“I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”

—Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

We only truly hate people who remind us of ourselves, and I think about this more than I care to admit. In fact, I plug it in to so many people in my life, I don’t remember who I am anymore, but I’m positive that if I did, I wouldn’t like her. I’d probably hate her. I try all too hard to forget certain versions of myself, especially those developed before my frontal lobe. The type of version that, while you think you’ve grown out of (and debatably from), now exists as an intrusive thought. It overcomes you when you least expect it. A dinner with a group of friends. A coffee date at your local café. Waiting on a pharmacy line for beta-blockers that will hopefully quell it all. And when you shake it off, people ask: “What’s wrong? What’s on your mind?” The hell if you want to tell them. But what if they get to rediscover that version with you? In front of millions of unseen viewers on a livestreamed talk show . . .

Who am I? Well, we all come from somewhere, whether it’s a castle at the top of a Hollywood hill or a trailer (legally) parked at its entrance. Monsters are made, not born, but when I think of my past, I contrive the same pang of confusion and disdain as when I contemplate the existence of old people or babies around LA. I’ll see a mother with a stroller walking back from family dinner on Santa Monica Blvd; her and this bright-eyed innocent cruise past a gyrating stripper through a bar’s wide-open window. An old, lonely actress walks home from a Unitarian church on Fountain Ave; she slips on dog shit, trips over a scooter, and falls into traffic. I just want to yell out “Why are you all here?” and give voice to this grotesque secondhand shame. The sort of shame that hits when you make an inappropriate comment about either of the above at a party and hope all attendees remember you kind of mean well.

I know I’m meant to be in LA. Meant to be a part of this city’s curated mess of camp and beauty. After all, my existence feeds its daily dose of forgotten names and niche notoriety.

I must remind myself of this as I approach the stark black, reflective studio building, sitting atop a well-manicured mound above the parking lot like a foreboding haunted house of mirrors. I still belong here.

The sun beams down on my exposed, highly made-up face. I beat myself up for forgetting sunglasses and pray my makeup artist mixed sunscreen into the glops of foundation smeared across my botoxed forehead. Though my crow’s feet will now need a touchup sooner than expected. I cuff my hand over my squinting eyes and peer up at the billboard advertising my upcoming episode. My current and adolescent faces are meshed together, glimmering down at me like my last beacon of hope.

“I salute you,” I say before taking a deep breath of surrender—mostly incited by a lack of cardio—as I approach the top of the hill, blinded by my own seedy light and the desert sun.

“It’s funny you should ask—” I say to Millennial Jerry Springer1. I’m seated onstage as he rolls around in metallic, light-up Heelys2—yes, Heelys—across the stage floor, an oh-so-ironic ode to our Y2K childhood.

He cuts me off. “I don’t think you found my question funny in the least.”

His question was not funny, and I’m fucking annoyed that he asked it. But that’s Derek—Derek Hauser—hosting me on his talk show, Fun Haus. We went to college together. No, we were not friends back then. We did not come up together. Nor did we fuck. Sure, it’s fun seeing a dirtbag college hookup grow up to, in fact, look dirty, but Derek has been nothing but consistent in this regard, so temptation never found me.

The stage is set up like a typical talk show with two tuft chairs and a backdrop screen showcasing a daytime view of the Hollywood sign. While I remain seated, Derek continues rolling around like an unleashed problem child at a shopping mall. I look on at his small crew, silhouetted against the blaring studio lights, some hovering near the director’s monitor, others seated in the empty bleacher section just beyond. All ghosts of sitcoms past.

As Derek veraciously fingers his left ear, clearing space in his brain for his next stupid question, I imagine the deprecating comments from our virtual audience flooding across the live-streamed screen. He stops at a small table between me and the opposite chair. There are two water bottles. He takes a sip from the one that’s not mine. Cheeky.

People often assume participating on a talk show without an in-person audience is easy. There’s no one to picture in their underwear. No potential hecklers. Or shooters. Yet, I would equate a virtual audience to someone staring at you across a darkened street with a Guy Fawkes mask3. You can’t see their reactions, but you know they’re all watching—smiling creepily—and waiting for your next move.

