Once upon a time, Ivy Avila was a little girl who just wanted to be loved.
Isn’t that how all stories start?
And then her mom found a way to make her lovable. As if her simple existence wasn’t enough.
And then she quit school and worked and worked and forgot how to be a child. She gave everything she had and everything she didn’t know she had.
Or was it taken?
Did she throw herself to the wolves, or was she thrown?
Is a child even strong enough to do that kind of throwing? Is it a child’s job to make themselves lovable?
And we did love her. We do. Or whatever it is you call the feelings we have for the faces made two-dimensional by our screens, the lives made two-dimensional. We love her talent. We love her voice. We love her body and her beauty. We devour what we have been thrown.
And what about Ivy? What is left for her? Is she still hungry?
Lily was not proud of my going out last night. She’s not impressed by Ivy’s celebrity. She’s not impressed by my new job. She’s never understood what I see in Ash. She’s not impressed by anything I do or anything I love.
But Ivy thinks I’m special. Tami even called me special. Maybe it’s my turn to be special.
Lily doesn’t have to know about Ivy’s party tonight.
I don’t understand this strategy. Is this how Ivy plans to win Ash back—by befriending his girlfriend? Her logic is upside down.
But Tami is acting like she already knows her, like they go way back. This is probably one of Tami’s games, one of her ways of acting like she’s the one in control. Even though this is Ivy’s house, Tami’s walking around like this is her turf too.
Ivy is giving them the tour, even though they’ve both already been here. The house, the grounds, the magical people. I follow, silently, like a chaperone, a referee, the neutral party.
But am I? Neutral?
Tami has her arm through Ash’s. She is not letting go. She wants everyone to know Ash belongs to her. He could be any of these actors, these socialites, these rock stars. They are beautiful together.
This party is different from the last. It is hot even after the sun sets, and smoke from forest fires in the north is making the air hazy, burning eyes, closing throats. But people act like they’re still invincible, despite their new dry coughs.
Ivy’s mom is on a trip. She is not here, behind the scenes, running things. This party is all Ivy.
The night is darker. The magic of the last party has rotted away, and these are the dregs, like a civilization on the decline. People are drunker, grasping at shadows. There are men far too old to be at a teenager’s party. They lurk in the shadows. Everything is shadows. But still, it is impressive.
And Ivy leads Tami and Ash around like everything is radiant. She shows them the pool, the gardens, the private dock. She introduces them to the most famous guests—an entire K-Pop band is here—and then looks back to check their reactions, to gauge how much she’s impressed them.
As we walk, Ivy expands. Every time a head turns to look at her, she collects some new shiny thing, and it attaches to her, it gives her weight. She is a magnet. She is made out of her collections.
She is made out of her secret with Ash, swaggering with the audacity of parading him around as someone else’s love when she is confident his heart is hers. He is the prized centerpiece of her collection, being polished and shined, waiting for the perfect moment to be revealed.
She is the shine of chrome and glass and mirrors. She is the diamonds and gold of so much jewelry. She is the electric blue of someone’s eyes, the gloss of a girl’s lipstick, the shine of a leather jacket. She is Ash’s eyes, watching her, wanting her.
“These people are all your friends?” Tami says. I can tell she’s trying to sound nonchalant, but she is not as good an actress as Ivy.
“Not really. I don’t know. They’re just people I know.”
“Oh, there’s Celia Lamotte,” Tami says, trying to sound unimpressed and doing a bad job of it, as she waves at a B-list actress across the patio. The girl doesn’t even bother to smile when she sees Tami looking at her expectantly, but as soon as she sees who we’re with, her face lights up.
I never thought it’d be possible for me to feel sorry for Tami Butler.
Ash puts his arm around her and pulls her close, but he’s looking at Ivy when he does it.
Something shifts in Tami. “So this is what you do?” she says, her voice low and hard. “Throw parties?”
Ivy opens her mouth. A few of the shiny things she’s collected fall out.
As we walk, everything shrivels and turns gray in Tami’s wake. That is the power she has.
