by Zara Lisbon
“We’re literally at the beach,” said Olivia. “So yeah, it does have to be bright, ya vampire.”
London clacked her teeth together with her lips in a snarl, biting the air in Olivia’s direction. Josie rolled her eyes so that only I could see, and checked her matte coral lipstick in a shell-shaped compact mirror. The waiter came back with a tray of elixirs—luminous yellowy liquid in laughably skinny glasses. I watched, intrigued, as he set each one down without making eye contact, and then left discreetly without anybody thanking him. I wanted to thank him, but the words came out so timid and unsure of themselves that I doubt he or anybody else heard them. Olivia watched him out of the corner of her eye. When she was sure he was gone, she pulled a flask from her purse and dexterously poured it into her elixir.
“No need to be so sneaky and conspicuous,” said Eva-Kate. “They don’t care what we put in our drinks. As long as they didn’t serve it to us, they can’t get in trouble.” She meant inconspicuous, but I could see how the two might be easy to mix up. Sort of.
“Better safe than getting thrown out of the House for sneaking booze—I’d rather take a long walk off a short pier.”
“Suit yourself.” Eva-Kate shrugged.
“You want some, then?” Olivia offered.
“No thanks.” Eva-Kate wrinkled her nose. “I had enough last night.”
“You sure? It’s good whiskey. Johnnie Walker Blue.”
“Drinking like that will have you wrinkly by twenty-nine, my dear.”
“I’m sixteen,” Olivia replied. “I honestly don’t give a fuck.”
I wondered which of them I was more impressed with in that moment. On one hand, there was the girl so in the moment she couldn’t be bothered with the faraway concept of aging, and on the other hand was the realist, the girl who believed her beauty was a gift not to be squandered and took precautions against the inevitable. This was how I saw them then, admirable in their girlish wisdom, keepers of a book on role modeling I would have loved to get my hands on.
Sitting so close to them, I felt that I had to be watching a movie. They lived in soft-light Technicolor, blonds so blond and blues so blue and browns in so many varying shades the mind boggled: amber and coffee and chestnut and beige and sepia and auburn and fawn. Their details, from the confused array of bracelets and paper VIP wristbands to skinny black wings drawn onto the outer corners of their eyes—smudged as they were after a night of partying—were so fine and so crisp, somehow both divinely intentional and radically chaotic at the same time. With their enlarged eyes and exaggerated ranges of motion, it was as if they’d been assembled in a fun-house factory.
Next to them I felt drab and lackluster. I wore my pajamas still, with the slippers Eva-Kate had rummaged up for me. If I hadn’t been so tired and in awe, I would have been embarrassed to show up looking like I did. And I’m embarrassed now, in retrospect, cringing at the thought of my frizzy hair pulled into a ponytail and what they must have thought of me then. I must have looked like a charity case, like some loser kid Eva-Kate Kelly was taking under her wing for the sake of adding magnanimity and humanitarianism to her public image. And at the time that’s what I too thought it was. There was no way, in my mind, that Eva-Kate Kelly genuinely wanted to be friends with someone as unknown and insignificant as I was.
London and Olivia were comparing bruises from the night before, examining each other’s arms like apes at a zoo while Josie held her phone up for Eva-Kate to read from. Eva-Kate read with squinted eyes, nodding periodically for Josie to keep scrolling. I didn’t know what was happening, but it didn’t matter to me. I was sitting at a table with people I’d dreamed about being near, and I knew at this table we were quietly the center of attention, because as I watched them I could see the rest of the room was watching them too, surreptitiously over the tops of their teacups and sideways behind menus. It made perfect sense to me: the guests of the Little Beach House were rich and undeniably in vogue, but there were things far more alluring than money and high fashion. Like what? Like being young and absolutely careless, having money and fame so early in life that you can’t imagine it being any other way, and therefore you have no reason to be anything other than confident. It’s like how every morning of our lives we’ve seen the sun rise, so we’ve never thought to consider maybe once upon a time it didn’t, or that maybe one day it won’t.
