It's All Your Fault

by Paul Rudnick

  Everyone nodded and I knew what Heller was talking about when she’d said triggers. I have more triggers than probably anyone else in the world. If I had to start making a list of things that trigger my anxiety I’d start with opening my eyes in the morning and soon I’d need a few hundred more legal pads.

  “I’m lying on the ground in some very fancy Buddhist dirt and I’m all dolled up for a job that means the world to me and this girl, she leans over and she whispers in my ear, ‘I talked to someone who saw your movie and they said you were terrible in it. They said you don’t know what you’re doing and the movie is going to be a huge bomb and it’s all your fault.’ Then she smiled.”

  Everyone in the room, and especially me, gasped. At that moment I hated Ava Lily Larrimore more than I’d ever hated anyone in my whole life. Maybe Ava had her reasons and maybe she loved the Angel Wars books just a little too much or maybe she was just nasty and vicious and jealous, but right then I didn’t want to understand her or excuse her behavior or laugh the whole thing off. I wanted to kill Ava Lily Larrimore with my Lucifoil for telling Heller exactly the one thing Heller didn’t need to hear. Because a part of Heller, a very important and vulnerable part, believed it.

  “After that girl said what she’d said, I had two choices: I could grab her knife and cut her throat, which wasn’t such a good idea because then I’d go to jail, where I’d have way too much free time to think about how untalented I am. My second choice, of course, was to find a liquor store and buy a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in a nice brown paper bag and to head over to Central Park, where I could find a nice park bench hidden behind a nice oak tree where I could drink until I couldn’t remember a single word out of that girl’s mouth.

  “Then something even nuttier happened. As I was trying to remember if the closest liquor store was in the train station next door or in the hotel lobby across the street, there was Catey. She’d been standing there, wearing the most absurd outfit, as you may have noticed—she looks like the love child of Darth Vader and the Wicked Witch of the West. Catey did something that wasn’t easy for her because she’s got some major demons of her own even though she thinks that nobody knows about them. But she put on that ridiculous hat and she pretty much saved my life. For which … I thank her.”

  I couldn’t believe it. For the first time ever, Heller had said thank you. To me.

  Everyone turned around to take another look at me and they all nodded as if they were saying, Gee, for a girl in a homemade Dastroid costume, you did a good thing.

  “Which led me to a third choice, the hard choice and the disgusting, no-fun-at-all-in-any-way-shape-or-form choice. To not drink and to come here.

  “For right now, here’s how I’m trying to think. I’m trying to think that the girl who was so eager to hurt me, the girl who wanted so desperately to make me feel as bad about myself as I possibly can, well, just maybe, that girl was wrong. Maybe she doesn’t actually know someone who’s seen my movie because no one’s seen my movie; hell, even I haven’t seen my movie. Or maybe she’s right and maybe I have no talent and maybe the movie will be the most catastrophic dud of all time, but you know what? She doesn’t know that. I won’t give her that power. I’m gonna try not to give anyone that power, to make me feel that terrible about myself. Thank you.”

  Everyone started clapping, and I saw Oliver sitting in the front row smiling at Heller and clapping harder than anyone.

  Yeah, Oliver is my sponsor,” Heller told me while we were walking back to the hotel. “Whenever things are getting truly dicey and I really want to drink, I call him up and he talks to me. Right after I left Madison Square Garden I called him and he used his GPS to figure out where the nearest meeting was.”

  “Is Oliver also … your boyfriend?” I asked. “Or … your husband?”

  “Well, I can show you our sex tape,” said Heller. “I’m kidding! But I will say this: You’re never supposed to get physically or romantically involved with your sponsor. It’s, like, a major AA rule. Of course I’m really good with rules.”

  “Heller!”

  “Catey, it’s been a really long day. Tomorrow’s gonna be even more crazy because I have to deal with that little girl, the one with cancer who wants to spend the day with me. So right now because I’m not allowed to eat anything or drink anything or smoke anything, I should get some sleep. To prepare myself. To become Heller Harrigan, a deeply outstanding and super-sensitive role model for a dying thirteen-year-old.”

