by Zara Lisbon
“Anything else I can do for you ladies?” she asked sweetly, with a slight southern twang, revealing a mouth of crowded teeth, one of the two in front chipped diagonally in half.
“Three Bellinis would be great, thanks.” Eva-Kate batted her eyelashes and expertly handed the menus over to the waitress (name tag: Greta), who clutched them to her chest and frowned, saying:
“I’ll have to see your IDs.”
“Oh.” Eva-Kate’s face fell theatrically. “We didn’t bring our wallets, I usually just charge breakfast to the room.”
“Well—”
“I guess I could go all the way up the hill to get them. It probably wouldn’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes to get there and back, and you guys don’t mind waiting, right?” she asked us, making us perfect props for her performance. I didn’t know if this was my cue to say anything or if like any good prop, I should stay quiet and still.
“Oh, please, don’t be silly.” She gave Eva-Kate a mischievous side smile. “Normally I’d have to insist, but there’s no one else on duty and my friends would never forgive me if they found out I withheld Bellinis from Eva-Kate Kelly.”
“Ha!” Eva-Kate laughed with her. “You’ve made my day, Greta, you sneaky angel. I hope you like inappropriately generous tips.”
I thought the charm was just a bit over the top, but it was working on Greta. She brought us our Bellinis and the bill, then bowed her head thankfully and said:
“No rush, ladies, take your time.”
I didn’t like the Bellini; the peach puree was too thick and the sparkling wine bubbles fizzed up my nose, and I didn’t like Riley calling me a sociopath. Was it sociopathic to want to take care of my own needs and not let negative energies drag me down? It was true, I had dropped her and the others without considering their feelings. But that was because none of them cared about my feelings either. Where had they been while I was in Bellflower? Riley came once and left after ten minutes when she saw the psychotic patients in the common room zoning out on Haldol. She never came back. And she says I’m the sociopath? I suspected this was one of her many mind games: make me feel like I needed to come back to her and apologize. But game or not, the suggestion wasn’t sitting well with me. She wasn’t the first person to use that S word on me, so I had to wonder: Were these people trying to gaslight me into believing in my own sociopathy and relinquishing my power to them, or were they telling me the truth they saw in me? Either way, it took away my appetite. I poked at my pink champagne cake and took tiny sips from my Bellini every time Eva-Kate looked in my direction. When those few sips added up to a buzz, I was able to down the rest of it without noticing the pulpy peach and sharp fizz as it slid down my throat.
“I want to make a toast.” Eva-Kate raised her chalice. As the light shifted over it, I saw the glass was speckled with some kind of multicolored chrome powder. Josie and I raised ours in response.
“Here’s to my real friends who let me know what people are saying behind my back. And that’s you two, my real friends. No one else. So, cheers.” She clunked her chalice hard against ours, throwing grace and elegance out the window.
Real friends. A few days ago I would have delighted in the promotion to Josie Bishop–level friendship status, but now it felt more like a demotion. That’s the moment I knew I didn’t want to just be her friend, no matter how “real.”
“Is this about Rob? So what are you gonna do about it?” asked Josie. “Confront him?”
“Confront him? God no.” Eva-Kate scowled, horrified by the mere suggestion. “This is about keeping my reputation intact, Josie, not destroying it.”
“So then what?”
“There’s only one thing I can do.” Eva-Kate shrugged. “Make him wish, for the rest of his life, that he’d never started talking shit in the first place. I can’t make him love me, fine, but I can make him fear me.”
“So…” Josie pressed, “what are you going to do?”
“Release the texts.” She smiled slyly.
“Whoa,” Josie said. “You’re merciless.”
“On the contrary.” Eva-Kate slammed her chalice down. “I’ve given him plenty of opportunities to be on my good side.”
“What about the girl?” Josie asked. I stayed quiet. It sounded to me like Eva-Kate was asking for trouble, and I had a bad feeling about it.
“What about her?”
“If you release the texts, won’t you be outing her too?”
Eva-Kate rolled her eyes. “I’m not gonna say her name.”
