“Just.” I shift for a moment, already knowing my answer is wrong. “I needed a little time to myself, you know?”
Aaliyah laughs out loud. “No, we don’t know! We’re all trying to get time with Marcus, but I guess you’ve already gotten it locked up.”
“Of course she does,” Kendall says. She’s sipping her cucumber water again. Kendall is always careful how much she imbibes; I almost never see her with a drink in her hand and certainly not if it’s before 5 p.m. I suspect it’s part of her strategy, and also suspect it should be part of mine, too.
But, old habits, as they say.
“C’mon, Kendall,” I return, halfheartedly, a plea I hope she sees through. I need some room to breathe.
“What do you want me to do?” she asks with a giggle, taking a sip of her drink.
It’s all clear to me then. The way she’s been nice to my face, but gathering up support behind my back. Encouraging the theories about me. Turning the other girls against me one by one.
I’ve been a threat. One she can’t afford.
“We don’t want you to sit with us,” Hannah then says, the clear voice to stand up against me.
I turn to look at her, square in the eye, more aware of the camera there than I had been in days, even while making out with Marcus. I’m sure she’s aware the camera is there, too, and this might be her only moment to shine. “Why?” I ask her. I’ll make it difficult. I won’t let them get away with shunning me without a fight.
“Because you’re a stuck-up bitch,” Hannah says.
I absorb that blow. The other girls laugh behind their hands. I know their game, but I don’t want to play it.
“We know you sit around talking shit about the rest of us, up on your high horse where all the producers love you,” Hannah goes on. “You get all the special treatment, and you can barely be bothered to even speak to us. News flash, you’re not the only one Marcus likes.”
I blink, mostly in shock at all of these accusations. Somehow, that works against me, too.
“Come on!” Hannah demands. “Say something. We are so tired of all these eye rolls and looks from you.”
It breaks me, for some reason. I’m so exhausted, so tired of pretending to be someone. Every time I’ve let my guard down, every time I’ve trusted someone to give them a second of my truth—Marcus excluded—it has backfired. I forget the character for a moment, forget anything but me and my failure and inability to relate to anyone else.
I turn calmly toward her. She doesn’t get to decide who I am. “I don’t even really have to say anything,” I tell her. “Because this isn’t a competition. Me and you?” I tilt my head, surveying her, taking in everything about her, from her terrible contour to her ratty blond extensions. “There’s nothing about you that Marcus would ever find more attractive than anything about me. But what I do want you to understand is that it’s not just the way I look. It’s about the way you carry yourself, the way you could never have a complex conversation in your life. I don’t respond to you because you have nothing on me. I can barely be bothered to listen to you speak.”
“Oh, my God,” Aaliyah whispers under her breath.
“Bitch” is all Hannah says as the tears well up in her eyes.
Bitch.
I hate that moment I gave in to it. Into who I am. Played into exactly what Hannah accused me of.
Bitch.
I get up from the cabana and walk away.
I go back to my corner, trying to avoid the camera following me, hoping, praying no one else will notice. I stand there alone until the cameraman finally gives up, and I sit down, curling up into myself, sitting on the cement with my legs pulled into my chest.
Giving in to my worst self is so easy and so hard. It’s always there, right when I need to call on it. The thing is, I know what I can do to those girls. I know what I can do with my words and my looks and my everything. Not every girl here—some of them truly have something I covet, that lovability, that likability, but Hannah, she has nothing.
It’s so obvious.
I’m still not supposed to say it. I’m not supposed to make them all hate me, the way I’m so good at.
The way the boy I loved in college simply disappeared and when I asked why, said I was exhausting and he was tired.
The way nowhere loved me, not even the city I dreamed about for twenty-five years.
I stay collapsed in on myself, the moment never not replaying. I always lived there when it came down to it. It would play like shit on TV.
And I know him before I see him, existing in the periphery, put on Jac-watch to capture just what I might do next.
Henry crouches down next to me. “What are you doing?” he asks me, arm on my shoulder.
I look up at him, over at the camera that has followed him. I signal writing and he hands me a pen and pad he carries with him. I cradle the pen to me, writing a single word where the camera can’t get it. Panicking.
Henry’s brow furrows as he reads what I wrote. He writes a reply. Do you need a doctor?
I shake my head. I’d be fucked if they were getting me in front of that on-set psychiatrist.
Finally, he scribbles again and shows the pad to me. I can’t keep them from catching you like this.
I meet his eyes and he gives me a little frown, an almost private moment between the two of us.
“ITM, Jac?” he says, stuffing the pad of paper and pen into his back pocket.
I take a deep breath, nod. He doesn’t reach out, doesn’t pull me up like Marcus would have, just waits as I get to my feet; then he leads me across the patio, back into the house. We go into one of the ITM rooms, the bigger of them, me, him, and the cameraman. Henry hands me a water bottle and I drink it down greedily, grateful. I’m alone. No one here hates me.
But still, the words race through my mind: What does this mean? What’s happening now?
