My acting skills were subpar at best and never why they’d hired me. I’d learned to understand that over the years. I could cry and show rage and laugh on demand, which didn’t make me an actress but a damn good liar. Maybe it was all the same.
Opportunities had outweighed morale in Mom’s eyes. Until the director gradually turned my sarcasm into spite and made me the villain of the show to make Audrey’s character shine. For most of my pre-teen years, I was tormented and bullied and criticized by people who hated my character as Rudy and adoredher. Dad had pulled me after five seasons, the show collapsed, Mom left, and my acting career washed up, along with my friendship with Audrey.
Parts had come and gone since, all villainous roles, but I left show business before it could take anything else away from me. Perhaps abandonment ran in the family.
Sidney and Heidi had come into my life not long after. Our inner circle was more like a dysfunctional therapy session, bound in equal partsromantic failuresandsocial proof. Since then, we flashed smiles like they were dented I.D.’s, survived tabloid rumors, and pretended like we didn’t give a damn about what anyone thought of us.
They were famous for being famous and as miserable as I was, and we hid our misery with both uppersanddowners.
I stopped acting but never really stopped acting, though. I never stopped being Rudy from the show that had given me a name. The public had dubbed me as America’s bitch, and I played the part ever since. They couldn’t hurt me if I wasn’t me. Rudy—the rude and spiteful girl—had dug her claws so deep inside me it was hard to know who I was anymore. I’d spent my most vital years becoming her instead of figuring that out.
At the other side of the room, Audrey tossed back her auburn locks with a laugh that the music drowned out, her groupies entertaining whatever she had to say. She always surrounded herself with people who agreed with, who saw her as the victim afterIt’s Complicated. She used the martyr role to her benefit, rolled around in it. The whole scene made me sick to my stomach.
“Take one of these,” Sidney said, slipping a pill into my hand before pulling out a palm-sized bag of coke from her clutch. We were back in the secluded VIP room sitting on a couch Johnny Depp most likely fucked on. “She’s nothing but a backstabbing bitch. Forget her and just have a good time.”
An image appeared behind my closed eyelids. It was a polaroid of Jude River, and the sudden thought of him made me pause. I sat frozen with the pill heavy in my hand, remembering his death and the events that led up to it in this very room. His life in exchange for ninety seconds of an electric brain-bell jangle. A momentarily wash of panic silenced the room like cotton in my ears.
Sidney leaned over a table, heavy metal slicing through the speakers after House of Sparrows had left the stage. She crushed a rock against the compact mirror for another line, another way to wrap barbed wire around the tough stuff and toss it into the wind.
I tucked the pill into my bag and joined her, trading one poison for the other instead of choosing both. Mom would be proud, I thought.
I slid beside her as she lined it up.
No one could see us, and she flashed me a devious smile with painted pink lips.
Awareness before the fog was the phrase that came to mind.Like I knew I’d had enough, but the self-sabotaging numbed the worthlessness I often possessed. Cloaked it.
The white powder burned my nostrils next.
I wiped my nose just when a bartender appeared, her red hair in an eighties pin-up style.
“Sidney,” she began when my cell vibrated. I held up a finger between us and swiped the screen with my other hand to view the message. Sidney shoved a shot of something into my pointer, prompting me to just take the drink as she dismissed the bartender.
It’s mom. Please call me, it’s important.
“What is it?” Sidney asked, her eyes drinking in the tall drummer on the other side of the two-way mirror.
The overall feeling washing over me was not neglect or guilt but anger. It attacked my chest first then crawled along my arms down to my fingertips. It was hard to maintain my high when the rage possessed my fingertips, too.
“Nothing.” I clicked off the phone. “It’s nothing. Just an unknown number.” Everything was coming out in staggered sentences. Sidney didn’treallycare, and I didn’t know why she asked, but the last thing I wanted to do was ruin our already spiraling night.
I put the shot to my lips and threw back my head. The acid slid down my throat in one go, clearing the drip in my throat for the time being. The smile came easy, and I took Sidney’s hand. “Let’s dance.”
2
#byefelipe
HARLOW SAINT JAMES
Sidney led the way,our joined hands between us, sweaty drinks clasped in our others.
Midnight struck. I pulled Sidney back so she could face me.
“To the night that loves us,” I shouted over the music.
“And the lucky bastards who get to fuck us!” she finished. The contents in our drinks vanished along with our self-respect. Drums pounded in our ears, and we danced our high away to some trash song with the only motive of getting girl’s breasts smashed together.
Members from the band surrounded the lead singer, and sweat sprayed from his blond hair each time he banged his head to the beat. He found me from afar, raped me with his gaze.
