Divas Don't Cry

by Ni-Ni Simone

  One line, two at the most . . . that was it. I wasn’t addicted. I had it under control.

  I got this, I thought as I wiped my nose, tossed my pouch back inside my back, then slid a fresh coat of cotton-candy-pink lip gloss over my lips.

  I slung open the door. Stepped back into the booth. Grabbed the microphone, then said, “Let’s lay these tracks.”

  “It’s about damn time,” Black snapped, giving me a disgusted look. “This trick-azz,” I heard him mutter just as he hit the switch.

  18

  London

  It was mid-afternoon, bright skies and sunshine. Everyone else was in school—or should have been—and I wasn’t. I had fled the West Coast and decided to spend the day on Fifth Avenue in New York, doing a little retail therapy, followed by a light lunch. Yes. Once again, I’d decided to ditch Hollywood High for a bit more excitement than being around a bunch of evil, hateful girls. I needed a moment of peace.

  I needed an escape from . . . them.

  Lately, I’d been toying with the idea of being home-schooled. Just making an appearance on campus was slowly becoming a daunting experience. I was slowly beginning to feel like I had no real purpose there. I knew I needed, wanted my education. I just didn’t know if I wanted to continue it at Hollywood High. All I knew was, I wished I could click my heels and fast-forward my life, my total existence.

  I desperately needed a do-over.

  With all the tension swirling around Rich and me like a thick fog, I truly didn’t feel like I fit in there anymore. I was a misfit. An outcast. Or at least that was how I’d been feeling of late—ever since I’d come back from Milan, ever since my suicide attempt. I felt like a leper. And the painful truth was, I didn’t feel understood, or wanted, at Hollywood High. And even though I pretended it didn’t matter, I didn’t have any friends there.

  Real friends.

  Rich wasn’t ever that, yet we’d been friendly. And had had some good times. But I wasn’t naïve to the fact that she hadn’t been capable of ever being genuine.

  And neither had I.

  I’d been using her. She’d been using me. Our friendship was based solely on what we thought one could do for the other. Quid pro quo. Same thing with Heather and Spencer, although I didn’t necessarily fool with either one of those trolls; they were also users of each other. And somehow—in some disturbing way, we all benefited from—

  A taxi screeched to a nasty halt, ripping me from my reverie, its horn blaring angrily at me, the driver yelling and cursing at me. My heart jumped in my chest.

  “Hey, dumbass! Watch where you’re going!” the driver screamed. “Frickin’ moron!”

  God. I needed to pay attention.

  Anywho . . .

  I was in Manhattan. Away from all the West Coast drama, and all I wanted to do was enjoy the day. I looked up, my gaze taking in the buildings reaching into the sky. New York, New York, big city of dreams. Something was always going on in the city. The people, the traffic, the noise . . . God, there was so much life here.

  Orchestrated chaos. And I loved it.

  I inhaled. Breathed in the New York air, stale and hot and full of excitement. I hadn’t been on the East Coast in like forever, since moving out to L.A., so the hustle and bustle of the city that never slept was a welcome breath of fresh air. It filled my lungs with energy and temptation. And gave me my life back.

  I felt immediately alive.

  Excited.

  And free.

  It’d been weeks since I’d run up my credit card—well, Daddy’s black card, the one he allowed me to use sparingly¸ as he always warned—and I was long overdue for some reckless shopping.

  Yes. I felt like being rebellious.

  I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t sad. But I wasn’t miserably happy either.

  I was just blah.

  My therapist thought I was addicted to fame, that I was withdrawing from the attention that came with it, that I missed the adrenaline rush that came with the thrust of cameras and recorders and microphones in my face.

  Lies. And more lies.

  I wasn’t like Rich or Heather. Attention whores. Starved for the spotlight, hungry for the flash of cameras. No. I shied away from being the focus of everyone’s interest.

  I preferred my privacy rather than public scrutiny.

  Spencer had been right. I was a nonfactor these days. No one was really talking about me. And, honestly, I didn’t know what to do about it. Or didn’t know how I should feel about it. I mean, I liked the fact that no one cared enough to want to know what it was I was doing most days. I wasn’t being dragged in the media or on the blogs the way Heather and Rich were catching it. So I was relieved about that.

