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PARKHURST SEXCAPADE

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Propping the gas pump in my tank, I inch around the back of my car to get a better look. Right there, jammed between a bridal magazine and a gluten-free recipe guide is a photo of me.
Me!
I take another step and the full headline becomes visible.

Pregnant Girlfriend Reduced to TEARS!

    To fully comprehend just how humiliating this moment is for me, you need to have an understanding of how I look in the photo. 1) I’m wearing an awful yellow shirt with a ruffle collar because it was the first thing I could get my hands on. 2) My hair is a jungle of frizz and dirty, brown tangles, my mouth is open, and my eyes are partially closed. 3) I don’t have on any makeup and there’s a visible zit on my right cheek.

   
It’s like the magazine people got together with the picture people and were like, “Can you get us a shot where she looks like a SARS patient wearing a tulip?”

   
As I reread the headline, my mind starts to spin. I’m so out of sorts, I worry I’ll faint.
Pregnant?
Why would they think that?

    The shirt, the hair and the lack of makeup tell me that the photo was taken four days ago when I went to my doctor’s office to be tested for STDs.
Smart move
is what Julie had called it at the time. Now I’m not so sure.

    I grab the magazine from the rack and furiously
flip to the full story. It’s four pages long. At the top of page one, the title of the article reads:
I’m Having His Baby Alone!
Below that, there is a wide, glossy shot of me in a parking lot with a dark-haired woman in blue hospital scrubs. Now I remember that during my doctor’s visit, I left my phone at the reception desk and one of the nurses chased me down to return it.

    “Oh no,” I whimper.
I’ll admit that in the photo, it does look like I’m running and she’s chasing me.

   
I flip the page and the dull pounding in my head and heart increases. I clutch the magazine, my sweaty fingers crumpling the thin pages, and read on. In the center of the page there is a photo of Ren and his
Howl
co-star, Sierra Simms, locked in an embrace. The caption says that the photo was snapped two days ago.

   
Fuuuuuck!

    With a sob welling in my throat and
panicky tears dangling from my lower lashes, I step sideways and promptly collide with a wall of cotton and jiggling flesh. I blink and see that I’ve knocked into Pink Curlers. Her lottery tickets are scattering from her fingers like leaves in a strong wind. Her face is squished up and she’s yelling at me in accented English, “Watch where you goin’!”

    
“I’m sorry!” I wail in a choked, cracking voice. My body is reeling so fast that my heart can’t seem to catch up. She says something else that I can’t understand and shakes her head. I drop to the rough asphalt and scramble to recover two of the rectangular lottery tickets from the ground.

    “I-I’m so sorry,” I repeat,
face on fire, tears openly streaming down my face now.

    I push myself up from the ground and that’s when I see that Hot Dog Guy is watching all of this go down from
the door of The Gas Mart. When our gazes lock, his mouth moves silently over that same question.
Are you okay?

     A fresh jolt of humiliation rips through my core.

   
Am I okay?
Absolutely not. I’m shaky and exhausted. I’m mentally fried. I’m ashamed. I’m broke. I just want this day, this week, this lifetime to be over.  

    Pushing through another hysterical
surge of emotion, I thrust the salvaged lottery tickets at Pink Curlers and cram the magazine back to the rack. Then I’m stumbling to my car, wiping the tears from my face and ripping the gas pump out of the tank. In the very next second, I’m in the driver’s seat turning the key. I take a deep breath, throw the car into drive and jam my foot on the gas pedal, whipping Weebit and me out of the station in a blizzard of dust and gravel and unhinged mortification.

***

Two and a half years ago, when I made the decision to drop out of school and take my chances in the steaming pressure cooker that is L.A., I was a girl with a dream in my hand and a song in my heart, and nothing else mattered to me. I had been through a lot of heartbreak and survived. I figured I could handle anything that life threw at me.

    And
for a while, I did handle it. All through that first year and a half of failed auditions, blistering rejections and disappointments, I didn’t lose sight of what I wanted.

    It wasn’t until Ren landed his first major gig—a commercial for whitening toothpaste—that I re
ally started to question what I was doing. One night, after a particularly brutal pass from a pompous director, I took an honest look in a full-length mirror. I pulled no punches. I catalogued the glaring contrasts between myself and ninety-nine percent of the aspiring actresses I was up against, and that’s when I knew.

    It was all a farce.

    My face is too pointy and my skin is too pale. My ears stick out a little too far from my head. I’m too short. Too thin in all the wrong places. Too brown-haired. Too grey-eyed. Too boring.

   
And after that night, I never went on another acting audition. Not for movies. Not for stage. Not for commercials. I took my name off the call lists and a week later, I had the job at Ever After, where a voluminous blond wig, lots of cream foundation and a huge pink ball gown hid my averageness.

   
Ren called it my “bubble bursting,’’ but actually, it was more than that. It was a necessary change—a reality. Like a caterpillar transforming.

    An
d I know what you’re thinking. As soon as I brought up a caterpillar transforming, you imagined it emerging from its cocoon of bright green silk in a twist of colorful wings. You imagined a butterfly.

    You imagined that
because you’ve been conditioned to think of the metaphor in that way. By this point, you’ve already heard a hundred stories full of flowery language and sunny imagery about a caterpillar’s metamorphosis. You’ve seen it in cartoons. You’ve heard it in song lyrics. Maybe you’ve even dreamt it.

    What no one wants to point out is that s
ome caterpillars don’t become butterflies. Some caterpillars become moths.

