American Girls(22)

“That’s the funny thing about fame,” my sister had said. “It’s not like she’s ugly. She’s not even that terrible an actress, but you can feel that shift. Once that shift happens, you’re fighting an epic uphill struggle. Epic. You need some director to make you his darling and save you from the feeding to the lions that’s going to happen in the press. You can see it in her pictures, that she gets what’s happening and doesn’t know how to stop it. It’s despair, but she’s trying her damnedest not to let it show.”

“She’s just a f*cked-up kid,” Dex had said. “Plus, she has money, which makes her a monster. And I mean that in the nicest way possible.”

I wasn’t really prepared for the full Olivia Taylor–ness of Olivia Taylor. I don’t know what might have prepared me. Definitely not the tooth-rotting sweetness of the film she did where she found out her dad was king of some anonymous European country and she had to rescue a dog and make nice with the local prince. For sure not “Nice Is Nice Too,” the hit single that Doon and I made out to the one time we kissed. Positively not Kandy Kisses, the biopic that Doon and I had camped out to see when we were ten years old, Kandy necklaces around our necks. And not the recent gossip-site pics either, which had her looking like she could as easily be sliding into a body bag as passed out in the backseat of her ex-boyfriend’s SUV, waxed lady parts on display like a naked Barbie doll.

In person, she seemed both bigger and smaller than she did in her pictures and videos. Her hair was wound through with silver ribbons and braided in four sections that went down the back of her head into one large ponytail. She wore tight black jeans with silver seams, a fuzzy white sweater, and high-heel wedge boots that came just above her knee. If I hadn’t known she was Olivia Taylor when she walked in, I would have at least known that she wasn’t regular—her clothes, her hair, her skinny-girl slouch—without her having to say a word, her whole being set her apart. And if Olivia Taylor’s star was starting to fade, the last person to know about it seemed to be Olivia Taylor. Even the nerdy “I hate Hollywood” writers took notice when she stormed onto the set, interrupting the tail end of an all-staff Nintendo marathon.

“If you two rat-turds know who leaked those pics, you better let on, or someone’s going to let the rest of the world know which of you ejaculates spends all his Disney money on porn so he doesn’t look like the scared little virgin he actually is. And don’t pretend not to look at me. Don’t forget, I know where you live, you cuntresses.”

The twins didn’t even look up from the on-screen zombie massacre, but gave her an almost balletic, synchronized bird-flip. I don’t think I’d ever heard a girl use the word “cunt,” let alone find a way to make it seem like poetry.

“I have no friends,” she said. “And not in the sad way. Until I find out how those pictures got out, every one of those whores is on house arrest.”

“Boohoo.” Joshua macheted three zombies. “If you screw up my high score I’m putting you on house arrest.”

“You wait,” she said, pushing a pair of oversize sunglasses atop her head. “You wait until no one gives a shit what rotted-out beach your tired asses wash up on, when you get stopped in the mall and someone says, ‘Weren’t you on that show Nutter Butter?’ Because it’s going to happen, and the only person left on planet Earth who’ll suck you off will be some prison guard with basic cable who thinks f*cking you will make the president love her.”

It was like she was training for the Olympics of swearing.

“So you’re the klepto?” she said, and it took me a minute to realize she was looking at me. I stood up a little straighter and tried to pretend like she was just another girl in my English class.

“I’m not a klepto,” I said. “I was taking out a loan.”

“Right. Here’s a tip. Own it.”

“She’s fine,” Josh said. “Not everyone is a psycho like you.”

“Is that the best you can do? ‘Psycho’? Maybe you should lay off the video games. So Anna—it is Anna, right? Since you’re a professional, or a loan shark, or whatever you want to call it, would you like to come shopping with me?”

It sounded like a trick question. And she knew my name, which meant that the twins must have talked about me when I wasn’t around. Crazy.

“I’m supposed to be on a spending fast,” she said. “They’re doing a feature for some no-name sad-teen magazine, and I’m going to write some sermon about how not spending has saved my soul and is better for the planet and all of that, only I hate, hate, hate not spending and there is no way any sane editor could expect me to weather this shit-storm without at least a new bag. You need money too, right? I’ll pay you a hundred bucks. Finder’s fee and hush money. If you so much as tweet it to your best friend, I will destroy you, okay?”

Like anyone would believe me. Even Doon would think that I was making this up.

Seeing Olivia Taylor made me realize that everyone my sister knows is only kind of famous. Partially famous, faded around the edges, and potentially forgettably famous. Even Delia, if she works every day for the rest of her life, will never be Olivia Taylor. Olivia Taylor has sold out stadiums. She was on my television five nights a week and again in the mornings as reruns. I am pretty sure I know her birthday as well as her favorite color.