Chapter 4

4

MEREDITH

Hold up. I can sense the judgment seething from you. You’re thinking: What kind of monster steals a CHILD’S iPad? First of all, I’m not stealing it. I’m borrowing it. Second of all, Elea (and Noemie, and Sabine) is my goddaughter, and if I asked her to lend me her iPad, I’m one hundred percent sure she’d say yes. In fact, she would insist that I take it, because she knows that would annoy her mom. Third of all, I think you need context. You’re sitting there thinking I’m this horrible jealous bitch who can’t handle her best friend’s success, and that’s not at all the case. Let me paint a picture.

Eight Years Ago

With my help, Aspen very quickly realized that there was, in fact, no future for her in music. We quickly became close enough to each other to have regular sleepovers at my place. She shared a one-bedroom in Culver City with three other girls, whereas I at least had my own place: a studio in Glendale. It was during one of these sleepovers that we took a deep dive into her YouTube channel. I pointed out that five thousand subscribers in two years wasn’t good enough to cut it—wasn’t going to get her noticed by a record label. To my surprise, Aspen agreed.

I very quickly learned that Aspen is one of the most agreeable people I’ve ever known. She’s a compulsive agree-er. At first, I found it a bit off-putting, but now, a year into our friendship, I’ve grown to appreciate it. Unlike most of the people I’ve gotten to know in LA, Aspen is low drama—happy to go along with most of my suggestions, even when they contradict hers. Truly happy, not an “I’m fine ” happy. Being friends with her is like paddling in the kiddie pool: safe and predictable. I do not hate it. It’s why, when I was invited to a huge influencer event in Las Vegas, I took her along as my plus-one. The event went as expected: lots of photos and videos were taken, and I signed with two more sponsors while Aspen looked on with naked admiration.

We spend a lot of the drive from Vegas trying to figure out her niche. I’m huge on Instagram already, with over three hundred thousand followers (“I can’t even imagine what it must be like to have a hundred thousand followers!” Aspen squeals. I give her a humble smile in return, my insides glowing, vibrating with glee at her open admiration), but Aspen has foolishly neglected Insta in favor of YouTube and Facebook. Thanks to me, she’s started up an Insta account, but nearly a year in and she’s gained fewer than ten thousand followers.

“I think I’m just not cut out for fame,” Aspen sighs, gazing out at the desert.

“Bullshit. Look at you, you’re beautiful. Of course you’re cut out for fame. We both are. We just need to find your niche.”

Aspen props herself up on her elbow and gazes at me. “I don’t know, Mer, I’m not like you. You’ve got that…X factor.”

I snort. “Trust me. If you’d known me back in Ohio, you wouldn’t have said that. It’s just that I found my niche: beauty and fashion advice with some sass.” I wink at her, and she gives me a small smile.

For a while, neither of us speaks, lost in our own thoughts. I’m mulling over my success in Vegas, caressing the memories of me signing with my new sponsors, when Aspen says, “You know what strikes me about this place?”

“Huh?”

Aspen gestures at the lonely desert around us. “This huge stretch of nothingness.”

“What about it?”

“I mean, it’s literally an endless expanse of nothing between two major cities, isn’t that crazy?”

“Uh…” I shrug. The topic isn’t catching my interest, so I’m only half paying attention. “Sure, I guess.”

“There must be so many dead bodies buried out here. Anyone could just walk off the road, into the desert, and never be found,” Aspen murmurs.

“What the hell?”

Aspen gives me an apologetic smile. “Sorry, too creepy?”

“Uh, yeah? Why are you thinking of bodies in the desert? Geez.”

She laughs. “I guess sometimes my thoughts just go to dark places. Anyway, I love what you’ve done with your hair.”

“Really?” I take one hand off the wheel and primp my curls self-consciously. One of the many gifts I picked up at the event was a high-tech hair curler that promised me the world. “I think they’re a bit too tight.”

“You can carry it off,” she says, as loyal as ever.

I frown at the rearview mirror, then smile. She’s right. I can carry these curls off. “Okay, let’s go back to finding your niche. What are your interests?”

She shrugs. “Cooking?”

