The Real Real (26 page)
“I
wanted
a boyfriend who was
mine
. Sorry it was such torture.”
I look to Drew. “I swear on my grandmother I never said I was playing you. I wasn’t.”
Drew clears his throat. “It was just the once, right? In Cancun?” Everyone stares me down, and I lose my nerve.
I mean, I’ve apologized. And the “source” didn’t mention the limo.
I nod. “So, Jase and I hooked up. Nico and Drew kissed. Trisha has . . . Trisha-ed . . . everyone . . . and that’s that, so we’re all cool?”
“I’m cool.” Rick shrugs.
I look hopefully at Drew.
He bites his lip and nods slowly.
“Okay, kids, you’re on!”
* * *
In the vaulted room, knees clamped, I sit as far back on the white couch as possible. And here we are: full circle—on a stage, in front of a salivating crowd, another huge screen suspended too close to see things clearly. But the sound is perfect. Crystal. I can hear every one of my gasps as I writhe in the back of the limo under Jase McCaffrey pushing up my pink dress. Then, later in the episode, I hear myself urge him to lock the door as I pull him into the hotel suite bathroom in the dark security-camera-style footage. We were, indeed, being watched. Blushing in front of these fans, in front of America, I hear the soft, low moans that come from behind that door. I hear Drew tell Nico, as he pulls away from her in the pineapple hot tub, that he doesn’t have feelings for her, he likes me. And, when I think this could not be any worse, that I could not want to leave my body more, I hear a voiceover of my own voice. My end of the conversation with Caitlyn in the Lexus that night. Edited so that it sounds like I’m telling my deepest darkest to every glitter-eyed stranger watching breathlessly in this room.
They bugged the car.
They had cameras all over that hotel.
And then it hits me so hard I’m light-headed, the spotlights swimming before me into a white blur.
I am the source.
Early the next morning, I’m woken from the respite of a dreamless Ambien sleep by Mom standing in her pajamas, clasping the phone to her chest and holding the other extension out to me. “Who is it?” I whisper, pressing my hand over the receiver as I pull myself up to sit.
“Your guidance counselor,” she says, her exhausted eyes flecked with the first signs of hope I’ve seen in the seventy-two hours since the
OK!
hit newsstands. “I gave the school our new number. Maybe it’s about your financial aid?”
I go to say hello and then whip the phone back against my stomach. “Is it safe?”
“What?”
“Do you think our phone is bugged, too?”
“No.” She studies me with a whole new level of concern. “I definitively do not think that.”
Nodding, I raise it to my ear. “Mrs. Pritchard?”
“Jesse, good morning. Are you both on the line?”
“Yes,” Mom says into her extension as she sinks next to me on the duvet with a heaviness that suggests her Ambien didn’t do the trick.
“I’m afraid I’m not calling with good news,” Mrs. Pritchard says tentatively.
“Is it the financial aid?” Mom jumps in, her voice rising. “It’ll be okay, Jess.” She squeezes my knee, her face stricken. “We’ll figure this out. You have your Doritos money.”
“Mrs. O’Rourke, it’s actually worse than that. I just got off the phone with Georgetown. They’ve rescinded their offer.”
“
What?
” My stomach lurches. “Can they do that?”
“I’m afraid they can.”
“On what grounds?” Mom cries as my mouth wets, signaling vomit.
“Believe me, I begged. I staked my reputation on Jesse.
But they’re a Jesuit school, Mrs. O’Rourke. And they feel very strongly that this whole reality TV thing, which came to pass after Jesse applied, that it’s, well, the phrase they used was,
conduct unbecoming
.”
And at that I do. All over the floor.
* * *
Leaving the key in the ignition so the radio can continue to drown out the mental reverberations of Mom’s sobs and Dad’s door-slamming, I take a swig of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, trying to wash the acid taste from the back of my throat. From the only car in the sand-strewn lot, I have an unimpeded view of the empty beach, the rough waves slapping the shore in rhythm under the ascending sun.
I tune back into the mental frequency replaying every moment of the last five months, my stomach curdling, the pain sharpest right below my ribs.
