The call came as Scarlett was walking home through Central Park after school a few days later. The number was unknown, which caused her heart to palpitate. But it was Chelsea, and she did not sound like herself. Her voice was bumpy and broken.
“Sorry to bug you,” she said. “It’s just, I called Amy and she wasn’t answering, and my mom is out, and I didn’t know who to call and … ”
And then she burst into tears. Chelsea’s projection, even when weeping, was a little too good, and Scarlett had to hold the phone away from her ear. It sounded like she had gotten a call from a tropical storm.
“Are you … ?” Obviously, Chelsea wasn’t okay. That was a stupid question to be asking.
“The show,” Chelsea managed. “It’s closing. We just found out. I’m going to tell Amy in a minute … but my mom is out and … and I just had to call someone … and … I was wondering … if you could maybe … come over?”
There was no point in Scarlett wondering why she had gotten this call — there was no one else. You can’t say no in situations like that.
“I’ll be right there,” she said.
Chelsea was waiting by the door when Scarlett arrived. The living room was even more of a mess than before. There were shoes and clothes all around, covering the sofa and coffee table.
“Sorry,” Chelsea said. “Come into my room.”
Chelsea’s bedroom was probably the biggest in the apartment, but it was just large enough to hold a twin bed, a dresser, and a small elliptical machine. Given the limited space and the fact that Chelsea went to the gym all the time and danced six days a week, the machine seemed like overkill. But that was a stupid point to make. Of course there was an elliptical machine.
Scarlett had expected Chelsea’s room to be absolutely pristine and neat, set up entirely for efficiency. This was only partially the case. Her exercise and dance shoes were lined up neatly, her bed was made up snugly with a buttery-colored bedspread and accent pillows. But the walls were totally covered with taped up bits of paper. One entire wall was covered end to end at eye-level height with lists, lists written in silver or blue marker on colored pieces of paper, cataloging songs to learn, things to do, names of people, movies, books … The other walls were mostly covered with pictures from magazines of actors, old Playbill covers, show advertisements, and quotes.
One card was prominently displayed right above Chelsea’s bed, as if it was designed to communicate its message to her as she slept. It read: “ACTORS WORK AND SLAVE AND IT IS THE COLOR OF YOUR HAIR THAT CAN DETERMINE YOUR FATE IN THE END.” — HELEN HAYES.
Chelsea sat on her floor, squashed between her row of dance and workout shoes and her nightstand. She reached up and turned on her little bedside lamp. It was so light and chintzy that it almost toppled from the pressure of a single finger.
“My mom is out looking at houses in Brooklyn and I didn’t want to tell her over the phone,” she said. “We won’t even need the apartment now. We probably won’t even be staying.”
She looked like she was going to start crying again, but was trying hard to stop herself — squinting her eyes, balling her fists, rubbing her cheeks with her fingertips. Chelsea was sincere, Scarlett was sure, but there was something very precise and theatrical about her actions. Scarlett reached her hand down and put it on Chelsea’s shoulder. The outside-Scarlett was all sympathy. Meanwhile, the evil, inside-Scarlett was filled with a strange delight. Something had gone wrong for Chelsea. All the striving to be perfect, all the training, the star-material mind-set … none of it helped her now. Now Chelsea was almost down on Scarlett’s level.
Scarlett was sort of appalled that this was the way she thought. Chelsea had never done anything to her. And now she was curled up on the floor, sitting on her own shoes, asking Scarlett for help. Scarlett doubled her shoulder-patting efforts, but could think of nothing to say.
“Know what I really want?” Chelsea asked, sniffing. “A milk shake.”
This was good. This was nice and concrete. Scarlett knew where to get milk shakes.
“So let’s get a milk shake,” Scarlett said.
“I can’t get a milk shake.”
“Yes you can. You just go to a place that sells milk shakes, and you ask for one, and you give them some money.”
Chelsea gave her a look that said, “If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it.”
“Any flavor you want,” Scarlett said, pulling on Chelsea’s arms to get her on her feet. “The best milk shakes in town are just a few blocks from here. Shake Shack. It’ll take us fifteen minutes to walk there. Come on.”