My frown deepens. It’s true that Aspen’s cooking is amazing. We often stay in because eating out in LA is horrifically expensive, and plus, she stays over at my place so often that she feels guilty about it, so she’s always trying to make up for it by cooking me dinner. But to me, cooking isn’t something an influencer does. “I don’t know, not glamorous enough. Ooh, how about celeb gossip?”

Aspen goggles at me. “Dude, what? I know nothing about celebrities.”

“Yeah, but we live in LA—okay, well, we’re LA-adjacent—and we’re always running into celebrities at the parties I get invited to.”

If Aspen notices the specificity with which I say, “the parties I get invited to” and not, “we,” she doesn’t show it. She continues looking at me with open admiration. “I know,” she says, “but I don’t like, talk to them. I have no idea what to say to them.”

“Babe, they’re normal people, just like you or me. Ask them about their day. Tell them you love their clothes.”

She giggles. “I’m not like you, Mer. You’re so good at mingling.”

“You could learn, like you’ve learned everything else from me. Look at you now. I wouldn’t recognize you from a year ago.”

It’s true. Thanks to my help, present-day Aspen looks like a true-blue Angeleno. She’s dressed in high-end athleisure with slim cutouts right below the collarbone to bring the eye to her chest. And speaking of collarbones, Aspen’s are popping now, thanks to the low-carb diet I put her on. I’ve taught her how to get the Kylie lips by overlining them, and her face is so heavily contoured it would make a Greek sculptor fall to his knees. She is gorgeous, and it is honestly infuriating to me why she hasn’t yet been discovered by the morons on Instagram. She deserves fame, damn it!

“You know what?” I say. “When we get back, I’m going to do your hair, too, and then we’ll take selfies and post to our Instas. And I’ll tag you so my followers know to follow you too.”

“Oh, Mer,” Aspen murmurs. “Why are you so nice to me?”

I grin at her. “Because we’re best friends, of course.”

She matches my smile. “Forever.”

“Forever.”

···

That same night, after we arrive back from Vegas, we go to a party (that I was invited to, of course, not Aspen), this time at a beach house in Malibu. It belongs to the son of some rock star, someone too ancient for me to know of, and the house is filled to the neck with memorabilia. Electric guitars dominate an entire wall, a drum set is in one corner and literally cordoned off with red velvet rope, and framed magazine covers are everywhere. Kind of over-the-top, if you ask me. But I play the game well. I greet everyone, throw air-kisses here and there, and call everyone “Darling,” even the people I don’t recognize. Aspen is, as usual, at my heels, clutching her purse like a shield. Despite the contouring and the hair and the overlined lips, she still somehow manages to look out of place.

“Loosen up,” I mutter to her. “Some of the people here are the very best influencers.”

Her plastered-on smile freezes. “That doesn’t exactly help me loosen up.”

I sigh. “You’re my bestie. Everyone is going to love you.” Before I can say anything else, someone grabs my arm and I turn to see Ever Elle. (Can you believe that’s supposedly her official name? Like, the actual name on her birth cert? That’s what she claims, anyway, the fraud.)

“Bitch!” she cries gleefully.

“Slut!” I shout back. We laugh and pull each other into an aggressive hug. It’s our thing.

“Omigod,” she yells over the music. “How are you? Girl, you are growing so fast, what are you at now, one hundred thousand followers?”

I smile and bat my eyelashes demurely. “Try three hundred.”

“Omigod, bitch!” she squeals, hugging me again. “I’m only at like, two hundred and fifty. You must tell me your secret.”

“No secret, I just try to be as authentic as possible.” My go-to answer.

“Of course, yes, authentic, totally. I mean, that’s what I always say, myself.” Ever gives a vigorous nod. Both her hair and eyelashes are neon pink tonight. “I love your post about mental health. The way you were so real, so raw, about the pressure of looking perfect as an Insta-model. Obsessed!”

I want to give her a huge Cheshire cat grin, but that would be kind of tacky, so I tamp down my glee and battle my mouth into an acceptably humble smile. “Aww, thank you. I was just speaking my truth, you know?”

“Yeah, for sure.”

“Oh, this is my friend Asp—” It’s only when I glance over my shoulder that I realize Aspen is no longer behind me. I cock my head and turn around, scanning the room full of people for her. Nothing but the usual starved bodies pulsating to throbbing music.

