He doesn’t answer that, simply plucks her exam from the desk and slides it back into the folder, his shoulders set in a rigid line. She’s never seen a sweater-vest look so menacing.
“If you don’t have any specific questions about the quiz,” he says, avoiding eye contact, “I hope you’ll excuse me. I have some more grading to do.”
8
Ramona hates to be acliché, going shopping to self-soothe, but fuck it. She likes pretty, expensive things, and even if she usually prefers trying them on in the privacy of her own home after they’ve been delivered in a nondescript cardboard box, the siren song of owning something lovelyright nowis just too tempting.
Quit,urges the voice in the back of her mind.Just quit. Let this dream die and move on to something else.
And maybe she will. She could dive headfirst back into the nothingness she’s wrapped herself up in for the past half year. Or maybe this really could be a break, the way everyone suggested, and she can get back to music after all. Even if recording another song sounds about as appealing as being tied to a chair, forced to listen to a three-hour lecture from Professor Nick Navarro.
What does UCLA hold for her, really? Four years of suspicion and judgment? Four years of people not taking her seriously?
Maybe her parents were right.
“Looking for anything in particular?” the jewelry storesalesgirl asks, with a suppressed smugness that implies she knows exactly who Ramona is but has enough tact to keep quiet about it.
“Just browsing, thanks.”
The upscale mall is less than ten minutes from campus, and though she’d typically avoid public outings like this, she keeps her sunglasses on and peeks into shops to check which ones are empty before going inside.
Ramona picks up a diamond tennis bracelet she doesn’t need. Lab grown, so that means it’s ethical, right? Technically she’s a good person if she buys this. She smiles at the hovering salesgirl and points to the bracelet, then flashes her black Amex without looking at the price tag.
It’s a luxury, she knows, not to worry about money. The first decade of her life was marked by scarcity—groceries from the dollar store, clothes from Goodwill or rummage sales, tepid showers. A warm bath only every other week as a treat. Surely it was normal for the electricity to get cut off sometimes when her parents couldn’t pay the bill; that must happen to everyone. When she started booking jobs and her family could afford to go out to eat, Beck and DeeAnn treated her like it was her birthday, Christmas, and Hanukkah combined. “Go ahead, take a look,” her mother would say with twinkle in her eye when the server asked if they’d like to see the dessert menu. “You earned it.” That was before the extra calories made it off-limits.
Ramona was her family’s ticket out of poverty, and it took her years to realize that was never her responsibility. She shouldn’t have had to go to work as a child to provide for them. Yet that’s exactly what she did, and until she was old enough to understand, she loved it. From a young age, she tried to be smart about money.The parts of her paychecks that didn’t go into her Coogan Account or get funneled toward voice or guitar lessons, she saved, vowing that she’d never let any of them go back to that Lancaster apartment, explaining to her skeptical friends that yes, the Dollar Tree did sell food and no, it wasn’t that bad.
Then she bookedGretaand DeeAnn started dressing like a Real Housewife and suddenly they could afford to gift her agent a Rolex for Christmas, and Ramona realized something else: the distinction betweencomfortandexcess.
She tucks the bracelet into her oversized Miu Miu tote and heads back into the mall, vowing to buy only lab-grown diamonds from now on, though she imagines what would really make her feel better is only buying what she needs. Starting tomorrow.
“Oh my god, Ramona? Ramona Wilder?”
The words are punctuated by the squeals of a dozen preteen girls streaming from one of those build-a-whatever party shops. There are neon clip-on extensions in their hair, sparkles smeared on their cheeks.
Ramona freezes as the girls approach, reaches for her sunglasses only to realize they’re perched on top of her head.No. Oh god no.
She lifts a hand in an awkward hello as her stomach drops to her feet. “Hey there.”
“I love you so much!”
“You’re my favorite singer!”
“This is the best birthday ever!” one of them, ostensibly the birthday girl, yells out. Then she bursts into tears.
Ramona clutches her bag tighter and urges herself to breathe. This is what she gets for going shopping midafternoon in Century City instead of in the middle of the night on her phone.
The adults look on with mildly amused expressions. “Give her some space, girls,” a mother calls, halfhearted, her face buried in an iPad.
“Can we take a picture?” one of the girls asks, and twelve bejeweled phones are shoved in her direction.
“I—” Ramona tries, but the rest of the sentence dies in her throat. What’s she going to say—that she’s in a hurry? That she doesn’t do that anymore, and leave them with a terrible story about the time they met their idol?
She knows these girls. They came to her concerts, they wear her merch, they buy her albums on vinyl even when they can stream them for free. She’s always held so much affection for them, the girls who are so unashamed about what they love, even when that thing is bubblegum pink and stomping around in combat boots.
alwaysgonnadisappoint
nevermakeanyonehappy