Why
didn’t I see this coming? And
why
couldn’t I just have kept my shit together? Avoided Drew. God, avoided
Jase
. Stayed nice, stayed quiet, listened to my instincts instead of everyone’s bullhorned directions. What’s the worst that could have happened then—getting cut? Getting fired?
I wish
. Pressing my fingers into my brow bone, I slump over the wheel, every sickening decision pouring past my mind’s eye like a horror movie projected on molasses.
Sensing another round of imminent retching, I pull out the keys and open the door, the salty breeze finally tempering my nausea as I shakily stand. I kick off my Converses as my hair whips across my face and, grabbing them up, walk down the planks that snake through the dunes to the sand.
Still damp from yesterday’s rain, it’s chilly against my feet, but I’m just so relieved to be alone, with nothing but what my senses tell me is real—the cool sand, the sharp breeze, the sun on my face, the salt in my nostrils, the cries 272
of gulls in my ears. My breath steadying, I feel the familiar weight of being here, at once home among these forces and comfortingly small and irrelevant. I bend and pick up a small white stone, egg-shaped and smooth, holding it in my hand as the birds circle overhead, squawking and crying. A sound reaches me in strips as the wind snaps, rising and falling, rising and falling—
I twist around to see Nico sitting at the edge of the dunes, her sobs braided with the birds’. I spin to scan up and down the empty beach, as if I might spot the explanation—but it’s just me, her, and the gulls. As I turn to find my own dune and leave her in privacy, she lifts her head from her knees and, spotting me, cries harder. Crap. Girding myself, I jog up the sand.
“Hey,” I call out hesitantly as I approach. “I didn’t see your car in the lot.”
Huddling in a big white blazer she raises her head, her eyes almost swollen shut. “I walked.”
I reach into my jacket pocket for some napkins.
“Here.”
She takes them from my hand and presses them to her wet face.
“Don’t worry, they’re only doughnut-
scented
—no calories,” I lamely joke.
But she lets out a hollow laugh. “Eating for two?” she asks, blowing her nose.
“Yes, in eight to nine months I’m actually going to give birth to a large XTV logo.” She pats her face dry 273
while I bite my lip. “I feel truly shitty about Jase, Nico.
It doesn’t excuse me, but I really thought you were going after Drew.”
“And let’s be honest, I tried.” She shrugs, sending a pang through my gut. “But . . . ”
“But?” I try to secure my hair behind my ears.
“He wants
you
, Jesse.”
“Wanted,” I say ruefully, the pang dispersing to a full body ache as I drop down next to her to face the surf.
“Now I think the term is
disgust
.”
She starts to sob again.
“Oh God, sorry, did I say something wrong?”
Unable to speak, she extends her hand from the oversized sleeve to reveal something black and sparkly—a phone. One I’ve seen before. “
I’m . . .
disgusting,” she chokes out.
“Why do you have Fletch’s phone, Nico?”
“I took it.”
At that I place the blazer she’s wearing over her white Gucci romper from last night, her bare legs goose bumping through their spray tan. “Have you even been home?
What happened?”
She rakes the sleeve across her face, leaving a wide streak of bronzer and blush in its wake. “You saw how my dad was last night—when the crowd was chanting your name—so totally
done
with me. So I went over to Fletch after the screening and told him it couldn’t end like this.” She shudders. “Everyone thinking I suck—people at 274
school, Melanie, the blogs. Not with me just—ruined—
for forty thousand dollars.”
“There’s a good price to be ruined for?” I pull my hands into my jacket sleeves.
She lifts an eyebrow.
“Okay, naive. Continue.”
“So he says the network wants another season. With shake-ups. And he looks me up and down. And I’m, like, Okay, I know that look, I get that look at the dealership.
Reel ’em in without giving a thing. I can do this. So his driver drops us off at the house Fletch’s rented down the beach. Fletch makes me a drink. He makes me another. We talk about cars. I mean, he’s not unattractive, you know?
He pitches the idea of me starring next season.” She stops, her watery blue eyes glazing as she replays the events inside her mind. “He says he held me back to let you run your course, but now I’m ready to explode. I show him some leg, I flip some hair. He—” She squints, her voice going flat. “Lunges for me. Like bad seventh grade. Not, like, older guy, with moves and whatever you’d think. This was like getting mauled. Angry mauled.”