The world needs to witness real-life human vulnerability from us celebrities right now. To know we are alive and attempting to be well, just like everyone else.

I can tell this chair is meant for comfort, the way it curves around the body of its occupant, encouraging us to sit upright without dull force.

Public figures are handed so many places to hide in plain sight, especially when their talent and likeness can be bought at a high price. We can pose for social media posts without the fuss; ad campaigns flourish beyond the expense of a set; we can make a cheap blockbuster if all parties agree, taping giant paychecks over our mouths as we quietly concede.

Fun Haus became fashionable when we needed to make up for these deceptions and prove our self-awareness about the whole thing. For one hour, celebrities—A-list to Zebra—are stripped of their star-studded superior allure and forced to confront an AI-programmed, full-bodied hologram of their younger selves. This is all for the greater good of artificial intelligence, and how it could, in fact, pull out our humanity, not take from it.

The legs, arms—I notice every inch of this chair is covered in cushion.

Oh, that empty chair . . . burgundy, tuft cushions . . . a couch-chair, if you will. Sometimes, the hologram appears when we least expect. Or It just saunters in from backstage, no different than the civilized start of any talk show. Other times, It abruptly manifests . . . in the chair.

But the main entertainment factor? Our reactions.

I recall a very viral clip of a disheveled former sitcom actress face to face with her polished, heyday self. I knew her in those earlier years, and she was as prim and properly cheesy as the role she played for five consecutive, impressionable years. When the lights turned off, her internal flip switched with it, and she fell off the grid. Until Fun Haus found her. The bright-eyed, Hollister-wearing, hologrammed bunchkin looked on at Its deranged modern self in horror as some spit—and a culturally concerning dialect—flew from her filler-inflamed lips. Derek Heelyed in circles around the two, laughing and razzing them up into a full-fledged cat fight. For the show’s meme-worthy climax, her tattoo-covered hands seamlessly flung the chair at her likeness in raw, unadulterated emotional fire and fury. But It was undeterred, easily recalibrating into Its eerie, pixelized, sentient parody of true human form. And then It smiled. Probably because It couldn’t be confined to a padded chair.

I cross and re-cross my legs, sweat building on my camera-facing cheek. No desert sun to blame, just pure nerves captured in HD. Though there’s enough setting spray to lock in a corpse, I worry I’ll melt and reveal my true decaying sheen for Derek’s millions of followers to meme.

“Your rise, fall, and resurrection has astounded the masses,” Derek continues, “myself included. It’s safe to say we’ve been patiently awaiting you.” He taps his fingers together. Smiles maniacally.

I wonder if this is how they’ll greet me at the gates of hell.

“Let’s try again,” Derek pushes on, gearing up for the question of the hour. “Spencer LeBranche . . . are you a little scared?”

The Fun Haus Crash Out: a keyed term for a celebrity’s PTSD after their episode. Many report sleepless nights. Memories blast relentlessly through their minds like a speaker spookily spewing a nostalgic song on repeat. Others note waking up from graphic nightmares, their feet joltingly tugged awake, dragged down into the abyss of their own past. Regressive behaviors resurface—tantrums, thumb sucking, American Idol rewatchings—being mistaken for an evil possession bent on destroying its host. Though I’d argue Catholics just enjoy the theater of it all.

“I’m not afraid to speak to It.”

“It? That’s a tad insensitive, don’tchya think?”

“Oh, I forgot these things have feelings.”

“Don’t we all?”

“Okay . . . well, I’m not afraid to speak to her, but—”

“With or to her, Spence?” He strokes an invisible beard.

“Spencer,” I correct.

And I’m not afraid. I’m fucking terrified.

“Spence versus Spencer . . . How meta! Damn, that woulda been a perfect title for this episode. I’ll yell at my intern later. Why the name change? You were Spence. That was your thang.”

