On Screen & Off Again

Now Wilhelmina

Now WILHELMINA

I work the fabric of my dad’s bow tie, pulling and wiggling it into place until it’s perfect. He asks me what my plans are for tonight.

“Might go out with Cassie and Margot.” This is half-true. Iturn him by the shoulders to face the mirror. “Looking sharp, Chase.”

He adjusts the lapels of his jacket. Fiddles with the cufflinks. Gives his reflection a slow, shy smile that tells me he believes me in a way that makes my heart go soft.

“Do you think she’ll be there?” he asks his reflection. All my organs squeeze tight with anger. I want to fling out my arms and hold him tight. Protect him from her: Katrina Tyson-Taylor, his ex-fiancée. Or Satan, as she’s known in some circles. Okay, my circles.

“Where, Hell?”

“Wil.”

Even though I’m twenty-four and haven’t lived here in years, his voice takes on a scolding edge like I’ve overstepped and he’s trying to course-correct. It pisses me off that he’s still sensitive about her. That he lets her stay under his skin.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” I challenge, an eyebrow raised.

Dad turns to face me. At first, he’s stern. Then he goes soft and tired, leaning forward to press a kiss to my forehead. “Ilook okay?”

I nod. “Very debonair.”

“Thanks, kid.” He sits on the cushioned bench at the end of his bed and pulls on his socks and shoes. “You sure you don’t want to come with?”

“Yep.” I say it fast. Certain. Final. The thought of camera flashes, of men screaming at me to look this way and that way, of being interviewed about what it’s like to have been famous—and what I’m up to now that I’m obsolete—sends a chill screaming down my spine.

Dad gets this look like maybe he wants to say something to convince me, but the hardness across my face and in my eyes makes him drop it. “I gotta get going. Walk me out?”

“Do you know the code?” Margot asks.

Katrina Tyson-Taylor’s locked front gates stand tall beside a sloping hillside full of ivy. A brick wall at hip height runs the length of the hill, and I know how we’ll get in. “Don’t need it,” I say.

“Oh, no way,” Cassie whines, taking in our route. “These are Louboutins.”

I’d be faster alone. But two extra pairs of eyes are crucial for a hit like this one.

“Wait in the car if you don’t want to come in.” I glance back at Margot’s car, parked inconspicuously in the dark space between streetlights.

“I didn’t say that,” says Cassie, pouting in the dark.

“Let’s go,” says Margot seriously. She’s always like that—all business. “Stay to the right. There’s a camera on the left.”

Sure enough, Katrina’s got a security camera perched on the left-most gate, aimed at the driveway.

“Hoods up,” I say, pulling my black hoodie close around me. It hangs low over my eyes. Margot and Cassie do the same. We’re almost invisible in the darkness, save for Cassie’s annoying shoes, covered in rhinestones.

Up and over the brick wall we go, until we’re wading through tangled black ivy, disappearing away from the streetlights’ orange glow into the dark.

“My heel keeps getting stuck,” Cassie says. Margot and I shush her.

At the crest of the ivy slope, soft, wild grass takes over. We scoot down on our asses and hit the cobblestone of the driveway.

“Alarm system?” whispers Margot at my left shoulder.

“No,” I say. “Not since I was here last.” Weeks ago, when this house was a “real estate investment opportunity,” not just the place she’d sneak men into behind my dad’s back.

“How do we get in?” Cassie asks.

I lead them around the perimeter of the mansion towards a back door, and then I point at the doggy door’s rubber flap. “Margot, you’re first.”

“On it.”

A Nigerian supermodel mother and a Mexican rock star father brought tall, gorgeous Margot Martinez into the world, so slight and willowy that I get nervous the Santa Ana winds will blow her away. But she’s perfect for this.

“Wait,” says Cassie. “Does she have a dog?” I can’t tell if she’s freaked or excited.

White, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Cassie Levy is Margot’s best childhood friend, an heiress whose full-time job is spending money, and she’s growing on me.

I snort. “Yeah, Toby.” An ancient Lab that’s long gone deaf. “He won’t get in the way. Let’s go.”

From the other side, Margot unlocks the front door and holds it open for us. “Entrez-vous.”

Now I take the lead, the lifeless marble hall stretching ahead of us. No paintings. No pictures. It’s like nobody lives here. And for whatever reason, that gives me a chill down my spine. I smell the adrenaline radiating off my own skin.

In my peripheral, I only just make out Cassie’s hand rising towards a light switch. I grab at it, fierce and fast.

“Ow! Wil. What the fuck?”

“Keep the light off,” I hiss.

This isn’t our first hit. I mean, we’re not career criminals, it was just the once. And I never thought I’d be doing this again.

On my thirteenth birthday, Harris Bastian, the executive producer on Marnie , came into the wardrobe trailer while I was dressing—without knocking—and told our costumer, Janet, one of my favorite people of all time, that we decided Marnie shouldn’t have tits yet . And I don’t know if it was the shame of doubling up on sports bras under my costume that day, or the white-hot humiliation of being made to model my costumes the rest of that season for Harris, turning sideways for his approval, that put me over the edge, but bitches never forget a misogynistic, predatory dick.

