Chapter 4

4

Whenever people asked Lilah why she’d started acting, she had a few standard responses.

Because her childhood asthma had prevented her from playing sports.

Because she’d seen a community theater production of Annie when she was seven that had left an indelible impression on her.

Because her grandmother had been an actress, too—just a bit player, retired by twenty-five, but one of the last signed to Paramount before the dissolution of the studio system.

None of them were lies, exactly, but the real answer was both simpler and far more complicated: because of her anxiety.

She couldn’t remember a time before it. She’d been born into chaos, the product of a union of two profoundly incompatible parents who’d divorced when she was eleven—twelve years too late, she’d thought even back then. She’d never been able to figure out what they’d seen in each other in the first place, other than the fact that they were both Jewish and ready to settle down (or ready to settle, more likely).

Her mother was extroverted and impulsive, a supernova of charisma who could talk her way into or out of anything, with a mean streak a mile wide and a constantly expanding list of grudges with no expiration date. The polar opposite of her father, whose stoic, detached façade concealed a mountain of neuroses they were all constantly at the mercy of. It wasn’t until Lilah was older that she understood how being born male and conventionally handsome in a different era had enabled him to avoid getting the help he’d needed, that his rituals of checking every plug and lock and light switch before they left the house and circling the block in the car three times before they came home couldn’t be written off as standard fatherly quirks.

Though Lilah loved them fiercely, she sometimes felt like she’d inherited the worst of each of them. Both nature and nurture had conspired against her: she didn’t know whether she should blame her temperament on the two mismatched halves at war inside her, or whether she’d just soaked up the household’s dysfunction like a carton of baking soda in the fridge. Her younger sister had her own share of issues, but as the oldest—the first undercooked, misshapen pancake on the griddle—Lilah had borne the brunt of it.

She’d been bullied a fair amount in school, too, though she obviously downplayed it in interviews. She knew everyone rolled their eyes at now-gorgeous and glamorous actresses who complained that they were ostracized while growing up for being too skinny with disproportionately huge tits or whatever. And while that had never been her particular cross to bear, the physical features she’d resented for preventing her from blending in at the time (sprouting to her full adult height of five-eleven by the end of sixth grade, on top of her Technicolor hair) were things she’d come to appreciate as an adult. Even so, traces of that miserable, gawky, awkward kid still lurked in the rafters of her self-perception, like a brace-faced Phantom of the Opera.

Things had come to a head when her parents had announced the divorce, the turmoil at home reaching its peak at the same time the bullying did, the group of friends she’d had since kindergarten dropping her without explanation practically overnight. She dreaded getting up for school in the morning, and she dreaded coming home in the afternoon.

After she’d cried herself sick the night before she had to give a presentation in front of one of her classes, her mother, at the suggestion of Lilah’s school counselor, had forced her into after-school acting classes. Lilah had expected it to be a nightmare, her mind racing and stomach in knots in the car on the way there. Instead, it had changed the course of her life.

It was sort of ironic, the way that slipping into someone else’s skin had allowed her to discover herself. Having the road map of a script in front of her, secure in the knowledge of exactly what she was supposed to do and how everything would unfold, gave her the freedom to let go, to exist purely in the moment. It got her out of the house, away from the offstage drama of her family. And she finally had some control over when and why people were looking at her.

As she’d made new friends in the drama department and snagged the lead in play after play, her offstage confidence had grown, too. By the time she’d graduated from high school, she was pretty much done giving a fuck what anyone else thought of her.

Her therapist at the time had introduced her to a concept called “the spotlight effect”: the idea that you think people are paying much more attention to you than they actually are. Assuming that a friend didn’t respond to a text because they hated you, that a group that burst out laughing as you walked away was making fun of you. But the truth was, most people were focused on themselves, wondering what everyone else thought of them. The idea had liberated her.

Until she’d gone and fucked it all up by becoming famous.

Once Intangible had taken off, the odds were pretty good that the whispers were about her. That she wasn’t imagining the furtive stares. That complete strangers were concocting conspiracy theories about her personal life, sneaking pictures while she was out and about, spreading stories about what a stuck-up bitch she was whenever she didn’t feel like making conversation. But after a few years—and plenty more therapy—she’d learned to adapt, to the point where it almost felt normal. Staying off social media helped; her management team ran her official accounts. She didn’t even have the passwords.

There were still some things that triggered her—talk show appearances were always accompanied by sweating hands, a racing heart, and zero memory of anything she’d said. And occasionally someone would catch her off guard when asking for a picture or autograph, and her small-talk skills would completely desert her, leaving her an awkward, stammering wreck.

