by Paul Rudnick
“Why do you need to use your phone every second?” I asked. “What will happen if you don’t?”
“If I can’t use my phone then I will be forced to admit that I am sitting inside a van next to you!”
“Why is that so bad? Why can’t we talk, so I can help you overcome your deeply rooted emotional and spiritual problems?”
“My problems? My PROBLEMS? You are my problem! Even if I did have a problem, what would you know about it? What’s your average day like? You probably wake up at five A.M. and go milk something, like a cow or a goat or your neighbor’s garden gnome, and then you pray for the next five hours, and then you get homeschooled in how to, I don’t know, churn butter or make beeswax candles or crochet your own armpit hair into a scarf!”
“You are so ignorant. Just because I’m homeschooled it doesn’t mean that I’m backward. Our parents make sure that we keep up-to-date on scientific discoveries and politics and current events. At least I have an education.”
“That’s not an education! That’s a crafts project!”
“Well, next year I’ll be going to college!”
This shut Heller up. While Heller had never liked school, college might be a sore spot.
“Where did you apply? Middle Earth? Hogwarts? Obedience school?”
I was tempted to tell Heller a tiny bit of the truth, about how I’d applied to twelve schools because I was convinced that I wouldn’t get in anywhere. I’d gotten good scores on my SATs and I’d written my essays on the benefits of being homeschooled and singing with my family, and I’d talked about all of the volunteer work I did in Parsippany, but what if it wasn’t enough? There was so much competition and I constantly worried about my applications getting lost or hacked or sabotaged. I’d picture the applications arriving on the admissions directors’ computer screens scrawled with obscenities or photos of me on the toilet.
“I’ve applied to … several schools,” I told Heller. “I’m still waiting to hear back. At least I don’t spend every night drinking and doing drugs at some filthy nightclub. How can you stand places like that? With all of that noise and temptation and all of those disgusting, morally compromised people with sideburns?”
“I like those places! It’s just like you being homeschooled! I’ve been going out since, I don’t know, since I was doing Anna Banana!”
“You were going to nightclubs when you were THIRTEEN? They let you in?”
Heller’s life made no sense. Since that last day, when she’d left Parsippany, I’d tried to imagine how Heller lived, but I couldn’t. I would picture her waking up at noon when a maid brought her a glass of orange juice and maybe a marijuana cigarette on a silver tray, and then Heller would scratch her back using a crucifix, but that was as far as I could get.
“Out there, in the clubs in LA, they’ll let anyone in,” said Heller. “They’d let a newborn baby in, if the baby was in the business.”
“If the baby had a manager,” added Wyatt.
Heller leaned back against the van’s leather seat and shut her eyes. She looked really young, like she was still thirteen, but she also looked ancient, like a thirteen-year-old who’d been placed under a magical spell, or maybe a curse, so she’d stay young forever. She looked exhausted, as if she’d been writing college admissions essays for the past four years.
“I loved going out. Maybe it was because I was working so hard, like eighteen-hour days, even on weekends. Don’t get me wrong, I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing and I loved every second of it, but I was a kid and I would get so scared that if I didn’t work even harder, it might all go away. So even when I had some time off I’d just sit in my house and worry and study my lines and sort of vibrate. I started going to clubs just to blow off steam and get out of my own head. You’ll think it sounds ridiculous and you’ll never get it, but I would go to places like that to relax.”
This did sound ridiculous. That was the first nightclub I’d ever been to and it had been the opposite of relaxing.
“Why were you so worried? Anna Banana was a big hit, wasn’t it?”
Heller turned to me with a look of unholy glee.
“Did you watch it? K-Bop, are you a closet Bananafan?”
“I think I saw the show maybe once,” I lied.
“Just once?” Heller asked, and I could tell she hadn’t believed me. She started to sing, under her breath, one of the most absurd songs from the show, called “Lonely Banana”:
“SOMETIMES WHEN IT’S LATE, I WISH YOU WERE HERE
SOMETIMES I CAN’T WAIT, AND I WISH YOU WERE NEAR
BUT I’M ALL BY MYSELF, ALL ALONE ON THE SHELF …”
Without even thinking, I joined in with Heller:
“I’M JUST A LONELY BANANA
WON’T YOU BE A BANANA WITH ME?”
