by Paul Rudnick
“Here’s my question,” said Henry. “Heller Harrigan, you’re a total megastar. Everyone’s watching you every second to see if you’re going to mess up. A lot of people are hoping you’ll mess up because they think that might be fun to watch, the way crowds gather around car accidents and plane crashes. But let me ask you something. I know this would never happen, but what if—everything does fall apart? What if the movie tanks and everyone blames you and all of those Angel Warriors target you with their golden crossbows? If, God forbid, that happened, what would you do?”
Henry was looking right into Heller’s eyes and she was looking right back, as if they were daring each other to do something, but I wasn’t sure exactly what.
“I’d deal with it,” said Heller. “It wouldn’t be my most favorite experience ever and it might take a while to yank all of those golden arrows out of my head, but I wouldn’t … go off a cliff. I wouldn’t die.”
When Heller said that she wouldn’t die she didn’t sound like some silly girl saying, “OMG, when so-and-so looked at me from across the cafeteria I thought I would die!” She sounded like someone who might have come very close to dying or who’d seriously thought about it. There was a pause as Heller and Henry Firenze, or whatever his name really was, kept looking at each other. Heller wasn’t using her trademark grin but another kind of smile, something braver and smaller and a little scared.
“Thank you, Henry,” said Wyatt. “Please tell all of your followers that Heller loves every one of them and that they’re all going to worship the Angel Wars movie and that they should keep tweeting!”
* * *
After Henry left, Heller was on her lunch break and we were alone in one of the suite’s bedrooms, surrounded by racks of outfits—Heller had changed her clothes, her makeup, her hair and her accessories at least twelve times during the morning because, as Wyatt had explained to me earlier, “Heller is also a fashion icon. She can’t look the same in all of her photos and video chats because the fashion bloggers need tons of new Heller looks to analyze, criticize and then copy. The magazines like to print collages of Heller’s outfits so that readers can vote for their favorites and argue over how many times Heller’s repeated the same belt or bag, and whether this means that the repeats are Heller’s favorites. We’ll have plenty of tips for where to buy Heller’s favorite belts and bags and where to buy much cheaper versions that look almost the same, even if they may fall apart or give you a rash after you’ve worn them a couple of times.”
An assistant brought salads for Heller and me. We hadn’t spoken since the Tally Marabont interview because we were so mad at each other, but after a few minutes of watching Heller nibbling on a single lettuce leaf I couldn’t take it anymore.
“You have to eat the whole thing!” I said. “Then you should have another salad and a protein shake. You’re working very hard and you need your strength.”
I was sounding like my mom, which was just fine.
“People who are going to be having their picture taken in high def wearing a white catsuit are not allowed to eat,” Heller said. “I’ll be able to eat in two more days.”
“You can wear the white catsuit with a nice down-filled vest,” I suggested, and then because I couldn’t wait one second longer I broke down and asked, “Who was that guy? With the white forelock? Henry Firenze?”
“Why should I tell you? So you’ll feel really on top of things? So you can give pretend interviews to your stuffed animals? So you can tell all of your little friends the inside dirt about Heller Harrigan? If you even have any little friends?”
“Because if you don’t tell me I’ll call your mother and ask who he is. Is that what you want?”
Heller stared at me and then she finally said, “That wasn’t Henry Firenze. He made that name up because he knew I’d recognize it. Firenze is the Italian word for Florence, which that guy always told me was the most beautiful city in the world and where he wants to live someday. With me. So that wasn’t Henry. That was Oliver. Happy now?”
Heller looked at me skeptically. It occurred to me that maybe Heller was the one who didn’t have any friends. She knew thousands of people, but from what I’d seen, most of those people either worked for her or wanted something from her or thought she was crazy, or all three.
As for me, since our parents had separated us four years ago I hadn’t had many friends either. Since I was homeschooled I mostly hung out with my brothers and sisters and my anxiety issues made me limit contact with outsiders. I’d had a best friend but terrible things had happened, which made me even more wary of having any friends at all. As far as I could tell, having a best friend was dangerous because a best friend knows everything about you. No one can hurt you like a best friend.
