Fame Adjacent

by Sarah Skilton

  Brody Rutherford: the loudmouth good ol’ boy from Texas who was so convinced his career would wither if he came out of the closet (and he may have been right) that he doubled down on over-the-top romances with Melody and Tara. Who pushed away anyone who encouraged him to be his authentic self and required everyone who spent more than five minutes in his presence to sign an NDA that forbade them “and their heirs” from discussing their interactions. I couldn’t out him for the book—it would turn readers against me—but I had other gossip that would do the trick. For example, his twin sisters had tried to follow in his footsteps with their own pop careers. He pretended to be supportive—even produced one of their tracks—but when their hokey, embarrassing efforts were savaged by every music critic who counted, he asked his record label to drop them because their lack of talent was scooping up all his good press. They never knew he was responsible for the end of their fizzled dreams. But I did, and when he revealed this in halting stops and starts over beers at my parents’ restaurant, I assured him it was a difficult position he never should have been put in.

  Ethan Mallard: the indie darling, the sensitive, quirky artiste and auteur, troubled by the attention, yet never actually willing to leave it behind. The boy who once joined a cult called Pöorify in which members deliberately ate spoiled food so they’d vomit it back up in a “cleansing” and become “purified” (and lose weight). Known for fully immersing himself into his roles, to the point of living on skid row with heroin addicts for a month. Citing privacy concerns and a fear of glamorizing drug use, he politely declined all questions about the experience, and the framing worked as it was meant to; no journalist dared broach the subject. They certainly didn’t know how he’d done justice to such a brutal, unsympathetic character, a murderous junkie—but I did. He had a baby with one of the homeless addicts. And every film role since had garnished his wages for alimony.

  Melody Briar: Where to begin? The tricky thing was, most of her scandals were readily known; she’d be the toughest one to dish the dirt on. Shaved heads and car crashes were pretty Meh at this point. But there were still some hidden scandals that never hit the press, because they happened when she was with my family. The Christmas she lost custody of her son and daughter, she decided to take a handful of sleeping pills and lie down in the middle of traffic. It was a story with a happy ending—she had joint custody now, so long as she kept her nightly gig at The Palazzo and proved herself a capable mother.

  Tara Osgood: Desperate to maintain her reputation as a proper English rose from the stage, she struggled like hell when her cousin Luther, reportedly a Manchester football hooligan, was convicted of deadly assault in a brawl during a soccer game in Madrid. He languished in prison to this day despite evidence that he may have been falsely identified. What did that have to do with Tara? Nothing much, except it was personally painful, and everyone loves famous people in pain, caught in lies of omission.

  J. J.: What could I write about J. J. that wouldn’t also be about me? Would I be willing to discuss the one hard truth of my life, which was if I’d converted to his specific brand of Christianity we’d have gotten married ages ago, complete with kids and an influencer Instagram designed to make people like Marjorie at Prevail! feel like crap? How at age twelve, he worried incessantly that God was angry about his enjoyment of Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All” (which celebrated loving oneself rather than loving Jesus) and was punishing him with agonizing headaches? My parents and I tried to tell him the headaches were caused by caffeine withdrawal, but he never stopped believing. Would I be willing to discuss his drug use? His family? How he’d revealed to us that his baby cousin had died because his fundamentalist aunt and uncle refused to give him antibiotics, insisting that if their faith were strong enough, they wouldn’t be necessary?

  Just then, Kelly saw me sitting in the dark nursing and cataloging horrible thoughts, and waved.

  “Where you been, kid?” she called. Everyone swiveled their heads to look. “Get out here!”

  “Hol-ly, Hol-ly,” chanted Brody, which meant soon the entire audience joined him. It sounded like a thunderclap, a roller coaster.

  “Should I…can I…” I asked the AD.

  “Go right ahead,” she said.

  Which meant there was only one thing left to do.

  I took a deep breath and walked onstage.