Spencer is not my mom’s maiden name. I was born of the generation that thought giving girls distinctly masculine names would be fun. Quirky. Different. They’d raise a cool girl. Or a lesbian.

“Everyone deserves a rebrand,” I say straight to that fucking chair.

I’m interrupted by a record scratch—full volume—as I jump out of my skin and into the hands of my silent spectators.

It’s starting.

“Gimme a break!” I hear my teenage voice off-screen.

The guitar intro to “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne slowly sounds. A strange, icy shiver courses through my body, yet my cheeks burn into what I know to be a clownish flush. I believe this sensation is what the kids deem “cringe.”

“Uh huh . . .” Derek sings along.

Red blotches crawl down my neck now on his behalf.

“That’s the way it be, Spencey!”

And now I physically cringe.

“That bad?” He brushes off his shoulders, sweeping away my judgment—and some dandruff. “How we feeling, old pal?”

“Intrigued.” My eyes roll at this exploitative spectacle just as quickly as they dart around the room.

“Say more! Give the people what they came here for!”

Translation: Remember what we’re paying you for. Because dignity has a price, and I’ve spent most of my career ignoring the tags.

“Intrigued—” I wrack my brain for something remotely relevant to add. “—by the song choice! I forgot I was an Avril girl.”

“Some may say Avril was a Spence girl! The millennial emo chicken before the egg, and all that.”

“The what before the . . . ?”

“They get it.” He winks to the camera, pretending to humor his show’s laugh track.

Pink hologram skull-and-cross-bone emojis hover around the empty chair. My neatly manicured nails tap, tap, tap my armrest, awaiting the arrival of this strange presence. The skulls bop their heads to the increasingly loud beat, my tap turns into a grip . . . then it all stops.

“What a tease! Some things never change, huh?” Derek throws me a wink, giving everyone rumor fodder.

“You wish!” Spews that familiar omnipresent voice.

He jumps. “Wow, gets me every time. They truly have a mind of their own. Tech is tight, tech is tight. But not gonna lie . . . I kinda wish I got to party with Spence back in the day. She woulda been a time. Am I right?” He asks his fans again.

“That would’ve been dangerous. Don’tchya think?” I quickly counter.

I watch a millisecond of fear dance across his face as his slew of Title IX’s threaten to resurface in one hit. I could put him out. Right here. Live.

“A dangerous dynamic duo,” he corrects.

“Sure,” I too-clearly annunciate.

I wasn’t one of his victims. I didn’t sign the NDAs or take his rich parents’ payouts. Instead, I was a voyeur—arguably worse than an aggressor—soberly watching Derek’s ruses play out. And I said nothing. I’d hover near the drunken girl, as if I were roleplaying an out-of-body experience from my not-so distant-youth. I wasn’t there to be her savior; I just needed to watch a fall in real time.

Everyone else got to witness mine. And they were just as silent.

“Tell us then: when was the last time you got truly fucked up? What was it like?”

“I was on set.”

“Then six months later, an Oscar! The tortured artist at her peak.”

Instead of attending the Academy Awards, Spence had curmudgeonly navigated herself to an AA meeting. A girl—woman—rose to speak first. At only sixteen, Spence was a girl, too, but this person was woman enough to speak, shyly tugging her flannel sleeve, big doe eyes scoping the room. No makeup but suspiciously moisturized, with her ski-slope nose sitting aglow while recounting her alcoholic tale of woe. Oddly, Spence had felt like she was back in acting class, waiting for her turn as less seasoned peers heaved out quick, red-faced skits onstage like their next bowel movement depended on it. The timed pauses, hair musses, lip bites, scoffs . . . then she caught it: the theater twang. You know it when you hear it—the perfectly annunciated vowels, singsongy vibrato.

