by Stacey Kade
I shake my head at Beth. “Not my problem.” Plus, as harsh as it sounds, if Calista has a horrible time, it might even work to my advantage. She’ll realize being here is a mistake, and she’ll want to come home tomorrow.
Beth nods after a second, but her mouth is curving down in disappointment and dismay, an expression I’m all too familiar with.
I sigh. Good to know some things don’t change, I guess.
“Tell me about Blackout,” I say.
3
CALISTA
“Welcome to Blackout!” An entirely too-cheerful guy in Greek letters at the door to Phi Beta Theta shouts over the music to the girls in front of me while I shiver in a tank top beneath my buttoned-up coat.
Going to a party to prove a point is a terrible reason to go to a party. In my limited experience, it either doesn’t work (the person in question doesn’t even notice you’re trying to make a point) or it works too well (see: success followed by world-destroying failure).
Three and a half years ago, I went to a party at Eric’s house as glammed up as humanly possible. I wanted to prove that I wasn’t sixteen anymore. And that other guys (hopefully) found me hot and would act accordingly, even if Eric wouldn’t.
In truth, I wanted to provoke Eric. To push him a little, see what would happen.
And for about fifteen minutes at that party, that was the best idea I’ve ever had. And then it turned out to be the worst and only continued to spiral downward from there, taking my whole life with it.
And yet, here I am again, making a stupid point.
Only this time, I’m not even sure who I’m making the point to. I huff out a frustrated breath, watching it cloud in the air in front of me.
Eric isn’t here. The people who are won’t care.
It’s just that between my mother and Eric, it feels like all of my choices are being taken away.
My chest aches, and tears threaten at the memory of this afternoon. I keep my mascaraed eyes open wide, though I’m pretty sure any moisture would freeze before it had a chance to smudge anything.
I’m here because I want to be. And how are you supposed to have the life you want if you’re not willing to fight—or in this case, freeze—for it?
I’m going to be the best damn Blake College student for as long as I can, even if that’s less than twelve hours at this point.
Assuming I don’t die of exposure first.
“Come on,” I mutter. My arm aches, and I’m shuffling my feet to keep them warm. The boots I’m wearing are cute, products of my former life; they’re not actually meant to do anything, like keep my toes alive. And the guy at the door seems more interested in flirting than letting people in.
But finally, the trio of girls ahead of me steps inside, claiming their oversized white T-shirts and chattering among themselves eagerly.
Then the door guy turns his attention to me. He’s adorable in an overgrown-puppy sort of way, with floppy hair and a patch of acne on one cheek. “Hey, welcome to…” But then he stops, his eyes going big.
And I recognize what’s about to happen immediately. “No,” I say quickly. “Please don’t. It’s really not a big deal.”
But he ignores me. “You’re that girl,” he says in an awed voice, pointing at me. Like I’m some kind of mythical creature, a unicorn in the Forbidden Forest. To be fair, though, it’s not like I’ve ventured out much socially here. “That hot girl from that one show,” he adds as clarification, though I’m not sure for who.
Years of my mother’s training have me filling in the gap. “Starlight,” I mutter.
He snaps his fingers. “Yeah, that’s it. And you go here now.” Then he turns to shout behind him. “You guys, she’s here! That chick!”
How very specific.
And yet it seems to work because suddenly the small entryway to the fraternity house fills with five or six brothers, all wearing the same white shirts. Their names—or nicknames—are marked on the back of their shirts with black electrical tape, which I don’t understand.
“Welcome!” The guy at the door says with a wide expansive gesture, and I step inside cautiously, hating the feel of so many gazes on me at once. I’m wearing my puffy coat, but it’s as if I can feel them peeling away my clothes, layer by layer.
Okay, this is fun.
“Here’s your shirt and your highlighter,” another brother says, reaching into the cardboard box behind door guy. His shirt says “Dirk” on the back. Or “Dick.” It’s hard to tell with the tape letters.