  3

  J. J. stood and pulled the one vacant chair closer to the group. “You made it,” he whispered. I didn’t trust myself to talk to him. I nodded instead and slid onto the chair.

  “Are you okay?” he spoke in my ear. The optics made us look intimate; romantic. I hoped Thom wasn’t watching and misinterpreting it. Then I realized how dumb that was, and part of me hoped he was watching.

  “Thank you for joining us,” said Cindi Cooper. I nodded, unable to speak. She probably thought I had stage fright, but that wasn’t it. I was afraid if I opened my mouth I’d start wailing and I wouldn’t be able to stop.

  After introducing me and showing a five-second clip from Diego, Cindi asked us to share our most vivid memories of that time.

  “How about Brody trying to score a free pizza every Sunday,” Tara said.

  “Brody? Care to elaborate?” Cindi asked.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” Brody said. “Gather ’round, children, and I’ll tell ye a tale of olden times: In those days, Domino’s Pizza had to arrive in thirty minutes or less or you got your order free.”

  On Sunday evenings, the cast and their guardians always came over to my parents’ house to watch a movie. We’d order six large pizzas from Domino’s and a couple liters of Coke (one entire bottle of which was for J. J.). Brody would flag down the delivery car at the end of the street, fake a bike injury, and try to stall them before they got to the house. (The policy ended in 1993.) He managed to delay them enough to qualify for free food, but my mom was always so aghast by his behavior that she paid them anyway, and added a big tip.

  “You think that’s bad, you know what else Brody did?” said J. J., reaching across me so he could flick Brody’s ear.

  “Ow. What’s that, bro?”

  “You stole my dance move, remember?” J. J. asked mock-bitterly. He turned to the audience. “I came up with this sweet move one day during rehearsal. I called it ‘The JJ’ for the Jason Jump. And he ripped it off and performed it on Star Search during hiatus.”

  “It was different! I called mine the BJ. The Brody Jump. They wouldn’t let me say BJ on air and I never understood why.”

  “I did,” Kelly said. “I understood.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It came out as a honk, like a startled goose.

  Brody wanted the last laugh to be his. “I still don’t get it,” he said.

  “I’ll explain it to you later,” Tara said, patting his hand.

  The audience was eating out of the palm of their hands.

  “Holly, what about you? What’s your most vivid memory?” Cindi prompted me.

  I immediately looked at J. J. I wasn’t about to tell the audience about any intimate moments, so I picked something humorous and benign.

  “The time J. J. and I stayed up all night eating Jell-O powder.”

  “Gumdrops,” J. J. corrected me.

  “Excuse me, yes, gumdrops.”

  “From science,” he clarified.

  “We had this book called Mr. Wizard’s World, and there was a recipe for gumdrops in it.”

  “All you had to do was pour some Jell-O powder in a bowl and…”

  “Who’s telling this story?” I teased.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Jell-O powder in a bowl and add a few drops of water.”

  “Preferably with a dropper.”

  “Right. We probably went through six boxes of pure gelatin sugar. Didn’t sleep a wink and we had to be on set at four the next morning.”

  “Was that the day J. J. threw up near the seal exhibit?” Kelly asked.

  “And I fainted,” I said.
“It also happened to be the day the San Diego Tribune came sniffing around.” I giggled. “They reported what they saw as an exposé on child actors being pushed too hard.”

  “It was the Jell-O!”

  Cindi Cooper read from her notecard. “There’s an old fan club membership kit from the first season of the show. It came with a Q and A you all filled out that would be sent to the children of PBS subscribers. I thought we could all go down the line and see what you wrote. The question was, ‘What’s your favorite part of being on the show?’”

  She handed out the sheet.

  Tara read: “‘The singing.’”

  Brody read: “‘Craft services.’” He sent a shit-eating grin out to the audience. “That means the snacks, yo.”

  Pause for laughter.

  J. J. read: “‘The dancing.’”

  Kelly read: “‘The acting.’”

  And I read: “‘The friendships.’”

