OLIVIA WAS A PANICKED MESS BY THE TIME SHE GOT HOME from school. Peanut, her usual ride, had disappeared after school was dismissed, forcing Olivia to take the bus. Which was fine, except for the fact that every single underclassman taking public transportation home was watching either Rex’s birthday video or Amber’s fat-camp photo montage on their phones. She was literally surrounded by DGM. Her brain swirled with recent events: the new pranks, the warehouse fire, the envelopes. It was as if everyone on the bus was taunting her, and with every passing second, she became more and more desperate to escape. By the time she reached her stop, she wanted nothing more than to run to her room, dive into her stash of packaged baked goods, and hide under the covers for the rest of the night.
“Livvie!”
Her mom bolted across the living room and tackle-hugged Olivia the moment she opened the front door, squeezing her so hard, she had to gasp for air.
“You won’t believe what happened today,” her mom cried. She broke away and gripped her daughter by the shoulders. “I’ve been offered . . .” She let her voice trail off intentionally, her eyes wide as she prolonged the drama of her announcement. “A one-woman show off-Broadway.”
Olivia cocked her head. “But we’re in California.”
Her mom clicked her tongue. “I know that, silly. The Lady’s Curse is previewing in San Jose. Charles says—”
“Charles?”
She laughed. “The producer. Charles says they’re already guaranteed a month-long run at the HERE Arts Center in SoHo. Can you believe it?”
Actually, no. Olivia couldn’t believe it at all. “How?”
Olivia’s mom took her by the hand and dragged her to the sofa. “I was working the lunch shift and this guy approached me at the bar. Youngish, attractive. He said I looked familiar but, you know, that’s every guy’s line when they’re trying to pick up the bartender. Anyway, I was like, ‘Yeah, whatever,’ but he was really persistent. Finally he snapped his fingers and said, ‘Twelfth Night at the Public, 1998. Am I right?’”
“He remembered you from like seventeen years ago?”
“Why is that strange?” her mom snapped. “It was a smash hit and my reviews were amazing. ‘June Hayes entranced as Olivia . . .’”
“‘A fantastic, exhilarating new face at the Public,’” Olivia said, completing the review. “I know. It just seems so . . .” Convenient? Unlikely?
“Don’t be jealous,” her mom said, pouting like a ten-year-old. “You’re not the only one in this family with acting prospects. How do you think it felt to have Fitzgerald Conroy see us living in this dump, me heading off to my shitty bartending job? I was supposed to be somebody.”
Olivia recognized the frenzied tone of the voice, the way her mom’s eyes darted around the room. She was on the upswing of one of her manic episodes, probably ignited by Fitzgerald’s visit, and now the flame had been fanned by some hack producer promising the moon. Olivia would have to tread lightly.
“So, um, when do rehearsals start?” Olivia asked, trying to de-escalate the situation.
“Tonight!” She rushed to her bag and pulled out a thick, brad-bound script. “Then every evening for the next two weeks.”
Every evening? Alarm bells went off in Olivia’s head. “Did you permanently change to the lunch shift at Shangri-La?” she asked hopefully.
“Lunch shift?” Her mom laughed. “I don’t need that horrible bartending job anymore. This is our ticket to the big time, Livvie! Back to New York. Back to midnight cocktails at Bar Centrale after performances, then sleeping till three in the afternoon before doing it all over again.”
“Mom,” Olivia said slowly, as if she was afraid to say the words out loud. “Did you quit your job?” Please say no.
“Of course!”
Olivia felt the room spin around her. Could this day get any worse? “How are we going to pay the rent?”
Her mom grabbed Olivia by the shoulders. “We’ll have plenty of money! Once rehearsals are over, I’ll be getting seven thousand a week. A week! Think of it, Livvie!” Her mom did a little pirouette, then sashayed into the kitchen, where she poured a glass of water from the filtered jug.
Seven thousand a week. As much as Olivia wanted to share in her mom’s readiness to believe in the unexpected windfall, the entire situation seemed too good to be true. Which usually meant it was.
Olivia followed her mom into the kitchen and leaned against the counter. “So,” she said, trying to sound casual and nonjudgmental. “Have you seen the contract yet?”
“Please. This is a business based on reputation.”
Oh boy. “So you haven’t seen a contract.”
Her mom whirled on her. “No,” she mocked. “I haven’t seen a contract.”
“Maybe you should ask Charles about it?” Olivia wanted to see this seven thousand a week and guaranteed run off-Broadway in writing before she let go of the tiny ball of stress forming in the middle of her heart.
“You know, Livvie, I don’t like your attitude.”
“You don’t like my attitude?” Olivia blurted out. Who was being the child and who was the adult in this scenario?
She was instantly sorry for her outburst. Her mom’s face turned beet red and her eyes practically sparked with rage.