Spence had watched this young woman intently, eyes squinting under giant incognito Prada sunglasses. That theater twang. Spence had peered around the room with contained excitement—really? No one? This AA meeting was a solid combination of entertainment hotshots, nepo baby junkies, and homeless. They couldn’t have all slept through our recent golden age of indie cinema. Still, Spence sat there by her lonesome self, watching this fellow, beautiful mess croak out Anne Hathaway’s own Oscar-winning performance from Rachel Getting Married.

Spence wasn’t even mad. She had been impressed by the sheer audacity to get up there and fuck with a room full of addicts for sport. She could have called out this young woman, but the complete disregard for a space people find so sacred was so powerful in its absurdity, Spence felt like the Greek gods of theater would have struck her dead. That’s if they didn’t hit this woman first. But no one—including this determinedly complicit audience—wanted to be put out of this misery, Spence presumed. They all wanted to sit in it, hand the woman a drink, and restart the take. Spence had been glad she’d missed her Oscar speech, as she knew—sober as a de-plugged skunk—she would’ve been found out just the same.

Six months after I ODed, I won the most acclaimed acting award in the world. Twenty years later, I am subjecting myself to a viral “Fun Haus” of AI horrors. I was my best at my worst, the Perez Hilton4 internet bullies of America always pointed out. But post #MeToo movement, they became nicer. More forgiving. I knew such faux niceties wouldn’t last, though. They simply hibernated until the Derek Hauser’s poked them wide awake. Though I’d reached the top, I don’t think anyone ever quite understood my true descent.

Sitting here today, I realize I’m still falling.

“I believe that this tortured artist you speak of,” I say cooly, “will be proud to see me living my best life—”

“Ahh, come on! You can do better than that!” He swirls around, yelling into the void. “Spence, come back!”

“She’ll be proud to see me just—um—living, really. I should be fucking dead right now,” I say sweetly.

The fans love when I curse. I should twirl my hair. Chew pink bubblegum. With my real teeth, too, by the way. No veneers. Five rowdy years of drug and alcohol abuse . . . real teeth. Kids don’t brush anyway.

“So you’re doing this to feel alive?”

I wipe invisible debris off my high-quality, responsibly sourced, affordable crepe pleated pants from Quince’s Simmering Summer collection. Style: Wide-legged. Color: Sand. Recommended pairing with a Stretch Cotton Jersey Short Sleeve. Style: Body suit. Color: Ocean Blue.

“Derek, I’ve never felt more alive,” I turn to the camera, flashing my whitest smile, “and wearing Quince’s Simmering Summer collection, I’m—”

“—ready for my funeral!” Spence manifests, pressing her pixelated hands into my arm rest.

What’s the worst that I can say?! My Chemical Romance’s “Helena” screams full blast as we stare at each other nose-to-nose.

I know she’s trying to shock me with that piercing, raccoon, charcoaled glare. But her eyes are my eyes. And she flinches first.

Things are better if I stay / So long and goodnight!

We appraise each other’s past and present, the experience like a home video on crack—opiates, heroin, LSD, MDMA.

So long and goodnight!

The music abruptly cuts, leaving us in a shared shocked limbo.

“Boo,” I say.

I watch Spence peer across my face, still leaning into me as she traces the lines of her lost youth. She’s a starer. One of those people who could hold eye contact after getting caught at a red light. Some would attribute this to sociopathy, but you just get away with those things when you’re pretty. Her eyes told stories she didn’t quite understand; one day, she’d lose her soul when she did.

“Well, I tried to reverse your damage,” I desperately attempt to joke and keep my cool, finally empathizing with my starstruck fan girls.

“Clearly.” She stretches her face, poking fun at my botoxed brow bone. “You missed a spot.”

This human knockoff may be all-seeing, with every piece of my personal data—from diary entries to Barbara Walter5 interviews and drunken paparazzi standoffs—programmed into her like a virtual handbook on how to properly piss me off, but she is far from all-knowing. After all, I’m talking to a sixteen-year-old.

“Fair. My face could be a warning label on a cigarette box. Good work, kid.”

“Ding, ding, ding! Round one!” Derek chides.