The girls and women around us had money, but money alone couldn’t buy confidence. They were all variations of the same thing. Designer jeans and crepe de chine blouses, glimmering hints of gold on their wrists and ears and necks. Suede fedoras and this month’s ballet flats, a generous amount of nude-colored makeup applied to create that natural, no-makeup effect. They wore low-cut shirts and push-up bras, they sat up straight and laughed shyly with chins tucked under. They were fresh faced and well rested. Our table stood out in such stark contrast that it made time stand still. Eva-Kate and her crew were pretty, yes, but bedraggled, unraveling at the seams. They were compact paradoxes: rich vagrants, street urchins living in high castles. And how they were still awake I had no idea. Their eyelids sagged but their bodies moved speedily, exuding energy. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and if I hadn’t known any better I would have wondered if they were even human at all, or another species entirely.
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” Eva-Kate said to Josie once she’d stopped scrolling. “I kept all my clothes on this time, didn’t I?”
“Yes.” Josie laughed. “Yes, you did.”
“Surveying last night’s damage?” Olivia asked from across the table.
“Hardly any,” Eva-Kate reported. “The Daily Mail picked up the story about me shouting from my roof and there are some less-than-flattering pictures on TMZ, but that’s pretty much it. Am I getting … boring?”
“Not boring,” Josie corrected her. “You’re just taking my good advice more than you used to.”
“Hate it when you’re right.” Eva-Kate kissed Josie on the cheek. “Okay, moving on. Speaking of pictures, anyone have any good ones from last night?”
“Is the pope Jude Law?” Olivia asked. London giggled but Eva-Kate rolled her eyes.
“I took a bunch,” said Josie. “Sending them now.”
“What about Spencer?” Eva-Kate asked London. “Where are his pics?”
“I doubt he’s even going to be awake for the next six to eight hours,” London said.
“True. Well, make sure to text when they’re up,” Eva-Kate said. Her phone dinged in her lap and she got distracted. “Ooh, Josie, these are dope.”
“I like the one of you lounging on your bed with the dog,” said Olivia.
“Yes!” Eva-Kate agreed, putting her phone flat on the table so that I could see: It was Eva-Kate reclining like an Egyptian queen with her nose pressed up against Princess Leia’s nose. It must have been taken right before I got upstairs and found them. Now Eva-Kate was filtering the photo and uploading it to Instagram.
“What’s your Insta?” Eva-Kate asked me, typing out a caption that read: Surprise guests, Justine and Princess Leia! #poolparty #goldenpuppy #AlwaysDownForNewFriends
“Me?”
“You, dummy.”
“It’s, uh, it’s…” I didn’t want to say. I had come up with it three years ago and knew it would sound childish now. Plus all it had on it was my photography—abandoned houses, stripped billboards, and other wannabe artist stuff—and I wasn’t ready for Eva-Kate to see that.
“Do you not have an Instagram?” Olivia prodded, irritated. “If you don’t have an Instagram just say you don’t have an Instagram.”
“Be nice,” Eva-Kate warned.
“I do have an Instagram.” I hurried the words out before the notion that maybe I didn’t could spread. “It’s Love underscore Song.”
“Cute,” she said, typing. “Romantic.”
“No, actually, it’s just a poem by T. S. Eliot. ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ And it’s not all that romantic.”
“I know the
poem,” she said unconvincingly as my Instagram loaded onto her screen. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”
With one eye I ambivalently peered at her phone, squeamish that I’d find my Instagram to be more embarrassingly childish than I remembered. There weren’t that many pictures posted. Luckily. The two most recent were of Princess Leia curled up on my bed, backdropped by the white-iron, spiraling bed frame. The third one was of elevator buttons lit up green, a piercing hue that had caught my attention as I left the doctor’s office on Wilshire. The fourth was of roses beneath a thickly clouded sky, filtered through Amaro and then enhanced. The last one, taken a year and a half ago, was of Bellflower: long fingers of ivy climbing up a wrought iron gate.
“I don’t get the bio.” She tilted her head from left to right as if this would help her understand it. I didn’t have to look to remember that my bio read: I have measured out my life with Taylor Swift albums.