  Heck, the fewer busybodies in my business the better. But on the other hand, being called things like a bore... a flop . . . depressing . . . pathetic . . . weren’t exactly self-esteem boosters either. And neither was being ignored, or being made . . . invisible.

  On the early-morning flight over here, I’d been browsing Instagram under my alias account—the one I’d created after Rich had blocked me from all of her social media pages—when I saw photos of her at some R&B lounge with Spencer. The caption beneath the photo read:

  YASSSS, BIHS, YASSSS! ON TURN UP WITH MY GIRL SPENCER!

  They were both mudslingers. Talking trash about the other. And yet Spencer had the nerve to call me two-faced. Mmmph. Those two slores deserved each other.

  Another photo was of Rich standing on stage while Justice held a microphone, obviously singing to her. The caption read:

  SANG, DADDY, SAAAANG!

  She had numerous selfies with the caption:

  SEE. WAIT FOR IT! BIHS WISH THEY COULD BE ME!!

  Sickened by it all, I clicked onto some of my official pages, and read some of the comments by people who I’d once thought idol—I meant, liked—me.

  Twitter:

  @LONDONTHEGODDESS u used to be a dime now u half a penny.

  @LONDONTHEGODDESS when u gonna let me paint ya lips wit dis eggplant sauce?

  @LONDONTHEGODDESS u wack AF these days yo! Step ya game up!

  @LONDONTHEGODDESS I c u still got that phatty. Let me beat it up 4 ya.

  @LONDONTHEGODDESS u used 2 b that chick. WTF happened? Get yo life, boo!

  Facebook wall:

  That bish gotta big head!

  Bobblehead!

  Oooh, hahahahaha. London still cute tho.

  That ho stuck up.

  She crazy.

  Hide your knives, hide your razors.

  Hahahaha. Ikr . . . crazy trick!

  I winced. Disgusted, I’d closed out of each browser, seriously considering shutting down all my pages. God, social media could be so, so heartless. Cruel.

  Click.

  Click.

  Click.

  Click.

  Stunned, I blinked at the succession of four quick flashes. Someone—unwanted, uninvited—had just taken my picture.

  “Ohmygod! I told you that was her, Mommy,” one blond-haired, blue-eyed passerby commented, nudging a middle-aged woman, a mini version of herself.

  “It is you. That teen supermodel?” the woman shouted, drawing the attention of others. “My daughter loves you. Please, one picture?” she pleaded, thrusting her daughter toward me.

  I looked at the young girl and, with a slight shrug, acquiesced.

  “Ohmygod, I’m so excited,” the girl squealed. “You’re my idol. One day, I wanna be a model just like you,” she said over a wide, toothy grin.

  I cringed inwardly. I was so flawed, so imperfect. I’d never considered myself anyone’s idol; never gave thought to anyone, especially a young girl, looking up to me. I’d done nothing spectacular. And yet someone more innocent than I would ever be had told me that one day she wanted to be like me.

  I kneeled, pressing my cheek to hers. “No, sweetie,” I said in almost a whisper. “Don’t be like me. Be better than I could ever be.”

  Her kind words had touched a part of me, and I chok
ed back a sob. My life as a model was over. But I wasn’t. I was alive. And still had my whole life ahead of me to get it right. To finally figure it all out.

  Or not . . .

  Several pictures and autographs later, several passersby stared at the tears sliding down my cheeks but said nothing. And just as I was about to step off the curb, a bus approached, nearly hitting me.

  Nerves shaken, I jumped back onto the sidewalk, and there, staring back at me, was a poster that ran the length of the bus of a girl I barely recognized—posing, milk chocolate shoulders shimmering from the glow of lights, a five-carat pink diamond necklace hanging from her elongated neck, her lips sumptuously glowing in hot pink.

  She wore a slinky pink dress. Flawlessly captured through the lens of the renowned Italian photographer Luke Lup-palozzi.

  A model.

  An illusion.

  There I stood. Nose to nose with the ad for the fragrance Pink Heat.

