Page 67 of Hollywood, Ending

“Are you hooking up with Charles?”

“One, I am not hooking up with Charles.” Juniper’s voice is rising. “Two, I am not your girlfriend, so I’m allowed to hook up with whoever the hell I want. Three, how can you ask that right now? This is not about Charles Oldham. This is about someone trying to ruin both our careers, Kai. You understand that? Don’t deal with this properly and poof. Everything could be gone.”

There is something intoxicating to me about the possibility of poof, everything being gone, but I don’t confess that to Juniper. I just say, “I’ll call Ellen.”

She picks up before it’s even rung. “You will sit down with Jill tomorrow,” Ellen says. “You will tell the truth, and this is the truth: You didn’t want to talk about your abuse, but it leaked, and now you’re going to affirm your fellow victim’s victimhood and heroism while also acknowledging that the real villain here is not you but the man who abused you, and the leaker who retraumatized you, who wasn’t Juniper. That’s all we need to do. We’ll let her break the embargo and talk about the movie, which will hopefully minimize the stuff about you. One interview tomorrow morning, before the rest of the junket, and then you don’t say another goddamned word about this and we let it blow over.”

“Okay,” I say.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Once you do this interview tomorrow, we can put it in the rearview mirror.”

“Okay.”

Except it will never be in the rearview mirror. That’s what Ellen still can’t understand. On some level, even though he’s dead, it’s still happening. It happens in my mind. It happens when people bring it up. It happens when I dream.

_____

Back at the hotel, I search my name on Reddit and Twitter. Conversations are everywhere about Juniper and me. The big one on the pop culture subreddit already has over a thousand comments. Some people are defending us—especially Juniper, who is seen by many to be “catching strays”—but the most upvoted comments say we’re fake and always have been, that you can tell when something is just to promote a movie, and that Juniper probably lies about being abused by her dead mom to get attention and sympathy. The consensus seems to conclude that Matthew Malone is a great guy but these two seem like conniving little starlets.

_____

I’m asleep when the phone rings. I look at the hotel clock: 2:18 a.m. It’s Juniper. She’s crying uncontrollably. At first I can’t even tell what she’s saying. “I’ll be right there,” I say.

I pull on some clothes and race to her room. She’s sobbing. “I fucked up and now they’re gonna cancel Andromeda,” she says.

“What makes you say that?”

“I just feel it. I know it.”

“Juniper, you’re having a panic attack.” She’s sweating and crying and very clearly in distress, but I am also frustrated with her, because who cares if they cancel Andromeda? It’s just a movie.

“I have nothing without it,” she says.

“That’s not true, Juniper.”

“I can’t not work,” she says. “You don’t understand. When I’m not working, I’m nothing. I don’t matter to anybody.”

“That’s your mother talking,” I tell her.

“I didn’t make it up,” she says. “I didn’t.”

“I know,” I say, and she relaxes into me as I’m holding her. “I’m sorry, and I’m here.” I hold her for a long time, until she calms down and her ragged breaths get deeper.

“You know our Obstacle?” she asks.

“Never have quite figured it out.”

“We can’t disentangle what we want from what we’re supposed to want.”

“That’s why so many kids our age go to law school,” I say, and she laughs. I stroke her forehead, pushing her hair aside, revealing the soft baby hairs above her temple. “I love you,” I say. “You’re way too into Hollywood, but I love you.”

“This is all I’ve got,” she says. “This is everything to me.” I want to ask her about me, about her brother, remind her that there is much more to her life than Hollywood, but I don’t.

“You didn’t leak it, right?” I ask. “It wasn’t you.”