“Good times,” I mutter under my breath.
“Poor Kendall,” Rikki says, soberly.
“Right?” Elodie says, and then she giggles. “God, I’m drunk. I wasn’t supposed to get drunk.”
The night is quiet, the production almost dead. Kendall isn’t back from her date, or she is, I don’t know. Everyone is in bed who can be in bed, but we’re still here, somewhere past time and space.
I glance over at Rikki, and she has fallen asleep in her chair. I turn my attention fully to Elodie, my feet pulled up into my Adirondack chair, curled in on myself.
“You were in Scotland last year,” I say. “Weren’t you?”
“Scotland?” Elodie says.
“Marcus and Shailene,” I say simply.
She thinks about it a moment. “Oh. Yeah. I was there when they broke up.”
I shift uncomfortably in the chair I’m sitting in, setting my chin on a knee and staring over at her. As I’d hoped, she starts talking. “Henry was with Marcus always. Always. Charlotte thought it was over-producing, but Marcus just shut off if Henry wasn’t around; he could barely hold a conversation. It seemed like he was bored or something.”
“Why?” I ask.
Elodie shrugs. “Shailene was ready to marry him, I’m pretty sure.”
“Marcus?”
She nods. “Yeah, I think it was a done deal.” I keep watching her, wondering how I could be wrong; how I could’ve read everything so wrong.
“Anyway,” she continues, “everyone knew that Marcus was more interested in being the lead than Shailene. Priya and Charlotte cut a deal with him behind Henry’s back to say he and Shailene had sex. It was bad. Henry went ballistic because Shailene was his favorite, and he almost got fired.”
Slowly, I nod my head.
“Then she tried to kill herself last summer because the online harassment was so bad.” Elodie leans her elbow into the side of her chair, almost falling over. I make no move to help her, simply process and keep going.
“Shailene tried to kill herself?” I ask, shocked.
“John cleaned it all up, and she came back, so . . .” Elodie sighs and shrugs.
“Why am I the villain?” I ask her quietly. “When this all exists?”
Elodie surveys me, knocking back another sip of her drink. I imagine her in Santa Monica, at a club with her friends, too drunk and spilling a secret. That’s where we are right now. “You’re not very nice, Jac,” she says.
“That’s true.” I press my cheek into my leg, my skin still sticky with humidity in the middle of the night. “Do you like me?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says.
“Is it just because you’re drunk?”
“You’re successful and beautiful and too sad to enjoy it. America hates that.” She hiccups. “I’m sorry.”
“I think America loves it. We love our own misery, we just hate when someone else does.”
“It’s not that deep,” she says, her eyelids fluttering. The color all around us is gray and coming alive. “What were you going to tell Rikki anyway?”
I watch her a long time, pale and young and too drunk to even know what she’s saying. “It sucks, doesn’t it?” I say at last. “To be the one made a fool.”
“What?” she asks, and looks up, just as the glass door slides open behind her.
“Jac,” Henry says. He looks furious, just as Elodie leans forward and vomits all over her feet.
“Good morning,” I say.
I GET THE last invitation to stay. Again. It’s tiring, but I guess they expect the audience to be so desperate for me to go home by this point, that they want them dreaming of it at every elimination ceremony (spoiler: they are). I’ve been pitted against the beloved Rikki, her hand squeezing mine as my name is called.
I go to take the invitation held out to me, and Marcus winks at me for good measure. “I can’t wait to meet your family, Jac,” he says. “I hope you won’t miss your friend too much.” Then he tells Rikki that, unfortunately, she is not the one.
Brendan grins at the two of us in his wacky pink suit like we’re having fun, when in reality, Marcus has just knocked another piece off the board for me.
I turn back around and go to Rikki. I grab her into my arms and hug her tight. “I love you,” I say.
She smiles sadly. “Just not enough to not use me, right?” she whispers, but she is whisked away before I can respond. I stare after her, blank-faced.
“Congratulations, Jac,” Kendall says to me.
“Gird your loins,” I tell her. “They’re throwing your stepdad at you.”
Kendall frowns, but everything is too loud and happening too fast for her to respond.
“Let’s get everyone for a champagne toast,” Priya says, calling Kendall and Shae and Eunice over, handing us all glasses. Elodie has been gone since yesterday.
