Another post, this one from @sonjalovesgeorgia, reads,Big news, #JFG Warriors!!
I glance at the caption, expecting to see news about boycotting Shocking Pink’s reunion tour, but instead there’s this:Has anyone else seen the police report from the last time Georgia was arrested? Her tox screen was clean! The press lied, but what else is new? They’ve been telling tales about our girl since she burst on the scene. #boycottshockingpink #justiceforgeorgia
I squint even though the words on the screen are perfectly clear. The last time Georgia was arrested wasn’t particularly remarkable. Another drug-fueled brawl (according to the press), another night in lockup, followed by another trip to rehab (here), and another public statement about getting sober and managing the disease of addiction. Nothing (I thought at the time) that hadn’t happened before. Even if the contents of the diary are true, she could’ve easily fallen off the wagon by then; the diary’s final page is dated almost a week before the night she was arrested.
Of course, @sonjalovesgeorgia could be lying. Georgia’s fans have posted plenty of nonsense over the years. Someone claimed that Georgia wasn’t dead at all, she was in hiding in the French countryside, so that people posted grainy pictures they claimed were her like they’d sighted Bigfoot. Someone else insisted that my grandmother had murdered Georgia so she could control my trust and the millions that came with it. Another fan suggested I’d had her killed, and all my stints in treatment were for psychosis, not eating disorders.
I study @sonjalovesgeorgia’s profile, holding my phone like an egg that might crack. Her hair is dark and parted down the middle, framing her face like curtains. White ink tattoos snake up and down her arms, and in most of her posts, she’s wearing nineties-era vintage clothing: baby-doll dresses, floral headbands, ripped fishnets with motorcycle boots. Even though she technically looks nothing like my mother—black hair, aquiline nose, a dimple in her chin—somehow she resembles Georgia more than I do. Certainly, she’s the sort of daughter Georgia would’ve had fun with, the sort of daughter who’s spent her life publicly defending her hero, begging the rest of the world not to let Shocking Pink perform my mother’s music without my mother there to take center stage.
All my life, Iknewthese people were crazed fans with absurd conspiracy theories, but then I alsoknewthat Georgia was a basket case whose every move was determined by which substances she happened to be on that day. I look around the pristine bedroom, as though its right angles and white walls might reveal hints, telling me what’s true and what’s not.
I click on @sonjalovesgeorgia’s most recent post, from two days ago, January 12, 2025.
I’m going dark for a while. I’ll probably be offline ’til after the anniversary, but I promise to give you more before SP goes on tour this spring. Like and follow for more info soon! #boycottshockingpink #justiceforgeorgia #jfg
I sigh. Clearly, @sonjalovesgeorgia is an influencer trying to attract more followers. I scroll through her feed. Sprinkled between #georgiafan posts are paid advertisements for everything from toothpaste to pumice stones to lip gloss. Even if she did track down the police report (something that never occurred to me to do), she only did it to excite Georgia’s fans so she can keep selling them moisturizer and sunscreen, no better than the classmates who pretended to be my friend so they could sell a photo to blogs and magazines.
I press my fists into my stomach. It’s nearly midnight, more than two hours till Dr. Mackenzie’s check-in and there’s a bass thump filling the air. Somewhere, someone is playing music too loud. Overloud music was the soundtrack to my childhood, as familiar as a lullaby.
I drop my hand, cross the room, and open the bedroom door. I half expect to see Dr. Mackenzie sleeping on the floor outside my room, but the hallway is empty. I tiptoe toward the kitchen, my belly in knots.
17Florence
Just you wait, I’m gonna get her back,
The whole world will know,
I’m gonna get her back,
There’s nowhere she can go,
I’m gonna get her back,
Nowhere she can hide,
I’m gonna get her back,
Everyone will take my side.
I throw the covers off my body, suddenly hot. That fucking song is in my brain so deep it’s showing up in my dreams. Or maybe I wasn’t asleep. Maybe Ican’tsleep anymore. Maybe years and years of coke and speed and whatever-the-hell-else fried the part of my brain that knew how to sleep and dream, and now I have no choice but to lie awake for the rest of my days. It’s not true that you’ll die without sleep. The human body’s more adaptable than we give it credit for.
When Callie suggested this place, she promised no one would know exactly where I was. She said it like that was supposed to make me feel safer. Now, in the middle of the night, without my phone, I feel stranded. If something happened to me here, no one would know.
I get out of bed, my bare feet cold against the hardwood floors. There’s a tiny white rug beside the bed, no bigger than a bathmat. This place could use some carpeting. The floor-to-ceiling windows everywhere make everything so goddamn drafty.
Drafty,
Nasty,
My skin is pasty.
How am I supposed to write anything halfway decent when I can’t get Joni Jewell’s fucking lyrics out of my head?
The chorus of dead musicians in my brain asks,What was your excuse before Joni released her song?
Janis Joplin laughs. Anger tingles beneath my skin. Before I attacked Joni, multiple witnesses heard me scream,
I’ll kill you for what you did to me.
