lily rhode

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The party is still going strong. Idris Morcos? Not so much. He’s stumbling all over the place and can barely keep his eyes open. Lily looks around. Should she be worried? The music is so loud. It might’ve been more fun watching the Paleys on TV than it is actually being here. A group of girls are obviously talking about her and looking her up and down. She’s out of place. Zero glam. And there’s been no sign of Hailey all night.

She was grateful when Idris came up to her while she was standing alone, even if she knows what a player he is from watching the show—Lily could never understand why Greta put up with him. But maybe it’s like the facade of the Paleys’ house: everything on the show has another side to it.

Idris almost falls into the pool. Lily gasps as Joel sweeps in and catches him. Lily was trying to play it cool when she met him before entering the party, but it’s Joel Strom! He doesn’t look real. It’s like she’s still looking at him through a screen. Lily has to resist reaching out and trying to swipe him.

Joel drops Idris on a floating unicorn in the pool. Idris passes out and floats away with the swans surrounding him.

“He spiked your drink,” Joel says, putting his hands in the pockets of his pink distressed hoodie.

Lily stares into her glass.

“I switched them at the bar,” he explains.

“Idris Morcos just tried to drug me?” Lily looks back up at Joel. “Isn’t he with your sister? Or is that just on the show?”

“Who knows. Greta’s just another possession to him. Idris thinks he has it all. He isn’t self-aware enough to realize how miserable he is.”

They notice a Platinum Triangle camera lens pointed at them from across the party.

Joel sighs. “We’re supposed to be done shooting this season. But the nightmare never ends.”

“I might be to blame for that,” Lily says.

On impulse Lily reaches for Joel’s hand and takes him to the pool house where Whitney says she’ll be staying. He’s a bit more real now that she’s touched him. Or at least she feels more real. Her heart is racing.

Lily slides open a glass door that leads to a bedroom. She knows from the Paleys’ home tour that the pool house has an open-plan kitchen, dining area, and living room complete with white modern furniture and a Bettina Rheims coffee table book on an Yves Klein Monogold table. The closet is bigger than her bedroom in the trailer where Lily grew up. There’s an en suite with a marble sink that just looks like a slab of marble with a slit in it that drains the water.

The bedroom is pitch-black as she and Joel slip inside. Joel slides the door closed and the music from the party fades. It’s replaced by a faint vibrating hum. A blue neon sign on the wall says Land of Hopes & Dreams.

Lily and Joel are cast in its blue glow. She feels him staring at the side of her face.

“You really gonna be on the show?” he asks.

“I think I’m already on it.” Lily falls to the edge of the bed. “It’s so weird being back here. I haven’t been to this house since my tenth birthday.”

Joel sits next to her. They’re not touching but she can feel his own hum.

“I didn’t know Hailey had a cousin,” Joel says. “Or that you’d been here before.”

“We’re the same age, but I grew up in the Valley,” Lily explains. “Hailey came to my birthday party. She was a diva. She thought the trailer where I lived was horrible. It was…but she didn’t have to say it like that, not in front of everyone. She called her mom and got her to send a limo to pick us all up and bring us back here. Like, right when we were in the middle of eating pizza. But of course everyone wanted to go to Patrick Paley’s house. They wanted to swim in a movie star’s pool, and play games in a movie star’s yard, and sit in a movie star’s home theater watching movie stars…”

Lily touches her charm bracelet.

“I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Do what?” Joel asks.

“Survive in a world where people are made and not born.”