  I was about to scold Heller for her bad language and her poor attitude and especially for her mocking treatment of a sick child, but I stopped myself. Heller had been through a lot, although most of it had been her own fault, because she wanted to be a movie star. Only—she’d apologized to me, at least a tiny bit. It was a start.

  As Heller’s door closed I felt completely wiped out. I’d helped Heller get interviewed for media outlets from around the world, I’d seen her battle the forces of the Darkling Creeper in the Netherdome and I’d watched her almost get killed. I was a long way from Parsippany.

  I shut my eyes and leaned against the wall, trying not to think about anything, especially not about Tally Marabont and AA sponsors and subways and Emily Dickinson. All of this was only increasing the ping-ponging of my brain, which was so loud and so nerve-racking that I’d never be able to sleep, ever again. I started touching my neck with my forefinger three times, which turned into thirty clusters of three times each …

  “Catey?” said Mills as he stepped outside his own hotel suite, which was a few doors down from Heller’s. “That scene at the Garden got pretty wild. Is Heller okay? Are you okay?”

  I looked at Mills standing there in his sweatpants and his Angel Wars T-shirt with his hair wet from the shower he’d taken to get rid of all that mandala sand. I stopped counting. I walked over to him and I put my hands on his broad shoulders, which felt very nice, and I kissed him.

  * * *

  That was the exact moment, I have just decided while sitting in my jail cell, when I truly sailed off a cliff. That kiss. Up until then I’d been walking a tightrope. I’d lied to Tally Marabont and I’d swatted Ava Lily Larrimore with my Lucifoil and I’d jumped a turnstile. I could almost excuse all of that behavior because I’d been trying to do my job and save Heller’s soul, or find her one. But kissing Mills Stanwood hadn’t had anything to do with Heller. I’d kissed Mills because he was so handsome and because he was Tallwen and because I’d known that he had a crush on me and most shamefully of all … because I’d wanted to.

  I wasn’t just a criminal. And a liar. And an idiot. I was, and I’m just going to say it, I’m going to use a disgracefully hideous word because I deserve it, because I am … a FLOOZY. A TRAMP. I can’t say this other word because it’s too terrible and because I wish I didn’t even know this word and because maybe I’m starting to use this kind of word as a result of being around Heller. But I have to say it because it’s true. It’s what I’ve become. I didn’t just kiss Mills Stanwood. I LIKED kissing Mills Stanwood. I am a SLUT.

  Here I am just one day later in jail and whatever is under that bandage on my arm is starting to throb and the magenta and purple dye from my hair is starting to drip onto my cheeks and—oh my dear sweet Lord baby Jesus sobbing his heart out in the manger. Something else on my body, on my face, is aching. I reach up and touch the left side of my nose and I feel—a HUGE METAL STUD.

  I look down and I don’t want to tell you what I see. It’s too shocking. It’s too evil. My name is, or at least it used to be, Caitlin Mary Prudence Rectitude Singleberry. I have raw, hacked off purple-and-magenta hair and at least one tattoo and what feels like a steel baseball bat sticking through my nose. I kissed Mills Stanwood and I’m not sure what else I’ve done or with whom or if anyone was filming it with their phone and will soon be posting it online so that the pope and the president and everyone in Parsippany can excommunicate me. While my hair and my tattoo and my nose piercing are all atrocious and shaming and a disgrace to my fait
h and my family and the entire Christian world, those things are nothing compared to what I just saw when I looked down at my left shin.

  It was gone. My entire left kneesock was COMPLETELY GONE. NOT THERE.

  I can’t … breathe. My windpipe is closing. The cell walls are closing in and I’m going to scream while they crush me and pulverize me and grind my bones into dust. I need to wash my hands at least three hundred times and I need to fill out at least five hundred more college applications and I need to try and remember what sunlight looks like but none of this matters, nothing in my life is ever going to matter ever again for one simple reason.

  I AM GOING TO HELL.

  The next morning as I sat beside Wyatt in the hotel ballroom I wondered what Sophie Schuler, the Make-A-Wish girl, was going to be like. I’ve never known anyone who had cancer, much less a thirteen-year-old girl, so the whole idea seemed sad beyond words: How could anyone deal with being that sick and with all of those complicated, painful treatments and with the thought of dying before your life had barely begun?

