When five-star Frank—she can’thelp it—drops her off at Cherry Canyon’s parking lot, Betty’s waiting for her wearing a muscle tee, hot-pink shorts, and the kind of effortlessly sadistic grin that promises it’s not going to be an easy hike.
“You’re doing advertising now?” Ramona reaches forward to flick the brim of her friend’s cap, navy blue withBody by Bettyembroidered on it.
“My little sister made it for me for Christmas last year. Not my fault I look cute in it.” Then she turns serious, hugging Ramona before pulling back to examine her. Ramona has five inches on Betty, but in a fight she’d put her money on Betty towin every time. “How are you doing? Or are you sick of that question yet?”
“You’re one of the few people who might actually care about the answer.” Ramona lets out a slow breath. Inhales the earthy tang of nature. Her own athleisure is designed to blend in: gray tank, black leggings, giant Ray-Bans. “Today…today I feel decent. Ready to climb a fucking mountain.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
Betty Zhu started as her personal trainer a few years ago and has, much to her surprise, become her best friend, the person she texts when she’s lonely on tour or has gossip to share with someone she knows won’t pass it on. Ramona’s worked with a number of trainers, all of them selected by DeeAnn and eager to push her until she threw up. She got Betty’s name from the indie singer-songwriter who opened for her last tour.She’s tough but gentle,she said.She doesn’t actually want to kill you.
That had been enough for Ramona. During their first session at a private gym in Glendale, Betty didn’t make a single comment about Ramona’s career. Didn’t pinch the skin beneath her bra strap like her previous trainer did. Didn’t ask for a photo. A couple months later, just before Ramona performed at Coachella, she offered Betty free tickets.
“Oh,” Betty had said with a scrunch of her brow. “Are you like, famous or something?” She maintained the faux confusion for three full seconds before both of them burst out laughing.
Betty’s known for her discretion, which is why she has plenty of celebrity clients, and ever since those first few sessions, Ramona’s been able to open up to her in a way that she hasn’t with anyone else. Something about sweating and grunting in front of a near-stranger will do that to a person.
“I forgot how long it’s been since I’ve done this,” Ramona says with a rough laugh as they pound the dirt trail. Her phone and keys are tucked into the pack around her hips, water bottle dangling from one hand. She takes a long sip. “Is this what people feel like after being cryogenically frozen?”
“We can take it as slow as you want, sugar-bean.” Betty is relentlessly creative with her pet names. She’s also relentlessly cruel for barely breaking a sweat while Ramona already feels like she’s swimming in it. “You set the pace.”
They got into the habit of hiking last year, when Ramona remarked that the gym was starting to feel a little claustrophobic, and she’s grown to love it—the thigh-burning, breath-stealing freedom.
She decided to stay in LA for two reasons: one, the weather, and two, because it’s always been home. She was born in a drafty one-bedroom apartment in Lancaster, at least fifty miles north of anywhere her parents would have rather lived, but still LA County, a source of pride for them. Her toddler years were spent in the back seat of DeeAnn’s ’95 Dodge Neon, shuttling back and forth to auditions she didn’t fully understand but loved when she could make strangers smile. Then there was the furnished apartment she rented in Burbank while onGreta, and the first house she bought for herself and her parents in Studio City before realizing she couldn’t keep living with them if she was going to maintain any sense of calm.
Every time she imagined abandoning the city, she couldn’t bear the idea of leaving behind the sepia-toned vistas or taco trucks orgrit, that ambition ingrained in nearly everyone from the highest-earning celebrities to five-star Frank, promoting his music in an Uber. Even this rocky desert landscape is beautiful toher, the sagebrush fighting to survive under the same sun that roasts her bare but heavily sunscreened shoulders.
Ramona readjusts her baseball cap to push loose strands of hair back into her ponytail. “Guess I should have considered, you know,movingwhen I was sitting on my couch eating takeout and watchingGilmore Girlsfor all those months.”
“That’s just what your body needed. You were starving yourself,” Betty says. “Don’t beat yourself up for it. Even though you’re inexplicably Team Logan.”
“The older I get, the more I see the appeal!” she volleys back, igniting one of their age-old debates.
Ramona hasn’t beaten herself up for it—at least, not today. She knows she’s gained weight since the announcement, but when she looks in the mirror, she tries to focus on how the dark circles under her eyes have faded a bit. The rosiness coming back to her cheeks. The new softness to her belly and around her thighs, all of it proof that she’s listening to what her body needs. She wants to make peace with every part of herself. However long it takes.
“Have the reporters stopped calling you?” she asks Betty as they turn a corner, elevation steadily increasing.
“They’re always calling, and I’m always blocking. You know I’m a vault.” A swift shake of her head. “And what about you, bumblebee? Your parents still trying to convince you to come back?”
“I haven’t heard from them in three weeks, actually. A record.”
Even though they’ll be able to comfortably retire in a few years—sooner if they hadn’t been so reckless with their money—Ramona has some guilt that her decision ended her parents’ careers, too, though she supposes there’s nothing stopping them from finding someone else to manage. She hates that, the guilt,because how many times has her mother ever apologized for calling up the paparazzi, or for the photo shoots that bordered on inhumane? At age fifteen, the first time Ramona saw an airbrushed magazine cover of herself with slimmer cheeks and fuller lips and thought,I hadn’t realized there was anything wrong with my faceas DeeAnn fawned over how pretty she looked. There’d been no apology then.
It feels a bit like a breakup, although at least with Thaniel, she didn’t feel at all conflicted about ending it. What remained after the lawyers’ fees were paid was an acute, staggering loneliness. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t have second thoughts sometimes—mostly when she’s still awake at two in the morning, Janet fast asleep on her lungs—if only because some noise might make the quiet more bearable.
“I guess I thought that once they were done being my managers, they might go back to being my parents?” She catches her foot on a stone, takes a moment to right herself. God, it sounds idiotic when she says it out loud. The two things have been twisted together for too long—they probably don’t even remember how to be parents. “What I’m learning is that I was extremely wrong about a lot of things.”
“You’re healing,” Betty says. “Of course it’s going to be a process.”
Against her thigh, Ramona’s phone buzzes. She usually turns it off during her sessions, but there’s one particular email she’s been waiting on. An email completely disconnected from her past life.
As she taps the notification, she tries and fails to bite back a smile.
“I’m in,” she says on a giddy exhale, eyes scanning the screenagain to make sure she’s reading it correctly. Andyes, she is. “All the paperwork went through. I’m officially a UCLA Bruin.”
“What, were they waiting for your SAT scores?” Ramona gives her a nudge, but Betty squeals and lassos her for a hug. “My little college student! I’m so happy for you—why do I feel like a proud mom all of a sudden?”
Over the past six months, she’s spent hours talking this through with Betty. She’s always admired how Betty found her passion—she’d spent her whole life training to be a ballerina, but an injury late in high school forced her onto a different path. As she slowly built her strength back up in the gym, she discovered something she loved more than ballet, and decided she wanted to help other people feel powerful in their bodies.
