"I don't know what happened with you two," she said. "But you need to see him, Elias. Things weren't right with him before, but he's in a bad way now, since he came back from Vegas."
It was like hearing my mother speak in a foreign language, the way she was acknowledging that my brother was in some kind of trouble. This-being direct, honest-was not something she did. Maybe my father's death had shaken something inside her.
"Promise me you'll go see him, Elias," she said, her voice pleading.
"Yeah, mom," I said. "I'll go see him." But that didn't mean anything. That whole blood is thicker than water thing? That was such a bunch of bullshit, I thought. Silas and I, we'd been tight once, but that was a long time ago.
14
River
The tick-tick-tick of the antique clock on the bedside table was starting to get under my skin. I rolled over on my side to look at the clock. Shit. It was only 7:30. I had a whole night ahead of me in an empty house. June and her little boy had gone back over to the ranch house on the opposite side of the meadow, leaving me to entertain myself.
I should be happy with this, I told myself.
Quiet was something I should like. It was something I never got enough of. For the longest time, it was something I craved, surrounded by the noise of Hollywood and all of the craziness of my life. Now, though, stuck here in this house alone with my memories, it was positively suffocating.
That’s the thing about running from the past-when you stop, even for just a moment, trying to catch your breath, that’s when you’re the most vulnerable. It’s when the past rears its ugly head and lets you know you’re foolish to think you can ever get away from it. Instead, you’re forever tethered to it.
I stepped out of the car. The limo driver averted his eyes, quickly returning to his post and speeding away, leaving me to walk into the lobby of the apartment building alone.
The doorman took me by the elbow as I stumbled through the door. “Ms. Andrews, are you okay?”
I shook my head, mumbled a barely coherent response. “I’m fine.”
I wasn’t fine. I was fifteen, returning from my twenty-four year old costar’s house at four in the morning, barely able to walk.
The doorman gestured to one of the bellman to take me up to my apartment. He was silent, looking straight ahead during the elevator ride. Maintaining an air of professionalism.
But I knew he really wanted to take my picture, sell it to the tabloids.
At the door to our apartment - my apartment, the one I paid for, where I housed my sisters and my shitty excuse for a mother - he paused. “Is your mother home?” he asked, trying the doorknob.
I laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “Who the fuck knows?”
Then I leaned over and vomited into the decorative urn near the doorway. At some point, my mother opened the front door and shooed the bellman away, hissing a threat to have him fired if he were to tell anyone what he saw.
She looked me over, her eyes trailing up the length of my body, taking in my torn shirt, my smeared makeup and my mussed hair. Her eyes narrowed. “What the hell happened to you?”
“I was at Jason’s.” I pushed past her into the hallway, kicking off my heels. I just wanted to go to bed. I was going to be sick again, I knew it. And I was going to break down. I didn’t want to do it in front of her. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry.
But she followed me, back toward my bedroom, her barrage of accusations masquerading as questions ringing through the air between us. “Masterson? Your co-star?”
“Is there any other?” There wasn’t. He was it. That movie would end up being my big break. It was one of those roles that you take, excitement in your belly even as a teenager, because you understand the significance of what you're about to do. What I’d done up until then was nothing. This was it. It was my big chance. Jason Masterson was the man of the hour. He was hot - not just physically, but in the industry. And I’d gotten this role, despite my age and the fact that, even a couple years after being discovered, I was still a new actress when it came down to it.
So when my co-star asked me to a party at his house, turning him down would have been a huge mistake.
Even when it turned out that the only person he’d invited to our little party was me. And after I’d drank a couple of beers to take the edge off, taken a few tokes, he’d given me something else. Said it was ecstasy. I’d never taken ecstasy, but I knew it was important to be friendly with Jason. And I wanted to belong. He belonged here in Hollywood, and I was the new girl on the block.
I didn’t want to go back to living in that trailer park.
So I took what he offered.
It wasn’t ecstasy.
“What the hell did you do?” my mother asked.