Ivy walks us through the small museum of herself, and Ash acts like it’s new to him, while Tami acts like she couldn’t care less, like her insides aren’t being torn open with jealousy. Maybe Tami is part of an A-Corp dynasty, but Ivy made this all by herself.
“Ash, did I tell you I bought another rental property in Bellevue?” Tami says. “I’ve already tripled the money my grandfather left me when he died.”
“Uh-huh,” he says. Is this really what rich teenagers talk about? They could be forty years old.
There’s the picture of Ivy with that actor who won the Oscar last year. There’s the picture of her with that famous director, that famous musician, that famous chef, and on and on. I think of Tami with Vaughn, with her empire of people she can demean without consequence, the supposed friends she treats more like they’re her employees, and I wonder about the difference between power and fame. The difference between old money that’s inherited and new money that’s earned. I wonder which has more weight.
Here is Ivy, raw and vulnerable, at the mercy of whoever deems her worth noticing, defined by the eyes that see her. And here is Tami, born knowing how to take whatever she wants. And there is Ash in between them.
And where am I?
There is something desperate in the air. Glasses get filled and emptied, filled and emptied. People hide in corners, doing harder drugs. Eyes bulge out of faces, searching for something.
Ash betrays his usual cool when he spots members of a band waiting in line for a bathroom. They are in sunglasses even though it’s nighttime. “You’re friends with them?” he asks Ivy. “They’re good. They’re really good.” What he doesn’t say is, “I love them. I don’t want any of you to know how much I love them.”
Ash’s dark eyes sparkle for a split second, then Tami looks at him, and the light goes out. “Really, Ash? What are you going to do, go ask them for their autographs? While they’re waiting in line for the bathroom?”
“Why don’t you go ask Celia Lamotte for her autograph?” he snaps back.
Ivy smiles and smiles and smiles. A fight breaks out somewhere. A girl appears to be OD-ing, but is quickly whisked away by her friends without much fanfare. The party goes on.
Ash is a statue by Tami’s side, made of stone. He is a trophy, heatless. Objects can’t feel.
But I see a faint outline of a shadow beneath him, thrown by the artificial light above, and it is twisting itself inside out, trying to break free.
Ivy grabs another glass of wine from a passing server. Tami says, “Aren’t you supposed to be drying out?”
Ash opens his mouth but only pebbles fall out. The impotent tink, tink, tink as they hit the ground is percussion, making a song with the melody of a girl, unseen, crying softly in the distance.
“Oh, there’s Madison,” Tami says, and she disappears around a corner, eager to escape us, to be on her own so she doesn’t have to compete with Ivy’s light.
As soon as she is gone, Ivy grabs Ash’s wrist and whisks him in the opposite direction, and I am left in the vacuum of their absence, on hold.
I don’t know how long I stand there. Time seems to stop and I am just a series of observations without thoughts attached—the sound of that girl crying, the faint smell of smoke and spilled drinks, the sour taste of wine in my mouth, even though I’ve been drinking nothing tonight but water.
And then Ivy and Ash return, their noses sniffling, with pupils the size of pinpricks, a halo of electricity surrounding them as if they are walking in a different reality, they are vibrating with it, and Ash can’t keep his eyes off her, and I think she must have found the right spell, the right potion, to finally make him hers.
But then Tami comes back, and she pulls him away just in time, before Ivy can claim him, and his shadow clings to hers for a few extra moments before it has to break away.
“We have to go,” Tami says. Ash says nothing, just stands there vibrating next to her, his shadow flickering in and out.
“Oh, okay,” Ivy says. “Let’s hang out again sometime.”
“I’ll text you,” Tami says as she pulls Ash away. He turns his head back, his eyes searching for Ivy, but she is already gone.
The only thing I can think to do is to follow Tami and Ash, but I am so quiet, they don’t know I’m there. I imagine Ivy somewhere in the bushes. She must know all the best hiding places.
The gravel makes no sound under my bare feet as I follow them to the end of the driveway. I watch Ash pull Tami into him as they wait for their car to arrive. His kisses are wild and all teeth. He is hunger and more hunger. Whatever potion Ivy gave him is working, but it is all wrong.
Tami pushes him away, a pleased smile on her face. His want gives her power.
