Someone I Used to Know

by Blakney Francis

  Declan was protective of Madeline in a brotherly way. My mind flashed to the glimpse of vulnerability I’d seen in Madeline when she’d been talking to Georgia, and my feet stopped moving completely.

  Without my consent, my body began backtracking. As much I didn’t want to see it, that small connection between Madeline and Declan gave her a humanity that I hadn’t had to consider before. Behind the seemingly endless layers of managers, publicists, assistants, and hangers-on, there was someone real, someone that needed protection, and someone who needed my help.

  When I arrived at my destination, I took a deep breath, and knocked on Madeline’s trailer door. I barely had time to wipe my clammy hands on my jeans before it was yanked open, and I was presented with the heavily painted face of Marissa Little-Ashford. She was Madeline’s manager, and from what I’d seen, her duties as mother played second fiddle to what she considered her more important title.

  “Yes?” One word, sharp and demanding, was my warm greeting. There was something about the harsh, forward angles of her face combined with the crafted volume of her bleached hair that immediately reminded me of a shark.

  It was a fitting look for someone whose daughter deserved her own week on the Discovery Channel to catalogue each kill she relentlessly stalked.

  “Uh, hi.” I had to fight to stand still. Running away had been my first instinct for so long, my feet needed to be trained how not to retreat. “I heard Madeline wanted to speak with me.”

  “Well that’s just unacceptable!” the woman suddenly screeched.

  This time there was no stopping my five steps backwards away from Madeline’s Mom. It took me that long to realize she hadn’t been directing the exclamation at me at all.

  Her bony hand pressed a Bluetooth closer to her ear as she continued, “We want that job, Grady! It’s just what she needs to add a little sex appeal to her persona!”

  Her rant never ceased as she stormed past me, apparently forgetting that I was there and leaving the trailer’s door open in her wake. I figured that was as close to an invitation as I was going to get.

  More skittish than ever, I entered the sleek living room with cautious steps. My ears were still ringing from the Mom-ager’s outburst, but otherwise, the room was quiet. It smelled new, like a car fresh off the assembly line, and as I assessed my surroundings, it was easy to guess the flawless, smooth leather coating the couch and chairs was to thank for the aroma.

  I was just starting to relax when the door leading to the bedroom opened, and Madeline stepped out, seemingly unsurprised by my appearance in her personal space. It was like she’d expected me to show up all along, and if I was hoping for outcries of thanks, I was sorely disappointed by her unaffected attitude.

  Behind her came the rest of her entourage, and by the time I counted four (plus her scary looking bodyguard who counted as at least three people all on his own), I was starting to suspect the back room was like one of those little, magic cars at the circus, that managed to hold dozens of clowns inside their tiny interior. What had they been doing back there?

  She didn’t say a word as she stared at me, coming closer than I’d let her since the first day we met. Raising a hand, she commanded silence from her followers, and for a very long moment we all fell quiet.

  Even without make-up, she was one of the most genuinely stunning people I’d ever seen. It was hard to believe they’d chosen her to play me, not because I was naïve enough to think she was supposed to look like the Adley Cam had created. I knew enough about the book to know that he had described Adley with my same basic physical attributes; blonde hair, blue eyes, slender.

  Through Madeline, I could see something about the book that had never occurred to me though. Cam had made me beautiful in a way that deserved to be portrayed by someone who looked like Madeline.

  In that moment, for the first time, I actually wanted to read it. Even if it was just to glimpse at the girl he’d seen in me, the one he’d loved so desperately, and thought so much of.

  Her gaze mimicked mine, tracing my body up and down, but I knew she was seeing more than just the simple depiction of my outer shell. Her eyes were starving as they glazed over the slant of my hip where I stood, the nervous itch that begged to pull at my lips, and the directness I forced into my shoulders. She wasn’t just looking at me. Her goal was to be me.

  “Fuck,” her dry curse broke the hush of the room.

  It thrust me back into the reality of the situation, and how this was the last thing I wanted to be doing.

  “Excuse me?” My tongue felt as sharp as a sword, on guard, ready to whip out and slice someone in half.

  “I can’t find it.” Frustration mashed her lips together, but her eyes never ceased their journey, continuously running over every unpolished surface of my face and wrinkled clothes. Her glare was so forceful; I’d bet she would have been able to paint a halfway-decent rendering of me if she wanted.

  “Adley is young, naïve, and open, but then she goes and makes all these decisions that completely contradict who she is as a person! How am I supposed to portray that when I don’t even understand it myself? There’s no connection with me at all.” Her cry was weighed down by all the dissatisfaction that had been building up long before I’d arrived. I was momentarily taken aback by her forcefulness. “I mean, she’s the perfect all-American-girl one minute, and then after meeting a boy one time, she travels across the country to have sex with him! She just gives her virginity to a guy she barely knows!”

  “Stop!” The strength of my exclamation was so powerful that I swear her bodyguard took a protective step towards us. “Adley Adair might just be some character in a book to you, but if you’d take two damn seconds to think about something other than yourself, maybe you could understand that I lived through every single one of those moments you can’t understand. It was my life…So excuse me if I’m having a little trouble feeling pity for all the pain and heartache you’re struggling to pretend to feel!”

