Paris: The Memoir(33)

I said, “Please shut the fuck up.”

I lay there looking out on the moonlit mountain. This place wasn’t a lockdown, but it was surrounded by a tall fence. That didn’t scare me. I’d scrambled over the tall fence at Brooklawn countless times to rescue a stray frisbee or just because it was fun. I’d scaled chain-link barriers around urban rave venues and wrought-iron gates at a friend’s house.

I can hop a fence.

If you don’t believe me, google “Paris Hilton climbs fence”; there’s a surprising number of pics and videos, and I look surprisingly good in them.

Check out the Daily Mail from September 2007. I’m wearing an adorable French Connection sequined shift dress—geometric color blocking, white, gold, and silver with a joyful pop of yellow—silver pumps, and a Fendi Forever Mirror bag. Silver like the pumps, but it has a texture, so it’s not too matchy-matchy.

This look was perfect for a Prime Time Emmy after-party, but I was there with a guy who was acting kind of beyond, like he had expectations or whatever, so I decided to ditch him and spend the night at the home of a friend who lived near the Hollywood Municipal Park, where the party was.

It was getting into the wee hours, as they say, and my friend wasn’t answering the phone, so I asked one of the paps to hold my shoes, which he gladly did, because they’d followed me from the party and were excited to take pictures of me scaling the fence. I’m sure they anticipated a clear crotch shot, but—sorry, boys!—I know how to do it with my legs together. Like sidesaddle.

Fence hopping is a skill that comes in handier than you might think.

So, back at CEDU, I figured that was the easy part. The fence I could manage. But then what? We were in the middle of nowhere. It was pitch black and freezing cold at night. Without shoes, I wouldn’t be able to run very fast or very far. I tried to think, tried to make a plan, but the freight-train roar of the Rap echoed inside my head.

“You’ll get used to it,” Blanda whispered.

No, I promised myself. I won’t.





9

My memory of the following weeks is a blur of shock and exhaustion. I stumbled through each day in my pink sweats and gym socks, trying to avoid speaking or being spoken to, trying to swallow my humiliation and terror, trying to avoid eye contact with the boys who hissed and spit at me during Raps. If they looked at me, I was the one who got in trouble.

I counted down the fourteen days I had to get through before I could call my parents and wear shoes again.

“Two weeks,” I reminded Hippie Mess, using my sweetest baby voice. “You said I could call my parents. I can’t wait to tell them how beautiful it is here.”

He smiled and said, “Cool. Blanda and I will be right beside you. To support you.”

Oh.

This is a fun moment to share another bit of actual copy from the CEDU brochure:

CEDU has experienced a great deal of success with students who are manipulative, unmotivated, and lacking in direction. These adolescents often have strained family relations, poor communication skills, rebellious or withdrawn behavior patterns, and have possibly experimented with drugs or alcohol.

My parents had been counseled by the psychiatrist who made weekly visits to the school that I would try to lie and manipulate them into letting me come home. He told them the only way to literally save my life was to be strong and refuse to listen to my begging and pleading.

When I sat down for my fifteen-minute phone call, Hippie Mess and Blanda sat right next to me, listening in. I had planned to blurt out everything as quickly as I could before they cut me off, but when I heard my mom’s voice, my throat choked up, and I started crying.

“Mom . . . Mom . . .”

I needed those fucking shoes. I was afraid to say anything that would give the counselors an excuse to keep me in pinks, so I tried to send Mom a secret message. I used the baby voice, which she knew was fake AF. (Who do you think I learned it from?)

“Mom, I just . . . it’s like . . . I’m really . . . really . . .” I couldn’t do it. Words poured out of my face. “Mom, please! You have to get me out of here! This place is fucked up! You don’t even know!”

“Paris, honey, I know it’s hard. You just have to hang in there and work the program.”

Work the program?

It was scary to hear CEDU-speak come out of my mother’s mouth. I’d been operating on the assumption that my parents had no idea what was happening here. Now I didn’t know what to think.

“Mom, they—this isn’t like—like, in the shower—”

Gently but firmly, Hippie Mess took the phone from me and said, “That’s all for today, Paris.”

I tried to hold on to the receiver. “No! No, I get fifteen minutes!”

“Paris,” he said, “you don’t want to lose your call privileges, do you?”

“I won’t say anything bad. I won’t tell. I swear.”

He hung up the phone, severing the connection—that small thread of love in my mother’s voice. It would have been less painful if he’d cut off my finger.

“You want to make another call two weeks from now, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then. Work the program.”

Another week went by. And then another.

I was so fucking exhausted. I tried everything to sleep—counting, playing music in my head, imagining myself dancing under the strobe lights—but if the blanket touched my foot, I jerked wide awake with my heart leaping out of my chest because I was back in that moment of the thug grabbing my ankle.