Two months passed before we left Charleston. I spent that time as a freshman at Ashley Hall, where the girl who had made my life in middle school a daily hell now wanted to “do lunch” and “get together” after seeing me on TV. Yeah, as if. I realized all those moments of catty girlish nonsense in school that I had seen on TV and in the movies were real and that who I was didn’t matter to her or her friends as much as the status I bestowed on them as a model and actress. I supposed I was ready to leave them behind.
Then it was welcome to LA—sort of. My parents found an apartment in the heart of the San Fernando Valley and enrolled me in Notre Dame High School, a private, co-ed, Catholic school in Studio City. But before we settled in, they had to make one more trip back to South Carolina. I had a new manager, Glenn, an engaging man in his midthirties who we had met with several times but still barely knew, and yet my parents left me with him.
I supposed they trusted him, though I really can’t speak to the way they arrived at that decision. I’m guessing they had no other options, and Glenn, wanting to be the helpful new manager, said no problem. As for me, I had no choice in the matter.
It was 1994, and I was fifteen years old, with a weeklong stay ahead of me. Glenn lived in a Spanish-style home with a pool in the backyard that had the potential to be nice if it was kept up, but it wasn’t. The house was dirty and musty. I slept on the couch in his living room. Glenn spent most of the time in his bedroom with the door shut. I bought my own food and labeled each of the items with my name. They were eaten regardless.
I started my new school while there. Notre Dame required school uniforms, and I got it all wrong on the first day by wearing my skirt to the stipulated length and buttoning my blouse all the way to the top. Those were the rules, and I wanted to be good and follow the rules. Little did I know that the details of this stringent dress code didn’t apply, and that there were no rules in general. I was gawked at and made to feel like the odd duck out, only to have Glenn pick me up at the end of the day and ask if I saw any cute kids who might want his business card.
Not exactly the sympathetic shoulder I would have preferred after my first day at school. But he was serious. Later that week, as I was about to get out of his car in the morning, he stopped me and handed over a stack of his business cards, instructing me to hand them out to my friends. The cute ones, he reiterated, laughing, as if it were a joke.
As soon as I walked into the school’s courtyard and was out of his view, I chucked the cards into the nearest trash can.
After this poor start, the week got worse. Another of Glenn’s clients, a baby-faced guy who was close to my age came around the house several times. He seemed to be doing quite well, which was impressed upon me and others who also dropped by to hang out with Glenn. One day some other kids, a bit older than me, came by the house. One of them was friends with Glenn’s other client, and he was a big guy, very tall and almost twice my size. They were loud and messing with me. There was a lot of yelling. I felt threatened, and as they were leaving the big guy pushed me and I pushed back.
As I regained my balance, though, something got caught in the headphones he was wearing—perhaps a finger of mine—and the headphones snapped in half. Everything stopped and he stared at me in disbelief. I didn’t mean to break the headphones. But he was furious. He ran past me into the room where I had been earlier and where my CD player and headphones were and took mine. But they weren’t mine. They belonged to my brother, and I was going to be damned if anyone was going to take something from my family.
I was in Los Angeles alone and it was hard for me to be away from my family, and so, in this moment, I charged this guy, screaming as I jumped onto his back and hit him with my fists, fighting as if my life depended on it. He reeled backward and slammed me into the wall. I hit my head and fell off of him. But I attacked him again, screaming that the headphones he took from me belonged to my brother and he wasn’t going to take them. After another furious round of punches from me, he threw the headphones down and left.
I had never been in a fight. For that matter, I had never fought for anything. But here I was staying with this strange man, starting a new school, in a city where I had just moved and didn’t know anyone, and then this guy and his friends turned and taunted me, and even tried to take something that belonged to my family. I was on my own. I had no choice but to fight back and remain on the lookout for others who might come at me. I didn’t feel like I could let my guard down or trust anyone—certainly not while I was at Glenn’s house, and not afterward. I needed to stay safe if I wanted to survive.
What an introduction to Hollywood.