“‘Spence versus Spencerrrr,’” Spence imitates his smarmy, forced baritone before teleporting to her respective chair. She smirks as she catches his second glance, her short denim skirt riding up past black, knee-high Converse. “So official. So professional.”

“Comfortable?” I say to her but glare at him.

“Funny you should ask . . .” Clever. “Very comfortable. As if I took a thirty-minute nap.”

I know where she’s going with this, and she needs to stop.

I instinctively sit up, about to tell the camera guy to “cut” the take, but I can’t. This is part of the deal, and I might as well have signed my name in blood.

Derek smiles at me, sniffing out my desperation like a goddamn shark in reddening water.

I feel myself drowning . . . drowning back to when—

Spence had told everyone she’d needed a thirty-minute nap. They all knew this was her routine, and she didn’t appreciate how her set call-time hadn’t been worked around it that day. This was her time, and their money wasted. She was their star, she reminded each crew member as she returned their nasty looks en route to her trailer.

She often heard fellow child actors whining about their set lives. Long hours, harsh demands, mind games, creepy coercions. The powerplay was directed toward her age. Having been plucked from trailer trash obscurity, she’d played the game, film to film, dazzling everyone with her natural talent, terrifying them with her survival instincts. Fat, pockmarked producers deemed her concerningly fearless—too on top of their film’s world, and the character she inhabited within it. They couldn’t fight against her demands. She was irreplaceable. Untouchable. A young, hot, rags-to-riches story shining like a Hollywood blood diamond. Each role promised to pull her further and further from herself, all fears and doubts pushed aside for later. All it took was thirty minutes.

“You good?” Spence snaps her fingers at me, reeling me back to the present.

“I don’t sleep much these days.”

“Really? Seems like you’ve had alotta time on your hands, LeBranche.” She rolls up her sleeves, track marks pocketing her pasty arms, before cracking every individual knuckle.

I flinch at the atrocious sound and trip out a little, wondering why this bothers me so much; technically, I’m the one doing it.

“You’re right. I haven’t done a film in quite a while. I’ve needed to ground myself. Reboot.”

“Everyone loves a good reboot these days,” Derek says.

“Do they though?” Spence scoffs. “I feel like they just wanna watch has-beens oink and squirm for crumbs of attention. Isn’t that why you started this gay show in the first place?”

“We don’t say that—” I quickly intercede.

“—anymore?” She smirks.

I put a hand to my temple, preparing for the viral heat headache about to pound my way later.

“Yeah, homophobia ain’t cool no mo,” Derek adds.

There’s that cringe again.

Spence throws up her hands in surrender to this tone-deaf defense. “Okay, Malibu’s Most Wanted.”

“So many digs in such a short time. How Letterman6 of you,” I say to her.

“Letterman? Fat chance. We were never invited!”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“Because he was scared of me, and doesn’t give a fuck about you.”

“You mooned Carson Daly7!” I defend myself . . . against myself.

“No doubt. Kept TRL8 on-air for an extra year.”

“The eye of the cultural storm, some would say.” Derek swerves into a Heely donut between us.

“Reality TV had to start somewhere.” Spence boredly plays with her chipped black nails, as if this fucking adolescent femme-bot punk has somewhere better to be.

“Always the trendsetter,” I try to jest with It—her. Whatever.

She faces the camera, back straight, hands on her lap. “Now, get fifteen percent off Quince’s Sweltering Summer collection—”

Derek hoots. “Classic!”

“—using coupon code: Derek-Cuckhauser1995.”

“Padded chair not included.” I smirk, glad he’s getting ganged up on now.

Her eyes light up like she’s recognized an old friend. “Wow! Is Shady back?”

I shake my head, dismissing her comment like a good, mature adult while internally reveling in the thrill of a bitchy teenage girl’s validation.

Derek interjects: “Oooh, I gotta get him on here. Good call, Spence, good call.”

“So you went to school with this clown?” She asks me, as the foresaid clown literally spins around in his Heelys to a circus tune. “He reminds me of someone we’ve worked with. Same—” she takes a beat for the right word, “buoyancy.”