“Oh.” I blushed. “Right, so, uh … in the poem, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’ he says, ‘I have measured out my life with coffee spoons’ … So, it’s like that, except with Taylor Swift albums…” Eva-Kate looked at me blankly, so I kept talking. “Because, like, her albums are a way to keep track of time and are, like, an easy way to remember when things happened in my life. You know, so, if I’m thinking about a time when … let’s say a time I went ice skating at the Culver City rink and I want to figure out what year it was, I can say, oh, well, I remember ‘You Belong with Me’ was playing and it was the first time I’d ever heard it so it had to be 2009, which means I was eight. For example.” My face was hot and I was talking too fast. Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought: If she really did know the poem she would have gotten the reference.
“Taylor Swift,” Eva-Kate repeated, as if the name were the only thing I’d said. “Are you a fan?”
The way she said it, I could tell there was a right answer and a wrong answer, I just didn’t know which was which.
“Sometimes,” I said, wishing I could have a sip of Reign or be brave enough to ask Olivia for some of her whiskey.
“We’re invited to some pool party with her,” she said casually, drinking her elixir. “When she’s on a break from her tour. I wasn’t gonna go but we can if you want.”
“Wow.” I had to play this right: too excited would come off as desperate, but not excited enough would result in us not going to the party. “I mean, if you’re up for it I’d love to go.”
“Is it in Rhode Island?” Olivia asked. “Like for Fourth of July?”
“No,” said Eva-Kate.
“Why not?”
“How should I know?” Eva-Kate made her voice sound painfully bored. “And why would I care?”
My phone vibrated and two notifications popped up on the screen:
EVAKATEKELLY started following you.
EVAKATEKELLY tagged you in a post.
I opened the Instagram app and saw the photo of Eva-Kate with my dog. Princess Leia looked like a real princess, sitting in a lap of luxury she’d never known. And yes, I know that I was projecting, so no you don’t have to point that out. Above, Eva-Kate’s bio read:
First class and fancy free.
(Yeah, I’m the girl from that show.)
“Love it,” I said, mimicking her language, giving her my most grateful smile.
My phone went off again.
You have sixteen new followers.
My heart skipped a beat. I’d never had more than eleven followers, and they were just Riley, Abbie, Maddie, and some kids I didn’t really know that well from school. People who followed me by default.
My phone vibrated again, another notification.
BellaBoo is now following you.
BellaBoo commented on your picture: WTF how are you friends with Eva-Kate Kelly? I’m too jelly. Hehe, no rhyme intended;)
I giggled then, I couldn’t help it. I didn’t understand how I could have gone from pining voyeur to friends with Eva-Kate Kelly in the span of twenty-four hours. I felt chosen and lucky as hell. I felt that my particles were drifting away from each other, fizzing out and up in a bubbly flurry. I put my hands on my cheeks to make sure I was still in one piece.
“You’ll get a ton of followers now,” Eva-Kate told me. “So you should probably rebrand.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your Insta is fine and all, it just doesn’t have personality. Well, it has some. It needs more. You need a brand.”
“A brand?”
“Yeah, like who is Justine Childs? What does she stand for, what does she represent?”
“I … I really don’t know. Maybe—”
“I have an idea,” she interrupted, too inspired to contain herself. “You can be Eva-Kate Kelly’s edgy, mysterious new friend—kinda dark, kinda weird—who legit doesn’t give a fuck and is way smarter than anybody else.”
“Uh…”
“Just give me your phone,” she said. “This will be easy. Trust me.”
Hesitantly, I held it out for her and she snatched it up with her glossy, glittery claws. I watched as she uploaded pictures from last night’s party onto my Instagram, adding tags upon tags, filters upon filters. She changed my name from Love_Song to Whiplash_Girlchild, then opened my bio and added to it so that it said: I have measured out my life with Taylor Swift albums. / May or may not be a nightmare dressed like a daydream.
“There.” She handed the phone back to me. “Now you’ll be remembered.”
“Thanks … but why?”
“Because now you’re a character, a persona. Or at least you’re on your way to being one. People are stupid, their brains don’t hold on to information unless it’s broken down in very simple, digestible pieces. We’ll change your profile pic later, it should be of your face, not some … plant, or whatever that is. Actually, why don’t you go to the bathroom and take some selfies in the mirror, Little Beach House mirror in the background of a profile pic will do a lot for you. You’d be surprised.”