He thrusts the shirt and an orange marker into my hands, even as the door guy glares at him.
“Thanks,” I say.
And then there’s a long second of anticipatory silence, where I realize they seem to be waiting for me to shed my coat and yank this shirt on. Really?
“Um, a place for my coat?” I prompt uneasily.
“Oh, sure, chapter room is through there,” door guy says, pointing toward a doorway on the other side of the hall and then elbowing the brother who gave me the shirt hard enough to make him grunt.
I didn’t go to parties in high school. Because I didn’t go to high school. And at Hollywood parties, it’s a competition to see who can look more bored by the event, the food and even the most famous of attendees.
This level of enthusiasm might be flattering in another situation, but here, by myself, it’s feeling a lot more like feeding time at the zoo, and I’m the lone lamb in the tiger pen.
“You can use my room instead if you want,” a grinning redhead says to me, sliding forward as if to usher me out of the entryway.
I lean away. “I think I’m good, thanks.”
“Let me get you a beer!” someone else says, then vanishes before I can say no.
In the chapter room, an open living-room-like space with a big TV on the wall and several couches that look like they’ve been rescued from the curb, I find the pile of coats on the corner of the nicest of the couches. Which isn’t saying much.
Too aware of the gazes behind me, I pull the shirt inside my coat and pull it on over my tank top, ignoring the audible groan of disappointment from the doorway. It’s not like I’m taking anything off, but apparently that doesn’t matter. Just the chance to leer at the somewhat exposed skin of a once-famous person in real life is enough.
I used to daydream about going to a regular school, about what I was missing in high school and then in college. If this is it, my daydreams needed a severe downgrade. Or reality needs an upgrade, one of the two.
Stuffing my keys and my phone in my jeans pockets, now hidden beneath the oversized T-shirt, I leave my coat, feeling like I might never see it again.
When I head back toward the doorway—and presumably the actual party going on somewhere—the redheaded brother stops me.
“Wait, I need to sign your shirt.” He beams at me before leaning toward my chest with his blue highlighter.
I turn swiftly, and he writes something across my back, just near my cami strap.
I try to twist around to read it, but he grasps my shoulders and propels me forward, past the entryway and into a dark and crowded corridor. “Oh, no way, you can’t look. Not until the end of the night. That’s cheating.”
So … people will be able to write whatever they want all over me, and I won’t even know what’s there until hours later?
Suddenly this seems like a much worse idea than even Ginny or Tamara thought.
Music thumps beneath my feet, indicating the party is in the basement, but getting there proves trickier than I would have thought. Every few feet, someone stops to write on my shirt or to demand that I write on theirs. It’s only about the fifth time that someone requests only my signature that it finally dawns on me that some or all of these will likely be showing up on e-Bay at some point.
Good luck, guys. I’m not sure what a Calista Beckett signature goes for these days. Might not even be worth the price of the T-shirt, except to the tragedy-mongers. The people who collect all the crap desperate child stars
try to sell when their fortunes change—Lindsay’s half-used lip gloss, Corey’s fingernails, etc.
Once I’m at the stairs, though, my escort has gotten distracted, and I slip ahead on my own.
At the bottom of the steps, black light pours out of a large room, turning everything purplish. When I peer in at the doorway, it’s no less freaky inside. The whites of people’s eyes and their teeth glow a bizarre lavender. But it also makes all the highlighter scrawls on the T-shirts pop with neon intensity. Now I get it: We’re like walking graffiti. Or billboards, only none of us have any idea what we’re promoting.
A girl, her head tilted back with laughter, drifts in front of me. “Ask to see me naked!” is scrawled across her back in bright pink.
Fantastic.
To my relief, I recognize Ginny and Tamara huddled in the far corner, talking to each other and a couple of other girls. I’m going to have a good time tonight, damnit.
I carefully cut my way through the small mob of dancers—most people are on the other side of the room, waiting for a turn at the beer pong tables.
“Hey,” I greet them.
