by Raziel Reid
Bea doesn’t hold him down. He hasn’t talked to her all night, and he’s currently in a hot tub with two half-naked girls, but when the party is over, he’ll take her up to his room and close the door and she’ll rub his head until he falls asleep.
The topless girls start making out but Brandon isn’t paying attention; he’s on his phone, going through DMs from more girls. He sends the location. He isn’t even sure who he’s contacting. His vision is too blurry to focus on the nudes they’re sending him. Followers all look the same after a while.
A new photo appears at the top of his feed. It’s of his mom with IVs in her arms, dark circles under her eyes. She captioned the photo “Keeping the faith! Finding a cure! Believing in the healing power of love! #holistictreatment #nottodaycancer.” Brandon tries to focus on the picture but his mother is so distorted it’s like she took the photo with a really old iPhone. Her low-res smile hides her pain.
He keeps scrolling and stops at a photo someone posted from the party, which is of this blond girl who doesn’t notice that her photo is being taken. Brandon realizes it’s Hailey’s cousin Lily, who everyone has been buzzing about. One of the comments is a link to an article on Radar Online. Brandon opens it.
Finally, some excitement! Hailey’s cousin is getting dragged hard.
brandocadogan
lillianrhode
11k followers
christinanatalia_v How r u so white trash yet so high fashion at the same time….
It feels like the entire party is looking at her as Lily steps through the open back doors of the Cadogans’ house to where the party is spread across the sprawling grounds. You could host a festival here. The yard slants down a hill leading to a fountain spouting water. A bunch of kids are sitting around it. Some people are in the pool, and others are getting naked in the hot tub. A DJ booth is set up in front of the pool house. Lily goes up to someone pouring beers from a keg and gets a drink in a red Solo cup. She sips from it as she looks out at the party.
Lily’s on her own—Hailey split from her practically as soon as they walked through the front doors. Lily doesn’t get it. They drove over together in Hailey’s Mercedes and it was a continuation of the conversation in the pool house. Hailey was mapping out what they should do together for the rest of the summer. She was even saying they should go up to Ojai for a weekend. Lily thought she and Hailey were finally breaking ground and starting to build a relationship.
Two guys bump into Lily on their way into the house, spilling beer on her new Aquazzura sandals.
“Dude!” one of the guys says as he looks at Lily. “It’s that girl!”
“Is it true that your mom started doing porn when she got out of jail?” the second guy asks.
They stumble off laughing, leaving Lily standing alone. She looks around the party. People keep looking over at her. She feels instant dread and pulls out her phone to check her notifications. It’s like she hasn’t just physically arrived in the Platinum Triangle; her digital self has arrived with her. And it has a life of its own. Another story about her has leaked on Radar Online.
The headline: “Whitney Paley’s Niece Lily Rhode: From Trailer Park to Trousdale!”
Accompanying the article is an image of the trailer where Lily grew up and a photo of her mom’s mugshot for writing bad checks. It was before Lily was born, but still embarrassing. There’s a photo of Whitney and Hailey posing on a red carpet, looking the picture of glamour and perfection, and then below it, Lily and Erin’s mugshots are side by side. Erin’s dark roots are showing in her bottle-blond hair. Lily feels her face burning. Has everyone at the party seen this? The comments at the bottom of the article are full of shade like what that drunk guy said, gossip about her mom and Lily’s past in the Valley.
“Hey, Lily!” Lily looks up from her phone and sees Idris coming toward her. “How’s that pool house life?”
“What do you want?” Lily asks coldly.
“Aw, come on! Don’t be like that. I’m sorry, okay?” Idris gives her these big puppy-dog eyes, an expression Lily’s seen him make on the show. His forehead wrinkles like a shar-pei. “I wasn’t going to try anything, I swear! It was Hailey’s idea to haze you. She gave me the drugs.”
“Hailey?” Lily’s phone pings and she looks down at it. Instagram is blowing up with notifications.
“But you probably don’t need to get high.” Idris smirks. “Aren’t Valley girls always down to fuck?”