“Oh my God, Nico.” I put my hand on her hunched shoulder, feeling a completely different nausea take hold as she shakes.
“So, I leaped up.” She starts to cry again. “It was instinct.” Her tears run silently while she talks. “And I saw it on his face—immediately—done—totally done with me—just like Jase, just like my dad. So he left the room to 275
get himself another drink, and I grabbed my clutch and his blazer and ran out the patio door. I’m such an asshole.”
She hands me the phone.
“And you took this with you?” I ask.
“It was in the blazer pocket. Check the video,” she says.
I tap the icon and look at the long list of files . . . all of them girls’ names . . . Trisha? I tap her name, and in a second her image fills the palm-sized screen. It’s dark, but I recognize the Mexican bay. The camera captures her topless from an infinitely closer vantage point than where I stumbled past that night waiting for Drew. Over her unmistakable Trisha giggles, Fletch’s voice floats from the phone: “Now you’re ready to explode.”
A hand reaches into frame, his
Killah
tattoo visible in the moonlight, groping her breast, and the screen goes to black.
I drop the phone in the sand between us and look at Nico, shaking my head in disbelief. “
Shit
.”
“I’m so
stupid
,” she says again, flopping her head to her bent knees.
“Why are
you
stupid?”
“Because I
believed
him. He said the same thing my dad’s always said.”
“That you have star quality?” I take a guess.
“
Yes
.” She blows her nose again into the disintegrating napkin.
“Oh my God. He’s the grown-up who drove you back to his house and tried to jump you! It’s not your fault. This 276
isn’t our fault,” I repeat, more for myself. “We’ve just been doing what we’ve been told, and they’ve totally twisted everything to make us look and feel like assholes.”
I expect her to take hold of my rage and run with it, but instead she just stares out at the ocean, nodding her head.
“I shouldn’t be here.” She closes her eyes tightly. “I should be in the city shopping for a prom dress. Or home, taping extra blank pages into my yearbook.” She opens her eyes, her pupils round. “Someone lobbed manure on our lawn and wrote
bitch
on our door with spray paint.”
“Nico, this has to blow over at some point. Any minute now someone will forget to wear underwear or break up a celebrity marriage or both and we’ll be old news. I mean, at least you’re going to college—”
“I’m not. Dad won’t pay. He says I’ve had my shot—I didn’t fight to do better, and he’s done investing in me.
First your mother, now you
, he says.”
“Jesus.”
“You want to know the truth? He’s right. I didn’t fight.
As soon as the initial response came in, and you were the star, and I saw how he handled it, I just . . . I guess part of me wanted to see what he would do if I failed. Would he still love me?” The question hangs in the wind between us as she turns her raw face to me. “When I was twelve and doing those local beauty pageants in malls, he made me wear the name of the dealership on all my outfits like fucking NASCAR.” She looks down at the clump of her 277
discarded white patent Gucci heels. “I got a little famous, so I can help sell cars.”
“But if someday you inherited the business, that wouldn’t be so bad.”
“It’s not what I want.” She pushes her chin against her kneecap.
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know . . . options, I guess.” She sniffs.
“You?”
“Same.” I nod, watching a gull swoop down and then soar back up toward the pink sky.
Suddenly the sand is ringing between us. Ghostface Killah, to be precise. We both stare at Fletch’s illuminated cell like it’s as viral as
The Ring
video.
“Is it him?” she asks.
I carefully pick it up and check the number. “I don’t know. It’s local.”
“Chuck it in the ocean,” she says, but we both just stare at it until it’s quiet.
We startle afresh as ringing emits from the pocket of my jeans. Handing her Fletch’s phone, I lean back to tug my cell out and check the number. I look at Nico. “Ever imagine the day it would be a relief when Kara calls? I mean, at least I know no one’ll scream
fucking bitch
and hang up.”
As Nico offers a faint smile, I press answer.
“Hey, Jess! It’s Kara.”
“Hi.” I put the phone on speaker, and Nico leans close to listen.
“Fantastic news! The numbers are in from last night, and they’re through the roof! The network is super-stoked about a second season! God, it’s
fantastic
. All that hard work has paid off, Jesse! So we’re all going to meet at Fletch’s rental in about thirty, cool?”