“Aha!” I mumble to myself with my house key now in hand.
“It’s at one o’clock at Bethel Life Church!” Beth yells as I am turning the key in the lock, opening the door to my apartment with dead plants and laundry everywhere. The state of my place being completely neglected.
This is enough to motivate me to panic-clean, scrubbing every glass panel of my fridge. Dusting the ceiling fan. Throwing all the laundry stuck on the floor into my washer.
When everything is done, I force my thoughts away from earlier today.
From now on, if I’m going to continue this freelance stuff, I am only gonna accept actresses. Except Sloane Swanson. She will be on my shit list forever.
I flop myself on the bed, stripped to my oversized shirt, imagining how a funeral for the girl haunting me will go. A museum to catalog Skye’s brief time on Earth.
What will everyone say?
What music will they play?
Will they pick up on her energy in the room?
I hold on to the pendant around my neck tighter, yelling, “A luz sabe” three times…
But nothing. My room is perfectly consistent at seventy-three degrees Fahrenheit. My pendant hasn’t glowed since the premiere.
I have so much to say. It feels inconvenient how she shows up whenever she feels like it. The only thing I can turn to is my couch.
My day is spent with entirely too much time glued to my TV. Burning through episodes ofSex and the Citybefore my eyes eventually give out.
When I wake up the next morning, I am completely oblivious for about thirty seconds.
Every bit of yesterday resurfaces with one click of an app when I unlocked my phone. I’ve successfully crossed over to meme territory. My rage is well documented, publicly, for all to see.
“Weren’t you the girl that stepped on my dress?”
“Yes, Sloane. That was me.”
A continuous loop repeats over and over again with a remixed version of the sound bite playing endlessly on my phone as I read through the comments.
Wow, she is so brave.
I could never destroy my career for a guy.
Someone’s jealous.
Sloane’s prettier
She wishes she was as talented as Sloane.
God, Sloane can’t do an interview without rehearsing her lines.
Mr. Save-a-Ho—Graham Walker
Psycho girlfriend
I like her, she’s got spice.
Every jab I read hits me like a bullet train trying to run me over. At the speed of light, the opinions flood in—good, bad, neutral. All weighing in on who I am.
Like every train wreck, I can’t stop looking. It is almost eleven in the morning when I finally manage to get myself together in a modest black dress for the day. I pull myself away from the phone and leave every notification on Do Not Disturb, desperately needing to tame my frizzy waves.
Switching to my music app, I scroll my playlist as I try to find the best song to get ready to.
