There was a ton of fan mail, though I felt bad calling it junk— but there was just so much of it. I had another assistant who handled answering all of it. I wish I could say I read my fan mail, but I didn’t. There wasn’t time. One of the jobs assigned to my assistant, Marianne, was to rubber stamp my “autograph” on 8x10 glossies and send them back to those fans she deemed worthy. Even in this day and age, there remain the diehards out there looking for a deeper connection than following my various social media feeds. If they felt like they were receiving a picture I’d held in my manicured fingers and personally signed, and if it inspired them to spend more money, of course, then it was worth every penny I paid Marianne while she desperately waited for the callback that would never come, no matter how many auditions she went on.
When I opened the invite, I’d just taken my meds and was waiting eagerly for the euphoria to hit. I tapped the toe of my Valentino heel against the leg of my desk—agitated, annoyed to have to feel the inconvenient trappings of human existence, even temporarily. I wished I had taken the pill sooner. I didn’t want the hunger to hit, I couldn’t afford the binge, I had a call-time on Monday and there would be fittings.
Ironically, I was thinking of Hollis at that moment. She’d been the one to introduce me to the pills, back when we were roommates at Martha Jefferson. Every time I felt the mundane finally start to fade away, I always said a silent prayer of thanks to her for introducing me to the great love of my life. Combined with nostalgia— my other favorite escape— it rewrote the past. It helped me focus on the present.
As soon as I read the invite, of course I’d been distressed. I was immediately on the phone to my agent and then to my production partner to let her know I wouldn’t be making any of my meetings that day.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “The interview with Variety is at three, you want to cancel that too?”
“Postponing is not canceling,” I snapped. “Can you take care of this or not?”
“Of course,” she replied. “It’s done. Do you have a preference for when you’d like to have it?”
“Next week is fine, any day, but it has to be either during lunch or after shooting,” I held up the invite, re-reading it over and over and over again.
The familiar hot flush crept up my neck and I knew it had kicked in, finally. My hunger, my tiredness, my anxiety— they all faded.
That’s what I loved about speed. It reminded me I was powerful. It woke me up and focused me. It didn’t allow my mind to wander. It kept me in the moment. I wasn’t weighed down by the difficulties of being human.
I could think clearly now.
I set the invite down on my desk, picked up my cell.
And I dialed the number for Hollis Cobb.
Four
HOLLIS
I wasn’t shocked to get a call from Amanda Hefflebower.
Of course, the world doesn’t know her as Amanda Hefflebower. To the entire planet and her sixteen million Instagram followers, she’s Amanda Ambrose.
When she was starting out, her first manager had convinced her to choose a more alliterative last name, something that sounded sexier than the mishmash of hard consonants in Hefflebower, which he thought sounded like the rejected name of a Hogwarts house.
She’d fired him soon after but agreed the name change was a must.
Being that Amanda would have done anything to be famous, that modification had been the slightest of obstacles on her climb to celebrity.
No, I was certainly not surprised to hear from Amanda.
I figured as soon as she saw the invite, she’d call me.
We didn’t speak as much as we used to. Especially the farther away we got from our time together at Martha Jefferson. Every year the communication became more infrequent.
We’d been extremely close at one time. Maybe the closest of all of us, much to Brooke’s chagrin. She’d be devastated to have heard me say that; her quiet desperation in life was diminished only by her imagined role as my best friend.
Bless her.
Amanda and I had graduated from college and immediately moved to Atlanta together, sharing an apartment in Buckhead. I started law school and Amanda worked for an advertising agency. She’d been there for barely a year when she decided on a whim to move to Los Angeles.
Of course, this is where the truth and the narrative part ways.
Amanda branded herself as the girl who came from nothing, the girl who made it in a town and business that prospers and runs on connections, nepotism, and favors. Amanda’s success was fueled by none of those things, her publicist would gleefully remind everyone. Even Amanda’s Wikipedia page was constantly being edited to remove any mention of Martha Jefferson College – for Amanda to have attended a “fancy” women’s college, or any college at all, for that matter, simply didn’t fit the narrative.
Amanda knew all too well that’s what the public thrived on, this idea that anyone can make it, that there isn’t some exclusive group of people that hold all the cards. She’d built her career on hope, like a calculating politician, constantly pushing the chronicle of the self-made myth— the same Hollywood folklore that had been selling magazines and movie tickets since the beginning of time.
Amanda sold the dream. She put the uniform on, and she played the game like no one else.
She was Amanda From the Holler as one journalist wrote, a play on Jennifer Lopez’s own humble beginnings fairy tale— a plot that was able to redefine the term “relatable” and convince Americans that a beautiful woman who lived in a Beverly Hills mansion and slathered her perfect body in $500 moisturizer was really “just like everyone else” at the end of the day.
It was obvious who Amanda had taken her cue from.
Amanda Ambrose— the daughter of a Kenyan mother and a white coal miner— was the modern version of the Loretta Lynn song.