Chelsea resisted the pulling. She was stronger than Scarlett, her powerful legs locked into place, and her toned arms resisted.
“I haven’t had a milk shake since … ” She considered for a moment. “I don’t know. Since I was ten?”
“You are way overdue,” Scarlett said, pulling harder. “At least walk over there. See for yourself the creamy goodness. If you ever deserved one, it’s today.”
On the word deserved, Chelsea perked up.
“I guess … I guess I do deserve it. Right? I work hard. It’s not my fault the show closed, right? It’s not all my fault.”
Scarlett took advantage of the break in resistance to get Chelsea moving. Once up, Chelsea moved quickly, allowing Scarlett to guide her down the street. The Shake Shack was in Madison Square Park, a tiny plot of grass in the middle of a busy restaurant-and-shopping district.
“You order,” Chelsea said, pressing the money into Scarlett’s hand. “I can’t do it.”
“What flavor?”
“I don’t know.” Chelsea wrung her hands and looked away. “You pick.”
Scarlett ordered two large black and whites. They were her favorite.
“That cheeseburger looks good,” Chelsea said, watching someone go by with a brimming cardboard tray of burgers and fries.
“And a cheeseburger,” Scarlett added, without waiting to consult Chelsea. “And fries.”
They sat down on a bench in the park with their box of food. Chelsea looked at it fearfully for a moment, then took one of the shakes.
“It’s so heavy,” she said, examining the cup. “I don’t remember them weighing this much.”
Scarlett decided not to explain that these shakes were made from a thick custardy base. That was something Chelsea did not need to hear.
Chelsea poked in a straw and hesitated before putting her lips on it, easing herself down slowly, until she worked up the courage to take the first sip. It took a major effort to get these shakes up the straw. Her cheeks sank in and she had to draw a second breath to get there, but once she did, her eyes registered surprise.
“It’s good, right?” Scarlett said.
The experience of so much fat and sugar rendered Chelsea speechless. She nodded and continued to drink away like a champion, vacuuming up half the milk shake faster than anyone Scarlett had ever seen. Chelsea had been hungry for a long time.
“It closes in a couple weeks, maybe sooner,” she said, when she paused for breath. “They’re still figuring out the dates.”
She churned the straw a few times through the hole in the top of the cup, making a loud straw-squawk. Then she pulled the lid off and drew out some shake on the straw, watching it drip thickly back into the cup. The viscosity of the drink fascinated her. Scarlett offered her the box with the cheeseburger and the fries. Chelsea tentatively took one of the latter.
“Dip the fry in the milk shake,” Scarlett advised.
“Are you serious?”
Scarlett guided the fry hand to Chelsea’s shake to dip. Chelsea laughed, and nervously took a bite.
“Why is that so good?” she asked.
“Because it is made of … ”
Scarlett stopped before she said the word fat. Delicious, life-sustaining fat.
“ … all natural ingredients. Organic. All made fresh.”
Chelsea was already dipping a second fry.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do without the show,” she said. “It’s only been three weeks, but I feel like my whole life was shaped around it.”
Scarlett knew that feeling, and she hadn’t even been in the show.
“Yeah, but … ” She took a fry for herself. “ … you can do other stuff. You have school, and you can audition.”
“My show pays for most of that apartment,” Chelsea said.
Scarlett had no idea what to say to that. She had never been responsible for the rent. She let Chelsea eat — and Chelsea was eating. She cleared out the fries, got the cheeseburger down, and polished off her shake.
“You know what I would like?” Chelsea said, poking around at the bottom of her cup, trying to get whatever was left at the bottom. “I’d like to go on a date. I’ve never been on one. I don’t get to meet a lot of people, except through work. And I don’t have any time. Do you have a boyfriend?”
The question was so out of the blue that Scarlett coughed on her shake.
“I … no. Not a … no. Not … no.”
“But you’ve at least been on a date,” Chelsea said with certainty.