  The Singing Singleberries had performed at benefits to fight different kinds of cancer as well as Alzheimer’s disease, MS and ALS, that illness most people only know about through those videos where celebrities raise awareness by dumping buckets of ice water over their heads. We’d sung at hospitals where I’d met little kids who’d spent most of their lives undergoing treatment and we’d gone to nursing homes to entertain really old people in wheelchairs who’d seemed frail and barely awake but who’d always managed to smile and applaud. I couldn’t claim to be friends with any of these people because I’d been more like a tourist stopping by their misery for a few minutes and a few upbeat songs. If I was being really honest, I’d have to admit that sick people, especially really sick people, scare me. I know that I’m not going to catch cancer just by being around someone who has it but the whole idea still makes me unbelievably nervous, even for me.

  During our benefits I’d learned to control my breathing and I’d force myself to look everyone in the eye, even the kids covered in bandages or the old people with strange growths on their faces. My heart would be racing because I couldn’t imagine being that ill or that old and I always wanted to magically cure everyone with a wand or a secret serum or a prayer, and I’d imagine everyone jumping from their beds and their wheelchairs and laughing and striding out of the hospital into the warmth of the sun and, of course, writing me thank-you notes with daisy stickers. I’d feel guilty because I’d get jolted back into reality and I’d know that while the sick people had to stay in the hospital I got to leave and escape.

  My parents tried to prepare everyone in our family for these concerts by explaining how fortunate we were to be in good health and how it was our responsibility both to raise money and to let the sick people know that we cared about them and they weren’t forgotten. My mom had also given me one of my favorite books ever, which was a young adult novel with characters who were sick.

  The book is called Arise All Ye Fools and it’s about a sixteen-year-old girl named Ariel who takes a summer job as a volunteer health care aide in a hospital. She’s thinking about becoming a doctor someday and she knows that volunteering will look good on her college applications. After her first day, when one patient vomits on her and a gunshot victim in the emergency room splashes her with blood, Ariel just wants to run out of there and never come back. Then Ariel meets James, who’s eighteen and who has an inoperable brain tumor that he’s named Sam. When Ariel and James first start to become friends, James warns her that Sam is always listening and that Sam is jealous and cranky.

  Ariel and James fall in love and pretend the hospital is secretly an enchanted kingdom filled with what James calls “hidden pleasures and dreadful dangers,” and just between themselves, they rename the staff things like Dr. Larry Lancelot of Rhinoplasty and Nurse Nostradamus, the Witch of Wart Removal. James’s brain tumor starts to shrink and for a very short time Ariel and James allow themselves to imagine a life outside the hospital in what they call Fineville. On the day when James is scheduled to go home he collapses and dies in Ariel’s arms and after finishing the book I couldn’t get out of bed for three days and whenever one of my brothers or sisters would ask what was wrong, I’d just hold up my copy of the book and start crying again.

  Even though this book had lots of details about being sick, I knew it was still a story and that really being sick would be very different and something I couldn’t understand. Today I was trying to make sure I stayed extra pulled together so when I met Sophie Schuler I wouldn’t say or do anything ignorant or stupid and hurt her feelings, and I needed to firmly guide Heller because she’d be in the spotlight with Sophie. I was seriously worried about how Heller would deal with Sophie because Heller tended to ignore unpleasant things or make jokes, plus being a movie star was the opposite of being a sick little girl because movie stars get everything they want.

  The Sophie Schuler situation was making me so anxious that one of my compulsions returned. Since I’d woken up and started thinking about Sophie I’d had this overwhelming need to knock on wood three times, because otherwise either I would get sick or someone I loved, someone in my family, would get sick and die. The only way I could stop this from happening was to find something made of wood, like a railing or the back of a chair or the top of a desk, and tap on it three times. The taps didn’t need to be loud and I could use a fingertip so no one would catch me doing it. I couldn’t stop.