Ginny looks up from whispering at Tamara. “You came!” She smiles at me, and it seems reasonably genuine.
Relief washes over me.
“How could I resist letting strangers write on me?” I say, rolling my eyes, and then immediately regret the words when I see that their shirts are barely marked.
Ginny and Tamara exchange a glance.
Shit. “Here, let me sign yours,” I offer.
“Um, sure,” Tamara says.
She faces the wall, giving me her back, and I sign my name in my best autograph-worthy signature. I have no idea if it really has any cache here, but at least the people who’ve been nice to me will have it if it does.
I’m in the middle of carefully marking a smiley face in the “a” of my name on Ginny’s sleeve when one of the girls standing nearby sidles closer.
“So, I have a question for you,” she says, shouting to be heard over the music. This girl has tied her T-shirt up to reveal her belly, where several distinctly male signatures are residing.
“This is Sosie,” Tamara says, nodding at the girl. “She’s on our floor.”
“Hi Sosie, I’m Calista,” I say, pausing to smile and wave in her direction.
She waves back, but it’s a distracted gesture. She’s clearly got something else on her mind, and the eagerness gleams from her lavender-tinted eyes.
Instinct has me bracing myself, my stomach going tight with dread.
“Did you really get high and fuck Dylan Bradley at his birthday party two years ago?” Sosie asks, far too loudly.
Okay, definitely not my imagination.
“Sosie!” Ginny scolds.
“What?” the girl asks, folding her arms across her chest. “It’s not like it’s a secret. It was on the front of a bunch of magazines.”
Tabloids, actually. Because Dylan, former Disney star and good-boy galore, was looking to muddy his image a little. But not too much. In truth, yes, I was at his birthday party, and yep, I was on Oxy at that point. Further fueling the speculation was the fact that Dylan and I had gone out on “dates” back in my Starlight days, arranged by his PR people and mine. We were friends, probably still would be if I hadn’t cut off everyone from before. I didn’t blame him for the leak. He might not even have known about it ahead of time, and that was assuming it was even his team. I never knew what stories my mother was feeding the gossip mill, even after I’d fired her.
Sosie turns her attention back to me. “I just want to know what it was like.” Her expression softens. “He seems so sweet.”
Because drunken or drug-fueled hookups are usually “sweet.”
“I don’t talk about that part of my life anymore,” I say as nicely as I can.
Sosie’s forehead creases with a frown. “Why not?” she asks.
“Sosie, cut it out,” Tamara says. “She said she doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t get the big deal,” Sosie insists. “If I did that, I’d be proud of it.” She looks at us defiantly. “I mean, hello, Dylan Bradley?”
On her other side, another girl tugs at her, trying to pull her onto the dance floor, oblivious to the drama playing out.
But Sosie doesn’t move.
She’s waiting for her answer, and she’s not going away until she gets it.
With a sigh, I cap my highlighter and stand to my full height, which—helped by three inches of boot heels—makes me almost a half a foot taller than the scavenger Sosie. “No, I did not get high and fuck Dylan Bradley at his birthday party two years ago.”
Technically, I was already high, and it wasn’t his birthday party. It was two friends trying to erase pieces of themselves that wouldn’t be so conveniently obliterated. Like still being in love with someone who was obviously an asshole, despite previous evidence indicating otherwise. Or, in Dylan’s case, trying very hard not to be in love with your (male) best friend when you have thousands of screaming teenage girls worshiping every move you make and funding every career achievement. Not that either of us were exactly upfront about either of those things before. Only after.
Yeah, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Don’t do drugs, kids. It fries your judgment, and you end up seeing a very dear friend naked. Which should never, ever happen.
Sosie’s eyes narrow. “But you did sleep with him?”
Damnit. “I’m sorry, but I don’t talk about that part of my life anymore,” I say again. I try to smile. “I’m trying to make a fresh start here, and I’m sure you can understand—”
She gives an indignant huff. “Bitch.” And then stomps off in the opposite direction, after her friends.