I’m bitches.

It won’t be a free-for-all. I’m going to take one thing, something Katrina can’t replace. Like the years of my dad’s life she wasted cheating on him. For Harris, it was an original Playboy from the seventies with Barbi Benton smoldering on the cover, a personalized autograph scrawled across her chest.

Katrina’s bedroom is upstairs. Single-file, we go in, Margot lingering in the doorframe, playing lookout.

“Where does she keep it?” Cassie whispers.

“Don’t know. Check the dresser.”

I go for the colorless nightstand, starting with the bottom of three drawers. The first is silky underwear rolled up perfect and neat. Carefully, I sink my hand between a row, feeling nausea creep its way up my esophagus. But where do you keep something you don’t want to look at? Tucked away under something else.

Next drawer, I’m not as careful, pushing loose bracelets and pearl necklaces aside as my fingers plunge hungrily towards the bottom. Not here, either. I growl under my breath and rip open the top drawer.

She has a journal in here and oh holy Jesus do I want to shove it into my hoodie so I can take it home with me and stay up the rest of the night reading all the petty bullshit she’s filled it with. Except I already know what’s going to be in it—Ben Cooper.

Fuck Ben Cooper, his Best Actor Oscar, and his chiseled jaw.

The rest of the top drawer is full of knick-knacks. I slam it shut and sit on the edge of the bed. Where the hell is it?

“Anything?” I see Cassie trying on a Burberry scarf and sunglasses.

“Would she miss these?”

“No,” I sigh. “But keep looking, Cass.”

“Ten minutes,” says Margot from the doorway, “and we should go.”

I use every bit of that ten minutes going through every drawer, every basket, every shelf. I’m being much less careful now; my sweating hands dump thousand-dollar purses to the floor, scatter shoes and jewelry. Cassie stands back, watching me like I’m a landmine she’s afraid might go off if she takes a step.

“Wil, let’s forget it.”

“ No .” My chest rises and falls. Sweat beads along the back of my neck. I go for the last place I can think of: the bed. Ipull up the king-sized mattress and feel around. Nothing. Ipull back the gaudy silk sheets. Nothing. I slide my hand under her pillow and feel myself go rigid.

It’s here.

Margot whistles from the doorframe that it’s time to go. Iknow I should plunge the tiny, velvet box into my pocket and run. But I undo the catch and let the cool diamond fall onto my sweating palm.

Suddenly, a floorboard in the hall creaks. Every drop of my blood turns to ice.

I hear the soft shuffling of heavy boots. The click of a flashlight. My heart sinks like an anchor to the bottom of the ocean as the light hits me in the face.

“Hands up! Don’t move!”

I smile pretty for my mug shot.

It’s bound for the tabloids and countless articles on has-been child actresses and the ultra-depressing lives they’re living now. Might as well work it.

An officer guides me roughly by the shoulder towards a holding cell.

“Oh shit. Are you Marnie?” A girl my age. She’s lying on a cement bench in the cell, blood staining her shirt and nose and knuckles.

Oh good. A fan. “Yup.”

“Girl, what happened to you?”

“Drugs,” I lie. “Lotta drugs.”

“Shit. That’s sad.”

“Yup.”

The door to the holding cell buzzes as Margot is led back in from making her one phone call. I reach for her. I feel like shit; it’s my fault she’s here. But the guard shouts, “No touching!” so I let my hands fall limp to my sides.

“Who’d you call?” I ask her.

“My brother.” Margot sighs. “He didn’t pick up.”

The guard turns to me. “Wilhelmina Chase. One phone call. Let’s go.”

“Tell Dougie I said what’s up ,” says my blood-stained prison bestie.

Dougie Miles, she means. Marnie’s best friend on the show.

The guard leads me to the phone hanging from the wall and waits for me to pick up the receiver. I run my tongue across my teeth, thinking. The people who are first on my list to call from jail are in here with me. Dad? No, he’ll still be at the Emmys, looking at his knees as Katrina Tyson-Taylor accepts her little gold statue for Best Actress in a Comedy Series and thanks everyone but him. Besides, I don’t have his new number memorized.

Shit , I don’t think I have anyone’s memorized.

Then a phone number lights up inside my memory, and it’s one I haven’t called in years.

Tell Dougie...

My fingers are quick on the buttons, hoping it’s still the same. There’s a click, a breath, and his voice comes into my ear, low, concerned. So familiar, my heart rises.

“Hello?”

“Dax,” I breathe into the phone. The guard beside me clears his throat pointedly, telling me to keep it brief. “It’s Wil.”

“Wil... what’re you—what’s this number? Where are you calling me from?”

“Jail.” I make the word sound casual. Like I’m out for a cup of coffee and called him simply to shoot the shit. “You busy?”