  There I stood. Staring into the eyes of...

  Me.

  19

  Spencer

  “I’m asking you one more time, Mother,” I urged, sitting at the table across from her. Out of all the rooms in this palatial estate, the kitchen seemed to be where Kitty preferred to keep her rump-shaker parked.

  She peeled her eyes away from whatever article she was reading and peered at me from over the edge of her magazine. She sighed.

  “You’re asking me what, Spencer?” A hint of agitation coated her tone. “How utterly ridiculous you look with that clove of garlic hanging from your neck? How angry I am at my uterus for carrying you for nine months? How insulting it is to be associated with you as your mother? Is that what you’d like to hear, Spencer, huh?”

  I bit into my bottom lip. And instead of leaping up from my seat and doing the Superman on her face, I simply tilted my head and then smiled at her for effect. “Your spirit is evil, Kitty,” I said calmly. “But that’s nothing new. And it’s nothing that can’t be fixed by exorcism.” I tilted my head to the other side. “This clove is keeping me safe from your evilness. But don’t fall asleep tonight. The boogeyman is coming to get you.”

  I stared her down, then raised an eyebrow.

  She huffed. “Spencer, get out of my face before I have you committed.”

  I laughed, tossing my head back in dramatic fashion so she could see the back of my sparkling white thirty-twos. Then, after several seconds of staged laughter, I abruptly stopped and clasped my hands together like I was praying. “Let me see you try it. But know this: If I get wrapped up in a mummy suit, so do you. So don’t test me.”

  She slammed a hand down on the table. “Spencer, don’t try me, dammit! Now what the hell do you want from me?”

  “Your life,” I said curtly. “But for now, I’ll take the truth. You do know what that is, don’t you?”

  “Oh, for the love of God, Spencer! The truth about what?”

  So she wanted to play duck-duck-goose with me, huh?

  I took a deep breath, then sat on my hands to keep myself from reaching over and knocking her coffee cup over.

  “About this Cleola Mae,” I said. “So before I go digging up people’s graveyards, cracking open caskets, and snatching out skeletons, I’m going to ask you one more time, Mother. Who is she?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but I placed a hand up to stop her.

  “No, no, no. Unh-uh-uh. Don’t do it.”

  “Oh, for the love of God, Spencer,” she spat again. “Don’t do what?”

  “Tell another one of your lies.” I narrowed my eyes at her. “And don’t you dare give me that cockamamie bull about Daddy being delusional—even though he is a little cuckoo these days—because he’s not delusional. A little forgetful, yes. But do not play him—or me—for crazy. Now who the heck is Cleola?”

  She let out an exasperated sigh. “Oh, all right, Spencer. You want to know who Cleola is?”

  I gave her a blank stare. “Um, that is what I’ve been asking, right? So let’s follow the yellow brick road, Dorothy.”

  Kitty glared at me. “Don’t push me, Spencer. You want the truth? Then shut your filthy piehole for once in your despicable life, and let me speak. Now do you want to know who she was or not?”

  I batted my lashes. Pursed my lips. Then stared at her. Kitty was testing my gangster. She knew I was a classy diva. And—lawdgawdjeezus—I didn’t want to bring out the ratchet, but if I had to get hood-ish I would. And I’d do it real quick.

  I nodded my head. “Proceed.”

  “Well then,” Kitty said, “she was some ole country bumpkin your father was once infatuated with . . .”

  I grimaced. “Why was Daddy making goo-goo eyes over some country bumpkin?” I asked, half-believing her. “Some ragamuffin like that? She sounds hideous.”

  Kitty shrugged. “Back then, Ellington—your father—had a thing for wayward girls. He liked them wild and unruly and barely legal.”

  I frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense to me. Daddy was a renowned author, a professor, and a world traveler, so why would he need to pick through trash for some lady-girl with an ugly name like Cleola?”

  I eyed her as she lifted her ceramic mug to her lips, purposefully blew into its steamy depths, then took two slow sips. “Because your father was an old perv, Spencer. A predator. An old nasty goat that man was.” She shook her head, and grunted. “Ellington always had a thing for young, vulnerable girls.”

