American Girls(46)
Jeremy had found the dog food and placed it by the door. Beside it was the bag from the store where I’d bought Olivia the purse.
“I found this.” He lifted the bag toward me. “The receipt’s still in there. It has your dad’s name on it. I’ll bet you can return it.”
I took the shopping bag, but I couldn’t look him in the face. Olivia’s dog licked my ankle, and when I reached down to pet him I could feel how small and fragile his head was beneath all that fur, that he had a slight shake even when he was trying to be still.
“You can’t pay attention to her,” Jeremy said.
“Sure,” I said. “No. I’m not.”
More than anything I wanted him to stop talking, and almost like he could read my mind, he offered to take me back to the set. Mr. Peabody sat on my lap and we listened to music as we rode. I didn’t recognize any of the songs, but they were low and sad, like they’d been dipped in the darkest of blues. Maybe it was the music, but when we got to the studio, Jeremy touched his hand against my face before I got out of the car.
“I’ll see you later,” I said, and before I could stop myself, like a total idiot, I said, “Thanks.”
He looked at me like I was sadder than Mr. Peabody. At least he had the sense not to say you’re welcome. And at least I had the sense to leave.
*
The rest of the week I played sick. I had to stay at my sister’s place, because otherwise Dex would know that I was faking, but I couldn’t go back to Chips Ahoy!, not until Jeremy had at least a week to forget that his sister had all but called me a hag. Delia said he probably wouldn’t even remember, but that was only because she hadn’t been on the receiving end of the beat-down I’d taken. I’d rather have risked Delia’s psycho neighborhood than endure further humiliation. Not even a contest, really.
Delia brought me a stack of movies from Dex’s place, including one that he’d snagged from the set: Kandy Kisses: From Olivia Taylor to You, the Real Olivia Taylor Story. “In case you get tired of working on your history final,” she said. I couldn’t tell whether Delia was being nice or just messing with me. I’d seen the movie twice with Doon when it first came out. We even talked her mom into taking us to a midnight screening “slumber party” the night that it opened. At the time, Olivia Taylor had seemed like the prettiest, nicest, funnest person you could ever trade stickers with, but now I knew that she was a spiritual wolf in Malibu Slut Barbie’s hand-me-downs. Then I remembered that the twins were in the movie, and that more than anything made me load it up.
The movie came out right when my parents were first having problems, and part of the reason that I loved Olivia Taylor so much was that her own dad had never been a part of her life, and some of her mom’s lunacy couldn’t help but leak onto the screen. Her family wasn’t crazy in the same way that mine was, but it was definitely crazy. The movie opened with a group of fans, teenage girls, talking about how much they loved Olivia Taylor, how she made them feel like someone understood them, how no matter how sad they were, they knew that happiness was just a “kandy kiss” away. Then, surprise, Olivia Taylor came out of her bus, showering them with air-kisses and high-end candy, telling them that they were her inspiration. The movie followed three months of her tour, three months of her and her mom fighting about her costumes, her boyfriend, the size of her ass. Her brothers had just gotten cast in Mouse Around the House, a show that ran for about ten seconds and might have been even worse than Chips Ahoy! Still, it was pretty obvious that Mom had her eyes on the newbies, that Olivia was going to be on her own soon enough, fighting or no fighting. Right after the movie came out, the court case when Olivia sued for emancipation started.
But the funny thing was, in the movie, Olivia had so many friends. There was her best friend from her neighborhood, the girl she met in dance class and would never leave behind, who tap-danced (badly) through her “Rock Pop Rocks” number, not to mention a posse of managers, stylists, and choreographers who claimed that they were just a bunch of big love-balls orbiting Olivia. Selfless fans with nothing but her best interests in mind. The movie closed with Olivia looking at the camera and saying, “If I can make one person happy, I’ve done my job. I just want to make the whole world a little sweeter.” Air-kiss and fade to black.
Jeremy texted me as the credits rolled: “Does the iguana get to live?”
I wrote back: “I don’t know. Do you call that living?”
Jeremy responded: “LOL. Hope ur feeling better.”
And that was it.
I decided that I had camped out long enough. The next day I would put on my big-girl pants and go back to the set. It didn’t matter that I still felt embarrassed, that I had no idea what I was going to say to Jeremy when I saw him. I didn’t even know what I was supposed to do with the stupid handbag; the fine print of its receipt read: Can only be returned for store credit. Not even kind of helpful. But if watching Kandy Kisses taught me anything, it was that you couldn’t trust what you saw, no matter how beautiful it looked. And if everyone was going to pretend to be a little better off than they actually were, a little more sure of their place in the world, I might as well join the party.
14
I was trying to make myself inconspicuous on the set, tucked in a hallway and reading a book that was supposed to be from the perspective of Sharon Tate’s family. The book imagined how all of Tate’s relatives were just going through the motions on a regular day when they got the news about their daughter, their sister. She was murdered the night before what was supposed to be her baby shower; presents had been wrapped: baby boots, blankets, a bassinet. And then the phone rang and their lives changed forever. The Manson murders took America by surprise, and in particular, this one family. I knew what it was to hate the telephone, to have this low level of dread every time the phone rang or a message showed up at the wrong time of the night. Since my mom told me she was sick, all news was potentially bad news.