And people ate it up. I was always impressed with her ability to know exactly what people wanted. It was truly incredible.
* * *
“I’m guessing you got your invitation,” I said.
I could hear her heavy sigh on the other end of the line.
“What the fuck, is this a sick joke?” Amanda replied. “Who would have greenlit The Brentmore for reunion weekend?”
“No idea.” I flicked my lighter a couple of times until it glowed. “I thought it closed down after the lawsuit.”
“It did.”
Ten years ago, Martha Jefferson College had sued The Brentmore over the incident that happened on our graduation night. It had been a long and drawn out process, but they’d finally settled it, and the school won.
The verdict bankrupted the four-star hotel, forcing it to close after seventy-five years of being in business. The hotel had hosted presidents, governors, writers, and academics.
But a dead girl falling off the top floor of your building is a difficult PR nightmare for any hotel to survive, especially in small town Virginia. Particularly when you lose a lawsuit worth tens of millions of dollars.
For the last decade the six-story building had been an empty, haunted, sentinel over downtown Staunton, Virginia. The few times we’d been back in Staunton for reunions, weddings, or events, we’d tried our best to host them on a side of campus where the hotel couldn’t be seen.
Even then, its past held onto us tightly. Just thinking about it made me uneasy.
“And even if someone bought it,” Amanda countered. “Who would be dumb enough not to rename it? Basic marketing 101— if you buy a failed hotel, change the name. Especially if someone died there and their death was covered by every news network and station in the goddamn country.”
“Maybe they think it’ll appeal to a certain clientele.” It was sick to think, but I’d learned people were twisted. Especially about beautiful dead girls who got that way under suspicious circumstances.
The Internet basically runs on the misery of women. It’s compounded if they’re young, pretty, and perfect.
Which of course described Olivia
Barron, our dead college roommate, to a T.
Five
BROOKE
That night at dinner, Will sensed something was bothering me.
I’ve been with Will for thirteen years, married for the past ten. We met in grad school at George Mason, both of us wasting our money and credit rating on advanced degrees in social work, naïvely certain that we could save the world.
By now, we know each other well enough to discern when something is off about the other one.
Our boys, Evan and Christian, ate with us, both scarfing down lasagna as they stared at the smartphones in their laps. I’d long ago given up on insisting on their attention at meal times. Some mothers might judge me for that, but most days I was just trying to survive.
I had to pick my battles wisely.
“Everything alright?” Will’s voice reached across the table stirring me from my thoughts.
“I’m fine.” I lied.
“Yeah?” Will raised an eyebrow at me.
I nodded. “Just a long day. Maybe we can talk about it later.”
That was code for: Let’s discuss it when the boys aren’t around.
Will went back to eating and I focused on my breadstick, the one I shouldn’t have been eating. I’d already run out of Weight Watcher points for the day after the stress-eating I’d done when I got off the phone with Hollis.
Ever since we’d hung up only one thing had been on my mind other than carbs and sugar.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Olivia Barron.
* * *
Olivia Barron was a late arrival to Martha Jefferson College. She hadn’t joined us until second semester of our freshman year.
The four of us— me, Sheridan, Hollis, and Amanda— had just come back from holiday break after completing our first semester.
Our dorm rooms were joined together, separated by a bathroom with two showers and two sinks. My roommate was Sheridan and our room was a double room, only intended for two students.
Hollis and Amanda had lucked out. Due to our corner location and an oddball design, their room was a triple, and it was intended for three students, but somehow only two had been assigned to it, so Hollis and Amanda had enjoyed the extra space.
But over break Olivia Barron had been assigned to fill the third spot, and this had been, understandably disappointing. Hollis, in particular, wasn’t pleased to learn about their new roommate.
“I think it’s such bullshit,” she whined to me over the phone the weekend before we were to be back in Staunton. “They can’t just spring that on us! I mean, Amanda and I have our set up and now we’re going to have to rearrange all our shit, not to mention deal with an actual human being who we don’t know, in our space. What if she’s a freak? Or a bitch? Or both?”
“I mean, I agree.” I always tended to concur with Hollis, even if it was just to appease her. “It’s not fair, there are plenty of other dorms with spots that won’t force three people to live together.”
“Exactly!” Hollis exclaimed. “I mean, there’s that girl on our hall who doesn’t have a roommate at all! What’s her name… Julie. She claims it’s because she has sleep apnea, but who the fuck cares? I’m gonna complain to the dean and see if this chick just can’t stay with Julie instead. I hate to get my dad involved, but maybe I’ll do that too if I have to as a last resort.”
Hollis loved using her parents as weapons. They were big donors to the college and her mother was a legacy, so Hollis tended to throw that in the face of the Martha Jefferson administration every chance she got.
She’d never had to pick battles. To Hollis, everything was war.
It had impressed me in those days. It seemed like a glamorous sort of power to me, a step below the kind celebrities must use when they want a table at a very popular restaurant.
