDs were convenient. People threw them into car stereos, portable players, and home systems without a second thought.
Vinyl was different. Owning a record demanded intention. You lowered the needle yourself. You sat down. You listened from beginning to end.
Wealthier collectors, dedicated audiophiles, and owners of meticulously assembled home hi-fi systems or people would afford it, swore that a well-mastered vinyl record possessed a warmth CDs simply couldn't reproduce.
Whether that warmth came from the analog format itself, the imperfections of the needle tracing the grooves, or merely the quiet ritual of lowering the tonearm and listening without interruption had been argued over for years.
Nobody seemed able to prove it one way or the other.
Some dismissed it as little more than expectation and nostalgia—a very expensive placebo.
Others would happily spend hours insisting they could hear the difference within the first few notes.
Whatever the truth, Marvin's music seemed to thrive in that environment, encouraging listeners to slow down, sit still, and surrender themselves completely to the song.
But one thing almost everyone agreed on.
Marvin's music seemed made for moments like that.
His songs had an unusual way of drawing people inward. They settled the mind without asking permission. Regrets that had been buried for years drifted quietly to the surface. They quieted restless thoughts, softened old griefs. Faces long forgotten became vivid again. Even people who insisted they never grew sentimental found themselves thinking about old friendships, first loves, or roads they hadn't taken.
It wasn't just the melody. It wasn't just the lyrics.
Somewhere in the space between the two, the music invited people to stop doing everything else and simply... listen.
Owners of elaborate home hi-fi systems found themselves reaching for the vinyl pressing more often than the CD. They would dim the lights, settle into a favorite chair, lower the needle with almost ceremonial care, and let the room disappear into music.
When the final chord faded, many realized they hadn't moved once.
Five minutes had slipped by unnoticed.
They couldn't have said exactly what the song had done to them.
Only that they wanted to hear it again.
The timing couldn't have been better.
By the summer of 1999, radio playlists had become dominated by glossy teen pop, polished dance tracks, post-grunge rock, rap, R&B and increasingly aggressive rap.
Audiences loved them, but familiarity inevitably bred fatigue.
*That Girl* arrived from a different direction.
It carried the accessibility of pop, the soul of acoustic rock, and a quiet emotional weight that stood apart from everything surrounding it.
There was no attempt to overwhelm the listener with explosive hooks or elaborate production. The arrangement breathed. Every instrument had room to exist, allowing Marvin's voice to remain at the center, carrying an intimacy that made the song feel less like a performance and more like a conversation.
Yet even that wasn't the biggest reason people rushed to hear it.
The song belonged to Marvin Meyers.
Only weeks earlier, newspapers and television stations around the world had been consumed by the extraordinary story unfolding in New Zealand. The teenage author, actor, and musician had suddenly become something larger than any celebrity.
He had become a story people wanted to believe in. To some, he was a once-in-a-generation prodigy.
To others, a modern Robin Hood with a bow in his hands. Whatever name they gave him, one thing was undeniable.
People were no longer listening to Marvin simply because he made great music.
They were listening because they wanted to experience whatever he did next. He wasn't just a Hollywood prodigy anymore; he was a real-life, bow-wielding folk hero.
Because of this, sales of his previous single, *Unstoppable*, skyrocketed back up the charts. The sudden influx of new fans pillaged record stores, buying up his older music. His debut EP, *Marvin 1*, and the titanic single *My Heart Will Go On* saw expected boosts in sales, throwing the Columbia Records and Wolf Cousins pressing plants into twenty-four-hour overtime shifts just to meet the demand.
Yet, it was *That Girl* that truly captured the zeitgeist.
Marvin's lazy, melancholy vocal interpretation, combined with the sad, exquisitely crafted lyrics, seemed to tell an intimate story of a "missed love." But underneath the analog recording, Marvin had woven his magic into the very master tracks. The magic acted as a carrier wave for his intent.
Coupled with his textured, husky voice, the music felt almost physical—as if tiny, visible particles of pure emotion were floating through the air of whatever room it was played in. It was hearty, smooth, and deeply soulful, like a cool breeze cutting through the heat of early summer. It penetrated people's defenses effortlessly, bypassing their logical brains and making it impossible to hide from or resist.
Listeners unknowingly fell into a hypnotic trance, putting the single on a continuous, unbreakable loop.
The strangest phenomenon of the track was the paradox it created. Even though the lyrics explicitly described a "sad" story of regret, Marvin's performance carried an unparalleled, supernatural "healing" effect. It was magic designed to soothe, to tether the listener's buried emotions to his voice.
DJ Rick Dees hadn't meant to start a media storm.
He had.
By the following morning, every entertainment desk in Los Angeles, New York, London, and Sydney was asking the same question.
Who was That Girl?
The hunt began almost immediately.
Entertainment editors reassigned reporters. Photo agencies emptied filing cabinets. Researchers combed through months of archived negatives, contact sheets, and freshly digitized photographs, searching for one face that appeared beside Marvin more often than the others.
The tabloids smelled blood.
And circulation.
By Friday, the supermarket checkout lines had become battlefields.
Magazine covers screamed competing theories.
*WHO STOLE MARVIN'S HEART?*
*THE MYSTERY GIRL BEHIND THE WORLD'S BIGGEST LOVE SONG!*
*HOLLYWOOD'S YOUNGEST GENIUS... SECRET ROMANCE?*
Every publication claimed to possess an exclusive.