Lily’s eyes flash up from her phone.
“Since you so generously got me a drink last night, allow me to offer you one.” She throws her beer in Idris’s face and storms off. Lily enters the house, quickly ducking down a long hallway and into one of the mansion’s bathrooms. She locks the door and leans against it, closing her eyes.
A ping comes in to Lily’s phone. A DM from Joel. He’s at the party and wondering if Lily’s here. Lily holds her phone to her chest and takes a deep breath. She isn’t sure if she can face him—or anyone. She once again feels like her identity is being defined for her. Lily is being reduced to sound bites and headlines, and that seems to be all anyone cares about, all they believe.
Lily reads the Radar article more carefully. It’s written in a way that makes it look like it was Hailey’s idea to bring Lily to Beverly Hills. An inside source claims that Hailey heard about Lily’s arrest and about how she’d been abandoned by her mom, and she felt guilty for being so privileged and knew she had to help “pull her cousin out of the gutter.”
“ ‘Hailey and Whitney are super close,’ the source reveals.” Lily reads aloud to herself, performing it like she imagines Hailey telling the reporter. “ ‘She feels so guilty that Lily’s mom abandoned her! Lily comes from a different world than Hailey, but Hailey doesn’t judge, and she’s the one who insisted they move Lily into the pool house. Lily’s going to be on Platinum Triangle because of Hailey…’ ”
Lily stops reading, circling the Tiffany charm bracelet with the new Bon Bon pendant around her wrist.
“The question is, Who benefits?” a voice says from behind the shower curtain.
Lily almost drops her phone in surprise. Valeria Leon pulls back the curtain. She’s lying in the tub, holding a red plastic cup.
“I didn’t realize anyone was in here!” Lily’s embarrassed. She got way too into that.
“Sorry,” Valeria says. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” She climbs out of the tub and goes over to the mirror. “Good read, by the way.” Lily can’t pick up any emotion as she watches Valeria staring at herself. “There are fourteen bathrooms in this place. I thought I could hide out for a while. Then you came in and I held my breath without even realizing it. Do you ever do that?” Valeria looks at Lily through the reflection.
“What are you hiding from?” Lily asks. She’s starstruck. Valeria is her favorite on Platinum Triangle. She seems the most down-to-earth, and she’s always helping her mom with her younger siblings.
“Same thing as you,” Valeria says, opening her black leather envelope clutch and touching up her eyeliner. “Escaping the groupthink.”
There’s something mysterious about Valeria. Even on the show, which is all about projecting your life, there’s the feeling that Valeria is holding something back.
“So?” she asks. “Who benefits?”
Valeria drops her eyeliner pencil in her clutch.
“It’s possible someone from production called Radar,” she says. “Trust no one. The producers play dirty. But not quite as dirty as the cast…”
“You think someone is purposely trying to embarrass me?” Lily asks.
“While making themselves look good.” Valeria turns to face her, leaning against the bathroom counter. “Any idea who might do something like that?”
Lily looks back down at her bracelet. Was Hailey just trying to disarm her?
“Be careful with Hailey,” Valeria says, as if reading Lily’s mind. “She only looks out for herself.”
Valeria sees the look on Lily’s fa
ce and smiles.
“So you’re trending,” Valeria says, turning back to the mirror and fussing with her hair. “You can either enjoy it or ignore it. No point it letting it have any other effect on you. Certainly no point in letting it hurt you. Reputations are constantly changing from moment to moment. One minute you’re a joke, then you’re a hero, then a villain…. It’s exhausting, really. There’s no such thing as permanence, which is kind of fucked up because nothing lasts and so maybe nothing really matters. But it also means you’re never stuck with a single label.”
Valeria meets Lily’s eyes in the mirror.
“Take it from me: it’s better to have a label, even one that makes you cringe, than to have none at all. In this town there’s only one thing worth being ashamed of.”
She looks back at herself.