“Heller,” I said, “we were friends but now we’re not. We’re not anything. I’m here to check up on you because you need that. But I will guarantee you one thing: If you tell me something in confidence and if you ask me to keep it a secret just between us, then I swear I will never tell anyone.”
“Okay,” said Heller quietly. “I still won’t tell you about Oliver, not everything, because … because if I told you everything I might, I don’t know, I might start remembering too much, which could send me right into the volcano. I’ll tell you how I met him.”
I couldn’t tell if Heller had decided to trust me, at least a little bit, or if she had to talk to someone.
“The really humongous trouble started right before I got cast in Angel Wars. Anna Banana was over and I was sixteen and I was having trouble getting work. There were a few offers but they were mostly just crappier versions of Anna Banana, like what if Anna moved to Switzerland and became the babysitter to a pair of rich, spoiled twins or what if Anna moved to New York and enrolled in fashion school and became an unpaid intern for a bitchy designer with a pair of rich, spoiled twins. I didn’t want to do that because I knew it would be a step backward. Whenever I auditioned for movies or plays or grown-up TV shows, the casting people and the directors would take one look at me and go, ‘Oh, right, you were some sort of drippy teen princess on TV, you can’t possibly do anything else, next, please.’ ”
Back in Parsippany I’d wondered about what Heller had been doing after Anna Banana went off the air, but all I’d ever been able to find online had been pictures of her looking out of it at the openings of nightclubs in other countries and a few shots of her as some rich guy’s guest on board his yacht in the Mediterranean, where she’d been wearing a bikini and sipping champagne with a lot of other people who were supposed to be famous only I’d never heard of them.
“I was getting desperate and I had my old creepy manager who kept asking me if I wanted to be on a reality show where I’d get dropped onto an island with a bunch of other people who used to be teen idols, but who’d gone to jail or found Jesus. When I said no he told me that I could make a lot of money if once I turned eighteen I made a sex tape called The Really Big Banana, only I’d have to pretend that it was private and act all upset and outraged once it was for sale online. When I tried to explain to him why making a sex tape wasn’t such a good idea either, he just said, ‘Well, you’re broke.’ ”
“You were broke? How? Didn’t you make a lot of money from doing Anna Banana and the Anna Banana movie and all of your records? Everyone in Parsippany had one of those Anna Banana backpacks.” I hated myself for asking these kinds of questions because it made me feel like I was Heller’s accountant.
“I did make a lot of money but I was still a minor and so my mom was in charge of everything and she was supposed to be putting most of what I was earning into a protected bank account and I know she was trying her best and I know that she didn’t do it on purpose, but, well, she’d never had to deal with that kind of money before. Then one of her boyfriends, this total sleazebag with a ponytail—I mean sleazebag alert—he said that he was this big-time private sector Wall Street financial advisor even though he didn’t seem to have any clients. He’d say that he was representing
such big stars that he had to respect their privacy. My mom, of course, was crazy about him and she gave him all of the money I’d made because he told her that he could triple it by parking it offshore and by investing in, what did he call it, a diversified portfolio. Which meant that three weeks later, without telling anyone, he’d sold our house in LA and our car and he’d disappeared off the face of the earth, along with every penny I’d ever earned.”
“But, but—didn’t you call the police? Couldn’t they arrest him and get all of your money back?”
“They tried. But he had a fake passport and the last time anyone had seen him he was in Ecuador, where they won’t extradite sleazebag embezzlers with ponytails to the United States. There was nothing anyone could do. My mom was a total mess and she kept crying and apologizing, which meant that I had to comfort her and tell her that it wasn’t her fault and that I didn’t care about the money as long as she was okay. Which was pretty much true because I was way more pissed off about the way that guy had treated my mom, but still—I was broke and I was over and I was seriously thinking about showing up at your house and seeing if maybe your parents wouldn’t notice one extra kid and I could just be another Singing Singleberry.”