“Not now, Ash,” she says.
His breaths are quick and shallow. He is all wound up with nowhere to go. “God, that girl is a train wreck,” Tami says, and Ash just vibrates next to her. “Acting and music are bullshit professions.”
“She’s made a lot of money,” Ash says. “More money than you.”
Tami laughs and the flowers around her shrivel. Dry pine needles fall off nearby trees. Somewhere in the darkness, a frog’s chirp goes silent. “It’s about more than money. You know that. Getting a bunch of idiot strangers to buy your shit doesn’t make you lovable, or whatever sad thing it is she’s looking for. It’s pathetic, really. Needing attention like that. And then walking around like royalty when you have no actual skills that matter. I mean seriously, what has that girl accomplished? Reciting lines on a couple crappy sitcoms, singing some songs she didn’t even write?”
Ash doesn’t hear her. He is in that place where nothing touches him. Whatever potion Ivy gave him helped him get there even better than usual.
“And didn’t she just get out of rehab?” Tami says. “She must have drunk two bottles of wine just by herself. And who knows what else she was on. What a mess.”
That makes Ash laugh. “Why are you so concerned about Ivy Avila? You’re one to talk.”
“People like us know how to hold our liquor. People like us don’t get out of control.”
“People like us. People like us,” Ash sings in his smooth, low voice, with a melody like a children’s lullaby, and his laughter shakes the trees, pinecones knocking together like bells, creating an empty tinny ring, and it is the sound of Ash’s heart knocking around in his ribs, in its crisp, impenetrable shell.
That’s when Tami grabs the collar of Ash’s shirt, twists it tight around his neck, and pulls him toward her with a hard tug. His breath catches where she’s restricting his throat, and he closes his eyes and pushes into her as he gasps for air. She leans over and bites his lip as she slowly releases his collar, and he smiles between her teeth.
Their car arrives. The driver gets out and opens the door, and Tami climbs in. “Come on,” she says from inside, and I try to will Ash to stay. He stumbles, looks back in my direction, his eyes searching but not finding anything.
“Where’s Ivy?” he says, and Tami reaches her long arm out, grabs him by the belt, and pulls him into the car.
Where is Ivy? Not on this road, quiet and barren. Not on this driveway, surrounded by rustling branches. Not in the glass house, full of absence. Most of the party has started its sad procession home. Bodies slumped in the hallway. Asleep in the bushes. All these wind-up toys, unwinding.
Ivy is alone, sitting cross-legged outside on an oversized pillow, staring at the miniature palm trees she supposedly bought the house for, tropical plants that, years ago, would never have survived here.
“Look at those stupid trees,” she says as I slide silently beside her. “They don’t belong here.”
She is grinding her teeth. Her knee is bouncing. She is made out of chemicals.
“I wish I was like you, Fern,” she says.
“Me?” I say. “Why?”
“You have everything I’ve ever wanted. You’re exactly who I’d be if I could be anyone.”
“But I’m no one.”
“That’s the thing,” she says. “You don’t have to be. You don’t want anything.”
“Of course I want things.”
I don’t say, “I want Ash.” I don’t say, “I want you.”
“Do you want to hear a story?” She takes a swig from a bottle of something. I do not bother answering.
“I fell in love with Ash because he played me a song he wrote. That’s all it took. Three, maybe four minutes.” She is talking fast. Her mouth can barely keep up with her memories. “He doesn’t play them for anyone, his songs. He has a whole album’s worth now. He doesn’t let anyone see that part of him. Only me. Nobody knows it’s even there.”
I don’t tell her Ash has played me his songs too.
“It was beautiful, Fern. I mean it. Like real art. Not that bullshit I get paid to do. I know what it is. I’m not lying to myself. You know all those guys who were here? That band Ash was so excited about? I begged them to let me tour with them as an opener last year. I offered to take almost no money. But they pretty much laughed in my face. They’ll come to my parties, the straight ones will fuck me, but they don’t want me associated with their brand.” Her fingers make sloppy air quotes around “brand.” “Because my music is a joke. I’m a joke.”
