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“Is there anything in your personal history that journalists might dig up to make you look bad? Any scandals, dramas, arrests, cheating on old boyfriends, anything like that?”
My mind immediately shot to the car accident. It was involuntary, like a reflex. I saw flashing red and blue lights in the darkness and heard a man saying, “Miss? Miss, can you hear me?”
“I — I don’t think so.”
“Remind your friends that they signed non-disclosure agreements with their contracts,” Tonia instructed. “And let them know that if they leak this information, I’ll know how it got out. The same goes for you, by the way.”
I felt every muscle in my back tighten. Here it comes: the slut-shaming that I experienced after I slept with Cameron, and he told my entire senior class what we’d done. But instead, she said, “Now, let me speak to Dean again.”
“I’m here,” Dean said, and walked away from me so I could no longer hear Tonia’s side of the conversation. “Mmm-hmm.” He stopped and stared up at a palm tree that stood next to the building. “Fuck, seriously? Surely there’s another way —”
I edged closer, wanting to hear what Tonia had said, but Dean hung up the phone and stood there without moving.
“What?” I asked.
“She’s sending Brooke back to Australia.” he said, his voice sounding defeated. “So we can do damage control together.”
“Damage control?” I didn’t like that. It sounded like I’d be seeing a lot more of Brooke… and I’d be willing to bet my good leg that she still hated me.
“Interviews. Public appearances. Shit like that.” Dean kicked the ground, sending dirt and leaves a few inches into the air. “Of course, it’ll be my job to keep her sober enough to actuallydothe interviews.” He looked at me with a flat expression. “Honestly, if you think you work hard, you should try babysitting a twenty-seven-year-old alcoholic with unlimited funds and an inability to hear the word ‘no’.”
“No, thanks.”
Listening to him now, I wasn’t sure how I’d ever believed that he and Brooke were together. Hell, I wasn’t sure howanyonebelieved it. Tonia must have been a damn good publicist, but that didn’t ease my feelings of guilt for telling April as we went back to film our next scene.
Dean seemed more serious than usual — even though this part of the movie was meant to be funny — but his deadpan delivery made the props manager cackle, so Preston, for once, allowed us to continue instead of calling, “Cut!”.
By the time we’d finished filming, it was late and the extras had been sent home, so I went straight to April’s house. Her brother answered the door and let me into the living room.
“Is April here?”
“She’s in her bedroom,” he said somewhat redundantly, since I was already on my way there.
April’s bedroom had barely changed since we were kids. She’d painted the previously pink walls white and upgraded her furniture so it was color-coordinated and less childish, but the layout was the same. Her desk was in the corner beneath the window and she sat facing it as I opened the door.
“April?”
She turned and her face split into a smile.
“Kyla! I was just telling my followers about you!” She gestured to the webcam that she’d attached to the center of a bright ring light next to her laptop. “This is Kyla Wright, the star ofPushing Daisy. Say hi, Kyla!”
My intestines twisted. I held up my hand to cover my face like one of those sleazy builders on Sixty Minutes and demanded, “Turn it off and delete it. Now.”
“But this is steaming live.” April held the camera as I tried to unclip it. “There are questions coming through — look! I can’t just cut the feed.” Her computer gave several dings a second as new comments popped up on the screen.
“Yes, you can.” I leaned across her and held down the power button on her computer. It took a few seconds to power down, and she grabbed my wrist, but I was stronger. The laptop screen went black and April gave me a filthy look.
“I’d better not lose any followers because of this.”
“Who cares?”
April gasped, but I pressed on without apologizing. I had bigger things to worry about than teenagers who wanted to see her apply makeup and talk about being an extra.
“What did you say about me?” I gestured to the webcam.
April tilted her head to one side.
“You’d already know if you watched my live stream.”