  My voice cracked. Tears washed down my face, turning it into a mascara-streaked mess. I let the tears fall. If I tried to rub them away, tried to pretend they weren’t there, I’d make things worse. And who cared, at this point? Who cared how many people were watching me? Who cared, who cared, who cared?

  I was turning down a million-dollar book deal. I’d lost Thom. I had no job, no prospects. But somewhere back in time, my eleven-year-old self knew I was doing the right thing. It was her I’d saved; not the wildly overcompensated celebrities out there, but me, and the kids I once knew. The kids who had been my very best friends.

  I got up, set the paper down on my vacant folding chair, and left. I just left the stage. I could barely see for crying by the time I got backstage.

  A fuzzy, glowing red sign in the distance indicated the EXIT. I staggered toward it.

  I was done.

  I was done, now.

  Coming here, seeing them—it was something I’d needed to experience, and it was wrong of Thom to try to rob me of it. Certain things couldn’t be described to us—we had to feel them—and this was one of them, for me. Maybe even the most important one.

  Besides, if I were the kind of person who’d been capable of betrayal of that magnitude, I didn’t deserve Thom or anyone else in my life. Whatever issues I had with them were exactly that: issues between us, not an excuse to reveal a litany of the heartaches, abuse, and private regrets they’d gone through to a vicious readership.

  My tears turned into a hacking cough as I reached the exit and pushed myself against it.

  “Wait.” (J. J.)

  “Holly, don’t go.” (Tara.)

  “Hol, come on…” (Brody.)

  “Get back here.” (Kelly.)

  “Don’t go.” (Ethan.)

  I stayed where I was, not moving, not turning around.

  So they came to me. They surrounded me.

  “Makeup! Oh my gosh, y’all, where is my team?” Melody shouted, swooping in last.

  She reached me in a few steps and wrapped me in a hug. She smelled like cherry blossom Lip Smackers. “That’s why you took off, right? You need a touch-up? We’ll get my guys to fix the bags and smears.”

  I released a soggy laugh. “No, that’s not why I left.”

  “Maaaaake-up,” she called again, and headed off in search of her team.

  Kelly took my hands in hers. “We’re not going back out there if you don’t come, too.”

  I squeezed her hand. “It’s okay, you guys. It’s you they came for. I’m okay with that; I really am.” For the first time, I believed myself. Because for the first time, I was telling the truth. I didn’t belong out there with them. And that was all right. “Nobody came here for me.”

  “That’s not true,” said J. J. passionately. “We did.” His eyes shimmered with tears, too. He’d always had a tough time keeping it together when I fell apart. Sometimes, I’d wanted him to be stronger. But right now, it was familiar, and kind. It was good. It showed me he meant it. “Why do you think we chose GirlsWrite as the charity?”

  “I have no earthly idea.”

  “Your sister said that you were going through a hard time. We know how much you love writing, and we thought, maybe if we donated all the ticket money to them, you’d come.”

  GirlsWrite, GirlsWrite…

  Every time I’d checked my email during the last few days, new messages from that group were there. I’d assumed they were pleas for cash at a time when I had none. I groped for my phone and opened my inbox. Typed in a search and scrolled down to the first one, sent the day before I arrived at Prevail!

  “Upcoming Fundraiser,” read the subject line. The body of the text went into specifics: “Can you believe it’s been 25 years since ‘Diego and the Lion’s Den’ premiered on select PBS stations? We can’t, either! We’re emailing to invite you to the 25th anniversary of Diego and the Lion’s Den. Ticket proceeds to benefit GirlsWrite.”

  They had invited me.

  I didn’t have time to process that piece of information before Melody shimmied back over.

  “Everyone,” she whispered heatedly. “Mikes off. They can hear us out there.”

  Horrified (all of them had been nailed by hot-mike scandals in the past, and now I guess I had, too), we simultaneously freed our collars of our mikes, like we were unplugging our IV lines and busting out of the hospital.

  “What are we doing?” Melody asked. “Are we having a secret meeting?”