Had she ever been on a real date? No, come to think of it. Not a planned one. She’d had … encounters. That was the word she would assign to whatever the hell it was that she had ever done. Encounters with Josh. Encounters with Eric. Weird, unformed, exciting, anxiety-causing encounters in dusty places, and in small rooms, and in front of televisions. Never scheduled. Never defined. Maybe they were dates. Who could define a date?
“Sure,” Scarlett said.
“God,” Chelsea said, hanging her head a bit. “I’m so pathetic.”
“But … ” Scarlett couldn’t just smack Chelsea when she was down. “ … they kind of sucked.”
“They did?”
“They make you crazy.”
Chelsea smiled a little. She ate another fry and drained the rest of the milk shake.
“My mom’s going to know I ate this,” she said, staring mournfully at the empty cup and paper burger container.
“How?”
“She’ll just know,” Chelsea said. “I’ll come home with no job, and fat.”
She threw the remainder of the fries in the trash without asking Scarlett if she wanted them.
The entire walk back, Chelsea clutched at her stomach, mumbling things about how heavy and ill she felt, and how maybe she could get right to the gym and get her metabolism going.
Back at the Biggses, Max was home. He had the television at an extremely loud volume, all the while keeping his earbuds in. There was no way he could be listening to both. It must have been auditory nonsense. On seeing them, he yanked on the cord at his neck and plucked out the earbuds, looking extremely disturbed, almost guilty.
“You’ll be thrilled,” Chelsea said. “The show is closing.”
Max cocked his head to the side and examined Chelsea’s face. Her tears had long dried, but her eyes were still watery, her expression set on “distraught.”
“So there is a God,” he said.
“I hate you,” Chelsea mumbled, flouncing into her room. Scarlett heard her banging around in there. She stayed in the living room and faced Max, silently challenging him. It didn’t matter that she didn’t like Chelsea very much, or that she, too, was delighted to hear the news … there are some things you don’t do. Like kick your sister when she’s down. Max stared right back at her.
“When’s it done?” he called to Chelsea casually, like he was asking what time they were eating dinner.
“Shut up and die,” Chelsea responded.
Max smiled at Scarlett, as if to say, “See?”
Chelsea reemerged with her bag.
“I have to go to the theater. Here, Scarlett.” She placed a small bundle of theater tickets, bound together with rubber bands, into Scarlett’s hand. “These are stubs, for comp tickets. If you know anyone who wants to go to the show for free, just give them one of these and have them call the number on the front and give them my name. I won’t need these anymore, and we have lots of empty seats to fill.”
Chelsea started to walk to the door, but Scarlett stayed where she was.
“I have to ask Max something about Bio,” she said.
“Oh … okay. Well. Thanks for coming. Thanks for not leaving me alone.”
Max waved her good-bye, and she slammed the door.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Scarlett asked.
“Did you stay here to lecture me? Because that’s not going to work.”
“It doesn’t matter that the show sucks,” Scarlett said. “She’s your sister.”
“She’ll be fine. It’s not like something actually bad happened.”
“It’s bad to her,” Scarlett snapped. “She’s upset.”
“Notice how she has no actual friends to call when something happens? She has to call you, and you don’t even like her.”
This was kind of a good point, which made it all the more infuriating for him to say. But she tried at least.
“You have no actual friends,” Scarlett said. “What’s your excuse?”
“I’m picky. And you’re just pretending to care about this. What’s worse? Not caring, or faking?”
Also, annoyingly, a fair question.
Scarlett brought herself to really look at Max. If his personality could be removed and replaced, he would be attractive. Not like Eric, who was attractive in every conventional sense — but striking. Hard-looking.
“Do you know why she has no actual friends?” he went on. “You think that show has done anyone any good? It’s closing. Let’s have a party. Maybe we can go home.”
“Go home?”
“Nobody asked me if I wanted to move here,” he said. “I’m not here by choice.”
“You had to take a test to get into Perkins,” she said. “It’s hard. They don’t take many people, especially in sophomore year. There are only about ten spaces. So you had to make some kind of effort to be here.”
On that, Max seemed to shut down. He turned back to the television.
