“The fifty-pound compensation for participating,” I snapped—still irritable from the study and still, evidently, in the headspace to reveal my every problem. “Which I’ll need if I’m expected to buy asingledrink at Langstone House this evening. Are we done now? Can we get toMacbeth?”
“Oh,” she said, clearly realizing the particulars of my situation, and I regretted saying anything at all. Then she pivoted,a crooked smile falling in place like it might lighten the mood. “Are they still open? I quite like the idea of startling some poor research assistant with a few childhood anecdotes.” She mimed pushing glasses up her nose. “Harper Moore is an outlier who must be disregarded.”
Damn it. Something about that softened me a little. Harper was easier to hate from a distance, when she was a blank slate for me to paste all myundeserving,privileged, andlazylabels onto.
Before me she was hesitant smile and awkward humor and someone who wastrying.
“Yeah, that article that went around seemed … interesting,” I said, because I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t seen it.
Harper shrugged. “I respect the hustle, I suppose. Greta aged out of modeling and became a sort of maternal guide for the new models on the scene. I just wish the mother on the page was the one I got, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I do.”
She looked at me, and I thought,God, am I really about to do this?And then the words were spilling.
“My grandfather was the one that was into all this,” I said, waving my hand at the stage before us. “No one else really cares. They don’t care about much actually. My mother says I feel things too deeply. But I think you have to if you’re going to create art like this, right?”
I’d never tried to articulate their indifference—and I couldn’t believe I was saying it to Harper of all people. But Iwas at least aware my aversion to her was childish and based on very little. And she’d trusted me first.
And maybe I was desperate for someone else who might understand too.
She pulled a face. “In my experience the only people who tell people they’retooanything aren’t much worth listening to. So your grandfather, is that who made you want to do this?”
The words stuck in my throat.
“I used to spend the holidays with my grandparents.” My parents would go away together and leave me there each year. I was so independent I’d have a better time without them, my mother insisted. (She did that a lot, actually, told me how I would feel about something, like she could make it so.) “My grandfather had a whole cinema set up in the cellar.”
When those projectors rolled, he came alight. Me adoring it too? It delighted him. Whole hours of just the two of us, the rustle of his peppermints, the slightly burnt microwave popcorn, and my tiny head resting against his knee as we reveled in the magic of a screen.
I’ve never felt as loved as when a film score played.
“He died a few years ago.” I kept my voice steady, though all this emotional detangling was constricting me, piece by piece.Heart attack. Sudden and painless. My parents beside me at the funeral, holding each other’s hands, passing each other tissues. I was sobbing so violently I was nearly choking. An aunt noticed and reached forward to pat my shoulder, to pass me a tissue of my own, and—
I swallowed, hard. Grandfathers die. It’s what they do. There was nothing left but to make his life worth it in every step I took. “He knew I wanted to go to drama school. His inheritance paid for the tuition, so I just … I have to make sure it’s worth it.”
Harper nodded, like she got the unsaid parts, and I felt so raw I’d have rather fled right then and there than stayed another moment.
But then, like we’d bartered an exchange, she spoke. “My mother’s family moved to San Francisco from China about a year before she landed her modeling contract. She met my father when Moore and Halton were sponsoring fashion week. It was just as my grandparents were moving back to Chongqing, and I think she rushed into marrying him just to avoid being alone. She even moved to the Cotswolds to be with him—I mean, who choosesanywhereover San Francisco? But my whole life feels like it’s been a test to prove she made the right decision. I’ve always believed she loves me about as much as she can brag about me.”
“Is that why you’re here? To give her something to brag about?”
She leaned in, almost conspiratorially, and a stray strand of her hair ghosted across my skin, featherlight and prickling, her raspberry-scented shampoo absurdly sweet.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “I’m here because my mother has written about me my entire life, and I’d like to cement my own name. I want to be so famous Greta becomes theanecdote inmyinterviews. And I like acting well enough. I’m good at it, and I do so love being the best.”
I managed to suppress a wince, but only just. Didn’t this just confirm it? Harper didn’t care. But she was still talking—and she was right, she was good at this—because captivated, I leaned in too.
“Greta didn’t want me coming here—said it was a waste. She always thought if I wanted to be on TV, my pretty face should be enough of a ticket. I’m not sure my father even read what the check he signed was for. But I dealt with the daddy issues long ago, back when I still thought my mother was perfect. The disappointment of fathers you’re prepared for. It’s the mummy issues that fuck you up.”
I arched a brow. “Ahh, the old serial killer defense? My mother made me this way?”
Her smile slanted—a sudden smirk. “Precisely—now, in that vein, let’s talk Lady Macbeth, shall we?”
———
I could still feel Harper on my skin as I pulled a slip dress over my head in the bathrooms, the linoleum sticking through the holes in my tights. There’d been so much touching during those movements we’d rehearsed—which was commonplace for the most part; acting desensitized you to the mere concept of personal space. But toward the end Harper had grabbed my hand, her thumb pressing into my palm, running a circle into it as her eyes burned into mine.And off the back of all that trauma bonding, I felt that blaze somewhere deep.
“Out damned spot,” she’d said.
