“Sure,” Ramona says, wondering why it feels like there’s chalk in her throat. “I’d love that.”
Everything about this lunch is slightly surreal. Arlie must be doing it out of some sick fascination, mentally taking notes to avoid becoming just like her. Step right up, watch the girl who torpedoed her own career.
And yet Ramona can’t deny that there’s a yearning, deep down, for this to be something more.
In her early twenties, she replaced her desire for friendship with the attention she got from her fans. She spent hours scrolling through her accounts, loving the way they freaked out when she liked one of their replies or reposted a picture. Got addicted to it, almost. But that kind of parasocial relationship was ultimately hollow—it could only go one way. She could love her fans the way they claimed to love her, but she couldn’t call them up when someone broke her heart. She couldn’t ask their advice or send them memes or make plans to get lunch.
At this point in her life, she’s certain her mother was wrong about most things. But now she wonders if having fewer attachments made it easier to cut herself free.
She’s missed a half dozen calls from DeeAnn over the past week, plus an email asking if they could talk, which she sent right to her lawyer. Sometimes—and she hates to admit this—sometimes she has to fight the urge to answer the phone. She wonders what it might be like to spill all the chaos in her head, even when DeeAnn is one of the root causes. It’s almost laughable, the idea of telling her about Nick, imagining the judgment and scolding DeeAnn might have for her—but even that would come with a certain kind of confidence.
DeeAnn loved when Ramona came to her for advice. Ramona was the one with the name, the face, but she still needed her mother. Because even when DeeAnn was overscheduling her or undervaluing her…at least she wasthere. She can say a lot of awful things about DeeAnn, and most of them would be true, but she’ll never be able to say that her mother wasn’t there.
A girl asking her mother for advice—sometimes that’s all she wants to be.
“Well, I’m proud of you for knowing your limits,” Arlie says. “Whether it’s a break, or if it’s permanent.”
“Thanks. And yeah, I don’t know,” Ramona says, fiddling with a strand of hair. “Right now I’m really into this whole school thing.”
The energy between them is so different from how it used to be. Arlie used to look up to Ramona, eager for praise when she played her a new song.
Now…it’s not even that they’re equals. Arlie’s career is on a massive upswing, and Ramona’s career is…frozen. Stagnant.
There’s nothing wrong with Arlie; she’s not vapid or arrogant, the way some people might imagine celebrities to be. It’s that she’s still soin it, and Ramona’s spent eight months trying to escape it.
Suddenly Arlie slaps the table. “Holy shit, I almost forgot to ask you,” she says, and Ramona’s very aware that despite the way their friendship began, Arlie’s now the one steering the conversation. “Have you been hearing about Zander Parrish?”
Ramona nods slowly. “Unfortunately.”
“Of course, they’re trying to bury the story in advance of his new show. He’s framing the whole thing as a ‘misunderstanding.’ ”
“He—what?” She grapples for her phone. She’s purposefully avoided googling him since thatVarietypiece, worried about what she might find. She hadn’t realized Zander had issued a statement—and yet there it is, some publicist-curated shlock denying the accusation, with numerous friends backing him up. And the requisite think pieces painting the costumer as someone hungry for fame.
One person’s word against another’s, and the horrible truth of it is that his word means more than hers.
“Really fucked-up,” Ramona says, shutting off her phone and continuing to poke at her protein bowl, trying to remain calm. When she ordered, they asked if she wanted a slice of flax bread with it, and she said no. She wonders if it’s too late to go back and get it.
“I’d love to go a single week where one person isn’t accused of being a scummy lowlife, but…sadly not the society we live in.” Arlie takes a sip of kombucha. “You two dated, right? You were on that show together?”
Ramona nods, the discomfort swirling low in her stomach.No, she probably wouldn’t be able to handle any flax bread right now. “Ages ago,” she says weakly. “We haven’t been in touch in years.”
“There’s a special place in hell for men who use their power to make other people feel small. He even had the nerve to show up at an awards show last week with a Time’s Up pin. No one’s worn those in like, five years.”
Ramona tries to breathe against the crushing weight in her chest. She really doesn’t want to be talking about this. “Wow, you really got deep with it.”
Arlie lets out a brittle laugh. “I hate this town sometimes,” she says. “I mean, sure, I can play the games, but at the end of the day…I just want to make my music, you know? I just want to play my songs.”
She wishes she’d loved the music enough to do that.
“Right. Right.”
And suddenly, it’s not just Zander, or the ghost of her career, or her mother—it’s all of it, all at once, and it’s so goddamnloud.
fuckingpathetic
uselessworthless
“Will you excuse me for a sec?” she says, pushing out her chair and nearly tripping over her own feet on her way to the bathroom.