“Uh oh, did you lose your date?” Ever says. Even above the deafening music, I catch the sneer in her voice. I want to hit her.

“She must’ve gotten lost. Excuse me, I better look for her. She’s my protégé.” I leave without waiting for a reply from Ever, plunging into the knot of people. I swim through the crowd, making sure to keep the brilliant smile on my face. People say hi to me and I say hi back to them, but my eyes don’t stop scanning the crowd, trying to locate Aspen’s familiar form. I should just leave her be. I should just enjoy myself. But I’m only now realizing that it’s been almost a year since I met Aspen, and we’ve gone to almost every party together, and her absence is disturbingly noticeable. I got used to having her shadow me. To having her watch my every interaction, knowing that she’s admiring my conversational skills; knowing that each smooth interaction I have makes her wilt just a tiny bit, because she knows she can’t do what I can. (I’m not being horrible, it’s just a fact of life that people adore the knowledge of having something that others don’t. If there was no pleasure to be taken from exclusivity, then the rich wouldn’t be so into their private country clubs. There is joy from knowing you are blessed while others are not; if you deny it, you’ll only be lying.)

Only a short while passes, but already I’m incandescent with rage. I invited her to this party. Without me, she wouldn’t even have the measly number of followers she has. And she certainly wouldn’t be here, in this jaw-dropping Malibu mansion surrounded by stars. And she has the audacity to ditch me? We are going to have fucking words .

But she’s the one who finds me. I’ve just stepped outside onto the patio, which overlooks the crashing waves, when she spots me. “Mer!” she cries from the beach. I turn to the sound of her voice, and my rage freezes in my veins. I’ve never seen Aspen like this before. Her hair is wild, whipping in the sea breeze, and even in the dark, I can see that her face is flushed. She looks like a wood nymph stepping out of the forest.

The spell breaks, and all my anger comes surging back in a fierce wave. “Where have you been?” I hiss, as she stumbles across the sand toward me.

“I’m so sorry!” she laughs. “Oh my gosh, you wouldn’t believe what just happened. I got separated from you—the crowd just swallowed you up—god, Mer, I was terrified. I kept trying to look for you, but the crowd was too much. I got overwhelmed, so I went outside to get some fresh air, and I went down to the beach and—”

“Got swept away,” a male voice says. A man I haven’t noticed has slipped out from the folds of the darkness. He stands close to Aspen. Way too close for someone she’s just met. Unlike everyone else at this party, he isn’t beautiful, but there’s a steadiness to his gaze that makes you look twice.

Aspen giggles, and I want to smack her. “Literally, Mer! Well, my shoe did, anyway.” She lifts her right hand, from which dangles a single shoe. “God, those waves. I wasn’t expecting them to be that strong.”

“It’s a surfer’s paradise out here,” the guy says. His voice is so deep and rich that your brain instinctively tells you to pause and listen, even if he’s saying the most clichéd words ever.

“Surfer’s paradise?” What are we, in the freaking eighties? Who even says that anymore?

“I don’t even know what I was doing,” Aspen continues. “I think I was screaming and like, rushing in to grab it back.” I notice that her voice has gone up an octave and is a little bit more nasal, like a kid’s. Once more, the urge to hurt her, to pinch her or shake her out of this, nearly overwhelms me. I swallow it down.

“She was screaming,” the guy laughs, “and yeah, she was literally about to dive in after the shoe. I caught her just before the waves took her. Are your shoes made of diamonds or something?” He looks down at her, smiling and shaking his head, and I feel nauseated. The way he’s gazing down at her and her up at him, there’s so much naked attraction in their eyes that I feel as though I am intruding. And not just attraction, but somehow a history, as though they’d known each other for a long time before tonight.

He finally seems to notice me staring and offers me his hand. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude. You must be Meredith. I’m Ben.”

I take his hand and taste bile in my throat. His grasp is firm and warm, and when I look into his aquamarine eyes, it’s clear that he’s not going to be just some guy we ran into at a party one night. The look in his eyes promises that he’s going to be a permanent problem, a constant wedge between Aspen and me. I’m going to have to get rid of you somehow , I think as I look at Ben and meet his glowing smile.