I remember the night at the old army fort, when Ash told her she wasn’t crazy, how that made her melt into him. I want to do the same thing, want to tell her you’re not a joke, but she starts talking again before I have a chance.
“Dr. Chen says I need hobbies, things I do just for fun, just for me. Something I’d enjoy even if no one was watching. But I don’t even know what that means. Even when no one’s watching, I pretend they are. When I’m brushing my teeth, when I’m fucking peeing, Fern, I imagine people watching me. I don’t know who I am without an audience. So I perform for ghosts. I’ve grown up as a commodity. I don’t know how to be anything else. I want to be expensive. Put a price tag on me, tell me how much I matter.”
“You matter,” I say. But I know she can’t hear me.
“Who am I with no one watching? I’m nobody. I disappear. I turn into a fucking ghost screaming ‘Look at me!’ but no one can hear me, so maybe I get mad and start going around breaking stuff to get noticed and all those things ghosts do. I have to haunt people just so they’ll pay attention to me. I have to scare them. That’s the only way to get their attention. But there’s nothing scary about me. That’s the big joke. I’d make a terrible ghost. Or maybe I could be one of those ones who cry all the time, who you hear in the wind, who hide in the clouds—that one who’s always wandering around looking for something she lost. But she’s been a ghost so long she doesn’t even remember what that thing is, just that it’s missing, and she goes around wailing about how empty she is.”
Finally, Ivy looks at me, like she just remembered I’m here. “Maybe I am a ghost,” she says. “Maybe I’m haunting you.”
She doesn’t know that the real ghost is me.
“But that night on the beach, with Ash, with his music—I sang with him, and then he played the song again, and then again, and eventually it was me singing the song, and he was harmonizing like he was the backup singer, and it was the realest shit I’d ever done, and there was no one there to see it. Just me and Ash, and that was all I needed—for him to see me. Only him. No one else really sees me. And I’m the only one who sees him.” She smiles, deep inside her dream. She is somewhere far away, on a different kind of island, a place where she is not surrounded by passed-out strangers, where the air is fresh and does not smell of things burning. “And then it started raining, one of those tropical downpours, not like it rains here. And he had to hide his guitar under an overhang, and we just started running on the beach through these sheets of rain, getting totally drenched, and lightning was flashing all over the place, lighting up the sky all kinds of weird colors, and we probably could have died, the lightning was so close, then it’d go black again, and we were just running blind in it, holding hands, completely free, and I could have kept running and running forever holding his hand like that, just running into the night and the lightning. All I want is to stay in that night forever.”
But this is a different kind of night. It is a different kind of island where the water’s freezing all year round and the beach is made of sharp rocks instead of soft sand and the rain is never warm.
She pulls on her nose. “Dr. Chen thinks talking about my pain will make it go away or something. But that’s bullshit. Talking about my pain just makes me feel it again. The only thing that ever took away my pain was Ash. He was even better than drugs. Dr. Chen can take her PhD and shove it.” Ivy tries to laugh but it sounds like static. “In rehab they’re always talking about chasing the first high,” she says. “That night was the best high of my life.”
Ivy leans against my shoulder. “You’re wonderful,” she says. “It’s like I made you up. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She entwines her fingers through mine and lifts my hand to her mouth, kisses it, and the image of my skin flickers on and off, while the electricity of hers surges, and I fade while she becomes a light so bright, I’m almost blinded.
“Does anyone ever catch it?” I say.
“Catch what?”
“The first high.”
I feel her harden next to me. She pulls her hand away from mine. “Go home, Fern.”
I asked the wrong question. And just like that, I am no longer wonderful.
She stands up and wobbles for a moment, grabs the bottle and walks away, into the house, the bodies of unconscious strangers strewn at her feet.
I am left alone, surrounded by unmoving bodies. We are not much different, the bodies and me. Even the palm trees are still. But I know the stillness is an illusion. I know beneath it there are machines that never stop running.
I look up at the windows on the second floor, at the figures darting around behind the curtains, and I don’t know if they are tonight’s guests or the apparitions I saw before. They are restless, just like Ivy. They are shadows intersecting with other shadows. They are hungry ghosts on their endless quest for something to fill them up.