American Girls(62)

It hurt a million times worse than the fight with my sister, a billion times, and I couldn’t tell Jeremy about it because it was all true, even though that’s not how I’d meant any of it. I’d thought that she’d have wanted to hear about TV sets and cool vintage shopping and Olivia Taylor, because to me it was a million times more interesting than anything happening in our sad neighborhood. Looking at the weird losers milling around the set, at the half-eaten cookie cake, the stupid fake penis now propped upright in the potato chip bowl, I wanted to scream.

“I don’t think you’re horrible. If it makes you feel better, you didn’t miss much with the wrap party.”

“I still wish I’d been here,” I said. “Anything would have been better.”

“Anything?” He offered me another piece of cookie cake, but I waved him off. “How late does your sister let you stay out?”

“Well, since we’re not speaking, I’m going to say as long as I want.”

“You up for something kind of crazy?”

“Is that a trick question?”

We left with the last of the crew members, who were heading to an after-party at one of the writer’s homes. Delia had mentioned it, and she may well have been there with Dex already, spinning some version of what she thought I might tell him, waiting for me to show. I thought about letting her hang, seeing if she’d break down and tell Dex what she’d been up to, why we were fighting, but being around Jeremy made me feel like I should be the bigger person. Do the right thing.

So I texted her: “I’M ALIVE. LIKE YOU CARE.”

“Are we picking something up for the party?”

“Better,” Jeremy said. “Trust me.”

We crept along the freeway until we turned off into a relatively deserted area of what looked like warehouses. They could as easily have been movie studios or places where serial killers stored their bodies—nothing on the outside gave away their contents. Jeremy slowed down and I worried for a second that we were lost, that he was, in fact, too nice to be a television star and it was all a cover for slicing ladies into pieces, and this was going to be both my last night in Los Angeles and on the planet.

“There it is,” he said, pointing at a warehouse on the corner. The building was as nondescript as the others, except for the two gorilla-size men outside the entrance, guarding the doors. Jeremy parked the car and for the first time I could hear the music coming from inside, loud and heavy on the bass.

The gorillas looked like they didn’t even see us, though one of them outstretched his hand and Jeremy high-fived him on the way in. The music was so loud I could feel it pulsing through the floor, and the hipster crowd was already thigh-to-thigh.

“What do you think?” Jeremy shouted.

What did I think?

The warehouse was cavernous, and along the sides were piles of garbage, spray-painted with glitter and sculpted into a makeshift moonscape. Boxes of Tide, Cap’n Crunch, old CD cases, crumpled paper bags, junk mail, you name it. I went closer and touched it, to see if was real junk or just junk made to look like junk. It didn’t smell, but otherwise there was no way of knowing. Atop the garbage, around the room were what looked like taxidermied monkeys, holding American and British flags and wearing astronaut suits. The lights went out and the walls glowed with eerily graffitied letters: FREEKMONKEE. LOST IN SPACE.

“Get out,” I said, and grabbed Jeremy’s shirt like he was Doon, like he was my very best girlfriend in the entire world and just the person to not even kind of believe this was actually happening. “Get out, get out, get out, get out, get out!”

“I thought you’d like it,” he said, smiling.

“Is this a release party?”

“Pre-release. It’s Max’s birthday.”

Max Storer. The drummer. Which meant that it was August 10 and I had officially died and gone to heaven, and heaven was a shit pile covered in glitter. I guess it made as much sense as anything.

Next to the stage was a DJ booth, and manning it was a statuesque alien in an aluminum-blue wig, with silver moon boots and a skintight peacock-colored bodysuit that changed from green to blue and back again depending on the light. There was none of the dollar-store, club-kid glow-sticking—everything glittered and glowed, but differently as the light changed. Even the garbage was beautiful.

“Where are the bathrooms?”

Jeremy pointed across the room.

“Find me and we’ll go backstage,” he said.

A tall blonde in a gold minidress walked past us, looked an extra second at Jeremy, and kept going. I headed for the bathroom. And even though I was in LA, at this super-exclusive event, when I crossed the floor it seemed like I could just as easily have been crossing our high school cafeteria, only with better decorations and prettier people. People were still giving you the once-over to see if they knew who you were, if you’d be worth getting to know. I saw the way that blonde sized Jeremy up with a “Maybe later” kind of side-glance. It wasn’t that she didn’t recognize him, it was more that he was the wrong kind of famous. He was cheeseball-TV famous in a room of rock-star cool.

In the bathroom, I gave myself a hard look in the mirror. I was wearing the shirtdress with pants that my sister had convinced me wasn’t actually just wearing two outfits at once, so the first thing I did was take off my jeans, roll them into a ball, and cram them into my bag. I unbelted the black tunic, which now hung midthigh, and loosed my hair from its braid. I had forgotten my comb, so it was wild and just a little tangled. Someone had already glittered herself in the bathroom, so I made sure no one was looking and I swept all the leftover glitter into my hand, dusted it into my hair, and then shook it around to make sure that it was at least somewhat evenly distributed. I did the best job I could penciling in the area around my eyes, and then I took off my glasses. I would be able to see far away but not close up, so I’d just have to trust that I looked funky enough to blend and take my chances.