I shouldn’t be surprised, not at this point, that people sometimes feel that sense of ownership, that they have a right to information that they’ve read or heard. But I honestly thought it would be different here. At least once they saw that I’m a person and not just an image on a screen or in a magazine. I thought three months would be long enough for that.
An overwhelming sense of despair rises up in me. It’s possible, as much as I don’t want to admit it, that Eric is right, that I don’t belong here and never will. But I don’t belong at home, in California, in my former profession, either. Then where do I fit? And how many years and how many failures is it going to take?
“Don’t worry about her,” Ginny says, patting my arm soothingly. “She’s just—” But her words cut off like someone has choked out her air supply, and her eyes go wide, staring at something or someone behind me.
I spin around, but don’t see anything out of the ordinary. Certainly not Eric, as was my first assumption, based on her reaction. Actually, based on Beth’s reaction earlier. I don’t think Tamara and Ginny have ever seen the show, thankfully. The sight of Eric wouldn’t mean anything to them.
Or me. I tell myself that, squashing the flare of relief that had gone off inside me at the idea of finding him here, and the accompanying disappointment when he wasn’t. It’s a little lonelier here than I expected, even with the crowd, even with talking to people I know. But I do not need Eric Stone.
“It’s him,” Ginny whispers. “He’s here.” Even in the crazy lighting, I can see that her cheeks are flushed. She’s also bouncing on her toes with excitement, her fingers covering her mouth.
“Who?” I ask, mystified. I move to stand next to Ginny, trying to see what she’s seeing.
“Oh Lord,” Tamara says, rolling her eyes but with a fond smile. “Save us from the manly perfection that is Reese.”
“Who’s Reese?” I ask. There are several guys in the vicinity of where Ginny is staring. Most of them are obviously brothers, in their white T-shirts with the taped names. But I don’t see one in particular that stands out.
“Only the tallest, smartest, hottest, fittest being to ever walk the—” Tamara teases.
“He’s in my organic chemistry class,” Ginny whispers, glaring at Tama
ra. “And he’s looking over here.” Her voice ends in a squeak, and she ducks her head, pretending, apparently, to study her shoes.
Suddenly, Ginny’s determination to attend this party makes a lot more sense.
I elbow her gently. “You should go say hello.”
She jerks her head up, expression horrified. “I can’t do that!”
“You can and you should,” I say, tugging at her arm and then pushing her out in front of me. “Trust me. Confidence is attractive. Fake it if you have to, but he’ll like it, I promise.”
“No, I can’t!” But she’s not resisting me. She just needs a push, and I’m happy to do that for her. I’m happy to be an actual friend.
Tamara sucks in a breath. “It doesn’t matter because Mr. Perfect is heading this way,” she says, turning her head toward us and talking through her smile.
Sure enough, one of the band of brothers has broken away and is heading straight for us. He does indeed appear tall and relatively handsome, as far as one can tell in the black light.
“Oh, no.” Ginny steps back toward the wall.
“Okay,” I say. “Keep breathing. Smile and say hello. That’s all. He wouldn’t be coming over here if he wasn’t interested.”
To my surprise and pride, she does as I instruct. She inhales deeply, puts on a wobbly smile, and then steps out to greet him …
… only to have him walk right past her.
He stops to lean against the wall, bracing his arm over my head.
A quick glance to the side reveals Ginny’s stricken expression.
“Hey, I heard you were here,” the guy who is apparently Reese says to me.
I slide away from him. “Um, yeah, I’m here with my friends, Tamara and Ginny. I think you know Ginny.” I gesture toward her. I don’t know if she can hear me, but she attempts a weak smile in response.
Reese glances over his shoulder. “Oh, yeah, hey.” Then he turns his attention back to me. “So, this party must suck for you. Do you want to get out of here? Make things more interesting?” He taps his pocket, and I have no idea whether he’s carrying or he’s referring to sex. Or both. He’s enough of a douche, it could be both.