Nadine Heywood:Yes, yes, she won an Academy Award for a role I turned down. So what? I had more trophies. And Supporting Actress hardly counts, anyway. Besides, even I can admit she deserved it. I certainly wasn’t wasting my time trying to one-up a mediocre actress. Her performance was transcendent. If I felt anything, it would have been a vague sort of itch to achieve more—but I wasn’t focused on her at all. If you remember, darling, I was a touch preoccupied that night.
March 1998
MY HANDS WERE STILL SHAKING AS I TRIED PUNCHING the buttons of my phone. Ruchi wasfinallyon speed dial. But my fingers kept slipping even though they were dry. The blood, as far as I was aware, was confined to my shoulder where it was slowly clotting. The seatbelt had cut in, but not deep as it held me in place.
“Nadine,” she answered, relieved. “I’ve been trying to get through to you all night. Are you—”
“I did something stupid,” I said quickly, biting back tears. And in that moment I realized how dependent I was on the people around me, like maybe becoming famous was not merely a means to get a great many people to care about me but a way to get a select few to look after me. It did not bother me that they were paid. That I was a job they likely complained about over drinks or dreamed of resigning. I had simply raised myself, chased my own ambition, and wanted to finally rest, to leave my life and my success in the hands ofothers. And right now I wanted Ruchi like a mother, to tell me everything would be alright. “I totaled my car, just off Malibu Canyon, and I—”
“What? Are you okay?”
“No.”
And then I started crying.
It all crashed over me:Gildedand the way they’d used me turning it down in their promotion, Harper and that damn nomination—not to mention her smug brags ateveryopportunity, the night spent watching the ceremony alone until I’d broke and reached out for help, realizing as I did that there were shockingly few people to turn to and, also, potentially a concussion from my head slamming into the airbag.
“Nadine, Nadine,” Ruchi said sternly, in the sort of way that made clear how long she’d been repeating it. “I need you to answer my questions. Do you have a head injury?”
“Maybe. I hit the airbag pretty hard but … no, I don’t think so.”
“Are you under the influence?”
“No, god, this is so stupid,” I sniffed through my tears. “I was driving to Ivan’s in Malibu, and I got lost, and I was distracted because of … well …”
“Harper,” she said softly.
“Always.” I winced against my own words. “God, it’s always Harper. But yes, and I wasn’t as focused as I should be, and something ran across the road. I don’t even know what. But I swerved and crashed into the mountainside.”
She fell silent, and I knew she was thinking what I was: I was lucky it wasn’t worse, a road like that with steep drops on either side. And here I was, making this call.
“I’ve got a hospital dispatch on my landline. Private. Discreet. They’re sending an ambulance along that road—do you know where exactly you are?”
I worked with her, trying to pinpoint my location, trying to steer clear of the drivers who slowed to ask if I needed help, putting on an American accent and telling them it was all in hand and hoping in the dark they didn’t recognize me.
And then she added, “Nadine, this is going to get out. Especially with it happening the night of Harper’s Oscar win. If we’re lucky, it’ll be too late for the papers to get it for tomorrow. But we need to angle this into an accident.”
“Itwasan accident.”
“And that’s not a very good story. So that’s not the one they’re going to go with.”
———
We did not get lucky. Apparently one of those passersby had indeed recognized me. The paparazzi got there before the ambulance did. Before Ivan did, who Ruchi had called the moment she got off the phone with the hospital. That is the power of the press—they transcend the limits of decent people, like physical distance.
They formed their huddle around me, flashing pictures like I was an animal in a zoo.
I tried laughing, even though I was still choked with tears. Even though my shirt was now damp with blood—though surely that was reminiscent of Adeline enough to be titillating on its own. “Just visiting a friend and swerved to avoid hitting a deer.”
None of them asked if I was okay, if I needed help, or if an ambulance was on its way. Just yelled about Harper—her win, the role itself, what it had done to me. And I stood there, bleeding and tear-stained, as their cacophony formed: “Harper, Harper, Harper.”
The ambulance arrived a few moments later and hauled me to the hospital where Ivan met me, running into the room with haste I’d never seen, his new girlfriend, Annabelle St. Clair, a step behind. I’d been skeptical when Ivan had first told me—he was art, graft, and dedication, and the St. Clairs were an American dynasty, the sort of wealth that couldn’t even be traced to a singular source. This was my first time meeting her—and I appreciated the way she pretended it was all normal. She had a way of forcing calm into the world. She almost mademefeel like that evening hadn’t happened.
But it had.
And for all that year spent honing my rich, polished sheen—the veneer cracked beneath the headlines that followed.
None of them came outright and said it: that I was drunk, maybe high. But they highlighted Harper’s Oscar win in the articles, let people think maybe it was retaliation. Maybe I’d acted out, done it on purpose to get attention back on me. Ormaybe I’d had a full-scale breakdown, gone on a bender, and smashed my car into the side of the road.