None agreed with the others.
One issue devoted six pages to photographs of Marvin and Scarlett Johansson taken during the *The Horse Whisperer* premiere, enlarging every smile, every glance, every moment they happened to stand shoulder to shoulder, surrounding the images with breathless speculation.
Another insisted the answer had been hiding in plain sight all along, printing photographs of Beyoncé from award shows and charity events, confidently informing readers that "industry insiders" had noticed an undeniable chemistry between the two.
Others dug through premieres, rehearsals, recording studios, airports, hotel entrances, restaurants, and backstage corridors, publishing any photograph in which Marvin had appeared within arm's reach of a young actress, singer, or model.
Jessica Alba.
Lindsay Lohan.
Every familiar face became another headline.
The more respectable entertainment magazines largely kept some distance.
The supermarket tabloids did not. For them, speculation wasn't a flaw. It was the product.
The true scavengers went even further.
If they couldn't find a celebrity, they searched for ordinary girls.
The "bottom-feeders"—the journalists who lived in the gutters of Fleet Street and Hollywood Boulevard—went even deeper. They dug up Miranda Kerr, the striking Australian teen. and his schoolmate Dorothy Martin. Former neighbors, teachers, distant acquaintances—anyone who had shared a classroom, birthday party, or photograph with Marvin became a potential source.
Most of them had absolutely nothing to say.
That rarely stopped the stories. Anonymous friends. Unnamed insiders. Sources close to the family.
The phrases appeared so often they almost became punctuation.
Then there was Paris Hilton. It would be surprising if she did not seize such an opportunity.
The rumors linking them weren't an accident; they were a calculated leak. Their private dinner during the Fox Charity Gala hadn't been that private, and while Paris played the "dumb blonde" for the cameras, she was sharp enough to know how to weaponize a scandal.
The tabloids would have been foolish to leave her out of the frenzy.
A single photograph of the two attending the same charity function was enough. Editors circled it in red, dusted it off from their archives, and gave it a brand-new headline.
*IS PARIS HOLLYWOOD'S MYSTERY GIRL?*
Another magazine went further.
*THE HEIRESS WHO STOLE THE PRODIGY'S HEART?*
It hardly mattered that neither publication possessed any evidence beyond a handful of photographs taken at the same event.
Evidence had never been the point.
Mystery sold magazines.
At eighteen, she was playing a dangerous game with a boy who just about to turned fourteen. She couldn't come out and claim him—the optics of a legal adult hunting a "prodigy" would have invited a firestorm she wasn't ready to weather—but she didn't have to. She simply leaned into the silence, letting her "connections and friends" leak the speculation. She let the media do her dirty work, riding the wave of his fame while keeping enough distance to deny it all with a wink.
By the end of the second day, Paris's name had joined an ever-growing list that already included actresses, singers, models, classmates, and practically every young woman the press had ever photographed standing within a few feet of Marvin.
Within days, the mystery surrounding That Girl had grown larger than the song itself.
Ironically, every new rumor accomplished exactly the opposite of what the tabloids intended.
Instead of narrowing the list......they convinced the public that everyone had a chance of being That Girl... almost everyone had a theory—and nobody had the answer.
For the girls, the attention was both a blessing and a curse.
Overnight, faces that had once appeared only occasionally in entertainment pages were suddenly plastered across supermarket checkout magazines from Los Angeles and New York to London, Sydney, and Tokyo. Casting directors noticed. Fashion brands noticed. Television producers noticed.
So did everyone else.
Their public profiles climbed almost overnight, but fame came with sharp edges.
Their "market value" skyrocketed overnight, but the spotlight of 1999 was a predatory, flickering thing.
The tabloids of the era weren't interested in privacy. They weren't even particularly interested in the truth.
The media’s interest in these teenage relationships felt less like romance and more like a hunt. It was an era of unchecked intrusion, where the line between "reporting" and "stalking" hadn't ever truly existed.
They wanted a story.
Better yet, they wanted a scandal.
The photographers waiting outside restaurants weren't hoping for an ordinary photograph. They wanted an embrace, a whispered conversation, a glance that could be frozen into a front-page headline. A single blurry frame could become an entire week's worth of speculation. The paparazzi didn't just want a photo; they wanted a transgression. They hungered for a slip-up, a tear, or a scandal they could strip-mine for content. Every girl on that list was now a target, their innocence bartered for circulation numbers.
Reporters appeared outside schools, film sets, recording studios, shopping centers, and family restaurants. Every outing became a potential cover story. Every friendship became a rumored romance.
For the girls whose names had become attached to That Girl, the attention could be suffocating.
Millions of people who had never met them suddenly believed they knew them.
Some envious, some malicious, and many disturbingly voyeuristic Some admired them. Others envied them. Many simply wanted to know whether they were the girl—all waiting to see which one of them would be the first to break under the weight of being the "Chosen One" for a boy who wasn't just a star, but a global obsession among females.
They had become unwilling participants in a mystery the entire entertainment world seemed determined to solve.
As long as Marvin Meyers remained the most talked-about young celebrity on the planet, every camera pointed in his direction would inevitably drift toward the girls standing beside him.
Within seventy-two hours, Marvin's phone had turned into a switchboard of overlapping voices.
Scarlett was the first to call.