“I knew it!” Heller shouted. “You only saw the show once but you know all the words to that song!”
“I was just guessing! And it’s a disgusting song!”
“I didn’t know you back then,” Wyatt told Heller, “in your Anna Banana days. Were they wild?”
“Oh my God, you have no idea. I was out in LA with my mom, which was already a pretty loony situation, but there was so much happening and it was really fun and really exciting but the whole time I just kept, I don’t know …”
“What?” asked Wyatt.
We were driving across a bridge and Heller looked away, out the window. “When I was doing Anna Banana, there were all of these grown-ups around and a lot of them were really nice but I couldn’t, you know, talk to them about how I was feeling, about everything. That girl from the show, the one who played my best friend, Nicky, she was nice but she could be sort of too nice, you know what I mean? It’s like, I once heard her talking on the phone to someone and saying that she wasn’t just Anna’s best friend, but that she was my best friend in real life too. Which wasn’t true because we didn’t have all that much in common, plus when she was on the phone I figured out that she was doing an interview and kind of bragging about being my best friend which was just sort of, I don’t know, yucky. Because I kept thinking, she’s not my best friend.”
Heller glanced at me for a split second and then she looked back out the window.
“I don’t have a best friend,” she said.
I don’t know why but Heller saying this hurt me so badly that I almost started to cry. We’d been best friends a long time ago, when we were babies. After what Heller had done to me I could never be her friend. I was only sitting in her fancy limousine as a favor to Aunt Nancy and my mom and because … because I was doing the Lord’s work. So why was I so upset? Why did I want to hurt Heller right back?
“I have a best friend,” I said. “My sister Calico.”
“Your sister? The one with the squinty eyes and the mustache? Who looks like a really unpopular lobster? Is that the best you can do?”
“At least she’s not some fake friend on a TV show!”
“You are pathetic!”
“Your show was canceled!”
“At least I had a show! At least I don’t have to sing with my parents at a shopping mall, next to the Cinnabon and the neck pillow kiosk!”
“At least I have parents!”
Heller reached out to slap me but I raised my arm to stop her. She used her other hand to get around my arm but I slapped it away. She slapped me on the side of my head and we went at it, slapping each other as hard as we could.
“You little bitch! I thought you were supposed to be a Christian!”
“I am a Christian! Stop using the b-word!”
“Which word would you like? The c-word? The m-word? The k-word?”
“What’s the k-word?”
“Kneesock!”
Heller tried to yank my left kneesock down, which made me so mad, I started yanking her hair.
“Stop it! Those are extensions! They cost a fortune!”
Wyatt leaned over from the front seat and pulled us apart.
“Girls, young ladies, peop
le, dueling crustaceans, whatever you are!” he said. “Play nice! From what I’ve heard, you used to be very close. Instead of all this sniping and slapping, why don’t we work on that?”
“BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO!” Heller and I both said at the same time, and then we both jerked our heads away to look out opposite windows.
Once we were in Brooklyn, which was across the river from Manhattan, we arrived at this old-timey diner called Hutterman’s, although as Wyatt explained to me on our way inside, “The owners actually found this place in upstate New York and they spent millions of dollars to update the plumbing and the electrical and then they brought it out here on a flatbed truck, and spent a few more millions to have it re-antiqued to look like it had always been here.”
“Why did they do that?” I wondered, since if it was in Parsippany, the diner might get condemned by the board of health.
“Because this is Brooklyn,” said Wyatt, “where everyone is cooler than cool and they like to pretend that they hate anything that isn’t quirky and raw and authentic. Just watch, when Heller walks in, everybody will recognize her but they’ll all try super hard to act like they don’t care.”
Wyatt held the door open and as Heller entered the diner I could tell that Wyatt was right. The diner was crowded with people in their twenties and thirties and all of the guys looked like really skinny lumberjacks with big bushy beards and ribbed wool hats, although I didn’t know why they were wearing their hats indoors, and all of the girls were also really skinny and wore outfits that looked like old-timey thrift-store clothes, only expensive.
