by Jenny Lee
“You should open the box, silly,” Lolly said, taking it from Vronsky. She opened it and removed the plastic pouch of veggies, then handed it back. His right eye had already started to blacken, but it didn’t look like his nose was broken, which would have been a shame because he had a perfect nose. If these weren’t such extenuating circumstances, Lolly would have asked him if it was his real one or whether some doctor had sculpted it for him.
“You didn’t send the email, did you? Sorry, I have to ask.” Lolly took the blunt that Murf held out for her and took a big hit as she waited for his answer. Vronsky shook his head no, and she believed him even though she couldn’t see his eyes because of the frozen vegetables.
“He definitely didn’t send it, Lolly,” Murf said. “But what about Kimmie? Vronsky said your sister showed up at his house unannounced and stalker-like when she first got back in town.”
Lolly did not react, because she didn’t want either of them to know this was new information to her, though she was hurt Kimmie hadn’t bothered to tell her about it. “The thought crossed my mind,” Lolly admitted, already feeling the effects of the pot. “But it couldn’t have been her. She’s never been to Anna’s house in Greenwich. That tape was made in Greenwich, right?”
Vronsky removed the bag of frozen vegetables from his face and nodded. “Yeah, that was Anna’s bedroom. I swear, Lolly, I didn’t make that tape. I would never do that to Anna, or anyone!” Vronsky stared at Lolly to see if she believed him and decided she did. He knew he shouldn’t ask, but he had to know. “How is she?”
“Not great, obvi. She was by the pool, drinking vodka straight from the bottle when I left, which is very un-Anna-like. Steven said he’d try to talk with her while I’m away. He’s ripshit. But I guess you know that already.”
“Don’t you think it’ll blow over in a week or two?” Murf asked. “You rich kids always have some high-key drama goin’ on, right? Maybe another sex tape will surface and then everyone will forget about Anna’s. Hell, I got a few videos on my phone that might do the trick.”
Lolly shook her head. “That’s wishful thinking, Murf. This is huge. Anna’s no regular girl. She’s like royalty in New York and it’s a long fall from the top. That email was sent an hour after we took off, and as we flew across the country it had traveled to every private school kid in the country.”
“Yo, y’all think it was the Greenwich OG? I mean he got burnt bad. Though revenge-porning a girl would be some bitch-ass shit on his part. Or how ’bout that Eleanor chick?”
“No way Alexander did this,” Lolly said. “He’s too proper. If people found out, he’d be ruined, too. I mean not ruined like Anna, because it’s always worse for girls. He’d never risk his future law career. And Eleanor? Not a chance, she’s too much of a goody-goody.”
“Ooooh, gurl,” Murf said. “You’re all SVU-ing this shit! You’re like a sexy boho detective, I love it.” He started to chuckle and lay back, looking up at the cloudless sky.
“Don’t pay any attention to Murf, he’s baked,” Vronsky said. “If I find out Alexander was behind this I’ll go up to Boston and kill him myself.”
“Alibi!” Murf screamed out at the top of his lungs for the whole neighborhood to hear. “I’m down to be your black Kato Kaelin, man!”
Despite the serious nature of their discussion, all three of them started howling. Lolly had to sit down, she was laughing so hard. She knew it was the pot that was making this terrible situation funny, but it felt good to get the tension out. It had been one thing after another for so long. “What’s this stuff called?” Lolly asked Murf. “It’s so strong.”
“California Dreamin’, though we oughta rename it California Nightmare,” Murf said. “Hey, hold up.” He turned to Vronsky. “This is the first time I’ve ever been happier to be in my shoes than yours, mostly because you got them all-white Bertolucci kicks I’m super jealous of, but also royally fuuuuucked … and not in the good way, my friend, not in the good way.”
Vronsky put down the frozen veggies and flipped his Thom Browne sunglasses down, lying back as he stuck up his middle finger and flipped off the whole entire world.
XXIV
Anna woke up the next morning with a screaming headache. She dragged herself to a strange bathroom she didn’t recognize and made herself puke, which wasn’t difficult. Not much came up, just some yellowish bile, which smelled rancid. All she wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep. She wondered if her brother had any sleeping pills or Xanax.