“This is a really boring discussion,” Max replied. “You should go. I only get to watch porn when the place is empty.”
Lola’s little rolling suitcase was open on the floor of the Orchid Suite when Scarlett got home, and there was a brand-new red dress draped on her blue bedspread. Lola was leaning on her bureau and having a low conversation on the phone that could only have been with Chip. She had just returned from the trip to Boston, to Chip’s dance.
“New dress,” Scarlett said when she hung up.
“Oh.” Lola put her hands on her hips and looked at it, as if admiring a moose she had shot, stuffed, and mounted herself. “It’s from Chip. Kind of a little gesture to replace the old dress.”
“And the dance?”
“Oh, I sort of skipped the dancing part. Spencer showed me one, but I think I could only do it because he knows how to lead. Chip doesn’t really dance, either.”
Scarlett set herself up on her bed and dumped out the contents of her bag, piling her textbooks to one side, sorting through the detritus of notes and scribblings of the day. Lola watched her, almost sadly.
“You look like you want to do my homework,” Scarlett said, offering her a dog-eared school library copy of The Scarlet Letter.
“That’s okay,” Lola said. “I think you’ll do a better job. English was never really my thing. I don’t think any subject was really my thing.”
Scarlett stuck her pen in her mouth in preparation for doing triage. She would do the Trig first, get that out of the way. The French was long — two pages to write. She was supposed to have gone to the Met to look at twelve paintings and take notes on them, but she hadn’t done that yet. Bio was one very long chapter to read, with questions to answer to hand in.
Lola drifted around the room all the while, putting her dirty clothes in the clothes hamper, examining the drawer she had broken the other week.
“Boston is really pretty,” she said. “I went to Harvard to see Carly. You remember my friend Carly? And my freshman-year boyfriend, Dev, he goes to MIT now. And Darcy goes to Wellesley, so I got to see her. I saw a lot of people. I just kept running into people I knew. It seems like everyone is in Boston. I always wanted to go to school in Massachusetts. That’s where I always saw myself ending up. It looks just like I pictured it — lots of brick buildings and trees, and people wearing cute little sweaters and scarves and meeting in coffee places … ”
“So why don’t you go?” Scarlett asked. “It’s fall. This is when you apply.”
“I know,” she said. “It just felt weird, being up there. Being the only one who didn’t do it. You know, apply. Get in. Go away. I felt like there was something wrong with me. And all the stuff they were studying … I don’t know. School always came easy to you. Not to me.”
Scarlett looked up from the mess of books and notes on her bed to see if Lola was actually pointing and laughing as she said this. She was not. She appeared to be completely serious.
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s true,” Lola said. “I had to work to get through school. Really hard. I put in more hours than anyone. I still got B’s and C’s. I got two D’s in math. I’ve seen you. You read through stuff once, and you get it. When you sit there doing math, you actually solve the problems. I would just sit there and stare until my eyes went dry. I’d get them wrong. Every paper I wrote for English, I’d break my back trying to make it good and every time they’d say I just summarized the story. Sometimes not even correctly. That Hamlet stuff this summer? I saw the play, what, twenty times? I still don’t understand it. You helped work on it. Spencer was in it … it was no trouble for him. I can speak well and dress myself, but I’m not really good at anything. I was good at selling makeup. That’s it.”
This wasn’t like Lola at all. Lola was quiet and confident and secure, and she did things well. In Scarlett’s memory, Lola always got good grades, probably straight A’s. She’d never seen Lola’s report card, but Lola always did the work. She always studied for hours on end. And her parents never seemed upset.
“You were visiting really hard schools,” Scarlett said. “Harvard, and MIT, and … wherever Chip goes. It just looks intimidating. You should start looking at some places you want to go to. Get the applications.”
Lola shook her head and smiled, dismissing everything she had just said. “All I mean is,” she said, “when it’s your turn to go to college, I don’t think you should wait. You shouldn’t be like me. Well, you’re already not like me.”
“You’re going to apply somewhere, right?”
“We’ll figure that out later,” Lola said. “Spencer’s going to be on Tinsel Talk at seven thirty.”