“You’d better calm down,” he says. “I get to decide how this plays out, not you. Maybe I’ll tell Ryder to film Gant getting arrested. It’d be a perfect climax to the parental neglect subplot—Dad abandons sons in hotel room; younger son turns to crime. Audiences love that shit.”
I close my eyes. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to get back to Annaleigh.”
“Why? You’re just going to break us up. Even if you don’t, her parents will.”
“You’re such a disappointment, Seth. Ryder really thought you’d see the bigger picture, embrace the idea of a new kind of movie. Me, I just figured you’d be smart enough to realize that fifty grand and fame were a pretty good start for a kid in Hollywood. But all you do is whine.” He sighs. “You’re not even here fighting for Annaleigh. The way I see it, we won’t have to break you two up at all. If she’s got any sense, she’ll dump you herself.”
“Maybe she will.”
“Or maybe you’ll get back here and be your charming self, and we’ll forget about this unfortunate situation with Gant.”
“You swear it?”
“Yes. Do you?”
I pause, but it’s mostly for effect. We both know what I’m going to say. “Yeah.”
“Good boy.” There’s a delay, and a faint murmuring as if he’s covered the mouthpiece and is giving instructions to someone. Then he’s back. “Get your ass here now, you hear me? If you’re not around at midnight, we’re going to have a real falling-out, you and me.”
I hang up. I’m relieved that Annaleigh kept Sabrina out of this, but I wish she hadn’t told Brian about us switching phones. Never mind that he can’t track me or eavesdrop. If he has this number, he’ll probably find a way to locate me. I turn the phone off and slip it inside my trouser pocket.
I return to an empty bedroom. “Sabrina?”
“I’m in the bathroom. Changing.” Her voice comes from behind another door. “How’s Annaleigh? She must be waiting for you.”
“Yeah.”
“You should go, then. Thanks for helping me.”
Her tone is all wrong—too conciliatory.
I scan the room. Her clothes lie strewn across the bed. The Kermit T-shirt is gone. “You’ve already changed.”
A hesitation. “I’m peeing.”
I try the handle, but it’s locked. I run around and try the other bathroom door, the one from the living room. That’s locked too.
“Open the door, Sabrina.”
“I’m on the toilet.”
“Open the door!”
She opens it. “What’s the matter?” She flushes the toilet. Turns on the faucet.
I watch her in the mirror. She has undone the ponytail so that hair drapes across her face. She stares at her hands, lathering soap quickly, rhythmically.
“Look at me, Sabrina.” More lathering. “Please.”
She rinses her hands, shoves the faucet off, and glares at me. “Happy now?”
She opens the medicine cabinet above the sink as if she’s looking for something. But she just wants an object between us, something to stop me from watching her.
“What did you take?”
“Nothing.” She sorts through the cosmetics in the cabinet, fingers skipping from vial to compact. But she doesn’t need makeup. She doesn’t need anything at all anymore. “You should go. Annaleigh’s waiting.”
I try to close the cabinet door, but she bats my hand away.
“I said go!” She spins around, face flushed, eyelids twitching.
“I’m calling the center.”
“Go ahead. They can’t make me go back.”
I feel lost. It seems crazy now, but when I found Sabrina behind the dumpster I cast myself in the flattering role of knight in shining armor. But she’s shattered the illusion, and returned me to my rightful place in the audience. I’m a spectator, nothing more.
“Please, Sabrina. Just . . . please.” The last word comes out quiet and tired. I don’t know what to ask for anymore. I just want something different for her.
We stare at each other. For several seconds she doesn’t move, or make excuses. She simply lets me witness the version of Sabrina Layton that no one is supposed to see: high on drugs, dirty hair, no makeup.
I’m the one who looks away first.
“You’re sweet, Seth, but you can be really boring.” She runs her fingers along the neck of my shirt. “I should’ve called Kris.”
Adrenaline courses through me. “But you didn’t. Because he would’ve known you’d go looking for drugs. Wouldn’t have left you alone for a moment. Wouldn’t have been so . . .” Easy, I want to say. But the word in my mind is Kris’s: naive.
There’s no use in calling the rehab center. They won’t come for her. Even if they do, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Sabrina isn’t ready for that. Her other relationships may have disintegrated, but not this one. This she values above everything.
It’s not difficult to walk out of her apartment. Gant and Annaleigh need me, and Sabrina wants me gone. But as I press the call button for the elevator and pace back and forth along the gray industrial carpet, I still wish I could do more. If only there was someone I could call. Someone who cares for Sabrina as much as I do. Someone like . . . Kris.
I take out the phone, but his number isn’t on it. So I ride the elevator to the lobby and approach the doorman. He’s reading a thick book, like he doesn’t anticipate having much to do, even on New Year’s Eve.
“Do you have Kris Ellis’s number?” I ask. “I want to call him.”
His expression hardens. “You better not bring him here.”
“Why not?”
The guy snaps his book shut. “Ms. Layton was absolutely clear. If he tries to get in, we’re to stop him. Call the police, if necessary.”
His words silence me. Is this why Kris was having Sabrina tailed? Because she wouldn’t see him anymore?