Lolly and Steven were snuggling in the smaller bedroom, and Anna felt a pang of guilt for having taken the big king bed for herself, though she didn’t remember how she ended up in bed at all. Seeing her brother peacefully spooning his girlfriend made her think of the nap she and Vronsky took on Beatrice’s plane only yesterday, and the thought made her want to vomit again.
She knew Steven kept his drugs in the bottom of a beautiful orange leather jewelry box she had given him two Christmases ago. It was a special place to keep his cuff links and watches when he traveled. She’d had his initials engraved into the fine leather and there was a picture on the inside lid of the two of them as children eating Mister Softee on a park bench. Under a fake leather bottom, built to hide your most valuable things, she found an assortment of pills, an eight ball of coke, and a slip of paper that had two rows of emoji stickers. When she picked up the stickers to examine them more closely, she recalled that Steven had told her he and Lolly were going to drop acid together at Coachella.
Steven had done LSD a few times at tennis camp with a friend from LA and loved it, but he said the trip lasted so long, it was impractical to indulge in it too often. Acid and shrooms were an event drug, he had said. Anna had been surprised that Lolly was willing to try a psychedelic, but as Lolly would follow her brother to the ends of the earth and back again, it made sense that she’d take a twelve-hour hallucinogenic trip with him, too.
Twelve hours sounded like forever to Anna, and when Steven asked if she wanted to join them she’d politely declined. But right now, on the first day of the rest of her shattered post-sex-tape life, it sounded like a perfect escape. She pulled off a sticker, grimacing at the stupid yellow winking smiley face, and placed it on her tongue. She was expecting it to have some sort of taste, but there was no flavor at all. She kept the sticker on her tongue until it started to dissolve and then woke her brother up to tell him what she had done.
Steven took her news calmly and motioned for Anna to bring him the leather box. He said that she needed a trip guide so he was gonna drop one now, too. Lolly woke up and when Steven told her what they were doing she yawned and then stuck out her pretty pink tongue. No way was she going to be left behind.
“What do we do now?” Lolly asked.
“We do what we came here for,” Steven replied, sitting up in bed. “We rock Coachella.”
This was Steven, Lolly, and Anna’s first time at Coachella, though like every teenager in America they had watched videos and seen pictures of the festival for years. It was hotter, dustier, and more crowded than they thought it would be, but they weren’t the most reliable narrators as all three of them were tripping hard by the time they reached the VIP security check.
Walking through the main VIP area, they decided to check out the smaller stages and maybe ride the Ferris wheel before it got too crowded. As soon as they passed the white fence of the VIP lawn, Anna clutched at her brother’s arm and told him she didn’t like how crowded it was. Steven told her it wasn’t far to the VIP Rose Garden area and she would have access to shade again. He kept a firm grip on both Anna and Lolly as the wide-pupiled trio slowly made their way through the excited throng of concertgoers, many of whom were dressed in outrageous outfits and probably rolling or tripping as hard or harder than they were. There were sixty-six different musical acts performing on day one and LiviX2 was scheduled to perform at sunset on the Mojave stage. Steven’s number one priority was to see Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals while Lolly and Anna
were desperate to see Billie Eilish.
Steven stopped at a vendor and bought three waters, advising Anna and Lolly to keep hydrated. Lolly announced she needed to go to the restroom and Steven said they should wait until they got to the VIP area, but Lolly said she couldn’t. Steven pointed the girls toward the port-a-potty line and said he’d stay close by. As they stood in line, Lolly and Anna didn’t talk and held hands so they wouldn’t get separated accidentally. There were people of all ages at Coachella, some dressed in the same California desert-chic style, a sea of cutoff jean shorts and tank tops, cowboy boots, sun hats and bandanas, while others went all out with their getups, the most extreme being ass-less chaps with biker boots, but the platinum-bobbed girl in front of them had on skin-tight pink leopard-print bell bottoms and a matching halter top. Lolly told her she liked her outfit, and the girl proudly announced her mom had made it for her special to wear to Coachella. “It’s my third time,” the girl said. “It gets better and better, but the bathroom lines get longer and longer.” When Anna asked her name, the girl said Eleanor, and Lolly told her she liked her name even though they knew a girl back East named Eleanor who was way different. The girl laughed and put on a pair of pink heart-shaped sunglasses.