“Still, you know the press will do everything they can to find out who she is and track her down.”
“Well, maybe she should have considered that when she slept with my boyfriend,” Eva-Kate snapped. “She’s not my problem anymore.”
I needed another drink. I glanced around for Greta the Waitress but didn’t see her, so I picked up my phone as a quick distraction. A pattern disrupter.
There were ten new text messages from Riley. I deleted them in one swipe without thinking twice, then waited for my email to load.
“Oh my God.” I clapped my hand to my mouth. A hot current surged through my body, “The Hot Toxic contract money came through.”
Ten thousand dollars. I read the number over and over again, thinking it couldn’t be real. It wasn’t possible.
“Awwwww!” Eva-Kate caught me off guard with her lips suddenly pressed snugly against mine in an aggressively sensual kiss. “It’s baby’s first paycheck!”
I thought I could feel my eyes popping out of their sockets. I’d never had more than nine hundred dollars in my bank account at one time, and Eva-Kate had never kissed me in front of anybody like that before. But Josie was unruffled, as if she’d seen it all, including this, a million times.
“How much is it for?” she asked me point-blank, with the most tepid fake smile. I was disappointed. I’d wanted her to be shocked to see us kiss, I’d wanted her to be jealous and even a little threatened by my prominent role in Eva-Kate’s life. Her blasé expression was anticlimactic. It would have killed the buzz if not for the ten thousand dollars I could practically feel burning a hole in my bank account.
“Nosy Josie!” Eva-Kate scolded, then said to me, “You don’t have to tell her, you’re better off keeping what you make to yourself. Trust me.”
“I trust you.”
“So, what are we gonna do to celebrate?” she asked. A starry glimmer in her eyes said she already had something in mind.
“I don’t know…”
“You gotta go big or go home,” Josie challenged me.
“I’m not going home,” I replied, staring her steadily in the eye.
“That’s my girl.” Eva-Kate beamed. “Guess that means we’re going big.”
CHAPTER 21
LOST CAUSE
I’m coming home tomorrow. I tried to call you. Please call me back.
This text came in from my mom while I was curled up in the Audi’s back seat, holding Princess Leia against my chest. I was carsick and had a splitting headache from whatever I had ingested the previous night.
I ignored her text, too sick to respond. I didn’t want her to come home. I think a part of me was hoping she wouldn’t come home at all. I prayed for sleep but it wouldn’t take me.
Because I wanted to lie down in the back, Josie got to sit up front, resting her bare feet up on the dashboard.
“I’m so tired of feeling sick,” she said despondently, as if it were a lost cause.
I wondered if she was a lost cause. What plans did she have, what did she want from life other than escaping reality with Eva-Kate day in and day out? I wondered if Eva-Kate was a lost cause, and if entwining myself with her would make me a lost cause. My cause had been to assimilate myself with the rich and famous, and now I could hardly remember why. I had never been so exhausted in my entire life.
* * *
Back at Eva-Kate’s place, we found London and Olivia in the living room sprawled out on the cowskin rug, smoking cigarettes a
nd laughing over a magazine.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Eva-Kate clutched her chest. “You scared me half to death. What the fuck are you doing here?”
I scooped Princess Leia up and slipped past Eva-Kate onto the stairs, hoping to extract myself from the confrontation that was no doubt about to happen.
“We heard about your little getaway,” I heard London say. “Kinda hurtful that we weren’t invited.”
I paused on the fifth step so I could keep listening.
“Dammit, Josie, you told them?”
“No! I didn’t, I swear.”
“She didn’t,” Olivia confirmed. “We read it.”
“You read it? Where?” Eva-Kate quizzed her skeptically. I didn’t believe it either. Who could have written about our trip? Who could have known we were there?
“Perez Hilton,” said London. “Obviously.”
“Well who the fuck told him we were there? It’s San Luis Obispo; someone had to tip him off.”
“I dunno, but whoever it was took some great pics.”
I turned to ice. What had they seen? I knew the answer. The answer was obvious and humiliating and terrifying.
RRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIINNGGGGGGG RRRRRRRRIIIIIIINNGGGGGGGG!
The landline upstairs began to ring, the rattling so shrill and loud it sounded as though it was coming from inside my head.
“That’s bullshit,” Josie said. “I’m always on paparazzi lookout. You know I care more about Eva-Kate’s image than even she does. No one was there.”
“Hey.” I could imagine Olivia shrugging with fake nonchalance. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
RRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIINNGGGGGGG RRRRRRRRIIIIIIINNGGGGGGGG!
It went again, this time prompting Princess Leia to wriggle out of my arms and dash up the stairs, unclipped nails scratching at the wood. I put a hand over one of my ears so I could block out the stridence and still eavesdrop.
“She’s bluffing,” Eva-Kate reported smugly. “There’s one picture on here and it’s a faraway shot of me getting out of my car.”
“But still,” Josie said, “someone had to tell them we were there.”
“Well, it wasn’t Justine,” said Eva-Kate. “She was with me the whole time. So, was it you?”
“Are you kidding me, Eva-Kate?” Josie snapped. “Me? Really?”
“Wanna tell me who else?”
RRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIINNGGGGGGG RRRRRRRRIIIIIIINNGGGGGGGG!
Fuck this, I thought, heading up after Princess Leia. If there were no pictures of me after all, then I had no more to hear. I walked to the end of the hall, where the early nineties clear plastic landline sat perched on a misplaced dining room chair. I reached out to silence it, but just then, the answering machine picked up.
“Hey, it’s Eva-Kate.” Her voice came from the machine, hushed compared to the earsplitting ring. “Thanks for calling my super rad landline. I’m not one hundred percent sure how to check these messages, but go ahead and leave one anyway after the beep.” BEEEEEEEEEEP.
There was no way I could have predicted what was about to happen next. And when it did happen, I thought—no, I knew—I had to be hallucinating. I had to be, because what I was hearing couldn’t possibly be real.
CHAPTER 22
EVELYN KATHLEEN
“Hi, Eva-Kate, this is Dr. Childs,” the voice message began. “I’m calling to let you know I’ll be back in Los Angeles next week, and will be available to resume our evening sessions on Tuesday. Looking forward to hearing from you, bye for now.”
It was my mom’s voice. Leaving a message for Eva-Kate. I stared at the clunky, outdated machine until my vision blurred as if waiting for it to tell me more. I pressed REWIND and listened again. And then again. Our evening sessions, she’d said, which meant something that just couldn’t be true: My mom was Eva-Kate’s therapist. Why didn’t Eva-Kate tell me? She had to have known, so why didn’t she tell me? I could feel sweat beading on my forehead because the realness of it all was starting to sink in. Each time I rewound the tape it became more and more clear that my mind was not playing tricks on me. Eva-Kate had known all along that my mom was her therapist and she’d kept it from me. I didn’t know why, but I did know one thing for sure: People don’t keep secrets when they have nothing to hide.
“Justine?” Eva-Kate spoke from behind me. “What are you doing over there?”
I turned around slowly. Suddenly, she was once again an absolute stranger to me. The weeks we’d spent together unraveled and I knew then in my gut that I’d missed something; somewhere along the line I’d overlooked what I’d never been too comfortable with: the truth.
“Tell me it’s a coincidence,” I pleaded.
“What are you talking about?” She laughed nervously, peeking over my shoulder to see the answering machine. The color in her face faded and she swallowed hard, then smiled to cover it up.
“Your therapist,” I said, my voice timid and wavering. “You knew she was my mom. We have the same last name, we live in the same house, so you knew. Now I just need to know: Was it a coincidence, or did you…”
“Did I move across the street from my therapist on purpose?”
“You moved in right after she left for India,” I thought out loud. “You knew she was leaving. Wait.” I shook my head and put my hand out so she’d stay where she was. “What am I thinking? There’s no coincidence, that’s not even possible. Her office is at our house, so when you bought this place you knew exactly what you were doing.”
“Of course I knew where she lived; I’m not a moron.”
