by Zara Lisbon
“Miss Childs.” Kenny Kaufman smiled as he pulled a leather wingback chair out for me. “Thank you for coming on such short notice. As you’re underage, I’d normally have asked for you to have a parent or guardian with you, but Eva-Kate instructed otherwise, at least for this initial conversation.” He had a nice face, I thought, symmetrical and safe with white stubble and scholarly black-rimmed glasses. The tip of a green tie rested on his belly, which protruded behind a blue shirt with white pinstripes and collar, the kind of shirt you always saw on men in eighties movies about the stock market.
“Of course.” I smiled back, trying hard to curb my curiosity, at least enough so that it wouldn’t break out in an inappropriate grin across my face. “So, what’s up?”
“What’s up,” he said, dropping a small stack of papers in front of me, eyes twinkling, “is that Eva-Kate left a will. And she, well, she wanted you to have a few things.”
“Okay … what did she want me to have?”
“Her car, for one.”
“Her car? The Audi? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” He nodded. “And that’s just the beginning.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, in addition to her car, it seems she left you her home in Venice, as well as all her financial assets.”
“She left me … everything?” My insides squirmed. Sometimes extremely good news and extremely bad news can feel exactly the same, like a plunge into nothingness.
“I’m sorry it had to come to you under such unfortunate circumstances, and, of course, if the verdict had gone the other way we wouldn’t be having this conversation, but you’re now the owner of a periwinkle Audi S7 and the house at Eighteen Carroll Canal. Or you will be once you turn eighteen and reach the legal age of inheritance. Arrangements can be made for a conservator to manage the assets for you until then, and for you to have use of them.”
“But wh-why?” I stammered. “I mean, why me? She had so many friends. She had a family.”
I should have been happy, excited. I was rich now, officially, after all. But I was too self-conscious. I felt as though Eva-Kate were watching me then, handing me the keys to her car and home from beyond the grave. Was this another test? Would she be testing me for the rest of my life?
“I don’t know,” he said, handing me an envelope. “But maybe this will help explain. She left you a note.”
I tore open the envelope and dropped it to the floor. The note was written on pink personalized Eva-Kate Kelly stationery with a black ink Micron pen. It read:
To Justine,
If you’re reading this, well, I’m dead. You may be wondering why I’ve chosen to leave you all my stuff, and the answer is twofold. 1. You understand me, the most anyone ever has, and you see me for who I really am. Or maybe you see me for who I want to be. (Yikes, I mean, wanted. Past tense since I’m dead now LMAO.) 2. I love you. You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever known, inside and out, and I only wish we could have had more time together. In this fake plastic world, where everything is just an illusion, you were my reminder of the real.
I hope you’ll miss me.
Lots of love,
Eva-Kate
When my heart finally stopped pounding, I arranged to meet with Kenny Kaufman the following week to discuss estate management and conservators and possibly the legal emancipation of a minor. That minor being me. It was too much to think about right now. Then he walked me out to the car.
“Hey, I have one more question,” I said, pulling open the door. “When did Eva-Kate write the will?”
“When she bought her house,” he said. “In the beginning of June. But she added the note later.”
She wrote me into her will before we’d ever met, I thought, and craved her madness. I wanted her madness right there with me, pressed up against me until it blended with my own. The entire time I knew her, I had no knowledge of her obsession. Had she no knowledge of mine? I never thought I’d have to be afraid of her. Did she know she should have been afraid of me?
“Oh,” I said. “Just wondering.”
“By the way,” he said as I slid into the front seat, “congratulations on the verdict. I knew you were innocent all along.”
* * *
Driving north along the water, I passed through Malibu, still scorched and smoky from recent fires. The flames had been extinguished, but the sky still burned, glaring down like a pair of irritated eyes, blood vessels stinging red.
I kept thinking that I should be listening to Reputation, Taylor’s darkest album, the edgiest album, the only album written after the Old Taylor had died. Just like me, I thought, Taylor had been wrongly accused, and Reputation had been her chance at self-defense. But I’d listened to it hundreds of times just this past month and was thirsty for a taste of something new.
After “ME!,” which had been released in April, there were three new Taylor Swift songs I’d been too distracted to listen to. It was early August now, and it was time. Of the four songs, I liked “The Archer” and “Lover” best, two impressively vulnerable pleas to love itself. In “Lover,” when Taylor sang, “Can I go where you go? Can we always be this close?” a tear slid down my cheek and I thought about that first night with Eva-Kate on her balcony. That first night with the moonlight in her bubble-gum-colored hair, her lips brushing against mine, how I thought it could really be something. And in “The Archer,” when Taylor sang, “Who could ever leave me, darling, but who could stay?” I wiped my tears away, thinking about the athame as it entered Eva-Kate, as she fell off the bridge and into the water. Splash.
* * *
The Ojai Valley Inn lay sprawled out over acres of rolling, velvety emerald green. Spanish Colonial Revival buildings painted white with brown terra-cotta roofs, palm trees and pear trees and sycamores sprouting up among golf courses and crystal-clear pools beneath a sky that was so crisply blue it looked like you could crack it with a spoon.