“One standing ovation and you think you know more than I do?” she roared. “I clawed my way to the top of New York, honey, and then I sacrificed all of it for you. How dare you try and ruin my moment of success, you selfish little bitch!”
“Mom, I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.”
But it was too late. Her mom stormed out of the kitchen, picked up her script and her purse, and yanked open the front door.
“Where are you going?” Olivia asked.
“I’m going to learn my lines before rehearsal,” she said, without looking at Olivia. “Don’t wait up.”
Olivia stared blankly at the door long after her mom had slammed it in her face. She was worried, angry, stressed beyond belief, and for some reason, she felt incredibly guilty. Her mom was right about one thing—she’d sacrificed her career for Olivia. A lot of actresses in her position wouldn’t have had the baby at all, or at least wouldn’t have kept it. Where would her mom be today if she’d never had Olivia? Tony winner? Oscar winner? Instead, she was stuck here, broken and forgotten.
Olivia’s eyes shifted across the room to where almost a dozen pill bottles lay strewn across the coffee table. More? She was pretty sure there hadn’t been that many yesterday.
Suddenly, her mom’s recent mood swings came into focus. She stormed across the room, scooped up all the bottles, leaving only the two prescriptions she recognized, and marched into her bedroom. She had no idea where her mom had gotten all the pills, but something had definitely shifted in her mom’s emotional state in the last couple of days, and the pills must be to blame. Olivia would stash them until she could talk to Dr. Kearns and find out what was going on.
But as Olivia searched her bedroom for a hiding place, she heard a sharp knock at the door.
Her mom must have forgotten her keys again. She dumped the pill bottles on her bed and rushed to the front door.
Only it wasn’t her mother on the landing.
“Amber!” Olivia exclaimed. Amber didn’t even make the short list of people who might have been knocking on her door in the middle of the afternoon. “What are you doing here?”
Without answering, Amber shouldered past Olivia into the living room. “So this is where you live,” she said, eyeing the small interior. “I didn’t know it was a one-bedroom.”
Olivia stiffened. She’d been in Amber’s gorgeous four-bedroom home more times than she could remember. The eight hundred square feet Olivia and her mom shared could have easily fit into Amber’s room alone.
She was ashamed of the way she lived, afraid of letting her friends know just how poor she really was. But she wasn’t going to let Amber see that.
“It’s all we can afford,” she said proudly. “My mom works double shifts to cover rent.”
“Worked,” Amber said. “Past tense. Right?” She turned and faced Olivia for the first time. “I ran into her out front and she told me she’s doing a Broadway play?”
“It’s previewing here,” she said, holding her head high, unwilling to let Amber see the shame she felt over her mother’s delusions of grandeur. “Before a possible run off-Broadway. My mom’s a well-known figure at the Public Theater in New York so it’s a perfect fit.” Okay, slight exaggeration. But Amber wouldn’t know that.
“I guess.”
Olivia took a deep breath. She was tired of the mind games. “Why are you here?”
Amber looked Olivia dead in the eyes. “I want to ask a favor.”
“From me?” Olivia blurted out. Amber had never admitted to needing anything from anyone in the history of their friendship. Maybe today’s humiliation had affected her more deeply than Olivia realized.
“I know that Rex and I are broken up,” she said by way of an answer. “But I’m asking you not to date him.”
Olivia laughed. She couldn’t help it. “I don’t want to date Rex.”
Amber took a step closer to her, scrutinizing her face. “Are you sure about that?”
Why didn’t she believe that Olivia was in no way interested in her ex-boyfriend? “Absolutely sure.”
“Because I remember the night of the bonfire. I saw how you kissed him.”
Dammit. That stupid bonfire! Olivia desperately regretted the act of making out with Rex to make Donté jealous. That momentary lapse in judgment had caused her nothing but grief.
“Amber, I know what you saw that night,” she started. She just needed to make a clean break of it. Get it off her chest. “But it’s not what you think. I was only—”
A shrill, old-fashioned telephone ring ripped through the room. Amber’s cell phone volume must have been on full blast. She whipped her phone out of her purse and quickly answered it.
“What is it, Kyle? I’m busy.”
Olivia could hear the muffled, unintelligible syllables coming through the phone, but the only hint as to what Kyle said was in Amber’s reaction. The color drained from her face, the hand holding the phone shook uncontrollably, and her eyes glassed over. Her arm fell away from her face; her phone clattered the floor.
“Amber?” Kyle yelled, so loud that Olivia could hear it. “Amber, are you there?”
“What happened?” Olivia asked. “What’s wrong?”
Amber lowered herself to the arm of the sofa but didn’t say a word.
Olivia snatched the phone off the floor. “Kyle? It’s Olivia. What happened?”
“Oh, thank God you’re with her,” he said.
“What happened?”