I believed her. I thought to ask where the bathroom was, but decided I’d come off much breezier and in-the-know if I headed away from the table confidently.
* * *
I turned the faucet on and let hot water wash over my hands. It was a relief to be alone for a moment. I snapped some pictures of myself looking into the brass-rimmed mirror, but my eyes had circles under them and my hair was a frizzy mess. I took my hair down, brushed it with my fingers, then twisted it into a high bun, hoping I’d look more presentable this way. I took my sweater off and threw it in the trash bin. In plaid PJ bottoms and a blue, thinning shirt from Old Navy, no bra, I almost looked like I could be one of them, the shabby to their shabby chic. I took two or three more pictures, twisting my torso and folding my arms to find my better sides and angles, then decided it was hopeless and glowered at myself. I saw myself in a new context then. I was no longer just myself. Now I was myself compared to Eva-Kate and her friends, myself compared to the other girls and women dining at the surrounding tables. The whole thing was unnerving.
I swung the bathroom door open and was going to head back to the table, but stopped when I saw Eva-Kate down the hall talking to our waiter. I didn’t want to interrupt, but I also didn’t want to walk past without saying anything, and I couldn’t think of any other way out of this besides staying right where I was, so I stood pressed flat up against the wall, figuring they’d be less likely to see me in the mood lighting. I had the fact that neither of them were facing me working in my favor.
“You are hilarious, Dennis,” I could hear Eva-Kate say. She laughed, touching his arm.
“Oh…” He laughed back. “Well, glad someone thinks so.”
“Hey, so, where’s Liza? Is she working today?”
“Liza?”
“Liza McKelvoy.” Liza McKelvoy. I’d heard the name before. It was those girls at Walgreens, they’d said that Rob broke up with Eva-Kate for Liza McKelvoy. That Eva-Kate must hate it.
“No, I know who you meant, obviously. It’
s just, she doesn’t work here anymore. She hasn’t worked here in months, didn’t you know that?”
“Oh, right.” Eva-Kate shook it off. “I must have forgot. She’s always hopping from place to place.”
“Guess so, yeah.”
“Where’s she working now? I’m sure she told me, I just get all these places mixed up, you know?”
“Sure, sure.” I could tell he was putting in extra effort to be friendly and was getting impatient. “Last I heard she was bartending at Chateau Marmont. I’m surprised you haven’t—”
“Chateau Marmont?” From where I stood I could see her entire body lock into place. When she stood still, so did the world around her.
“Yes…,” Dennis confirmed nervously. “Is that … bad?”
“No, no.” Eva-Kate regained her composure, calmly tucked her hair behind her ears. “I just wasn’t sure I heard you right. Chateau … Marmont?” She was a great actress, I realized in that moment. She went from paralyzed to casually addled in the blink of an eye, and very convincingly.
“Exactly,” he said, relieved, believing he’d misread her confusion as anger. “It’s a lovely hotel, highly recommend it.”
“Oh, is that so? Well, then.” She was slipping out of character again, sarcasm wiggling its way into her words like a snake. I could see her balling her hands into two fists.
“I should get back to my tables.” Dennis untucked a notebook from his apron. “Great chatting, Eva-Kate.” He slipped past her and back out into the light of the beachfront restaurant. When she saw that he was gone, she dug her fingernails into her scalp and let her head hang.
“Chateau Marmont, are you fucking kidding me?” she muttered under her breath.
I knew what she must have been thinking: If Rob’s new song was called “Chateau Marmont” and now it turned out Liza had been working at Chateau Marmont, then the song wasn’t about Eva-Kate after all. It was about Liza. Eva-Kate must hate that. She must be losing her mind.
None of this made sense to me. I didn’t understand why Rob would break up with Eva-Kate at all, let alone for a waitress. She’d have to be one remarkable waitress, I thought, and tried to imagine a face more uniquely gorgeous than Eva-Kate’s, or a personality more bewitching. It was like trying to imagine what nothingness looks like, what existed before the big bang and what will exist once this is all gone. In other words, it couldn’t be done.