  My mom once asked me if I hear voices telling me to do my compulsive actions. She hadn’t understood because anxiety isn’t about having some nasty emotional gremlins living inside your brain and hissing at you to lick a doorknob or scrunch up your face. I don’t receive instructions—I know things instantly. The goblins aren’t giving me orders—I am. My compulsive thoughts aren’t even thoughts, they’re absolute certainties and obeying them isn’t a choice.

  The ceremony had started a few minutes earlier as a moderator introduced Tarelle Densmore, the woman who’d directed the Angel Wars movie; Sarah Smilesborough, who’d written the books; and the stars of the movie, including Mills and Billy, who both kept looking at me, which was easy because they were up on this little stage and I was in the front row of the audience. Mills and Billy kept winking at me and making faces and trying to get me to laugh. Last night after I’d kissed Mills, I’d immediately run right back to my room to concentrate on both pretending the kiss had never happened and trying to remember every second of it in case no one ever wanted to kiss me again.

  The ballroom was filled with almost five hundred people, including the weekend’s army of reporters, bloggers, tweeters and a batch of Angel Warriors, who hopefully weren’t as homicidal as Ava Lily Larrimore. Wyatt had covered up Ava’s behavior at Madison Square Garden by telling the media that everything had been preplanned. Ava herself was currently being examined by a psychiatrist in a private facility.

  The moderator introduced Frank Markopoulos, who was the CEO of Omnisphere, the global corporation that owned the studio that had produced the movie and also owned the books’ publisher and the chain of fast food restaurants offering the tie-in Angelicious SuperSnax for the full month of the movie’s release. These SuperSnax included whole wheat doughnuts that the franchise was rebranding as Healthy Halos and chicken wings that were being called Angel Wings, which I thought was gross because I didn’t want to think about angels getting their wings sliced off, breaded and deep-fried.

  Mr. Markopoulos was all dressed up and making an effort to be super friendly by talking about “the Angel Wars family” and “the wholesome Angel Wars dreamscape.” He introduced “our fairest Omnisphere angel of them all,” meaning Heller, who was wearing a white-and-gold minidress with pleated, floating sleeves so she looked, as she’d told me, “like everyone’s favorite angel who works at Hooters.” Heller introduced Mary Straffords, a nice lady from the Make-A-Wish Foundation, who explained that the organization had been founded in Arizona in 1980 when a sick little bo
y had wanted to ride in a police helicopter and that ever since, Make-A-Wish had been granting requests for children all over the world with life-threatening illnesses. The Make-A-Wish people are amazing because they’re like fairy godmothers or not-so-secret Santas for kids who can really use some happiness in their lives.

  “A few months ago,” Mary Straffords was saying, “we received a letter from the parents of Sophie Schuler.” Sophie’s parents came out onstage and I tried not to start crying because I didn’t think I’d ever stop. The Schulers looked like anyone’s mom and dad at a high school graduation or a talent night, where the dad would be shooting video and the mom would be giving him advice. They also looked worn down and as if they were trying extra hard to be cheerful and I began wondering about how my parents would behave if one of us kids got sick, and I knew they’d look just like the Schulers.

  “Three years ago, when Sophie was first hospitalized for a biopsy,” said Barbara, Sophie’s mom, “she was very brave and very scared and the only thing that made her feel better was her brand-new copy of the second Angel Wars book.”

  “When she had to go back into the hospital two years later for her second round of chemotherapy,” said Dave, Sophie’s dad, “we made sure that she had the third Angel Wars book. By then she’d turned into our own little Lynnea, battling her own Darkling Creeper.”

  “When Sophie heard that her very favorite actress, Heller Harrigan, was going to be playing Lynnea in the Angel Wars movie,” Barbara continued, “she was so thrilled that for a few minutes she forgot all about the tubes and the injections and the hair loss and the rest of it. Because while Sophie was in the chemo suite at Boston General for her earliest round of treatment, she’d be sitting in that big oversized chair with that IV drip in her arm and she’d be binge-watching Anna Banana reruns, one after the other, on her iPad. So in a way, so far, I think we can say that Heller Harrigan has helped to keep Sophie alive.”