After shaking hands with everyone, Chelsea is sent out to the RVs to get some dinner. It should feel weird but it doesn’t, walking through the waiting room as people stare at her, whispering. She holds her head high—because she got the job, didn’t she?—and thanks Arlene before heading out across the baked earth toward the shade of the awnings.
There are five people sprawled out on lawn chairs and picnic blankets in the shade around the RVs and tour buses as a tall, skinny teen girl, maybe sixteen with an undercut and galaxy hair, babysits the hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill, a phone in her hand. Chelsea is surprised to see that no one looks like a professional wrestler. There’s one tall guy, but he’s thin as a breadstick; one young, muscled guy of average height with a shaved head and blackwork tattoo sleeves; a fit silver fox in his sixties who looks like he belongs on TV; a sad but beautiful Hawaiian woman in her thirties; and a pretty but fake-looking brunette in her twenties with painted-on eyebrows who probably calls herself an influencer. Chelsea immediately feels bad for assuming the worst of her.
“You’re Chelsea?” the teen at the grill asks.
“Yep.”
“I’m Sienna’s daughter, Indigo. You want a dog or a burger?”
“A burger would be great.”
Indigo nods and points to a cooler by the RV. “Cool. We have plenty. Just grab a drink and chill. Should be ready in five.”
Chelsea heads to the cooler and digs out a water. It’s cold enough to make her teeth hurt and drips condensation down her arm. She’s aware that everyone else is watching her, and she hasn’t felt this judged since the first Mommy and Me class she went to with a newborn Ella. She’d thought it would be all about woman power and sisterhood and mommy wisdom but it was more about losing the baby weight and buying the hottest artisan booties. This isn’t an artisan booty crowd, but whatever they’re looking for in her, they don’t seem to find it. Then again, she’s in old cutoffs, flip-flops, and a blood-spattered T-shirt. She wouldn’t talk to herself, either.
All the chairs are taken, so she sits on the blanket in the shade with her back against the RV, next to the sad-looking woman. Out of the six strangers, she feels like she might have the most in common with a sad woman in her thirties because she is also a sad woman in her thirties.
“Weird interview, right?” she says to the woman, because she has to say something because if she doesn’t say anything, she has to remember that she killed her only friend a few hours ago, even if the day feels like it’s lasted a year.
The woman perks up a bit and turns to her. “Right? I’ve never felt so inadequate about my CV. I’m Amy.” Amy holds out her hand to shake, although it’s awkward since Chelsea is on the floor beside her. “How’d you get in?” She motions to the whole group, all of whom are not-so-subtly listening in. “That’s the question of the day. Most jobs, they need definitive skills, but here, it’s a crapshoot. They took me on because I’m an accountant with marketing experience who looks ‘exotic.’?” Amy makes finger quotes and rolls her eyes.
“Why’d they take y’all?” Chelsea asks, turning to the group to give herself time to answer the question without scaring them all off. If this is a job where they all live together, she wants to be on the best possible terms from the start, and she knows that if she lies, she’ll just get caught.
They’re all listening, of course, because it’s a small group of people in a big, empty field.
The silver fox speaks first. “I’ve done some commercials and modeling. I’m Steve.” He gives a little wave.
“I think it’s just because I’m unusually tall,” the unusually tall guy says, frowning. “And I brought my own leather duster. I’m Matt.”
The punk and the Instagram girl stare at each other uneasily like a badger and a fox facing off, and he finally nods for her to go first. She fiddles with her navel ring, and Chelsea is very glad that Ella never got into the crop top and high-waisted pants trend. “Ugh. Fine. I guess they took me because I’m hot and flexible and don’t mind showing skin and I have a million followers on Instagram. I’m London. And that’s my real name, not, like, something I made up. My parents are ex-pats.”
They all look at the punk guy. His violent exterior—muscles, tattoos, shaved head—is at odds with his meditative, quiet manner. “I’m TJ. I do jiu-jitsu. And the tattoos, I guess.”
“And you do art,” Indigo says from the barbecue. When they all look at her, she says, “He’s famous on TikTok. Like, graffiti and stuff.” He smiles and gives a small nod.
London snorts and flops in her chair like she’s unimpressed.
TJ raises an eyebrow at the display and looks to Chelsea. “What about you?”
They’re in a loose sort of circle, nursing their sweating drinks, and for a moment Chelsea wonders if this is what an AA meeting feels like. She knows there’s no point in lying, since she’s apparently all over the news, so she might as well get it out of the way.
“I’m Chelsea. I think they took me on because I’m on the news right now. My friend and I were driving here, and I stormed on I-4. Woke up and…” She stares down at the red splatters on her T-shirt. “So, that. And I guess I did some drama and singing in high school.”
Matt honks a laugh and rocks back in his folding chair; he reminds her of an awkward goth pterodactyl. “Yeah! I saw that. Like, you threw manure at some old guy and stole his truck. Classic.”
Chelsea looks down, feels her face flush. It’s not something in which she can take any sort of pride. “So they say.”
“Hey, sorry about your friend.” Amy touches her arm briefly, and Chelsea wants to double over and cry. She’s been touched more today than she has in weeks, thanks to her self-quarantine and barricade, and she misses her girls like a punch to the gut.
“Thanks.” It comes out a half sob, and Chelsea has to look away and drink some water.
Steve goes to a different cooler and pulls out a mini-bottle of pink wine. “Sounds like you’ve had a hell of a day.”
Chelsea takes the bottle with a smile of thanks, screws off the top, and learns firsthand how awkward it is to sip wine from a tiny bottle. It goes down in a flash, sweet as soda, and warmth unspools in her stomach. She’s tried to limit her drinking for the last year, after David went after Ella, but God, she’s missed this feeling, responsibility and anxiety sloughing away like a heavy coat on a hot day.
“Yeah, I’ll have one of those, too.” Amy heads to the cooler and comes back with three of the mini-bottles, handing another one to Chelsea. “It’s only like half a glass, right?”
London was already drinking a can of alcoholic seltzer, Steve has an elegant, monogrammed hip flask, and Matt’s brow draws down as he does the math. He strides over to the cooler and comes back with three little bottles of red wine, and Chelsea is pretty sure this guy wishes he was a vampire.
“No drink for you?” London asks TJ.
He holds up his fist to show a big, black X on the back of his hand. “Nah. That shit’s poison.”
London snorts. “Anything can be poison if you misuse it. I know a girl who OD’d on Tums.”
“Then she was an idiot.”