As soon as she put on the sunglasses, Anna felt a wave of panic consume her like an unwanted ghost who had just possessed her body. The sunglasses appeared distorted and huge, and the hearts were stretched out and appeared to be beating like real human organs. “Lolly, I can’t be here,” Anna whispered. “I’m going to find Steven. I feel weird.” Lolly nodded and asked the LA Eleanor if she’d hang with her because she had dropped acid for the first time and was a little scared. The girl smiled and said she was shrooming herself but was more than capable of trip-sitting her while they waited.
Anna wandered around looking for Steven but couldn’t locate him, even though he was wearing a bright red HEY BRIDGET baseball cap. The problem was that all the colors were bleeding together, so staring into the crowd to find Steven was like rescuing the exact color crayon from a ninety-six-color boxed set before it melted into a waxy multicolored blob because you had put it in the dryer accidentally while you were tripping. The sun was too bright, and she was feeling overheated. Some guy in a clown wig came up to her and asked her name. “Why do you want to know?” Anna asked, suddenly afraid. “Do you know me?” Her voice was rising in terror, and the clown held up his big white-gloved hands and slowly backed away, telling her he had mistakenly thought she was someone else.
“Who did you think I was?” she cried out. “Who? Tell me!”
The clown yelled out, “Juliet. I thought you were my Juliet.”
This made Anna overwhelmingly sad, a Romeo in a clown wig had lost his Juliet. How will he ever find her here? The ground seemed to be shifting and slanting under her feet. Oh my god! she thought. It’s an earthquake! She spotted a white tent in the distance and, remembering what Steven had said about the VIP tent, ran toward it, dropping her water bottle in the process.
When she got to the security gate she placed her yellow wristband on the sensor and it glowed green. She found herself walking through a beautiful rose garden and almost sat on a bench but as the roses swayed in the desert breeze she felt as if the flowers started whispering to her, so she kept going, wanting to avoid any hallucinogenic conversations. The VIP area was less crowded, and everyone was better looking, less sweaty, and not dressed as clowns. She found a small area that had a couch, where a couple was holding hands and vaping, and squeezed in, mumbling an apology. She felt queasy, and the ground felt like it was moving. It’s not an earthquake. You’re just tripping. You’re fine.
There was a small area to the side where people were standing by a fence listening to the group performing at the closest stage. Anna became transfixed by the dancing crowd, watching the trails of colors waving off everyone’s clothes. Then she saw him. Alexia was dancing, surrounded by three girls, each in a bright pink wig. The girls were laughing and holding hands, a ring-around-the-rosie with Vronsky as their maypole.
He’s already forgotten about me. He’s moved on and replaced me with three Asian girls with cotton candy for hair. Anna hated the girls and their stupid pink party wigs. She hated their faces and their long tan legs. She hated the cropped pink denim jacket and the short turquoise-and-red cowboy boots that the prettiest of the three was wearing. She wanted to beat up the blond dancing boy. She wanted to rip every curl from his stupid head, but she couldn’t move. She felt like she was part of the couch, like she was sitting on a melted clock from a Dali painting. Time is melting. I’m melting Anna, tick turning into tock, and soon I’ll be gone. She held up her hand, and her fingers looked longer than they should have been. Alexia is the pied piper playing his flute and luring all the pretty dancing girls back to his bed, where he will fill them up and film them up, fill and film, just like he did to me.…
Anna looked over again and saw the three pink-haired girls had morphed into one, and she was no longer positive the blond boy was Vronsky after all. Wanting a closer look, Anna got up but immediately lost her balance and fell to the ground. She bit her lip, and when she touched her face, there was blood all over her fingers. My life is spilling out of me. Terrified, Anna scrambled up and looked for the exit. A security guard saw her bleeding and came over to ask her if she was okay. “No, I’m not,” she cried.