But it could’ve been worse. Though Intangible had been everywhere for the first few seasons, at the end of the day, she was just TV famous. Which meant that, more often than not, when a stranger approached her, they were calling her Kate. She clung to the thin layer of protection that provided her. It was “Kate” they wanted a piece of, and “Lilah” was still allowed to belong mostly to her.

…

The only thing that sustained Lilah during that first torturous week back on set was the promise of her plans on her day off: trekking out to Calabasas for brunch at her friend Pilar’s house.

Before Intangible, Lilah’s only major credit had been H.A.G.S., a teen dramedy she’d shot between her first and second years at Juilliard about four estranged childhood best friends—now in different high school cliques—who rekindle their bond while working as counselors at the same sleepaway camp the summer before their senior year. Lilah had played The Alternative One, complete with magnetic nose ring and taped-in purple streaks in her hair.

The movie had been made on a shoestring but became a quiet hit, building enough momentum as a perennial sleepover favorite to spawn two sequels (the overzealously punctuated H.A.G.S. 2: L.Y.L.A.S. and H.A.G.S. 3: B.F.F.L.). But, more important, the casting director had gone above and beyond when selecting the four of them: they’d begun the monthlong summer shoot as strangers, and left as lifelong friends.

More than ten years later, their group chat (obviously called “The Hags”) was as active as ever; but while they still regularly saw each other in combinations of two or sometimes three, getting all four of their schedules to align was a rarity.

Their lives had, inevitably, spun off in different directions over the past decade. Yvonne (The Smart One), a multi-hyphenate graduate of the Disney child star machine, had shifted her focus to her music career with wild success, her marriage to a superstar hip-hop artist cementing her A-list status as half of the reigning First Couple of Music. Pilar (The Hot One) still took the occasional acting or spokesmodel gig but had mostly pivoted to full-time mommy influencer, showering her millions of followers with aspirational lifestyle content about her, her gorgeous wife, and their two equally gorgeous children. And Annie (The Athletic One) had quit the industry for good shortly after they shot the third movie and was currently preparing to enter her final year of law school, on track to become a public defender.

When Lilah let herself into Pilar’s airy, farmhouse-minimalist kitchen, Yvonne was already there, leaning against the marble kitchen island, watching as Pilar finished assembling an exorbitant, multitiered fruit plate. Pilar’s six-year-old-twins, Luz and Paz, were nowhere to be seen, which meant they were probably off with their nanny somewhere. Both women exclaimed in delight as soon as they noticed Lilah, who dropped her bag and immediately wrapped Yvonne in her arms.

Every time Lilah was reunited with her friends, she was struck by the competing sensations of them looking exactly as she’d always known them and completely different at the same time, her mind automatically filling in the gaps between the unruly teenagers they’d been and the poised thirtysomethings they’d become.

Today, Yvonne wore a flowing dress in a color that would’ve been impossible for anyone else to pull off, a bright mustard yellow that made her skin glow. Her hair was wrapped in a colorful silk scarf, and as Lilah pulled away, she paused to coo over the delicate new tattoos twining between the slender gold rings on her fingers.

She moved around the island to hug Pilar next, who was swathed in clouds of floaty white linen, the dark roots of her hair fading immaculately into a loose, honey-blond bun.

Lilah shook her head. “I have that nude shoot tomorrow, I should probably skip the bubbles. God forbid I bloat.” She delivered the last part with a self-deprecating eye roll.

Pilar laughed, sticking her head in the fridge.

Annie arrived just then, looking a thousand times calmer and better rested than the last time Lilah had seen her. The dark circles had disappeared from under her eyes, the locked-in-the-library pallor gone from her complexion. She was even dressed in color, surprisingly—a pale blue sundress—with her light-brown hair, usually pulled out of her face, falling loose and curly down her back.

Annie refused Pilar’s offer to make her coffee, instead buzzing around the kitchen to make it herself, complaining good-naturedly that Pilar had rearranged everything since the last time they were all there.

Yvonne reached over the counter to pluck a cube of mango from the fruit plate before turning to Lilah. “You’re doing a nude shoot tomorrow? For what? The show?”

Lilah sighed. “Me and Shane.”

Yvonne’s nose crinkled. “Did you try to get out of it?”

Lilah shook her head. “Everyone already thinks I’m difficult. And it’ll be good exposure.”

Lilah didn’t have many reservations about nudity. Her body was her tool, and she wasn’t shy about stripping down for work when it was required. It wasn’t the getting naked part that bothered her—it was the getting naked with Shane part.