The Ojai Valley Inn was more spectacular than I’d imagined. And I’d imagined it for quite some time. In 2010, when Benji Laramore left Rachel Ames for Dominique Le Bon, Rachel retreated to the Ojai Valley Inn, where she stayed hidden for ten months, waiting out the paparazzi spree. Her therapist went with her. The therapist called her daughter back in LA once a week to check in. She told her about the massages and the saunas, the cabanas and the champagne cocktails and the celebrities who came and went ineffectively incognito. And her daughter, that eight-year-old, would have done anything for an invitation.
A bellhop named Carl carried my suitcase to room 221 wearing a bashful smile on the elevator ride up, avoiding eye contact to the best of his ability. He let me into my room, unloaded my bags off the gold-plated trolley, and then hovered awkwardly in the doorway for a moment. I panicked, not knowing how much to tip, so I fumbled in my wallet and handed him a fifty-dollar bill.
“Uh…” His cheeks blushed crimson red. “Thank you, Miss Childs, you’re very kind.”
Thank God. I sighed, relieved. The last thing I wanted then was for a bellhop to go around telling people I’m a bad tipper.
“Of course.” I smiled. “Have a great one.”
“You too.” He nodded his head. “And hey,” he added on his way out, “congratulations.”
* * *
The room was air-conditioner cool and smelled of mint and lavender. A king-sized bed with puffy, swollen, down-pregnant pillows practically bursting at their seams lay on top of a royal-blue quatrefoil lattice–patterned carpet that stretched from the front door to the wall-length windows overlooking a lusciously grassy knoll. Purple velvet armchairs sat perched in front of a built-in fireplace. A sculpture—a cluster of silver lily pads—hung above the mantel.
What would I do next? With my life, I mean. I was suddenly a free woman; I had money, notoriety, and rivieras, as Lana Del Rey says, so what would I do next?
In White Noise by Don DeLillo, the main character, Jack Gladney, teaches Hitler studies. A course he invented himself. At one point in the no
vel, a colleague says to him, “What you did for Hitler, I want to do for Elvis.” Or something like that. I imagined moving to New England and teaching Taylor Swift studies. She deserved that, and maybe I deserved to live that kind of life, peaceful, idyllic, writing my own ticket, literally writing the curriculum of my life.
“I’m a fucking queen,” I said, throwing myself onto the bed. The pillows were so sumptuous I wanted to take a bite. My stomach rumbled. I thought of those pathetic little ice cream cups and their pathetic little wooden spoons. I called room service and ordered a hot fudge sundae, then called back and added an old-fashioned to the order.
When it arrived, the sun was setting, toxic pink bleeding out across the horizon. I pulled on the plush hotel robe and slipped my feet into the too-large spa slippers in the closet and took my celebration dinner onto the balcony. I sank my spoon into the vanilla ice cream and, for the first time since it happened, I let myself think about that night. I was finally in the clear, so maybe it was safe. I let myself think about the sun rising outside my mom’s office window and how I felt after reading all those notes. How I wanted to talk to Eva-Kate, to hear it from her. To tell her I knew everything and that it was all okay because even though I didn’t understand why she’d moved across the canal, or why she’d never told me about being my mom’s patient, I could never see her as anything other than perfect. In that moment nothing else mattered. I had this one-of-a-kind, perfect person in my life, and I wasn’t going to let her go over a lie.
But Eva-Kate didn’t like hearing about the notes, that I’d read through them all, learned her secrets. A violation, she called it. She told me we couldn’t be friends anymore, that I should pack up my things and leave. She shouldn’t have done that. But more importantly, earlier in the night, I shouldn’t have grabbed the athame from where it rested next to the answering machine and stuffed it into my sweater pocket.
You might be confused right about now, but try to understand: I wanted to find out who could have done it, because it couldn’t have been me. You understand that, don’t you? I had to find an answer that made sense, a murder that made sense. But I failed. There was no version that made sense. There was only one moment, apple-rotten and sour, one Etsy-ordered witchcraft athame, and me.
Melinda Warren and the tabloids were wrong about me. I didn’t do it on purpose, and I’m not a sociopath. It’s just that sometimes, when it’s four in the morning and you haven’t slept and reality is wearing so thin it feels like tissue paper breaking apart in your hands, and you’re feeling so much more than you ever wanted to feel, things get out of control.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I killed Eva-Kate Kelly. I’m just saying that if I did, it might have happened like this.
* * *
We got home from San Luis Obispo that night around nine. I went upstairs and heard the voice mail from my mom. I don’t know why the athame was sitting there on the ledge next to the answering machine, but I grabbed it. I was afraid and it was an impulse. When you learn your new best friend has secretly been a patient of your own mother’s and didn’t tell you, you know something is wrong and want to protect yourself.
Eva-Kate came upstairs and I shoved the athame into my pocket. I didn’t see Josie, but I guess she saw me. And she watched as we went downstairs. She didn’t see me go home. But I did go home, back to my mom’s, where I broke into her file cabinet. I was unnerved and unsettled that the combination code was Eva-Kate’s birthday, and at first I was unnerved and unsettled by what I read. But that didn’t last long. Soon I was flattered, then I was elated. Eva-Kate was fascinated by me. She had fixated on me. The obsession was truly mutual. And that could only be a good thing, I thought. I thought I had to tell her how I felt, tell her I knew how she felt, so that we could be together, so that we could be the perfect match. We were the perfect match. Or were we two totally blank screens primed for projection?
