by M. O’Keefe
Her face creased. “I don’t know. Did I?”
“Jada,” the doctor said. “I’m having this man arrested—”
Beth, the assistant, came back in the door, looking defiant and terrified all at once. “I’ve called the police. I gave them your name and told them you were here operating with a fake license.”
“Shit,” the doctor muttered and started packing up his things, his bluff called. All his concern for Jada was clearly secondary to his fear of the police.
“What a piece of shit you are,” I said to him.
“Fuck you,” he said. “Like you know anything. Jada, honey. I’ll be in touch.”
And like that the doctor was gone, Beth, at the door, all but hissing at him as he left. A better junkyard cat than dog.
“Get lost,” I said to the couple on the bed, who’d been watching everything with wide eyes.
Without another word they snorted up the last of the coke, got up and stumbled out after the doctor.
“I’m going to go let security know police are coming,” Beth said. “Don’t… don’t leave her.”
“I won’t.”
Beth vanished, and I turned back to Jada, who sat there, a little slumped, watching me. Her eyes were startling.
So familiar and so different at the same time.
Her hair slipped over her shoulders, down across her eyes, and my fingers twitched to push it back, to stroke it off her shoulders with my palms, to hold it in my fist at the nape of her neck.
I’d never seen her hair down. Except for that one time. That horrible time.
When we were kids, her hair had been red. And I’d never seen a girl with that many freckles before, and she told me it was a mutation in the MC1R gene. How I remembered that, I couldn’t say. Except that I remembered everything she told me. Like those three months with her were crystallized. Solid moments I’d taken out over the years and watched like movies. Until I forced myself to stop. To give them up.
Because what was the point? Up until this moment, she’d been gone. So gone it was like I’d dreamed her. Made her up.
I could see freckles on her chest, the inside of her arm. Hidden away. Secret.
They made me breathless.
She smiled at me, dazed. “I know you.”
“You don’t,” I said. Because I couldn’t do this if she did. If we had to remember who we’d been to each other.
She wrinkled her nose, and my heart squeezed so hard I saw stars.
When she stood, she was a breath away, her hand on my wrist.
“You’re…really good-looking.”
I felt myself smile. She could always do that—make me smile when I’d rather not.
“Oh,” she breathed and touched the dimple in my cheek. “Will you look at that? A dimple. Did you know you had a dimple?”
“I’m aware.” Now I couldn’t stop smiling.
“I’d like to kiss you.” She’d said that same thing to me a million years ago. Announced it, because she’d been that kind of person—full of intention and courage. Bold. She’d been bold.
And I wanted to fucking roll in that boldness. Soak it into my dried-out skin.
“You should be kissed,” she said. “You got a mouth that wants it. Do you want to be kissed?”
God, I did. I wanted her to put her lips on me and her tongue in my mouth and I wanted to taste her, to see if she still tasted like Skittles. If the grown-up woman liked what the teenage girl had loved so much.
Fuck, I wanted everything we never did. Everything I’d dreamed of. Everything I didn’t even know to dream about.
But she was fucked-up and in some kind of trouble and I was in my own and the whole world was a little upside down.
I stepped back, and she bent forward, off-balance without me there to hold her up with my dimple.
She grabbed my elbow, blew out a breath. Seemed to crumple before me.
“Jada?” Not Beth. This whole thing would be easier if she wasn’t Beth and I wasn’t Tommy and we were strangers to each other.
“I want to leave,” she said.
I heaved a sigh of relief, blinked with surprise. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I can’t do this anymore.”
It was such a loaded statement. Such a sad sentence. Her knees buckled and she collapsed toward me and I caught her in my arms. “Jada?” I whispered, trying not to feel the skin of her arms. The lace of her hair. “Are you okay?”
“Get me out of here.” Her voice was sleepy and slurred. Whatever that shot was that she’d been given was kicking in.
Chaos broke out in the other part of the house, and I scooped Jada up in my arms. She was barely conscious and featherlight. So light it made my heart ache. So light it left bruises in places I thought too hard and calloused for such things. Her chest rose and fell with her breathing, and I could see the pulse working in her neck. A steady beat.
She was warm against me. Alive and flush—and I ignored all of it. I shrank back in my body so I didn’t feel a goddamned thing.
I wasn’t thinking. This thing I was doing was long past thinking. This was some instinct shit happening inside of me. This felt nearly outside of my control.
And it also felt really familiar.
I should call Simon, I thought, let him talk some reason into me.
But I didn’t.
There were sliding glass doors on the other side of the bedroom. The deck outside was dark and unoccupied. With one hand I opened the doors and stepped out into the cool night air. I walked along the side of the house, away from the party, until I got to the driveway and my car, sitting there with my dog in it.
Through the glass of the passenger window I watched Pest freaking out at the sight of me.
In the distance I heard the beginning wail of a police siren.
The front doors opened, and people were flooding out.
I fished the key out of my pocket and hit the button opening the doors and laid Jada, carefully on her side in the backseat. And then I ran around to the driver’s seat and I drove away from that party and the cops as fast as I could. Pest climbed from the front seat into the back, to lie curled up on the floorboards beside Jada.