Annie blew on her coffee. “That sounds like porn. Are you sure you’re not just doing porn?” she deadpanned.

Yvonne’s eyes widened. “Oh, I love Dario. He’s shooting my next album cover. He’s gonna take such good care of you. I bet those pictures will be hot.”

Lilah felt a flash of anticipation shimmer over her, which she quickly pushed away.

Yvonne filled her in as Pilar put the finishing touches on the fruit plate, standing on top of a stool to get the perfect overhead shot. Lilah felt her social battery recharging as they fell into the rhythm of their familiar chatter, the four of them weaving in and out of various side conversations without missing a beat.

It was sometimes surprising to Lilah that they were still in touch at all, let alone as close as they were. Most of her other friendships in the industry felt shallow and transactional, people whose cheeks she kissed at parties but whom she never saw in daylight, whose small talk felt like a calculated investment they were making in her that they would eventually try to cash out in the form of a favor.

But the four of them had been thrown together at exactly the right time, in exactly the right situation. They’d rubbed calamine lotion on one another’s bug bites, held one another’s hair back after drinking too much cheap beer, and passed out on one another’s shoulders after long, sun-sick days of shooting. Every time they reunited, Lilah would be filled with nervous anticipation that they’d finally grown too far apart to have anything to talk about, but within minutes, she’d be wheezing with laughter at some wordless inside joke that she’d forgotten until that exact moment. They spoke the secret language of old friends, that unconditional love and acceptance that could only come from years of shared history.

It made her even more bitter about the situation with Shane. The fact that she had to fight so hard to find time for the people she loved, while someone she hated was allowed to monopolize such a large chunk of it. Even after she’d done everything she could to diverge her path from his, fate—and the whims of the UBS executives and the viewing public—had shoved them right back together again.

Lilah groaned, flopping her head dramatically onto the table. The others laughed.

Lilah lifted her head and settled back against her chair. “It’s everything. All the new cast members hate my guts, too.” She turned to Yvonne. “How do you manage working with Adam all the time? Do things ever get weird?” Yvonne’s ex-boyfriend still produced all her albums.

Yvonne shrugged. “Not really. Well, not anymore. But we never had the kind of drama you two do.”

Lilah felt a stab of guilt as she shook her head. “We’ve been pretty much ignoring each other since we started shooting. And when we do talk, it’s…not good.”

Pilar raised her eyebrows. “Do you think…is it, like, sexual tension, or…?”

Annie picked up her phone and started scrolling as if to find something. “So you’re saying you didn’t write this BuzzFeed list, ‘Eighteen Times Shane McCarthy’s Smile Literally Put You into Cardiac Arrest and Sent You to an Early Grave’?”

Lilah reached over to grab playfully at Annie’s phone. “Shut up. It does not say that.”

Annie giggled, holding it up out of reach. “It’s on the front page and everything.”

Lilah sighed. “Or it would just make everything worse.” She rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward, cradling her head in her hands. “I know we should try to move on. I don’t know why we can’t. It’s like…every time I look at him, it makes me feel like the same dumbass twenty-two-year-old I was when we met. Everything that happened…everything I did. It’s humiliating. And the worst part is I know he’s thinking about it, too. I can’t let it go.”

Yvonne reached over and rubbed her back. “It’s not humiliating. Or, I mean, it’s okay if it is. Try to have some compassion for twenty-two-year-old Lilah. Remember, you’re in a group of people who love her. You’re not allowed to talk shit about her.”

Lilah smiled, her eyes growing misty. “Thanks. Sorry I’m such a downer today. I should know better than to come to brunch when I’m not allowed to eat anything.”

The others laughed. “Better whiny, dramatic, low-blood-sugar Lilah than none at all,” Annie said. Yvonne and Pilar raised their glasses in agreement. Lilah buried her face in her hands.

The other three rose out of their chairs as one, crowding in on every side to wrap her in their arms where she sat, in an awkward—but somehow still gratifying—group hug. If she’d been slightly less frazzled, she would’ve joked about the resemblance to one of the more saccharine scenes in H.A.G.S., but instead, she shut up and let herself appreciate it.

She took a long, deep breath, as if the affection that surrounded her right now could be stored inside her long-term, doled out in regular doses to fortify her during the long, lonely, hostile days ahead.

Yvonne released her and reached across the table for her phone. “Let’s get a picture of us all together before we forget. I bet that’ll bump Shane’s stupid face right off the front page.”