    That’s me.

    A moth.

   
Shoving my rambling thoughts aside, I blow out a thundering breath and blink the road back into focus. I check the directions to Julie’s apartment. Then I flick my blinker to hang a right onto the Pacific Highway. A few miles later, with the sea breeze rushing in through my open car window, soft music washing over me, and the terrain changing from urban to residential, my racing heart finally slows down and the bubble of anger and hot embarrassment lodged in my chest dissipates a little
.

    And, b
y the time I’m carefully nosing my car down a hidden drive carved out between a set of steep, sandy blond hills, I’ve nearly stopped shaking.

   
The road veers left and widens just as the sun breaks over the trees and washes the world in a patina of gold. I lean forward, my chest pressing into the steering wheel, and get my first glimpse of where I’m staying. 

   
The two-story building is actually a little dingy in the bright sunlight. A flat roof made from curving orange terra cotta tiles gives the whole place a dilapidated hacienda feel not unlike an older Taco Bell. I notice a few of the windows spaced across the façade are cracked and the stucco is crumbling away in uneven chunks near the roofline. On the northern corner, the downspout is detached from the exterior and a slug trail of dirty brown mildew meanders down the length of the building.

    I reach to the dashboard, my fingers seeking the small slip of paper with Julie’s address so that I can double check that I’m in the right place. B
ut before I can find the address, a black iron gate swings open and a petite girl with wide, rounded hips and red-gold hair pulled up into a high ponytail comes barreling toward my car. She’s got on a rockabilly-style blue, quarter-sleeve sweater printed with white and black flowers. A mustard yellow skirt flares out from just below the curve of her hips.

     I push the door open and
step out of the car. When my best friend sees me she bobs up and down on her toes, waving her arms and whooping excitedly, “It’s you! It’s you!”

    “It’s me!” I call back, feeling the corners of my mouth lift automatically.

    Julie rushes me, jumping into my arms and rocking us both dangerously to one side. “I missed you so much.”

    “I missed you too.” My voice is squeaky and small.

    “How are you feeling?” she asks against my hair, her fingernails digging into the skin of my upper arms.

    I pause and suck in a ragged breath. I can’t believe I’m already close to tears again. “Not really sure how to answer that at the moment.”

     Julie pulls back, seeks out my watery eyes and says, “Totally understandable, Gem.” Then she’s reaching past me for my makeup case and a rolling suitcase from the backseat of my car. “Let’s get you upstairs and into the apartment, okay?”

     Catching a
breath, I pick up Weebit’s travel carrier and let Julie get a quick look at him. I figure that I can come back for the cage and the rest of my stuff later.

     “I have so much planned for us,” she tells me as we follow a slightly uneven sidewalk through a side entrance and down a narrow hall, finally emerging into an open-air courtyard. The sound of our footsteps changes from hollow to
squishy as we cross the terraced space that descends in four wide stone steps to a rectangular pool filled with greenish water.

    T
he courtyard is neglected and barren except for a few potted aloe plants, some ragged-looking palms, and a handful of mismatched plastic lawn chairs stacked near a black hooded grill. A half-dead vine hugs the south wall, crawling all the way to the second story and wrapping round the metal railing.

    “You okay back there?”
Julie calls. 

    “Yeah, I’m good.” 

    “You seem pale, Gemma.”

    “Having your life ruined will do
that to you,” I snap. What would she have thought if she had seen me a few hours ago? At least now I’m showered and wearing clean clothes.

    “
I know.” She stops at the base of the stairs. “But you’re here now.”

    “I’m sorry,” I shake my head, feeling awful.
On top of everything else that’s happened, I don’t want to fight with Julie. With my parents and Ren out of the picture, she’s really the only person I have left in this whole world. “You’re right. I’m here.”

    “And I promise
you that everything is going to be better now.” Her tone is forgiving and I smile in relief. “If you want, we can go out tonight, or we can stay in and paint our toenails sparkly pink and have the traditional breakup ice cream binge. We can eat pizza until we’re sick and watch movies until the sun comes up.”

    “Can we watch a tragic miniseries about a dysfunctional family?” I joke as I count twelve apartments in total. Six upstairs and six downstairs.

    She laughs. “Maybe a sappy vampire love story?”

    “I vote for a musical about a shy girl who lands the lead in the school play.”

    “
Or
we can settle in and watch every single episode of
Sherlock.
”

    “Now you’re talking.” Benedict Cumberbatch is my homeboy.

     “That man’s face is long and his old ass is white as Swiss cheese, but he’s got a vibe, doesn’t he?” She shimmies her shoulders in obvious approval. “One hundred percent hot.”

     “And he’s British, which means that he probably says things like
bangers and mash
and
bits ‘n bobs.
”

    “And arse,” she tosses back.

    “And bugger.”

    Her laugh rises as she trots up the steps, my
rolling suitcase jerking behind her. She pauses briefly at the apartment at the top of the stairs. Her hand makes a fist and she thumps on the door two times. “Claudia and Smith live here. You remember I told you about them?”

    “Is Claudia the one who makes the pesto hummus?”

    “No, that’s Smith, her maybe-boyfriend. Claudia is in my department at school. She found me this apartment when my other lease ran up in August.”

    “That’s right,” I say, trying to remember
what she’s told me about her neighbors. “What’s a maybe-boyfriend?”

    Jules shrugs. “They’re friends. They’re lovers. They’re bi-sexual. It’s all very progressive and I can’t really keep it straight so I’ve stopped asking questions.”