Something is fishy. Dread forms knots in my stomach as I turn The Hulk toward Nizhóní.I’m still on vacation, I’m still on vacation,I whisper to console myself.
Five minutes later I walk into the resort and hear the last voice I want or expect to hear echoing through the corridor like a tornado siren. I should’ve known this was coming when I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck as I pulled into the parking lot. It's my mother. She’s here. And her voice is getting closer.
Willow is standing behind the front desk, her dark, doe eyes wide. “Sorry!” she whispers in a panic, but she picks up the phone. It’s been ringing since I came in the door.
My instinct is to run, jump in the van, hit the freeway, and hide in another state. My mother rounds the corner and spots me standing in the entry like an escaping fugitive, frozen under search lights in a prison yard. I’m surprised to see her smiling given I haven’t contacted her since I sent that batch of photos yesterday morning.
“Indigo! My long lost daughter, come give your mother a hug!” she calls to me from the end of the long, wide hall.
Two things happen at once: One, I rack my brain to figure out how she found me. When we spoke I was vague about my location, and I had double checked every picture I sent to make sure that the resort logo wasn’t in any of the shots. Two, I adjust my t-shirt and leggings like the action will magically transform them into something appropriate for a runway instead of a runaway. Unfortunately, the faux-vintage Twisted Sister tee I grabbed at Target is still loud and proud across my chest. Fabulous.
She finally reaches me, flanked by her assistants who look me up and down in their critical way that I’ve become accustomed to since I was a teenager. She pulls me in by the hands and air kisses my cheeks like we’re British royalty meeting for tea. “Hello, darling! I’ve missed you.” I wonder if she can smell the Flaming Hot Cheetos I ate on the drive here.
She pulls me to sit on one of the plush couches that line the hallway. I’m speechless. It’s like the hundreds of questions circling in my mind have bottlenecked in the back of my throat. I want to cry. I want to run. I want to yell. Instead I ask, “How did you find me?”
Something is off about her laugh. “You said you were in Utah, so I tracked you down.”
“Yeah, but how?” As much as I want to, I can’t raise my voice. This hall echoes and there are a lot of women staying here who would be very interested to know the intimate details of the life of Kara Fox.
She squeezes an arm around me. Her long, manicured fingernails pinch and dig more than she must realize. “You’re not that hard to track down.” I pull back just enough and she loosens her hold, folding her hands around the phone in her lap. “Aren’t you happy to see me?” Her injected lips pout even more than they do at rest, which is a feat.
Ismile at my mother, “Of course I’m happy to see you. I’m just surprised. When we spoke it seemed like Utah wasn’t interesting to you.”
Her voice lowers. “That’s exactly why I’m here.” She swipes to open her phone. “We put up a few of your photos and the response has been, well—just look.”
She makes it sound so easy. I take a deep breath in through my nose. Am I ready to jump back into this world? A few hours ago I woke up to the sound of Joe tapping on the window of The Hulk to say goodbye. He had transitioned to three light taps this morning, and something about that small change made me smile like a goofball. Those three taps sounded like “I miss you” or “I need you” or “Good morning, beautiful” or a few other things my twitterpated mind invented as I lay in my sleeping bag. Joelikes melikes me. I grin before I can stop it. Just thinking of those three knocks gives me strength to look at the phone.
It’s open to my Instagram account, which has a carousel of photos, edited to give the impression that I’m on an earthy, bohemian getaway. My pictures are reframed and filtered in the usual way, making it look like I’m only branching out in my usual brand. The front photo has been cropped to show half of my face with blurry sagebrush and red rocks in the background. Someone went heavy on the smoothing filters, thankfully. My freckles are nowhere to be seen and my skin is absolutely glowing. The caption is a snippet of some poem that is nothing but word salad to me—something to do with freedom and rediscovery. It was either on the back of a bottle of herbal supplements or someone dug deep on Google for that one. No one in my mother’s life is into poetry. But the woman in these photos doesn’t look like someone who’s having a life crisis, and that’s what matters to me. Maybe I haven’t entirely lost my credibility?
I look at the stats and my eyes go wide. I’ve never had this kind of response. Ever. If you took my most shared post on any platformand tripled it, you’d end up with these numbers. I’m viral. “Why? How did this happen?”
“You’d know this if you kept up with my texts.”
“Or my emails.” This is from her assistant Ashley, who shoots an irked look at me across the glass coffee table. I had forgotten she was here.
“That photo has had an interesting life cycle.” My mom switches to business mode, which is totally at odds with our peaceful surroundings. Her long nails click and swipe through phone screens, showing me the figures on my dashboard. “Initially your numbers tanked. Even mine took a hit. But over the course of a few days, you developed a crop of new followers who came to your defense in the name of body positivity, which I am totally behind. We are body positive, right?” The women nod knowingly and in perfect unison with my mother.
“A few big female empowerment-type accounts picked up on your story,” she says the word “story” with a frown as though I’m an oppressed woman living in Afghanistan and not San Diego county. “And here we are! You’re stronger than ever, and we’ll only need to make minor changes to your content. You’ll tack on a few natural beauty products, with a touch of woo-woo physical and mental health stuff thrown in to appease the body positivity people. So you can keep doing your yoga.” She playfully squeezes my knee and there are those talons again. I try not to flinch. “It’s just a pivot, not total rebranding. Which leads me to the best news of all.” Her eyes are wide waiting for me to join in her excitement. I physically can’t mimic my mother’s expressions right now.
“What?”
“Skinnybee. They are launching that new line and they still want you for it. They’re sending new contracts. In fact, they might even be in your email right now. You’re back!”
Their new line isn’t new. It’s the same old stuff, which seems at odds with the so-called body positive angle she’s telling me to adopt. No one understands branding like my mother, so I choose to trust her decision. But why do my lungs feel like balloons with pinhole leaks? I can’t breathe right. I want to wander out to that spot Joe took me last night and inhale a bunch of that clean desert air. My mother is waiting for me to show some excitement, but I can’t muster any. I have no muster. “Okay. Same deal as before?”
“Same deal. Except—and this is huge—they want to cometo you.”
“Come to me?” As in, have a launch party at my condo? That can’t be right.
Suddenly the location tag on the photo my mom’s team posted catches my full attention: Nizhóní Resort and Spa. There’s no way that’s what my mother means. “Comehereto me?”
“Yes. They have a team coming this week. We’ll stay here and do some shoots together. We’ve made all the arrangements. Luckily, the resort has plenty of room for us. They love, love, love what they’ve seen so far.” Her grin doesn’t quite reach her eyes, but that’s usually the case with her Botox. “We’ll all get in touch with our inner hippies and become one with Mother Earth. And we’ll look on point doing it, thanks to this partnership.” Her laugh echoes down the hall.
Am I asleep?I am hoping for something to wake me up. Maybe I’m actually in the back of The Hulk and this is just an unsettling nap dream. Sunny appears down the hall and the look on her face tells me that this is, indeed, reality. I can see her sweating from here as she speed walks toward the spa. No doubt she has a long list of rearrangements to make.
“Okay.” I know I would be a fool to pass up this opportunity. Sure, I’m cutting my vacation short. Or, more accurately—bringing my work into my vacation. But this will be good. I’ll get my career back on track and still stay here where there’s a much higher chanceof seeing Joe than there will be in California. It’s the best of both worlds, right? “I’m in.”
My mother’s team is already checked into the resort and has a full afternoon of spa time scheduled, so we part ways. She’s excited for her hot stone massage, and I’m tracking down Sunny so I can unpack the mental tumult brought on by our worlds colliding. No biggie.