“Good girl,” I said to Pest, wiping away the cold sweat pouring down my face.
I avoided the coastal highway, zigzagging through the mountains and then the desert on smaller roads, feeling every minute like I was about to get pulled over. But behind me was only empty highway, not a cop in sight.
The envelope with all my ID and the scrap of paper was on the passenger seat, crinkled slightly from Pest lying on it. One eye on the road, I fished out my phone from my pocket and called the cell phone number written there.
It didn’t ring. It went right to a robot voice saying, “Leave a message.”
“Carissa,” I sighed, my voice low so I didn’t wake up Jada in the backseat. “This is Tommy. What… I have…” Her name stuck in my throat. “Beth…I mean, Jada. Am I supposed to have her? Is she the thing I’m supposed to be dropping off? What the fuck have you set me up for?”
I mean, what were the chances that I was supposed to actually kidnap a pop star.
Low. The chances were really fucking low that was what I was supposed to do. So not only did I have to worry about cops, but I had to worry about Bates on my goddamned tail because I’d screwed this up.
“Call me back.”
I hung up and tossed the phone in the passenger seat. In the rearview mirror I had a good look at Jada, making sure she was still breathing. She was, her chest rising and falling under the paper-thin white T-shirt.
Fuck. What was I doing?
My phone buzzed with an incoming text, and I grabbed it.
All is according to plan, read the text from the phone number I just dialed. Continue to drop-off.
So the plan was taking Jada? I’d acted on some kind of instinct, needing to get her out of that shitty environment where everyone was taking advantage of her and the only person that seemed to care had
just been fired.
But that had been the plan all along? The highway in front of me was empty, the moon a big white slice out of a dark purple sky.
What about cops? I texted.
Avoid them, was texted back.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
Yeah. Avoid the cops, because the biggest pop sensation in the world right now was in my backseat.
And I just kidnapped her.
9
Jada
Ugh.
Shit.
I mean…
I couldn’t even finish that thought.
My body was floating. And humming and my head was expanding with every heartbeat like a balloon being blown up too big.
Don’t pop, I told my head. Don’t pop. I still need you.
This new thing Dr. John was giving me to help me sleep…it was bad. I mean, it was great in that it turned off my brain enough that I slept, which was a miracle.
But it made me wake up like a stranger. Like I had no idea who I was.
I was twenty percent myself. Eighty percent someone else. Someone I didn’t like a whole bunch. I didn’t even hear music anymore. And my hands, when I held the airbrush… they didn’t know what to do.
It was too much. I would tell Dr. John that. He would listen; he wasn’t like my mother. I was paying him to do what I asked. Jesus, I couldn’t lift my eyelids. Or my head. I was a thousand pounds. How was I supposed to go onstage like this?
Oh, that’s right, I wasn’t. It was over.
A dark and awful queasiness rippled through me. Something that felt like failure. Or regret. The North American tour was done and Europe was supposed to begin and I didn’t…I didn’t know how to do it. How to keep going. I wanted—in my dark, tiny heart—to stop.
That’s how Dr. John got hired two weeks ago in the first place. He was supposed to wind me up like a doll and send me dancing off onto the stage. His pills and syringes took care of the anxiety that crept up and followed me like a shadow, the fear that made me cling to my dressing room chair, wishing I’d never started any of this.
And then, when I got offstage, he gave me the nighty-night shot.
The nighty-night shot was a real problem.
Who was I kidding? All of it was a problem.
But this life… this pop-star thing? It was so much harder than I’d thought it would be.
Something cold brushed my hand, and the very distinct smell of dog washed over me.
“Beth?” I said, but it came out of my dry throat like a whimper.
The dog nosed me again and his tongue licked my face and with my eyes closed I stretched out a hand and found the dog’s back. I burrowed my fingers into its thick fur until I felt the warmth of its skin.
I’d wanted a dog, but everyone told me it didn’t make any sense on the road. Except my assistant, Beth. Beth told me I should get one. Beth told me I needed something to take care of.
Something rattled in the back of my brain about my assistant, some low-level anxiety slipping over me. What did I do to Beth?
Funny that my assistant’s name was also my name. I felt like I was talking about myself in the third person half the time. The dark irony of asking what did I do to Beth? was not lost on me. It could in fact be the name of my autobiography. My juicy tell-all.
CliffNotes version: I killed Beth. That girl I’d been. The patient, waiting victim. So good, that girl. So dumb. Terrified of being wrong. Terrified of…everything, really. Beth had been useless, so I became Jada.
Jada was fucking fierce. Jada wasn’t scared of shit. No one—absolutely no one—hurt Jada.
I loved Jada.
I opened my eyes and stared into the face of…Jesus. Was that a dog? It looked like a rat. Or a squirrel. Its tongue came out and licked its own nose, its long tooth hanging out of its jaw.
Did I really get a dog? Did I, in fact, get the ugliest dog in the world? Someone should stop me from doing that kind of thing. I couldn’t take care of a dog. I could barely take care of myself.
Assistant Beth would have to take the creature back where it came from.