  The only thing louder than the silence was my rampaging heart.

  Like a runner’s high, I felt fleeting bliss, having let out more than my frustration at Madeline, but also every comment I’d ever swallowed since The Girl in the Yellow Dress had been released. It came from all the times I’d had to bite my tongue waiting in line at the grocery store, while people around me discussed the downfall of present day teenagers as indicated by Adley Adair’s situation. It came from listening to girls in my college classes prattling on about how stupid Adley was for letting Cam get away. It came from all the judgments I’d quietly accepted.

  After all, wasn’t it all just part of my punishment?

  Madeline waited to reply just long enough to let my relief wear off and fear trickle in. Her eyes bore into me as I waited for retaliation.

  “Leave,” she barked, but it wasn’t to me. She commanded her followers to leave us alone, striking even more fear into my heart.

  Maybe, she wanted to eliminate the witnesses so she could murder me. As small as she was, there was something in her eyes alluding to some serious inner strength. She probably had special karate moves worked into her daily two-hour workouts by her private trainer or something.

  Her large bodyguard was the last to waddle out, shaking the metal structure as he went, and I tensed, preparing for a fight.

  What I couldn’t have expected was for Madeline to collapse onto the nearest sofa with a dejected scowl marking her red lips.

  “I lost my virginity when I was fourteen.” Her matter of fact statement carried the same bluntness I’d come to expect from her, but it wasn’t fully capable of cushioning the surprise I felt by her haphazard confession.

  “Um.” Awkwardly, I made several uncertain moves before finally taking the seat beside her. I thought about patting her on the back, but it felt too personal and too detached at the same time. I resolved to fiddle with my hands in my lap, while I desperately tried to think of something comforting to say.

  She watched me carefully as always,
and then started to laugh after a moment longer of my unease.

  “I wasn’t telling you to make you feel sorry for me.” She smirked like she’d accomplished something. “My agent had arranged for me to start dating an older guy. He was sixteen and in a boy band. The exposure was great for both of our careers, and we spent a good deal of time together doing premiers and appearances and things like that.”

  The idea of someone arranging a relationship for the point of media coverage was so foreign to me. It felt dirty, and this time, I really did reach over to place a comforting hand on Madeline’s arm.

  “No one pressured you into anything, did they? It’s not your fault if they did. There are people you can talk to about these sorts of things, Madeline. I can’t imagine holding something like that inside.”

  “God, I wasn’t raped.” Shrugging off my hand, she even had the audacity to chuckle at my assumption. “Believe me, there might have been a two year age difference between us, but maturity-wise I was practically his elder…I slept with him because it felt good. I’m not, nor have I ever been, interested in romance. I don’t have time for it, and from what I’ve seen, it only ever screws with people’s heads anyways.

  “I’ve had one goal my entire life, and that’s to be an actress. I want to leave my mark on this world, and to do that, I have to be the best…I made an informed decision to have sex, because I don’t ever plan on falling in love. It seemed like as good a time as any to add an experience I could pull from for later roles. I’ve never regretted it either.”

  We both paused as the information settled between us.

  “That seems…” I couldn’t even begin to describe how I felt about what she’d just told me.

  “Fucked up,” she filled in easily, nonplussed by my reaction. “It seems crazy to you, because our situations are very different. It’s exactly the same reason I’m having issues getting my head around your decisions, or at least the ones I’m supposed to be honestly portraying.”

  I thought losing your virginity at fourteen for acting experience sounded pretty messed up for anyone’s situation, but I bit back my comment, letting her continue.

  “My problem as an actress has always been empathizing with the characters I play. Some might say it’s a curse, or that it means I’m not naturally talented, but the way I look at it is that I have to work twice as hard to get into a character’s head, but when I do get it (and I always do eventually)…I’m the best. There is no one better than me.”

  Madeline might have been the most single-minded, self-absorbed human being I’d ever met, but her passion was nothing short of admirable. Something drove her to demand more out of life, to succeed, to mean something in this world, and that, more than anything else, I could relate to.

  The frivolous life I’d been born into, utterly lacking in goals and ambitions, had been steamrolled the day I found out I was pregnant. From that moment on, I had been on a mission to make something of myself, to make the decisions I’d made in the past worth it, to prove that I was someone who deserved being proud of again.

  “I guess my reasons for sleeping with Cam weren’t all that noble either,” I began carefully, letting my memories wander into dangerous territory.

  Predictably, Madeline zeroed in on me the second I opened my mouth as if I was about to offer her the secret to life. “So it wasn’t that you were just so convinced that you were in love with him? I’ve been working off that.”

  “I’d thought I was in love with him the second he walked through the door at my house when he came home with my brother, Thomas, for Christmas. It was a long time after I’d even slept with him that I knew I was truly in love with him though.”

  And as the words came out, the memories replayed a thousand times more vividly than a movie screen would ever be able to capture.