So many clues, yet the picture is as hazy as before. Sabrina was determined to get high, so why call me at all? Why not hail a cab and come home alone? Unless there’s another reason she wanted someone to watch her. Someone to protect her from—what? What could be more destructive than the pills scattered about her apartment?
That’s when it hits me. There’s something far more destructive than getting high.
And far more permanent.
42
I SPRINT BACK INTO THE WAITING elevator and jam the button for the ninth floor. Pound along the corridor and bang on Sabrina’s door.
I’m so convinced that something terrible is happening that it’s a shock when she opens the door. Tears trace lines down her cheeks. Her movements are labored, head lolling from side to side. But it’s the eyes that really get me, her constricted pupils like dark pinpricks submerged beneath an ocean of brown. I’m not looking at Sabrina Layton. I’m looking at the shadows of her personality left behind as drugs work over every molecule in her body.
She hugs me. “You shouldn’t be here,” she whispers into my hair.
My fingertips rest on the bumps of her spine. She feels fragile in my arms, as breakable as glass. “I need to know you’re going to be okay,” I tell her.
“Annaleigh,” she croaks, leaning back. “She seems like a good person. You deserve that.”
Sabrina is giving me permission to leave again, but I can’t. I kick the door closed behind me.
I follow her as she weaves toward the bedroom. The Kermit T-shirt barely reaches her legs and pulls tight against her breasts. It leaves little to the imagination, but there’s nothing remotely sexy about the way she’s squeezed into the garment.
That’s when I realize it’s not a T-shirt at all. It’s a little girl’s nightgown. Something she may have worn a decade ago, back when everything was different.
She slides onto t
he bed and hugs a pillow. “I hate being alone,” she says.
“I’m here.”
“You know what I mean.”
Yes, I do. “People love you, Sabrina.” I try to sound positive. “You’ve got more fans than any young actor in Hollywood.”
“Right. Mustn’t forget the fans—all that hollow, unquestioning love. So easy to adore someone you never have to understand, isn’t it?” She rests her chin on the pillow.
“Tell me about Kris.”
Hearing the name seems to sap her remaining energy. Or maybe it’s the pills, fogging her mind.
“I think he still loves you, Sabrina. And I think you love him too.”
She doesn’t say anything for several seconds. Then: “Doesn’t matter.”
“How can it not matter?”
“Because . . . he got me pregnant.”
Silence. We’re exactly as we were a moment ago, but everything has changed. Not only because of this news, but because I can tell that she’s talking in the past tense.
“What happened?”
“I lost the baby.” Her voice catches. Tears fall so fast and hard she can’t choke them away.
I sit on the edge of her bed. “Does he know?”
“No.”
“Does anyone?”
“Genevieve. She made me take the pregnancy test. Told me I had to get clean. Spelled out the risks, like I didn’t know. But I couldn’t stop. Or maybe I just didn’t want to.” She covers her face with her long, slender arms. “That’s what Gen thinks, anyway. Thinks I kept going deliberately because I didn’t want to have Kris’s baby.”
Sabrina’s face is still covered, but under the recessed spotlights that pepper her bedroom ceiling, I finally see her three personas for what they are: the real Sabrina, and the masks she hides behind.
The clock on the bedside table reads 11:07. I need to check on Gant. Need to get back to Annaleigh, impossibly beautiful in her pale blue gown. Need to let Kira take photos and Ryder take film, and pretend that everything is okay when nothing is okay.
But I won’t leave Sabrina like this. She’ll be asleep soon. Until then, I’ll stay to show her that I care. Friendship is a form of love too, and I might be Sabrina’s last friend.
I creep into the bathroom and close the door. Turn on the cell phone and call Annaleigh.
She picks up immediately. “Are you still with Sabrina?”
I rest my forehead against the cool tile wall and close my eyes. If Brian’s tapping into this conversation through her new phone, he’ll know where I am now.
She interprets my silence as a yes. “Brian and Ryder left just after you. They were pissed. Why aren’t you back yet?”
For a moment, I fantasize about coming clean and telling her everything. How it’s partly my fault that Sabrina’s drug addiction went viral, and that when she finds out, the only thing stopping her from hating me will be this evening, when I stayed with her and helped her through the worst of it.
Instead I say, “I’ll be back soon. I so want to be with you right now.”
“Yeah. Well, I hope you can still say that the next time I see you.”
Then Annaleigh waits for me to hang up, so I’ll know she’s just angry, not that she really means it.
I turn off the phone again.
Sabrina is curled up, fetal style, lighting a cigarette. “You should get back to Annaleigh,” she says.
“I will. Soon.”
“Do you think she’ll forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive.”
Her hair is draped across a pillow, revealing the nape of her neck. Her tanned skin glows in the amber light from her bedside lamp. I’m not the type to pray, but in this moment I do: that she’ll accept help; that she’ll be able to quit drugs; that she’ll still call me her friend during rehab.
I know the last one is the most unlikely of all.
She pulls on the cigarette. “Will you hold me, Seth?”
I toss my blazer on the floor and lie down next to her. Lay my arm across her thin shoulders. She doesn’t ask for more, and I wouldn’t do anything if she did. I just want to stay with her awhile, so she’ll know that trust and love exist, even in the capital of make-believe.