“You stink,” I said to the dog, though no sound came out. I closed my eyes again. God, I was thirsty. So, fucking thirsty.
“Can someone get me a drink?” I croaked. “Anyone?”
Silence. Nothing but silence. Maybe everyone was in the other room? Which was weird. There were people with me…always. Like in bed with me. In the bathroom with me. Half the time I didn’t know their names or how they came to be peeing while I took a shower—but it seemed to be part of this life I’d picked.
Like by choosing door number two—international fame—I also picked a group of nameless people who just constantly milled around me. I hadn’t been alone in months.
I loved it. What a relief it was, that break from all my solitude.
“Come on!” I barked, the sound more like a pitiful gasp. “Someone!”
No one.
I opened my eyes again, the world slowly coming into focus.
It wasn’t whatever was in Dr. John’s syringe making me feel like I was moving.
I was moving in the backseat of a car.
And I was alone back here. Just me and the dog, the black leather beneath me warm from my body heat. I’d been here awhile.
“Hey!” I yelled. “What’s…what’s going on?”
The driver didn’t answer, and I realized I was barely audible, my throat all swollen and pinched. My head was pounding.
I slowly sat up, my hand over my eyes keeping out the sunlight. “Where are we going?”
“We’re almost there,” a deep voice said. “Why don’t you go back to sleep?”
“We’re almost where?” I asked.
He rattled off some address that meant nothing to me.
“Where’s Beth?” I asked.
“Your assistant?”
I groaned. “Yes, my assistant.” Who was this driver? Some new guy?
“You don’t remember?” he asked, and I sensed a little bit of judgment in his voice. And man, nothing got to me like judgment.
“Fuck you, man,” I snapped. “You’re just the driver.”
Was I a hypocrite fighting judgement with judgement? Yes. The guy probably had a screen play or a fitness YouTube channel. No one was just one thing.
“Sorry,” I said. Apologizing was an old habit I couldn’t quite break.
“Me too,” he said.
Look at us playing nice.
I looked around for my phone, checked my pockets. Realized not only did I not have a phone, I didn’t have my purse. Or shoes.
“What the hell?” I muttered. I shifted around until I saw the driver in the rearview mirror.
Shit. He was big. Really big. Huge shoulders, big wide chest in a white dress shirt. He had a black tie pulled loose around his neck. But despite that tie and the dress shirt, he looked like a thug. He had a neck, sort of. And his nose had been broken a few times too many. He had a weird crackling energy around him. Still…but not. Calm…but not. Like he was waiting.
And he was a total stranger.
I’d been using the same driver for like the last few months. The record company had been paying for him.
A chill ran across my scalp.
Somehow my mother had found me, she’d broken through all the disillusionment charms and spells I’d cast around my life (Harry Potter references, another old habit I couldn’t break) and gotten in touch with my people, who’d gotten her in touch with me. I had no idea who it happened, how she tracked me down after all these years. Maybe, she’d recognized me somehow in the footage of my spectacular disaster at the Hollywood Bowl the other night. I had no clue. And it didn’t even matter.
All that mattered was that she’d found me.
And now she was making noises about seeing me. Having me evaluated. Putting me under her care again.
All things she could do. Only because she’d proven all along that there was very little she couldn’t do. Not when it came to me. And no
w, after that thing onstage, I’d blown the one advantage I had over my mother—my own credibility.
“Did my mom send you?” I asked, my brain clearing in a hurry.
“No,” he said. “I have nothing to do with your mom.”
I wasn’t sure I believed him, and I shifted a little bit more, wincing when my skin peeled off the leather. Finally I got a look at the man’s face.
He had blue eyes and pale blond hair, cut short. He was…very handsome. The way real people were handsome. With flaws and imperfections that told a story. I’d spent the last few months with people who worked hard to get rid of those imperfections. Who looked good in a completely perfect way.
It was creepy.
But he wore that scar on his chin and the healed-over piercings in his ear and his chapped lips, his badly broken nose—he wore them well. And the story those things told was a rough one.
Outlaw.
His eyes were narrowed against the sun coming through the windshield, and when he winced, flipping down the visor—though it did little good—in the corner of his mouth, right there in his cheek, he had a dimple.
I sucked in a breath. Held it. Couldn’t let it go.
Did I know him? I knew him? Everything in my body screamed that I knew him.
And that he was…dangerous. Dangerous to me somehow. A threat.
And not just because I didn’t know who he was and I was in the backseat of his car.
There was something worse. I just couldn’t remember it.
My stomach went cold, my belly full of fear, and the rush of adrenaline cleared whatever drugs lingered in my system.
This…this wasn’t right.
How did I not remember getting in a car?
I had to fire Dr. John. Had to. Beth had been right; he was a total mistake. I’d let shit get out of hand.
“Who are you?” I asked.
He glanced at me for a long time in the rearview mirror, like maybe I was supposed to know him.
“My name is Sam,” he finally said.
“You have ID, Sam?”
He tossed back a driver’s license and a license for an agency. They bounced off my leg and landed faceup on the seat beside me. Sam Johnson.
Seemed legit.
But…not.