“You should have! My parents would have understood!”
The second I said that Heller shot me a look because we both knew that was a lie.
“Then the studio that owned the Angel Wars books announced that they were looking for someone to play Lynnea. I was insane for those books and I identified with Lynnea because she had to fight for anyone to take her seriously as the girl who could defeat the Darkling Creeper. I knew that if the director would just let me audition I could prove myself. But for months he wouldn’t even see me and so I bombarded him with letters and emails and texts and I put myself on tape reading from the books and acting out my favorite scenes. My scuzzball manager kept telling me it was hopeless and that the director was screen-testing every other actress my age on the planet and that this one or that one had the inside track, so I should just give up and endorse some rubber diaper with batteries in it that was supposed to give you a great butt while you slept. I’m not kidding—it was called the Snooz-Booty.”
“Oh my Lord!”
While I still would never feel sorry for Heller, I was starting to wonder if back then, when she’d been alone and struggling, I’d let her down. What if I’d called her? What if she’d had some support? What if I hadn’t been so focused on hating her?
“Finally I was at the end of my rope and I was pretty much living in my car and I told myself that even if I didn’t get the part, I had to at least be sure I’d tried my very best. So I find out where the director is having his final callbacks for his top choices for the part and it’s on a soundstage in the Valley. I figure out a way to sneak in by bribing the guy who’s doing maintenance on the soundstage, who luckily had a twelve-year-old daughter who really needed an autographed copy of Anna Banana’s autobiography; remember, it was called I, Banana.”
I did remember this book because I’d found it at the library. I’d read it to see if there was anything about Heller’s childhood in the book, which meant I was secretly reading it to see if there was anything about me, or about what Heller had done to me. There hadn’t been a word about that part of Heller’s life because Heller’s network had hired someone to write the book for her, since it was Anna’s story and not hers. It had been all about how much Anna loved doing homework and helping others and it had included tips for outdoor exercise and healthy snacks like apple slices or little bags of almonds and grapes. It had ended by saying, “We can all be our own best banana.”
“Right after they’d auditioned the last girl I had the maintenance guy shut off all the lights in the building and when they came back on a few seconds later, there I was at the far end of this huge, empty soundstage and I’m dressed like Lynnea, you know, with the braids crossed over my forehead and I’m holding this crossbow, which I’d found at a yard sale and spray-painted gold, and I’m pointing the crossbow right at the director so he can’t move. I do that big speech from right before the end of the first book, when Lynnea faces off in the Netherdome against General Vlad Corpsemonger.”
“The Darkling Creeper’s first lieutenant!” I gasped. “Who created that child army by stealing the souls of all the kids who were killed by the genetically engineered Darkling Plague-Spores!”
“Exactly. So I tell General Corpsemonger that he will never prevail and that I will use the power of prayer to retrieve those children’s souls from the Gravesend Receptacle. As I announce that I’m the Chosen Winglet, I’m walking slowly but steadily toward the director, and just as I pull back my arm to send a golden arrow flying right between the director’s eyes, I put down the crossbow and I say, ‘Heller Harrigan. Thank you for seeing me.’ ”
“Oh my gosh!”
“And I got the part!”
Even though I knew that not only had Heller been cast as Lynnea but that she’d already made the movie, I wanted to hug her and congratulate her, but I didn’t because we weren’t friends anymore. If we were friends I would’ve already known the story because Heller would’ve called me and told me all about her audition right after it had happened, and we would’ve shared the whole thing. I would’ve been part of Heller’s adventure. Instead I’d been back in Parsippany, trying so hard not to think about her. I just nodded, as if a stranger had told me this story on a bench at a bus stop and I was being polite and a good listener.
