Open Road Summer(33)

I don’t remember exactly what I screamed at him. I think I was making up new profanity that the world had never heard before. In my mind, I can almost see myself from a distance, arguing with him outside the apartment complex. I can float above the memory and stare down at it like an outsider—watching the girl in high heels, red-faced, screaming. The words we exchanged were so ugly, so emphatic. I told him to go to hell; he told me I was overreacting like a little bitch. When he said that, I pushed him away from me, unable to keep my anger inside my skin.

Then he smacked me across the face so hard that my whole body flew sideways. I felt the heel of his hand connect with my cheekbone, and the noise pounded in my ear. Before I even realized what had happened, I hit the sidewalk with a horrific, time-slows-around-you thud. My wrist broke the fall, cracking beneath me, and my knee bled through my jeans. Pain pulsed through every part of me—that sort of white-hot ache that halts your breathing.

Blake sank to his knees beside me, immediately remorseful. “Oh God, oh God, Reagan, I’m so sorry—shit, I don’t even know what happened.”

I didn’t cry. I don’t cry. Instead, I called Dee.

At the emergency room, I lied. I told them I had fallen in my high heels and that my parents were out of town. It was like I couldn’t yet say out loud what had happened. While I was getting the X-ray of my wrist, Dee called my dad and Brenda. Deep down, I knew she would. They were all waiting when I walked back into the lobby, carrying a prescription for painkillers and a sadness in my chest that I couldn’t even begin to process.

“Geez, kiddo,” my dad said, frowning. “We gotta get you some flat shoes.”

By the next morning, the bruise on the left side of my face was undeniable, and the police brought a sobered-up Blake into custody for parole violation. I didn’t want to press charges; my dad threatened to kill him. It was lovely.

Here’s the worst part: before I parked outside his apartment that night, nothing—not Brenda’s disapproving looks, not the gossip of my classmates, not my arrest—made me realize how badly I was treating myself. Blake disrespected me doubly, in a matter of minutes, and I couldn’t believe how far it had gone. As I lay there on the ridged concrete, my mind pressed the zoom-out button, so far out that I saw the whole picture. Once I did, I wanted to laugh at the ludicrousness of it and shake myself by the shoulders, screaming: What the hell are you doing?

The fog lifted from the scenes of my life, so clear that I couldn’t believe I’d never seen it before: I’m better than all this. I’m better than all the losers I’d been dating for the cheap thrills. My therapist said my “high-risk choices” stemmed from a “distorted sense of self-worth.” But I know I’m smart, and I work hard when I care about the work, and I actually have goals that matter to me. Sure, I regularly make shit decisions, but they’re just choices, and I can make different ones. And finally, I wanted to.

So I’ve spent the past two months atoning, keeping to myself as I carried my own brokenness beneath the heavy plaster of a blue cast. This whole time, I’ve been trying to figure that girl out—the one who got too drunk at parties just for attention, the one who dated a loser pothead because it seemed cool. My wrist bone was the fault line between that girl and me, and, the moment it cracked, I separated myself from her. Sure, we share a wardrobe, a preference for heavy eye makeup and classic rock. That girl was me, but, especially now that the cast is off, I’m not her—not anymore.





Chapter Nine

Los Angeles


Scanning the scene from the inside of the limo, I feel almost light-headed—a surreal, dizzy feeling makes my legs shake. Luckily, I’m a pro at walking in high heels. It’s the dress and the paparazzi that are throwing me off.

We’re in LA and have been since yesterday. I’ve seen shockingly little of California so far: the airport as we hurried through it, the boutique where Dee and I were fitted for our dresses, and our hotel room. And now: the inside of a limo parked on the edge of a red carpet.

All around, stars are emerging from limos and town cars in formalwear, flanked by handlers who shuttle them from one reporter to the next. Backdrops and banners include the Dixie Music Awards logo, ensuring that celebrity photographs will advertise the show. Event workers signal limos to pull in, corralling people across the red carpet to prevent bottlenecks. Waist-high gates keep the media fenced out, and all the reporters are screaming first names, asking for interviews. Behind them, fans cheer in the stands, so loud that we can hear them from inside the limo.

Matt is waiting in the limo behind us, with another publicity manager from the record label. He’ll be taking on the red carpet solo, occasionally meeting up with Dee for pictures of them together. It’s all part of the label’s attempt to market Matt to the country music set.

“Ready?” Dee asks, forming her Lilah smile. It’s like she mentally turns a dial in her cheeks and voilà—zero to full-watt.

In a pale pink gown drenched in gold beading, Dee glows. Her hair is swept back, each blond hue picking up the blush and metallic gown.

“Yeah.” But then I hesitate. “No, wait.”

My dainty evening purse isn’t big enough for my new lens, so I take a photo of Dee now. She stays seated with her legs curved primly to the side, her gown spilling over the car seat and floor. Her hand rests on the door handle: a starlet ready to emerge. But her smile slides back into Dee again—happy, if anxious. No photographer on the red carpet will get a picture like mine. Even through a lens, you can’t imitate the connection between real friends. I turn to Lissa, who is sitting across from us in the limo. “Can you take a picture of both of us?”