“Anonymity.”
thejoelstrom
1.8m followers
tiny_realist_ Is he like Icarus because he flew too close to fame and now he’s suffering from its outcomes?
The Jen Stark graphics being projected on the back of the Cadogans’ neoclassical house are colorful cloud-like patterns that dissociate you from reality.
Joel stares at the graphics, unblinking, until they suddenly cut out. His eyelids close like the shutter of a camera and he slides back into himself, literally gasping for breath.
“Time to get this party started!” Brandon’s voice booms into the mic. He’s standing on the DJ booth. “Presenting a Brando Cadogan Original!” He hooks up his phone and projects a video onto the side of the house. Everyone outside turns to watch, and more people inside the house come out to see Brandon’s latest stunt.
In the video, Greta is passed out on a bed, wearing nothing but an oversize Yeezus tee-shirt with a graphic of the grim reaper on it. Brandon is recording, but the video is bouncy AF because he’s laughing so hard as Idris takes a selfie stick and prods Greta with it…. She’s unconscious. She looks dead.
“Let me try, man!” Brandon takes the selfie stick and trails it down Greta’s body, hitting her boobs with the end before taking it lower.
There are other voices and laughter off-screen. They had an audience.
“What the fuck, Idris!” The sound of Greta’s screaming pulls Joel away from the projection. Greta is repeatedly hitting Idris, who laughs as he ducks her blows. “When did this happen? And you filmed it?”
Hailey is looking over at Joel, and, never missing an opportunity to be the hero in his eyes, she starts yelling for Brandon to cut the video. But Brandon’s relishing this, gazing up at the projection like it’s a masterpiece.
All the sound drains out of the party. Joel can’t hear the gasps or the laughter or the comments from everyone around him. He just hears his heartbeat pounding in his ears.
Joel charges at Brandon, pushes him off the DJ booth, and grabs the mic out of his hand. He uses it to bash Brandon’s smug face before throwing the mic to the side and punching Brandon with his bare fist. Brandon goes down and Joel jumps on top of him, wrapping his hands around his neck and squeezing. Someone pulls him off. The sound turns back on.
“Chill, man! Chill.” It’s Sean. He actually looks scared.
Brandon’s nose is bleeding. Bea dramatically flings herself on top of him, screaming and crying for help. The party around Joel begins to swirl. He’s a part of the hypnotic pattern, and all he can do is go around and around in this cloud. Everyone’s staring. Even Hailey takes a step back.
Then he feels someone reaching for his hand.
lillianrhode
13k followers
arde.guneri Go back to the trailer park you fat bitch! UNWANTED
iamvickynewman Duck face
gladyskalengo Huh she looks 30
keoki717 Poser
berikiss She’s really a man
Lily takes the keys to Joel’s Porsche Targa from Joel and drives them through the Bel-Air East Gate to the beach. It’s the only place she can think of going; it’s where she goes when she needs to get out of her head. Joel sits in the passenger seat, his long eyelashes batting under the rim of his HUF hat.
When they pull up to the beach, Joel leaps out of the Targa, walks onto the sand, and throws himself down. He sits and stares out at the water. They can hear the sound of the waves breaking. He covers his face with his hands; his knuckles are bleeding. Lily comes up behind him, leaning down and rubbing his back. It starts shaking. Lily rests her head on Joel’s shoulder and the physical contact seems to calm him. She can feel him collecting his breath, and she feels so close to him it’s like he’s breathing into her.
Lily suddenly jumps up and kicks off her Aquazzura sandals. Joel looks up at her in surprise. Lily smiles at him before she starts running toward the water. She looks back and sees Joel watching as she tears off her bandage dress. She lets it fly in the wind behind her as she runs, the dress landing on the sand.