“No, you’re not, are you? You’re smart. In your world everything is intentional, accidents don’t happen.”
“Justine”—she smiled gently—“you’re being a little dramatic. My realtor showed me the house and I fell in love with it. It was a coincidence that it happened to be across from Dr. Childs’s house. What was I gonna do, not buy the house just because my therapist lived nearby? It’s really no big deal. I told her how much I loved the house, we talked it through and decided it wouldn’t be too weird. And when you and I started hanging out, I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you’d think I was like some weird stalker. I’m sorry, I should have told you.”
I thought this over, repeated it back to myself.
“Oh,” I said, pretending to be relieved, pretending to be embarrassed. I sighed heavily, let all the tension out of my shoulders, and laughed at myself. “Wow, Eva-Kate, I’m so sorry. I must still be all messed up from last night.”
“Aw, babe, that’s okay.” She got closer and kissed me on the side of my mouth. I tried my best not to flinch. “Your serotonin is totally depleted right now. Mine is too. Come, let’s sleep it off. I’d rather be unconscious anyway.”
“There’s literally nothing I’d rather do right now,” I told her, mustering every ounce of sincerity I had in me, “but Princess Leia’s been cooped up for so long and I really need to take her on a walk. You go to sleep and when I get back I’ll join you, okay?”
She agreed and slunk off to her room, effortlessly dexterous as a cat.
I grabbed Princess Leia from my room and walked downstairs as quickly as I could without letting on that I was rushing. When I walked through the front door and was standing outside, a wild shudder shook my body, because I knew my mom, and knew that if she’d even had the slightest idea that a teenage celebrity with Eva-Kate’s reputation was moving in across the canal, she would have been calling daily to make sure I kept my distance. Eva-Kate hadn’t told her. She’d bought the house and waited until she knew my mom was gone to move in. She’d known all along that I was the daughter of her therapist, but she never said anything, and she lied when I’d confronted her about it. I knew then that I’d been living in a lie, and as long as I stayed in that house, I’d never know the truth.
CHAPTER 23
TRANSFERENCE
I took the long way around the block to the back of my house so that nobody would see me. I found the key she kept in a hollow plastic roc
k and opened the French doors, then bolted them shut behind me. I closed the curtains and shut off the lights.
I looked around and realized I hadn’t been in the office for a long time. Possibly years. A lot had changed. The furniture was now in an entirely green color scheme with abstract paintings of deciduous forests and a Zen garden, sand fully smoothed over, on top of a glass-top coffee table. Behind the couch was a wicker room divider, and behind that was my mom’s desk. Her patients wouldn’t be able to see it just by standing in the room; they would have had to slip past the couch and around to the other side of the divider, which itself was too tightly woven to see through.
Compared to the main portion of the room, the sequestered area was unruly, papers and pens and envelopes and clipboards and coffee mugs and vitamin bottles and pushpins and paper clips strewn about with absolutely no rhyme or reason. To the far right was a file cabinet sitting beneath a framed picture of me posing with Princess Leia just a month or so before Bellflower. My hair was in braids and I was wearing a loose-fitting red T-shirt with Taylor Swift’s silk-screened face beneath the number 22. It’s so cute, in that song, when she mentions the cool kids who’ve never heard of Taylor Swift. Maybe once upon a time there were cool kids who’d never heard of Taylor Swift, but I’d say ever since 2009, kids that cool were as fictional as unicorns. Okay, fine, so maybe Kanye did give her fame a boost.
Eva-Kate had said she’d introduce me, but never did. Among many other things, this would be the summer I almost met Taylor Swift but didn’t.
“Oh my God,” I gasped as the realization hit me: Eva-Kate had seen this picture. Not only had she known who my mom was from the day she met me, but she had actually known about me long before that.
I yanked at the file cabinet handle but it was locked tightly, no wiggle room whatsoever. I looked around for the keyhole but there was none. And even if there had been, did I have time to go searching for a key? I certainly didn’t have the patience. Frustrated, I pulled again. This time, a high-pitched, squeaky-clean beep beep beep beep went off and wouldn’t stop.