  I blinked. Um. Let’s see. Daddy was now eighty-eight. Kitty was forty-two.

  Now let me calculate in my head.

  Daddy was forty-six years her senior. He’d found Kitty hanging upside down from some disco pole when she was eighteen. Then, a year later, he’d married her.

  I blinked again. It was the first time that I’d done the math.

  He was sixty-five years old when he’d married Kitty. Ugh. Yuck.

  I stared at Kitty.

  So she was also one of those poor trashy wayward girls she was referring to.

  Ugh.

  I shook my head in disgust. Suddenly, I felt my yogurt curdling in my stomach from this nasty realization.

  “But why?”

  She shrugged again. “I guess you’ll have to ask Ellington. Who knows why that man did half the things he did back then. He was carefree.”

  I never knew why my mother called Daddy by his last name, but she did. Always. And I never really cared to ask her why. “Well, Mother,” I said, trying to bite back my temper, “if Daddy’s brain wasn’t scrambled, don’t you think I would be upstairs having this talk with him? Don’t you think I haven’t asked him this already? And all I get is some jumbled mess. Now, stop farting around with me, lady, and tell me what I want to know so I can put this mess to bed. I have more pressing things to contend with than snooping inside the panty drawer of one of Daddy’s ole trashy ho-bags.”

  Kitty calmly took another sip of her tea. Oh, she was so composed. Almost too composed. And I didn’t like it one bit. Why wasn’t she trying to serve me up a dish of her nasty attitude? Why was she all of a sudden acting all cute and calm?

  It wasn’t adding up.

  I tilted my head back to the other side. “Then why does he call you Cleola Mae?”

  Kitty scoffed. “Think, Spencer, think! Why else would he? The same reason he calls you her. Your father’s Alzheimer’s has him hallucinating.”

  Hmmm. She has a point. He does call me her too.

  Kitty pushed back from the table and stood, then whisked over toward the sink. “I know you don’t want to face it, Spencer darling, mostly because you are about as empty-headed as your father is. But Ellington needs to be put down. He’s no good to anyone.” She set her mug into the sink, then ran the water. “Not even to himself.” She walked back over toward the table. “But you’re too selfish and inconsiderate to see that keeping him around is doing nothing more than making you look and act as crazy as he is.”

  I swallowed, hard.

  She placed a hand on my shoulder, then sque
ezed. “Send him back out into the wild, Spencer. And let that man live out the rest of his days like the wild beast he is.”

  I flung her hand off me. “Don’t touch me,” I warned.

  “Fine. Be like that, Spencer.” She grunted. “The one time I try to comfort you and you push me away.”

  Comfort me? Oh, please.

  Lady, bye!

  I stared out to the mountains through the ceiling-to-floor windows and held my tongue. I fought the urge to roll my eyes. But I also fought the urge to bawl my eyes out. I was conflicted about Daddy and his condition. But I was sick of Kitty trying to play me for a dingdanggity fool more. Even a blind man could see that there was something more to that cloak-and-dagger foolery she tried to feed me.

  I knew Kitty was holding out on a juicy secret. That secret had another secret. And I planned to drop down low, dig it up, and sink my teeth down into the meat of it.

  “Oh, and Mother,” I said as she prepared to saunter out the kitchen, “one more thing.”

  She let out an exasperated sigh. “Now what, Spencer?”

  Back straight, face forward. “You had better sleep with both eyes open,” I warned. I slowly turned my head toward her and narrowed my hazel eyes at her, holding the clove of garlic up. “I’m coming for you.”

  20

  London

  “You will learn to love him . . .”

  Those were the words floating around in my head that had me suddenly clicking my heels out of Bryant Park, foregoing my plan to sit on a bench and people watch, or sit at one of the small tables and sip my avocado smoothie until it was time to head back to L.A.

  Anderson.

  Thoughts of him were suddenly taking up lots of space in my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Anderson Ford. God, why now?

  I hadn’t spoken to him in weeks. Since the day he’d rudely ended my call with him. And now here I was, boldly crossing the pristine lobby of his family’s New York office building on Madison Avenue, walking up to the oval receptionist’s desk.