I didn’t go to the Ace. Well, not yet. I went back to Eva-Kate’s after reading through all my mom’s notes and found her sitting alone on the bridge in between our homes.
“You came back!” She jumped up to hug me. “I’m so happy to see you, you don’t even know.” Her eyes were dazzled and dazzling and wild, like they’d just been awakened to something. I wondered what she was doing out there by herself, but I didn’t ask.
“I’m happy to see you too,” I said, still embraced in her silk-soft arms. “I’m happy to be back.” We had only been apart for some hours, but it had felt like forever lingering in limbo.
“I’ve had such a weird night,” she said. “I can’t begin to tell you. But, listen, I’m sorry that I didn’t—”
“It’s okay.” I took her hands. “I understand.”
“You do? Do you forgive me? I really feel horrible that—”
“I’m not mad,” I said. “And, look, I probably shouldn’t have, but I read through my mom’s notes, and I know you’ve been interested in me for a long time, and you should know I feel the same way about you. I mean, I think you’re the most fascinating person alive, the most magical and enigmatic and—”
“Wait.” She stepped back, dropping my hands. “You read those notes? Everything from, like, my private sessions with my therapist?”
“With my mom, yeah. But you don’t need to be upset. I’m not mad and I don’t judge you. If anything it just made me love you more.”
“That’s really fucked up.” Her eyes dropped. “I don’t know what to say.”
“No, it’s not,” I said, though I knew she was right. “I shouldn’t have read them, but I was scared that you’d lied to me all summer and I just had so many questions. Can you understand that I just wanted some answers?”
“That doesn’t give you a reason to disrespect my privacy, Justine.” Her eyes went completely cold. “This is a huge violation. Like, huge.”
“I didn’t…” My mind reeled. I shouldn’t have told her. Now I’d ruined everything. Again. I always ruined everything. “I didn’t mean it that way. Please, just try to see—”
“No.” She crossed her arms. “Absolutely not. I need you to leave.”
“Leave? No, Eva-Kate, listen to me. I’m so sorry I read the notes, but you kept this big secret from me all summer. In a way, aren’t we even? We’re the same, Eva-Kate, we’re two pieces of a whole and we need each other.”
“I don’t need you,” she laughed. “I don’t even want you. You really should leave.”
“I’m not going to leave. You’re scared but I’m not going to let you push me away.”
“You’re pathetic.” She took a step toward me. “You’re so desperate to be close to me, to be part of my life, my world, but you never will be, not after what you just did. You can go inside, pack your stuff, and then get out of my way because I literally never want to see your mediocre, nobody face again.”
Maybe if the situation had been just a little different, I would have only pushed her, maybe I would have slapped her. But I had the athame in my pocket, and so in that moment of hurt, without thinking, I stabbed her. Her eyes popped. When she realized what had happened, she smiled.
“Damn,” she said. “You’re fucking crazy.”
And then she was gone. It only took seconds, the light and color draining from her face, blood rushing from the wound above her belly. My mind went blank, a completely empty expanse, white hot and buzzing. I checked for a pulse and there was none.
I panicked. I unlocked her phone (061300, a good guess). On the screen when it opened was a text exchange with somebody called Silver Fox. Silver Fox? I tried to think: Who did Eva-Kate know who could be considered a silver fox? I had no idea. I know now that it was Dr. Silver.
I miss you, Princess, Silver Fox had texted.
I miss you too, I texted back, come over.
I rolled her body off the bridge and into the water.
Then I went to the Ace.
Like I said, sometimes things just get out of control.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I
want to thank the following people for their help, love, ideas, and support as I wrote this book: Scott Antonucci, Richard Abate, Spencer Bly, Birdie Bly, Melissa De La Cruz, Hannah Denyer, Omar Doom, Krista and Kelly Doyle, Quinn Falconer, Kate Farrell, Caroline Kepnes, Natasha Lipson, Jack Lipson, Shiloh Lisbon, Erin Mallory Long, Breann Loveless, B.J. Novak, Ruby Post, Alexis Sanchez, Arpy Sarkissian, Ali Segel, Theresa Smith, Jason Solano, Kellen Solano, Cameron Solano, Scarlett Solano, Robert Wieder, and Jessica Zaleski.
Thank you once again to my parents, Caron Post and Mark Lipson, for encouraging me to follow my dream of writing books, and for not taking it personally that the parents in this one are awful. I love you and am so lucky to have you.
Thank you to my grandmothers, Ellie and Doreen, for believing in me when I don’t believe in myself.
Last but not least, this book would not have been possible without my legal consultant and good friend Brad Kaiserman. Thank you for teaching me everything I know about the legal system and helping Justine get a fair trial.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Zara Lisbon is a writer of fiction and poetry. She received her MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She grew up in Venice, California, and now lives in Los Angeles. You can sign up for email updates here.
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