It is. I’ve spent a lifetime allowing myself to be emptied by people like these. Sometimes they’re little thefts: “I know you said you’re busy this weekend, but you can cover this shift for me, yeah? It’s just that it’s my mum’s birthday and…”
And my needs are more important than yours.
Little by little they’ll take. You may not even realize you’ve been robbed.
Sometimes they’ll thrust a fist down the back of your throat, grabbing greedily at organs. My father did this. I imagine him, bloodied up to his elbow, angry with effort, fist squeezing my lungs. And me, mouth wide open and compliant as he snaps them free from my trachea. He inspects them, all spongy-pink and crucial andmine.You won’t need these,he says.Why are you crying? Little bitch.
Why did you allow it? Because speaking up came with a price tag you couldn’t afford to pay.
Dad won’t like it. Oliver will be pissed. Joy will have me fired.
So open your mouth, wide. Let them empty you. What are you now? A hollow, filled with everything the thieves didn’t want.
That’s how they turn girls into ghosts,Mum cautioned.Don’t let it happen to you.
But I did.
The studio is deathly quiet.
“Uh…we seem to have lost Melanie for a minute here, folks!” Lynny chortles, but I can finally hear the uncertainty in her voice. The alarm. Good.
“Cut to commercial,” the producer snaps, “now!”
The moment they’ve cut the studio feed, Joy’s mask slips. She glares at me and for the first time, I glare back.Lookat me.Reallylook. See what I’ve done for you? For everyone? What I’ve allowed myself to become? Me in my bland and severe clothes so no one will see me. Me with my timid, little-girl voice so no one will listen.
Am Ifuckingneutralenough for you yet?
Enough. Shakily, I get to my feet, and someone hisses in the dark, “Is she drunk?”
I reach behind me for my microphone, a skinny black snake running from my chest to the small of my back. I yank it out, and feedback shrieks.
Nobody moves. No one knows what to do with me and my very uncharacteristic outburst. What a plot twist this is. Meek little Melanie clings to the rules, while everyone else breaks them. My father, my fiancé, my co-hosts…my mother.
I am compliant. Complicit. Obedient.Good.I could not have beenmore fucking good.But it didn’t matter, did it? It never does. The more you give, the more they’ll take.
Joy bolts upright and grabs for my arm. “Sit down, you little bitch!”
I wrench away, darting behind the camera into the dark.
You’re not wearing that.
You won’t need these.
You’re not taking Jessie.
Sit down,you little bitch!
I grasp the mic pack, launch it like a baseballer, and hurl it at Joy’s face.
Chapter 2
It misses her head by inches.
No one moves. But this time, I do. I run. Down the stage steps, right past the twenty-something camera operator, who has no idea where to aim the camera. I bolt into the darkness, out the doors, and into the early-morning light. It’s not even 6a.m.yet.
I wrench my car door open, fling myself inside, and lock it. I stare at the steering wheel, and then unbelievably, I start laughing.
I can’t go back to my sterile house with my sterile fiancé in Northton, or my once-a-month lunch friends. They’re nice enough girls who work in the industry and understand the pressures, demands, and overtime, but after two years, we’ve never quite made the jump from “How’s work going?” to “I think I want to leave my fiancé,” or “My doctor wants to up my Zoloft.”