“Buoyancy. Big word for a little girl!” He desperately deflects her comment. “I’ve been told I’ve got those movie star good looks—”

Spence emits an uncomfortably pornographic high-pitched laugh. Derek flinches, eyes shining before laughing along, startled by her jarring blurt. Maybe a little turned on. He was definitely bullied in high school.

Spence slam-dunks: “He’s a registered sex offender now.”

Derek breaks short at the edge of the stage, his arms and legs flailing in midair like a cartoon as he slams onto the set floor. He normally dominates the conversation, refereeing these public flagellations of a celebrity’s inner child like he’s working out his own. Today, he slipped on Heelys and fell on his ass. No one said healing is easy.

While Spence and I politely hold our composure, both aware our silence will hit the proper comedic mark for our invisible audience, I clock muffled laughter offstage. Perhaps the laugh track ghosts . . . but most definitely a few crew members. Success.

“Wanna let the big girls talk now?” Spence cuffs her hand like a megaphone as if he’s yards away.

“Ding, ding,” I say.

“Awww,” Derek’s head pops over the stage, “it’s cute to see you two getting along.”

“I know how to play nice,” I say.

“And how far has that gotten us?” Spence cocks her head.

I look on at her and take a moment before I respond. This is a conversational tactic to retain control. Or so my hair dresser says.

“It’s gotten us past the 27 Club,” I say.

“Such a shame.”

“To have survived a drug overdose?”

“Hell yeah. We coulda stopped there and joined the greats. Maybe our method acting would’ve been poked and prodded by film nerds at that stupid art school you guys went to.”

“I’ll have you know, I actually happen to like who I—” But I stop and realize something. This isn’t coming from her; this is a memory.

“Well, sobriety looks lame on you. Paid appearances, cheesy sponsorships . . . you’re not even an actress anymore. You’re a fucking brand.”

“I like who I’ve become,” I finish, “because if you were left to your own devices—”

“We’d be a legend. Boohoo. Well, I can’t die, and thanks to me, I’m the only thing left that’s interesting about you. Maybe you should shoot up and try your luck out there again. Boy, do we all know you can’t pull it off cold turkey!”

I remain as still as my corpse of a career. She was the best at her worst, an old headline reads, scrolling around my brain, like a repetitive news Chyron loop. It has served as a reminder to play life safe within my sobriety and accept talent mediocrity. While I’ve never stepped foot on a film set again, I’ve made peace separating what life and talent means with the help of a modern tool: social media. I sport free dresses made of recycled fabric, cheekbones bare and dewy. I thank my Higher Power every day that I am pretty.

But Spence knows I’m kidding myself. She knows what’s holding me back from throwing a chair. It’s not my dignity; it’s my fear. What will they think when they finally see me?

Time to pull back the curtain and find out.

“Wanna know the irony?” I say.

Spence laughs, humored by my contained rage. “Yeah, kinda.”

“You didn’t get that Oscar because you’re talented.” I blackout where I am, and the thousands—perhaps millions—of eyes on me right now.

“Gee, thanks.”

“You played yourself, you white-trash, angsty, try-hard, doped-up ‘little shit!’” I hold air quotes. “Sound familiar?”

I can see I’m getting to her now, a gleam flashing across her eyes before her next comeback.

“And everyone loved me for it—still loves me for it! Except for you.” Spence skulks toward me now, holding terrifying eye contact. “All we needed was thirty minutes. Remember?”

“Just gimme thirty minutes!” Spence had screamed at the director as he pounded on her trailer door.

“Listen here, LeBranche,” he’d revved up. “Everyone else might put up with you, you little shit.”

She flinches at his cold ferocity.

“But me? I refuse!”

Something about a grown man calling you a “little shit” and scolding you by your last name. She stood a little straighter, taller, feeling like she needed to complete ten pushups. Maybe run a lap around a field.

“Get your ass out here immediately, if not sooner!”

“Thirty minutes!” She begged.

