The Exact Opposite of Okay(68)

Particularly due to the sexual nature of your screenplay, we’ve been forced to re-evaluate your position, and regretfully we’ve taken the decision to remove you from the running.


I understand this is disappointing, but we hope you continue to persevere in the screenwriting world. You have a lot of potential and the judges saw something in your work that we don’t often come across.


We’d like to invite you to re-enter the competition in a couple of years’ time – once the controversy surrounding your personal life has settled down (which we’re sure it will), we’ll be more than happy to welcome you back to Script Factor.


All the very best,

Tom


9.02 p.m.

Every time I feel like I can finally catch my breath, like I might actually survive this, something even worse steals the air from my lungs.

Oh my God. Losing everything and knowing it’s all my fault is excruciating.


9.06 p.m.

When this all first kicked off I had the fleeting thought that the competition producers might find out about the scandal. But I dismissed it as standard-issue Izzy melodrama. They wouldn’t possibly see the nudes, and if they did, it’d be them that should be embarrassed. I distinctly remember thinking that. That they should be mortified to be caught looking at a teen girl’s nudes.

And yet now the embarrassment and downright shame is enough to drown me.

How the hell do I tell Mrs Crannon? She’ll be devastated. I can’t stop fixating on that fifty-dollar bill. I know the money is such an insignificant thing, compared to everything else, but I’ve been raised to appreciate its value. I’ve been ruled by it. Fifty dollars to me is the whole world. I agonize over that unbelievable show of love and support and confidence in me – in honor of Mrs Crannon’s wonderful father. Her dead father.

I’ve let them both down. But not nearly as much as I’ve let Betty down. After everything she’s done for me, everything she’s given up, every last sacrifice she’s made. Every extra shift she’s picked up, every painkiller she’s swallowed, every chance at retirement she’s turned down. Every time she’s put my needs before her own. She’s worked and worked and worked so I can afford to stay in education, so I can afford to write screenplays in my spare time, so I can have shoes and toothpaste and running water. So I didn’t have to live with the Wells when my parents died. So I could keep being me against all the odds.

I owe her the world and this is how I repay her.


9.14 p.m.

My phone bleeps. At first my heart leaps, hoping it’s Ajita finally returning my messages, but instead a text from a number I don’t recognize flashes on the screen.

Kill yourself, slut.

I hit delete as soon as I see it, but it’s too late. The words are already burned into my brain.


9.16 p.m.

I’ve got something special, Tom said. They’d be happy to welcome me back. I should persevere, despite the fact I’m the lowest form of scumbag imaginable.

My conversation with Ajita about how maybe People Like Me don’t belong in Hollywood feels like an eternity ago. I was right. People Like Me don’t belong. Unless you’re perfect and classy and perfect and eloquent and perfect and poised and perfect and rich, you don’t belong. This email confirms that.

Look at Vaughan. He’s done everything I’ve done. He drank beer, had sex, sent a nude picture. And he just got an offer from Stanford. Why is his life worth more than mine, just because he’s rich and male?

My heart hurts. Imagine being deemed so lowly and awful that not even your talent and hard work are enough to keep you afloat in the career you want more than anything. Imagine one lapse in judgment stealing everything from you.

One moment can change everything. In the time it takes to send a nude, or in the time it takes to crack a joke about your best friend’s sexuality, or in the time it takes for your car to be crushed by a drunk driver, your whole life can come crashing down around you.

One moment can change everything, and that’s the most terrifying thought in the world.

How do we even function knowing that? Knowing how tenuous our existence is, how fragile our happiness? It’s debilitating when you really think about it. And now that I’ve thought this thought, I can’t ever unthink it.


9.21 p.m.

I used to believe I could handle everything by myself; that I didn’t need help from anyone. The last few weeks have shown me how completely and utterly wrong that is. I do need people. I need my friends and my Betty. I need them so much. The irony is that I’ve learned this too late, and I’m already losing everyone.

I can finally admit that I need help, but nobody has the energy left to give it.

I feel so fucking alone.


9.27 p.m.

As I toss and turn in my bed, agonizing over every second of the last few weeks, my mistakes gnaw at me from the inside. All I want is a time machine.

I’ve figured it out, why people just sometimes spontaneously combust: regret. It’s enough to set you alight.

Too much. This is all too much. And I’d do anything to make it stop.


9.30 p.m.

It’s now, in probably the darkest moment of my life, that my phone bleeps again.

I almost throw my phone at the wall because I’m so sure it’s more hate, so sure it’s another message telling me to end it all. But, just in the vague hope it’s Ajita, I look.