  “Your mike’s still on,” I muttered.

  “Why won’t it turn off?” Melody complained.

  “Still on.”

  Melody struggled with the wire and flung it down.

  My tears had dried. It was time to finally say what I’d come here to say. “I appreciate you organizing things with the charity. But it doesn’t change the fact that you guys have never been there for me. After J. J. and I broke up, no one reached out to see how I was handling it. But you still thought you could use me for a safe house! I got sick of you popping in and out of my life, in and out of my parents’ place whenever you needed an escape, but never to check how I was holding up, or whether I needed anything.”

  “You never understood how difficult it was to be us,” Ethan said.

  “I can’t even go out to eat with my kids unless the place is shut down for the night,” Melody pointed out. “I can never be spontaneous, or enjoy anything unless it’s been planned for and paid off in advance. I go from people touching me all day and shouting questions at me all day to silence. I’m completely alone.”

  Kelly gave her a hug.

  “You don’t know what it’s like to have a chick you’ve never met try to sell your sperm to the highest bidder,” said Ethan.

  “I can’t even go home for Christmas or other holidays. My aunt created a tour company in my hometown and they drive a mini bus past the house every hour,” J. J. said.

  “Your family hasn’t sued you, or sold off your childhood bedroom piece by piece,” Brody added.

  “Are you mad at me, too?” Melody asked.

  “The last time I saw you, you told me I was the lucky one. You told me, ‘It doesn’t matter what you do because nobody cares.’ Why would I want to hang out with you after that? With any of you?”

  “I meant it as a good thing. I was jealous,” she said.

  “Do you know how insulting it was? How condescending? Whenever you showed up out of the blue, it was always about you. It could never be about me and what I was going through.”

  “Maybe we didn’t ask about you because you seemed fine,” Melody protested. “You had a good family, you had freedom, you could go anywhere, do anything, without the entire freaking world judging your every move.”

  “And you loved being a part of my life, and my family, whenever things were tough, but then—but then—”

  “But then what?” said J. J.

  “You always left! Just when I’d gotten you back, just when we’d had a fun week together, just when things were the way they used to be, you’d leave.”

  “What were we suppo
sed to do?” Kelly said. “Live at your parents’ house forever? As far as I can tell, you cut us off.”

  “Because of the way you treated me!”

  “People drift apart. That had nothing to do with us being famous.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “People leave, and they have their own lives, and they drift apart. It wasn’t an us-versus-Holly thing.”

  “But…”

  “What did I do that was so bad?” Kelly insisted.

  “You didn’t do it to me. You did it to Renee. When she gave birth, and all the problems she had afterward, she needed you, Kel.”

  Kelly and I locked eyes. After a moment, she averted her gaze.

  Renee and I had always been her support system. She couldn’t deny it, and if she tried, I would lose my shit, potential hot mikes be damned.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Can I call her sometime?”

  My rage deflated like a popped balloon. To think, that was what I’d needed. What I’d come for. I didn’t want to be a star. I’d wanted my friends back. I’d wanted acknowledgment, not that I’d been on the show, but that I’d been one of them. A friend, that they’d treated poorly. Perhaps I’d treated them poorly, too. I hadn’t respected them enough to explain my side of things and given them a chance to either apologize or explain their perspective.

  “Yes, I think she’d appreciate that,” I told Kelly. We hugged, and she carefully pulled her hair out of the way so it wouldn’t get mussed. I read somewhere she’d had it insured for a million bucks.

  A million bucks. I laughed. I’d given up a million bucks just to hear Kelly say, “You’re right.”

  She gave me a curious look. “What’s so funny?”

  I thought fast. “Anyone else feel like Cindi Cooper’s annoyed with us? She sounds like Baroness Schraeder. ‘My dear, is there anything you can’t do?’” I mimicked the character’s soft lilt from The Sound of Music.

  “What happened to your cheek here?” J. J. asked, lightly touching the scrape on my face.