“You think I can’t find another you? I’ve got Spence LeBranches lined up at every acting class. Every open-call audition. You may be the OG, but carbon copies get the job done all the same, kid.”

She was pretty sure he’d just called her a gangster, but that lingo wasn’t universally known outside of the rap community quite yet, so she hadn’t wanted to ask.

“If I can’t find her? Fuck it. I’ll scrap this whole film and take the fall if it means I never have to see you again. I’m that fucking petty.”

And a generationally wealthy nepo baby, which made this situation a bit scarier.

“They say the perfect potion exists for a great film,” he lamented, “with just the right starlet to bring the real magic forward—to skyrocket it into relevancy. Worldwide fame and acclaim. But with what you’ve given me today? It’s proving how much you need this role, and how much this role doesn’t need you.”

These words had sliced through her, fully separating the ego she portrayed and the deep-seated terror dormant within.

“Ten minutes. Gimme ten minutes,” Spence had said shakily as she dumped a paraphernalia-filled first aid kit across the couch.

“I’ll give you five. And while we’re here—”

But his continued jabs had become incoherent jumbles of sound, weaving their way through space and time to an alternate universe where Spence did not have her shit together. The problem was that she felt herself unraveling earlier than usual that day, she’d thought to herself as she tied a hot-pink elastic band around her arm. This role was too real. It would destroy her if she didn’t give it what it wanted—what it needed.

“I know what you do in there, LeBranche. During your little nap times. No one knows yet, but I do!”

Spence heard him slump against the door. She got up and leaned against it, too, so they were seated back to back.

“I guess I should care. Maybe tell on you or something.”

Spence had begun to sweat as she shot up. She’d thought about everyone’s eyes on her on set, zooming in on her performance each take, like a hidden camera in a hotel room. Whether she’d hit the mark or not, it was as if they’d all been watching her navigate her private truth.

“But I won’t. I want this role to wreck you, Spence. You’ll be one of those 27 Clubbers. Pull through this charade of fame, right until it catches up to you. Just like the best of ’em. Isn’t that what you’ve wanted this whole time? Isn’t that why you’re here?”

Spence had woozily stood, catching her reflection in the trailer’s mirror.

“But you won’t die,” the director had continued, voice softening. “You’ll live forever within this silly little spectacle we’ve created together, kid. And we’ll both be eternal.”

She’d nodded in the mirror. Not to herself, but to this moment. She felt it begin to pass, as they all inevitably would.

Spence and I stand before each other now. Our heights match, but somehow I feel smaller, my posture shrinking before millions of eyes beyond the identical pair staring straight through me. They both impatiently await a breaking point in this escalating faceoff. And it’s working, as I feel myself pulled back to that harrowing day on set. I’m fully in it and I can’t escape myself. The version I just narrowly escaped, and the one I’ve become. Both ruled by fear.

“You act like you don’t care what people think,” I say shakily, fighting this trepidation with all I’m worth. “But you do. More than anyone. So much so, that you tried to die just to mean something to them all.”

“Shiiiiiit,” Derek says, as though I’ve spilled my own beans across the world. Which I have. But that’s a later problem.

“Shut the fuck up, Derek,” Spence and I say in unison.

Spence averts eye contact and begins to pace, her biting words not matching her now shrinking posture. I stand taller.

“There’s more to life than a moment, Spence.”

“Marriage, babies . . . liposuction? Hard pass.” She broods.

“I mean, same.”

We look to each other as if we’re waiting for the next chirp to fall within our toxic banter . . . then laugh.

“And this performance you’re giving us all,” I gesture to the void, “I hate to tell you but it’s subpar this time.”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs because she really doesn’t, her voice softening as all fight flies from her beautiful, sad eyes. “I’m just a kid.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I wanted to meet you again.”

“No one wants to meet us again. Must be a fat paycheck.”

Then why am I smiling at this young, hot mess before me?

“It should pay the bills.”

“I understand.”

“No. You shouldn’t. You’re just a kid.”