Anna spent the rest of the day in one of the medical tents, where she confessed to the nurse she had taken LSD. They gave her water, an ice pack, and a cot. She spent the next five hours curled in a little ball, squeezing her eyes shut, seeing swirls of colors that moved too fast and were too bright, but when she opened her eyes she saw a Japanese girl next to her throwing up into a plastic bedpan.
“What’s your name?” Anna asked the girl after she stopped hurling. “I’m Anna.”
“I’m Juliet,” the girl said, sniffling. She had popped a blood vessel from puking and now had one bloodred eye. Anna thought about telling the girl that her rainbow-wigged Romeo was searching for her, but she didn’t. Why should I help them find each other? Romeo and Juliet had ended badly. Why do people call it a love story when they both end up dead? It doesn’t make sense. Why does nothing make sense?
XXV
By now it was dark and Murf had spent the last three hours searching for Anna, but with over one hundred thousand people and spotty cell phone reception, it was an impossible task. Steven, who was tripping hard, had run into him, explaining he’d lost his sister and couldn’t find her. Murf told Daler and Rowney he’d meet up with them later and texted Vronsky the situation. Vronsky, who had decided to skip the day’s performances, was back at the house getting drunk by the pool, so when he showed up at the fairgrounds, he was wasted. Murf had to threaten him with a second black eye before he agreed to go, explaining he didn’t have the time to babysit his drunk ass. Vronsky nodded and started the long and lonely walk back to the fairground exits, but only after begging his friend to please text him once he found Anna.
By the time Murf did find Anna in the medical tent, she was shivering in the night air even though she had a blanket around her shoulders. The nurse didn’t want to release Anna to Murf, explaining she needed to call Anna’s parents. Murf said Anna’s parents were dead, and even though Anna was almost back to normal, when she heard Murf’s fib she started to cry. The nurse told them she wasn’t paid enough to deal with this kind of bullshit and asked them to leave.
Coachella after dark looked totally different, and if Anna weren’t so miserable, she would have found it gloriously and magically beautiful. The large-scale art installations lit up the night sky but pockets of darkness made it hard to see. Murf put a dust mask over her face as the wind had picked up, and they weaved their way through the crowd back toward the larger VIP area where Steven said he was going to be. Suddenly Anna stopped walking, refusing to continue on.
“Let’s go, we’re almost there,” Murf said.
Anna pointed at a nearby screen that was glowin
g red with flames. “Listen! She’s talking about me.”
Murf stared at the massive screen with Anna, unfamiliar with the seventeen-year-old wunderkind on the stage singing, “Don’t say I didn’t warn ya. All the good girls go to hell…”
“Anna, you’re fucked up. It’s just a song. You’re not going to hell.”
Anna started crying and sat down on the grass and put her face in her hands, which was when Murf had no choice but scoop Anna up in his arms and carry her like a child.
Murf took Anna back to the bungalow and waited with her until Steven and Lolly returned after the Childish Gambino headliner. Lolly, who was still tripping, came dancing in and declared that Coachella was a religion and she was its newest disciple. Never in her life had she ever had such a magical and wild time.
Murf told them Anna was packing to leave, which made Lolly burst into tears at the thought of not staying to see Ariana Grande’s headliner show on Sunday night. Steven told Lolly he needed to do what was best for his sister and although Lolly rationally understood his words, she irrationally couldn’t help pouting and stomping about. Overhearing the commotion, Anna came running out of her room and said she couldn’t handle any more misery and agreed to stay for the rest of the weekend. Unable to control her emotions, Lolly ran over to Anna and hugged her so hard and for so long Murf had to pry Lolly off of her. Lolly, crying once again, swore her tears were tears of gratitude for all the many blessings she was currently experiencing. She then did a cartwheel in the living room and ran to her room to change into yet another outfit.
“So I’m assuming what I just witnessed was what a good acid trip looks like?” Anna asked with a rueful smile. Steven explained that psychedelic drugs feed off the internal psychic energy of your current emotional state and Anna’s unfortunate nightmare trip was more than likely unavoidable given everything that was going on. He told his sister if she still wanted to leave Coachella, he would absolutely go with her and that she shouldn’t worry about Lolly.