“Happy New Year,” she says finally.
“Yeah,” I say. “Happy New Year.”
43
I WAKE TO BRIGHT LIGHT—LOS ANGELES, still pretending that winter is a myth perpetuated by the rest of America. I don’t understand where I am. Or why Sabrina is beside me, fast asleep.
My mind snaps back to the previous evening. Me comforting Sabrina, reassuring her that she’s not alone and that someone still cares. I just wanted to see her fall asleep. I never meant to fall asleep as well.
The clock reads 8:10 a.m.
Shit.
I reach for Annaleigh’s old cell phone. Turn it on and discover messages.
Lots of messages.
Before I can listen to them, Sabrina stirs. She stuffs a pillow against the headboard and drags herself into a seated position, long legs stretched out in front of her. She looks rough—no makeup, greasy hair. But most of all, it’s the eyes that scare me: dull and empty, waiting for an infusion of energy . . . or something else.
Maybe every day begins like this.
We haven’t made eye contact yet, but something about the way I’m looking at her makes her sigh. She swings her legs over the side of the bed. “You don’t need to stay,” she says.
“Huh?”
“I know how I look.”
“No. I just never meant to fall asleep. I need to check on my brother. And Annaleigh.”
“Then go,” she says, walking to the bathroom.
“Not until you’re back at the center.”
“I can take myself.”
“I want to go with you.”
She stops in the doorway. “Actually, I’d prefer it if you didn’t.” She runs a finger along the wooden door frame. As she watches its steady descent, her hair falls across her face. It doesn’t seem accidental. “There’s nothing attractive about seeing someone check into rehab.”
“Attractive?” The word makes me angry. It’s like we’re measuring our friendship in different currencies. “I’m going because I want to see you get well. And I know it’s scary for you, but I’m proud of you for doing it.”
Her face tightens, eyes squeezed shut. “Don’t say that yet. Be proud of me in a couple weeks, okay? By then, I might be proud of me too.”
“Okay.”
“Now go see Annaleigh.”
Still I hesitate. “You promise you won’t take anything?”
She doesn’t pretend to be offended. “I promise. It’s New Year’s Day, right? The perfect time for a resolution.”
Different doorman—larger, older—but he obviously got a status report from his predecessor. As I leave the elevator he ushers me toward a rear exit, away from the photographer loitering beside the main doors. He tells me to head a block east before hailing a cab.
I run along the street until I see a taxi. Tell the driver Wilshire and Rodeo instead of the hotel name. I guess I’m becoming paranoid too.
On the way, I listen to the messages. The first is from Brian. He doesn’t bother threatening me with retribution for not returning to the party—I know perfectly well there’ll be a price to pay. Annaleigh’s messages are even worse, though. She doesn’t sound angry, just resigned, like she knew I’d stay with Sabrina from the moment I left the party. Her third and final call was at four a.m. She didn’t bother to leave a message.
There are no messages from Gant. Maybe it’s because I’m using Annaleigh’s old cell phone, and he doesn’t have the number. Or maybe Brian called the cops after all.
I run along the corridor to my room. Gant is there, sitting bolt upright at the desk. His eyes are fix
ed on a blank sheet of paper. From the way he turns his head slowly, I’m afraid that he’s hurt.
I approach him like a hunter tracking skittish prey. “Are you okay?”
“I called you. As soon as I got back here, I called you. But your phone was right there.” He points to the bedside table. Someone must have brought my phone to the room. Brian presumably. Or Ryder.
I place the phone inside the empty minibar so we won’t be overheard. “I’m sorry, Gant.”
“Where have you been?”
“With Sabrina. Something bad happened.”
“Oh yeah? Don’t tell me you spent the night with her.”
“I . . . I fell asleep.”
He digs deep for a smile. He knows I must be screwing with him. Except that I’m not. And pretty soon, he realizes it too.
“You fell asleep?”
“Sabrina needed help and—”
He jumps up and tackles me. Sends me crashing against the bed. I’ve got a few pounds on him, but not the will to fight. He brings his fist up. I know what’s coming, and in a strange way, I welcome it.
As suddenly as he attacked, Gant stops. I can almost see his brain working, analyzing the situation and concluding that this is not the way to go. He rolls away and punches the mattress instead. Slides off the bed and crumples to the floor, arms wrapped around his legs, forehead resting on his knees.
“Someone just called from reception,” he mumbles. “Checkout’s twelve o’clock.”
I figured today was the endgame, but I’m still surprised Brian’s kicking me out already. How can Ryder produce a satisfying ending for his movie when so much is unresolved? Sure, Annaleigh probably won’t speak to me ever again, but if they don’t capture our breakup on film, viewers will never know what played out between us.
Gant faces me. “You have to warn Annaleigh. Whatever they’re planning, she’s in the middle of it.”
My cell phone rings, muted inside the minibar. Gant stares at me, in limbo until I decide whether or not to answer it.
I let it go to voicemail, but Brian has made his point yet again: He can always get to us.
I pull some of the remaining bills from my wallet. “You should go home.”