  Cam had been different than anyone I’d ever met. He was mysterious with the background of a bad boy, and the most charming grin I’d ever seen. Thomas had been telling us stories about his roommate since he’d left for college, but Christmas during their junior year was the first time I met Cam in person.

  It was one of my favorite Christmases. Cam fit right into our family. My parents loved him, and I couldn’t stop staring at him, wanting him to notice me as more than Thomas’ seventeen-year-old little sister.

  There were a few tempting moments between us that Cam managed to keep from escalating, but at the end of holiday break, he went back to the East coast with Thomas and that was that.

  Three months later, I’d flown across the country to spend my spring break with Thomas, and ended up seducing his best friend.

  “But why did you do it?” Madeline impatiently interrupted. “You barely knew him, and the book makes it seem like you’d had plenty of serious boyfriends before you ever met Cameron. Why save it for such a long time, only to give it up to someone you knew you didn’t likely have a future with?”

  I closed my eyes, and in my head I was in that bathroom again. I let myself go back there as a frightened seventeen-year-old, and I searched for the words. Finally, I opened my eyes, reluctant to admit the truth I’d just found within myself.

  “I just wanted to get it over with,” I cringed as the confession was spoken out loud for the first time. It was certainly the first time I’d ever admitted it to myself. “In relationships there’s so much build up to the event, and with my other boyfriends, there had been this sense of inevitability that I hated. It was like I had no control, and that night, when I stared into the mirror of that bathroom, all I felt was control. I had the power to make it happen on my terms. No more waiting, wondering, and worrying, when I could just do it and get it over with.”

  Once the words were out, I tensed with anticipation, like I’d asked her a question that deserved an answer, but Madeline sat quietly, looking more relaxed than I’d ever seen her.

  “Okay,” she said, the single word filled with finality.

  “Okay?”

  Nodding distractedly, she stood and began to straighten her clothes.

  “I can work with that,” it was the last thing she said before exiting the trailer, and leaving me to follow her back to set like a lost puppy.

  I felt gutted and insecure. It wasn’t every day that I spilled such personal information to strangers. Hell, I barely shared anything with the people I considered my friends.

  The moment we stepped back onto the soundstage, all attention was on us. It was like they could sense from the look in Madeline’s eye, or maybe the gloat in her step, the change that had just occurred, and when Georgia saw Madeline coming, a spark of expectation lit her face as if she knew exactly what was about to happen.

  Madeline took her place on set, the lights hit her face, the camera began rolling, and, just like that, Madeline became Adley Adair, talking her reflection into having sex with a boy she barely knew and, unknowingly, changing the course of her life forever.

  It was the final take, and the entire crew applauded the inspired performance.

  I excused myself to go throw-up in the bathroom, wishing more than anything I could rebury all the things that had just crawled their way back to the surface after four years of repression.

  Chapter Four

  Adley

  “You’re not thinking of rejoining the world of size 0’s, are you?” Cam asked across the table. His plate of pancakes was almost gone, while I’d been pushing the same amount of scrambled eggs around with my fork for the past fifteen minutes. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, your body’s always been great, but these boobs you’ve acquired are topnotch.”

  I flung a biscuit at him. It missed by an inch and hit his stainless steel refrigerator instead. At least he’d have to clean it up. He deserved it. He knew I wasn’t a morning person.

  “Excuse me, I was told at fifteen that I had the prototypical body to be a professional ballerina. I was supposed to be thin. It was for art not vanity…And I’m barely a size 4 now!”

  “And I suppose that’s not vanity either?” he s
hot back with the same smirk that had been driving me crazy for years.

  “Fabulous metabolism.” Even if my throwing arm was off, my glare hit him hard. “Besides, I’m not dieting. I’m distracted.”

  The silence that had become our third roommate finally made its appearance at the table, and I repressed a sigh, not wanting to be the first one to call attention to it. It was obvious that there was something bothering him. Certain things I would do or say, seemingly unrelated and random, would send his brow into a squished furrow and his eyes into concentrated distraction.

  The problem was that I couldn’t call him out about it without drudging up my own issues. Admitting how affected I’d been the day before helping Madeline, would be like opening Pandora’s Box. There was just no way to deal with one issue without bumping into all of the other ones that had become stowed away between us, gathering dust.

  So we’d reached a stalemate, and for the time being, settled into an unspoken resolve to dance around the issues at hand. Hence, our newest, frequent visitor: awkward silences.

  “We should probably head out if we want to beat traffic,” he said clearing his throat.

  I nodded and helped him with the dishes. We worked efficiently together, in the same way as two people who had done the same job together many times before.

  Leaving the kitchen, I headed through the living room and up the stairs, to the room I’d claimed as my own. Other than Cam’s master bedroom, there were three guest rooms (one of which he’d turned into a second library). I’d picked the room farthest from Cam’s, relying on distance, as I always had, to protect me from things I didn’t want to deal with.

  My room remained as completely impersonal as it had the day I’d arrived. Unless you opened the closet or one of the three dresser drawers I’d taken hostage, you’d never know a person inhabited it. I grabbed a sweatshirt in case I ended up on soundstage three (it was freezing all the time), and went to meet Cam in the garage.