Joel wipes the last tear from his cheek and leaps up, kicking off his shoes and chasing after her. He takes off his jeans and his shirt, reaching for Lily’s hand as they walk into the ocean. They let the pull of the waves take them deeper. Lily slips off her Tiffany charm bracelet and throws it into the water. She feels Joel’s arms around her body. They kiss and go under.
realvalerialeon
3.3m followers
mariachantal.lmfao 1 Timothy 4:12 Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.
erikabeloved0403 how do people not believe in God after laying eyes on her?
jaclyntatramaine B your own leader don’t follow crowd into hell
The Leons go to Hillsborough Church every Sunday, even when they’re not filming. When they are filming, the pastor allows the cameras into the service because having the self-professed megachurch packed with young Hollywood types and featured on TV brings in more members to the congregation. Everything comes down to followers.
For as long as Valeria can remember, Sundays have meant church with her family and then Sunday brunch at home. Valeria’s dad cooked eggs and sausages and pancakes, and it was the one day a week when Valeria was allowed to indulge. Her cheat day. She always associated church and God with cheating, and eventually betrayal became a form of worship.
Her dad hasn’t been around to cook breakfast for a long time now. He’s still in Vegas. He left right after filming for season 2 wrapped. Valeria doubts he’ll be back before the premiere party at the Sofitel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, at the end of the month. Valeria can’t wait for Platinum Triangle to start airing again. It’s good for her brand to get herself out there. And she wants her dad home. He’ll be back for the red carpet, no doubt. It’s where they rapture.
The Hillsborough congregation stands to sing a hymn. Valeria holds Leo in her arms. The Leons are a faithful, loving family. They fear God.
Valeria just lip-synchs because what’s the difference?
imseanjohnson
1.5m followers
sayadameer @imseanjohnson I know what chemicals you’ve done
laticiajenner_ Bring back the dreads
amina_beca I loved you now you are ugly you was beautiful and cute when you was child
pablobonieten Yo huge fan of you since day one cuh. It’d be sweet af if we could meet up and skate sometime man. Know it’s a stretch bc you’re famous and all but it’d be cool if I️ could get a reply or follow back or something man. Lmk
erycsum I miss the old version of you this version…
Growing up, Sean thought his dad walked on air. He jumped like he could fly, as if he had wings. Christoph was like a Nephilim. He was this giant superhuman in Sean’s eyes and in the world’s. On the basketball court, Christoph was all focus, and Sean would sit courtside filled with pride that he was the son of a legend.
Now Sean doesn’t know what his dad is. Christoph and his squad are in Miami for the weekend. Shondra’s with them. Sean has the house to himself for a change—his dad’s friends
unofficially live in their Tudor-style Holmby Hills house. It’s usually a nonstop party.
Sean’s out back grilling steaks on the barbecue for the pit bulls his dad keeps chained up down in the basement.
After Christoph retired from the NBA, he started partying and traveling a lot. Sean’s mom, Robyn, died when he was a baby. He doesn’t remember her. She was an aspiring singer when she met Sean’s dad. She died of breast cancer, which is why Sean’s trying not to be too hard on Brandon Cadogan, even if he is indefensible sometimes.
During filming of the first season of Platinum Triangle Sean was spending so much time with the Stroms in Beverly Park that Kathy joked he was her second son. “She just wants a black baby because she thinks she’s Angelina Jolie,” Greta once told him, rolling her eyes. But Sean liked the sound of it. The Stroms have their issues, but their bond is unbreakable.
TMZ streamed Christoph’s Little White Chapel wedding to Shondra, a Vegas stripper he’d met the night before. Sean watched with the rest of the world. Shondra’s happy to leave Christoph to his vices as long as she’s his number one and she gets the perks that come with that position—her credit card paid off and a gig on Platinum Triangle. Shondra’s willing to keep Christoph’s secrets, including the dogfights Christoph hosts in the basement, as long as he keeps her a star. Sean wishes he could resent Shondra more, but he keeps his dad’s secrets, too. And when it comes down to it, he keeps them for the same reason.
When Shondra’s lit, she pulls Sean into a hug and calls him her baby. She wants a baby of her own one day soon. Her challenge getting pregnant is her storyline on the new season of the show. Maybe it’s because Christoph is drunk and stoned 24/7.