A woman carrying menus came over and murmured “Hel” and she and Heller almost kissed and hugged but not quite; they just leaned in the general direction of each other and made kissing noises. As this woman brought us to a booth, I could tell that everyone was pretending to talk but that they were watching Heller and, underneath their tables, they’d all started to use their phones, probably to tell other people that they’d just seen Heller Harrigan and were ignoring her.
“I love this place,” said Heller as we sat down. “It’s like LA only even prissier. If you asked these people if they’d ever heard of Angel Wars they’d all say no but believe me, half of these people are trying to write another trilogy just like it and the other half want to direct the movie.”
“Hel?” said this completely cute guy, coming over to our booth. He didn’t look like one of the super-cool people but more like he’d just trotted off a soccer field, with his face shining and his hair clean but a little messy. I guess what I mean is that this guy looked genuinely friendly instead of like he wanted something from Heller. I realized that this guy had also been on the Angel Wars poster at the club, standing on the other side of Heller opposite Mills Stanwood.
“Billy!” Heller said, hugging him like she meant it.
“Hey, Hel,” he said, “who’s your friend?”
“She’s not my friend! Why do people keep saying that! She’s … she’s … she’s trespassing!”
“Billy Connors,” the guy said to me. “I really like your socks. Can I sit down for just a second?”
Okay. Okay. I WAS NOW SITTING ACROSS FROM MYKE, who was the boy who made ceramic pots in the town where Lynnea lived and who was in love with her. In the Angel Wars books, while Tallwen can be brooding and intense because he’s trying to save Lynnea from the Darkling Creeper, Myke is completely open and warmhearted because he grew up with Lynnea and every morning he leaves a flower in this tiny clay pot that he’d made when they were kids and that Lynnea keeps on her doorstep, and sometimes Lynnea likes to turn the pot over to see where Myke had written both of their initials in the clay on the bottom. Later in the books after Myke has been imprisoned by the Darkling Creeper, who forces him to make pots to hold demon breath, Myke uses the bottoms of these pots to send secret messages to Lynnea and the other members of the Angel forces.
“Are you making fun of my socks?” I asked Myke, or Billy—just like with Mills, it was hard not to think of these boys as if they were their characters because of course they looked just like them.
“No!” said Billy. “I think that your socks are really cool. Everybody else in this place is kind of dressed the same, but you’re the only one wearing kneesocks. So I’ll always remember you.”
“Whoa!” said Heller, and then she started mimicking Billy. “ ‘Oh, Catey, you’re so hot! I wanna suck on your kneesocks so I’ll always remember you!’ ”
“Shut up!” I hissed at Heller, but I wasn’t looking at her because I was looking at Billy and he had such shining brown eyes and a slightly crooked front tooth and I was trying really hard not to reach out and touch his hair, to comb it a little because it looked so soft.
“How’re you holding up?” Billy asked Heller, putting his arm around her—not in a pushy, she’s-mine sort of way but more like an older brother who was looking out for her. I could tell by the way that Heller leaned her head on Billy’s shoulder that she trusted him.
“I’m doing okay,” said Heller, and then she nodded at me. “Except for my choke chain. The studio sent her. Every time I start to have any fun at all she yanks me back. She’s like a Mormon prison guard.”
“I am not a Mormon!” I said, and as a waitress came over and asked if we’d like to order drinks I told her, “Why don’t we all just have some nice cold glasses of fresh whole milk?”
“Fresh whole milk?” asked the waitress. “Is that the name of a new cocktail? I can ask our bartender.”
“No,” said Heller, “but I think that Catey’s absolutely right. Let’s get four glasses of fresh whole milk. We can pour them over Catey’s head.”
“Heller!”
“Just water to start, for everyone,” Wyatt told the waitress. “Catey, water’s okay, right? Fresh whole water?”
“Ignore them, Catey,” said Billy. “Where are you from?”
“Parsippany.”