And to me Hollis Cobb was the most glamorous person I’d ever met.
Despite that, I couldn’t help but feel bad for whoever Olivia Barron was. She hadn’t even stepped foot on campus yet and she’d already made an enemy, and a formidable one at that.
* * *
Olivia was not a freak. Or a bitch.
Olivia Barron was a pixie dream girl. She was barely over five feet tall with brown hair and chunky blonde highlights. She had large, inquisitive green eyes, and a raspy voice that she said came from having colic as a baby.
Hollis’s pleas to the dean of students had fallen on deaf ears. And her father refused to intervene in such “trivial and pedestrian matters.”
For better or worse, Hollis was stuck with Olivia Barron.
Later it gave me chills when I thought about how things might have been so different if Olivia had roomed with someone else.
How altered all our timelines might have been.
But it’s a waste of time to wish for a better past. Even when you know that the seemingly random assignment of Olivia’s dorm room set in motion the most tragic of events.
If only Mr. Cobb had intervened.
Olivia Barron might still be alive.
Six
SHERIDAN
I woke up the morning after receiving the invitation around noon. I felt guilty for sleeping away another day in the life of my kids, but I justified it by reminding myself that they were in school anyway. As long as I was up before their bus dropped them off, it wasn’t a problem.
This is how I got through my days— I could convince myself of anything.
* * *
“Hey, roomie!”
I’d decided to call Brooke about the invitation. She was a softer soul, and I needed gentleness right now. Hollis tended to be abrupt and Amanda never answered her calls or returned messages.
But Brooke could always be counted on.
“Hey, Brooke,” I responded, staring at the foot of my bed, enjoying the stillness of the house. “How are things?”
“They’re good.” Brooke paused. “You got the invitation?”
“I did,” I said. “I have to admit, I’m confused.”
“We all are. Hollis is trying to find out why the hotel is open again. I’m assuming it’s under new ownership.”
“Yes, that’s good.” I closed my eyes, thinking about the past. “I can’t believe it hasn’t been torn down. Why would anyone buy it? And keep the same name to boot?”
“None of us understand it.” Brooke was making kissing sounds at someone in the background. “Sorry, I’m trying to get Plymouth to come over and sit in my lap.”
Brooke and her cats. As long as I’d known her, she’d owned at least two or three at a time. The feral ones around Staunton were constantly showing up at our dorm because Brooke would leave dishes out for them full of cheap kibble from the pet store downtown.
“I’m curious about who bought it,” I continued. “Isn’t there a way to look that up online?”
“Yeah, Hollis already did,” Brooke said. “It’s some abbreviated LLC.”
“I see.”
The fact that Brooke had already spoken with Hollis about this didn’t surprise me. Ever since we’d been freshman Brooke had made a permanent home up Hollis’s vagina.
I smirked at my inner vulgarity. Brooke would be surprised to have heard me say something like that out loud.
But everyone thought it.
Brooke is the Patty Simcox of our group, pretty, but mostly plain in the most basic of ways, and a do-gooder through and through. If Hollis is defined by having everything first, Brooke is defined by being the only one still impressed with that fact.
In other words, the only thing interesting about Brooke is the fact she has a place in our group of friends at all.
Which is why I always tended to talk to her first about things. Brooke went out of her way not to upset any of us, always sub-consciously afraid of losing her spot, even all these years later when it was all but solidified.
She was a tender-hearted thing, while at the same time being someone I had never allowed myself to completely trust.
Brooke Paulson (now Rivers) was the girl you
went to college with who later married the first man she had a serious relationship with, had a shabby-chic wedding with lots of mason jars, and posted gender reveal videos on YouTube to her 23 subscribers. She was raising her children in her hometown and used her mother as a babysitter on the weekends so she and Will could go to Applebee’s and a movie.
We had kept in touch through Facebook and Instagram, where I’d watched Brooke transform from a girl who posted trite poetry about dramatic love to filtered photos of her sons as they looked blankly at the camera. Brooke was a striver, even still. Her desire to be loved still popped off my smartphone every time a notification came up and I saw that it was Brooke posting yet another meme about either stay-at-home motherhood or God.
Yes. Brooke had also found religion since becoming a mother, which was one of the few things that surprised me about her.
She went to one of those super churches, a big one with a hipster pastor, a massive web presence, and sermons filled with basic and simple platitudes about being a good person and loving everyone no matter what.
“Meet people where they are and love them anyway” is a quote Brooke seemed to love, never realizing how it dripped of condescension.
But that was Brooke for you.
She never had any real awareness of how she came off or who she really was. And because I cared about her, it made me sad.
I mean, she was long past the age of where she should have realized this.
“Hollis is going to find out more this week,” Brooke continued. “I still RSVP’d though. Did you?”
I was shocked Brooke was still going to go.
The Girls On the Hill: A Psychological Thriller Page 2