“Once I heard the news I was over the moon because the director was giving me a chance and I was going to be Lynnea. But the second that the studio made the announcement, it started. The war against Heller Harrigan. I completely understood it because everyone loves the Angel Wars books and I was Anna Banana, which meant I was a joke. The web just detonated, there were all of those websites about how I had no talent and about how I was this washed-up has-been and about how I was too fat and too short and too ugly and about how anyone else, even the dog from Anna Banana, would be a better choice to play Lynnea. There was that one girl, Ava Lily Larrimore, who runs Angel Warriors International, which is the biggest fan site of all; I mean, she has over forty million followers and she hates my guts. I still don’t know why, but not only did she not want me to play Lynnea, she wanted to slaughter me, she thought that I should be arrested because I’d damaged the precious Angel Wars legacy. She sent the studio a petition signed by her forty million followers saying that if I was Lynnea then all of those followers plus their friends and families, none of them would go see the movie.”
I’d read things about Ava Lily Larrimore online. She was this grim-looking sixteen-year-old girl and as far as I could tell she truly believed that the Angel Wars books had been dictated by God and were a divine prophecy and that they were real. I loved the books as much as anyone, but I’d never gone that far.
“Which was the first time I really fell apart,” said Heller. “Even after I’d lost all of my money and when I couldn’t get a job, I was still okay because I was thinking, I’ll buckle down and I’ll work even harder and I’ll turn things around. But I wasn’t ready to have so many people, to have the whole world think that I was nothing and that I was wrong and that I should be ashamed of myself. So I made up a schedule in my head. I would rehearse for the movie with the director and the rest of the cast for ten hours every day. Then I’d train in the gym for another two hours with a coach so I could do all of the stunts in the movie myself and I wouldn’t need a body double, not even for the flying or the battles. I’d take another two hours every day to keep rereading the books until I’d memorized them. Finally I allowed myself one hour at the end of each week when all by myself on this little beach or in my car, I could drink.”
“Heller?”
Heller was looking right at me, to see if she could trust me. I wasn’t sure how to reassure her—I almost reached out to touch her arm but that felt fake, as if I was her minister or guidance counselor. I just nodded, which I hoped w
as enough.
“It was the only way I could deal with everything, with wanting to be so good and with working so hard and with so many people hating me. I would buy a bottle of Jack Daniel’s because that made me feel like a tough guy, and I would sit there really late at night and I wouldn’t stop until I’d finished the whole bottle and passed out. A few hours later I’d wake up and I’d take a shower and I’d get back to work. I made a deal with myself that I’d never complain about anything and I’d never tell anyone what was going on as long as each week, I had that one hour when I could just not think about anything. Because, believe me, if I couldn’t drink, all I would do with any downtime would be to obsess over whatever else I should be doing to prepare for the movie and about how I could get Ava Lily Larrimore to like me.”
Heller was scaring me, not just because of how hard she’d pushed herself and because of her blackout drinking but because I understood. While I had never experienced anything like Heller’s kind of pressure, I knew what it meant to want to be perfect every second of every day. I knew about punishing myself for even the tiniest failure. I knew about freaking out because no punishment was ever enough.
“I was handling everything, I was holding it together because I had my goal to make the movie and I had my whiskey, so I had a secret friend. Until one night when I was sitting on the beach in the dark and I’d put away about half the bottle, my phone rang. It was the director’s assistant, this totally nice girl, and she asked me if I could come in an hour earlier the next morning for a costume fitting. I said of course, but once I got off the phone I started going a little nuts because I had to reconfigure my schedule. I decided that I needed to get in an extra half hour at the gym the next day to make sure that all of my costumes fit perfectly. I got in my car and I really thought I was fine because my brain was buzzing. I’m a block away from the little apartment that I’d rented for me and my mom and I swear to God, I see one of the Darkling Creeper’s Dastroids, those nasty little drones he uses to grab little kids out of their beds. I see one, a Dastroid, coming out from behind this parked car and I needed to destroy it, I had to crush it, before it got anywhere near some little kid.