“In New Jersey?” asked Billy, delighted. “I’m from Tenafly!”
“Which is practically right next door to Parsippany!” I said, and that was when I started to think about what Billy and I would name our first baby but then I felt terrible because the first name I thought of was Mills! What was happening to me?
“Yo, are you Heather something?” said another guy, who was now standing at our table. He wasn’t dressed like all of the other guys in the diner because he was wearing a pink shirt and a navy blazer and neatly pressed jeans and he had a tan, only it didn’t look like a real tan, the kind you get from being outdoors. It looked more like spray paint, if you needed to paint something the orange of a highway safety cone.
“Oh, gosh, ordinarily Heller would love to chat,” Wyatt said to the guy, “but we’re on a tight schedule, and we’re eating.”
“It’s just gonna take a sec,” said the guy in the blazer. “I want a picture with my girlfriend, she’s a big fan.”
“I am not!” said the guy’s girlfriend, who was wearing a very short skirt, very high heels and the kind of complicated hairstyle that looks like it needs blueprints and a construction crew. She was very tan as well and carrying a tiny rhinestone purse.
“You always say you love Heather Hannigan!” said the blazer guy.
“No, I said that I used to love her but that I don’t think she has any business being Lynnea,” the girlfriend said, and then to Heller, “No offense, but I think Lynnea should be prettier.”
Heller didn’t seem offended; instead, she looked at everyone else and raised an eyebrow as if she was telling us, “You see what happens?”
“Um, I think that Heller is really beautiful,” said Billy, “and wait until you see her in the movie, she’s incredible.”
“Oh my God!” said the girlfriend. “You’re Billy what’s-his-name! You’re Myke! But you’re too short!”
“Guys, we appreciate your interest and we hope you love the movie,” Wyatt told the couple, “but we really need to order some food, so if you’ll please excuse us?”
“N
ah nah nah,” said the guy, “not so fast. Sure, we’re gonna go see that movie, even if it sucks, so we’re payin’ this Heather chick’s salary so she can goddamn well take a picture with me and Amanda. Heather, I got some blow in my Lotus, ’cause I know you’re into that, so we can do the picture outside.”
“Excuse me!” I said, standing up. “Ms. Harrigan is about to have her dinner and she has no interest in whatever you just offered her, which I believe indicated drug usage. So if you would please excuse us, we would like some privacy.”
“Who’s this bitch?” asked the guy.
“I am Caitlin Singleberry and I am in charge of … of Ms. Harrigan’s physical and spiritual well-being.”
“What did you say your name was? Captain Dingleberry?”
No. No. Please dear Lord, NO. Not now. I was having trouble swallowing and the room was spinning. I wanted more than anything to turn and run but my therapist had told me that sometimes I could stop my panic attacks by confronting whatever I was scared of head-on. She’d said that if someone was afraid of flying the only effective treatment would be for that person to wrangle their fear and get on a plane. I always wanted to ask her, But what if that person was right all along and the plane crashes?
“My … name … is … Caitlin … Singleberry,” I said very slowly and clearly.
“Nah nah, that’s not what you said, it’s Dingleberry! Hey, everybody, get a load of this smart-mouth bitch! She’s a goddamn dingleberry!”
The guy and his girlfriend started howling with laughter.
Heller stood up.
“What did you just say?” she asked. “You total asshole with a spray tan that makes your face look like a redwood picnic table?”
“Oh oh oh,” said the guy. “I thought so! Everybody loves you because you’re some big movie star, but right underneath you’re just another goddamn bitch, hangin’ out with your little buddy the dingleberry.”
“She’s not my buddy,” said Heller. She glanced at me and turned back to the guy. “But she’s not a dingleberry.”
I was stunned. Heller was, sort of, standing up for me. Because I’d been homeschooled I’d never had all that much contact with name-calling. But when my family would do our concerts we sometimes ran into people who liked to call us the Dingleberries. When I was little I hadn’t known what this word meant or why it had made my dad clench his jaw. Finally my brother Carter had explained to me what a dingleberry was and it was completely disgusting and it had nothing to do with our wholesome singing family.
