I am chaos.
I am a force of destruction, down to my marrow.
Please hear me when I tell you I am not intentionally heartless. I simply do not know my own heart. Do not recognize its true desires or understand its motivations. This senseless organ inside my chest is a stranger to me. I do not know which path it will lead me down, which star-chart it will steer me by. I haven’t allowed myself to think that far ahead yet. Haven’t allowed myself to feel anything except numb disbelief and clammy-palmed terror.
My hands find my stomach again. I press down hard enough to feel my lowest row of ribs jut through the skin like dull knives, carving me from within. Cleaving me in two. Tearing me to shreds of indecision.
A girl divided.
I am filled with contrary desires. Brimming over with conflicting interests. Torn, in every facet of life, in opposite directions between which I cannot choose.
I do not know if I want this child. But I do know one thing for certain.
This child will not want me.
One
“Areyou sure you’re ready for me, honey?”
- The lady shaping my eyebrows with hot wax strips.
Istareat the dark red polish coating my fingernails as the SUV cuts a slow path through downtown Los Angeles. There is not a single chip marring their glossy surfaces. In this moment of undeniable anxiety, with my stomach clenched into a fist and my back rigid with tension, the girl I used to be two insufferable months ago would’ve picked at them until they lay like bloody petals on the sleek leather seat.
Now, even if I wanted to pick them off, I couldn’t. The cheap, drugstore-brand polish of my past has been replaced by professional-grade lacquer, applied by a petite Vietnamese woman who came directly to my new house in the Palisades with a small cart of subtle shades in tow. My days of lukewarm pedicure baths and questionably-cleaned cuticle cutters are over… Along with almost every other recognizable facet of my existence.
Here lies Katharine Firestone, of the mussed hair and ripped cut-off shorts, of the day-old mascara and inappropriate drinking binges, who hurled headfirst through life hungover and heartbroken.
May she rest in peace.
The new Katharine Firestone is poised. Her hair is never messy. She never leaves the house still wearing makeup from the night before because she knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the paparazzi’s prying eyes are never far away. She is calm and collected. Her clothes bear designer labels. Her shoes cost more than the monthly rent of the crappy condo where she used to reside.
She is a stranger to me.
The weight of someone’s stare makes me look up. My gaze finds the icy blue irises of my security detail and driver, Kent Masters, in the rearview mirror. I see his hands tighten ever-so-slightly on the steering wheel as he scans the deep shadows beneath my eyes, the haunted look in their depths that I can’t quite mask, no matter how much expensive makeup coats my lids and lashes.
“Feeling all right today, Miss Firestone?”
I sigh. “Masters, how many times do I have to insist you call me Kat before you listen?”
“At least one more.”
“You’re dating my best friend,” I point out. “Doesn’t that make us friends by association?”
“Depends. You give all your other friends a three-figure salary and health benefits?”
My brows pull into a scowl.
“No,” I mutter.
“Thought so.”
His mouth twists as he merges left and turns onto a one-way street, heading toward Hollywood Boulevard. Traffic is even thicker than usual. It’s the week before Christmas; shoppers are out in force, especially in this glitzy part of town. Tourists with time off for the holidays are pouring into the City of Angels — they crowd into double-decker buses and hang out the windows with cameras fixed permanently to their noses as they roll down famous palm-tree lined avenues, taking pictures of vibrant street art without ever stopping to look at it in person. Trading actual experiences for Instagram likes from followers they will never meet.
When they reach the movie studios, they will disembark and fork over a thick wad of hard-earned cash for the privilege of taking a mind-numbing tour of a vacant soundstage — likely led by an annoying guide who cracks corny jokes and speaks a bit too emphatically into her microphone headset as she shows them a quote-unquotegenuine piece of Hollywoodbefore they shuffle back to their lives in some benign small town where nothing scandalous ever happens.
How was LA?their friends will ask.
It was okay,they’ll reply.But I don’t see what all the fuss is about.