Chapter 1 #2
“The older I get, the more I see the appeal!” she volleys back, igniting one of their age-old debates.
Ramona hasn’t beaten herself up for it—at least, not today.
She knows she’s gained weight since the announcement, but when she looks in the mirror, she tries to focus on how the dark circles under her eyes have faded a bit.
The rosiness coming back to her cheeks. The new softness to her belly and around her thighs, all of it proof that she’s listening to what her body needs.
She wants to make peace with every part of herself. However long it takes.
“Have the reporters stopped calling you?” she asks Betty as they turn a corner, elevation steadily increasing.
“They’re always calling, and I’m always blocking. You know I’m a vault.” A swift shake of her head. “And what about you, bumblebee? Your parents still trying to convince you to come back?”
“I haven’t heard from them in three weeks, actually. A record.”
Even though they’ll be able to comfortably retire in a few years—sooner if they hadn’t been so reckless with their money—Ramona has some guilt that her decision ended her parents’ careers, too, though she supposes there’s nothing stopping them from finding someone else to manage.
She hates that, the guilt, because how many times has her mother ever apologized for calling up the paparazzi, or for the photo shoots that bordered on inhumane?
At age fifteen, the first time Ramona saw an airbrushed magazine cover of herself with slimmer cheeks and fuller lips and thought, I hadn’t realized there was anything wrong with my face as DeeAnn fawned over how pretty she looked. There’d been no apology then.
It feels a bit like a breakup, although at least with Thaniel, she didn’t feel at all conflicted about ending it.
What remained after the lawyers’ fees were paid was an acute, staggering loneliness.
She’d be lying if she said she didn’t have second thoughts sometimes—mostly when she’s still awake at two in the morning, Janet fast asleep on her lungs—if only because some noise might make the quiet more bearable.
“I guess I thought that once they were done being my managers, they might go back to being my parents?” She catches her foot on a stone, takes a moment to right herself.
God, it sounds idiotic when she says it out loud.
The two things have been twisted together for too long—they probably don’t even remember how to be parents.
“What I’m learning is that I was extremely wrong about a lot of things. ”
“You’re healing,” Betty says. “Of course it’s going to be a process.”
Against her thigh, Ramona’s phone buzzes. She usually turns it off during her sessions, but there’s one particular email she’s been waiting on. An email completely disconnected from her past life.
As she taps the notification, she tries and fails to bite back a smile.
“I’m in,” she says on a giddy exhale, eyes scanning the screen again to make sure she’s reading it correctly. And yes, she is. “All the paperwork went through. I’m officially a UCLA Bruin.”
“What, were they waiting for your SAT scores?” Ramona gives her a nudge, but Betty squeals and lassos her for a hug. “My little college student! I’m so happy for you—why do I feel like a proud mom all of a sudden?”
Over the past six months, she’s spent hours talking this through with Betty.
She’s always admired how Betty found her passion—she’d spent her whole life training to be a ballerina, but an injury late in high school forced her onto a different path.
As she slowly built her strength back up in the gym, she discovered something she loved more than ballet, and decided she wanted to help other people feel powerful in their bodies.
Ramona doesn’t have an origin story like that. The question of what now? has pounded away at her brain since before Milwaukee, because at first she didn’t have a concrete plan. All she wanted was out, and then once the pressure faded away, maybe she’d have the space to consider it.
So she journaled and meditated and took long lavender-scented baths, until an idea appeared, almost so laughably obvious that she couldn’t believe it hadn’t come to her right away.
More than anything else, she’s always felt she missed out on school. And while obviously she can’t go back to high school…she could enroll in college.
When fall quarter begins in two weeks, she’ll be a UCLA freshman, and any amount of nerves she has are overshadowed by the thrill of getting to do something completely different.
She’s weirdly nostalgic about her education, despite only having experienced online classes and on-set tutors.
Even though she’s played arenas all over the world, her worldview still feels limited.
Tunnel vision, but for her brain. She craves homework and teachers and tests and structure, and the chance to worry only about herself for the first time in her life.
If Ramona’s ever going to figure out what happens next, she’s convinced it will happen there.
“You’ll look adorable in blue and gold.” Betty lifts an eyebrow. “Then again, do you look bad in anything?”
“Chartreuse,” Ramona says, her mind still spinning.
College. She’s finally going to college.
“And that white avant-garde dress I wore to my first Met Gala that no one on my team seemed to realize looked like a toilet until I was memed to death the next day. Speaking of…” Ramona nods toward a questionable bathroom up ahead and breaks from the path.
No outdoor bathroom possesses a flattering mirror—it’s probably inscribed in law by the UN—and yet that doesn’t stop her from examining her slightly warped reflection as she washes her hands.
She tries not to focus on every imperfection DeeAnn would spot right away.
The dry skin on her forehead, the oily skin along her nose, how short her lashes are without mascara or extensions.
So much for progress. She hates that she notices—she’s exercising, she’s not supposed to look hot—but wasn’t that the goal every single night onstage, no matter how drenched in sweat she was? Before classes start, she’ll book a facial. Get her hair trimmed.
As she’s exiting the bathroom, she spots two girls self-consciously approaching Betty, and for a moment, Ramona’s frozen in place.
She knows that cautious approach. The request for selfies that follow.
It’s happened much less than usual over the past few months, mostly because she got spooked when paparazzi snapped her leaving Erewhon and opted for delivery after that.
There isn’t an on-off switch; she can’t immediately begin having a private life when the majority of it has been spent in the spotlight.
But are these girls really about to pounce by asking her friend about her instead?
“Excuse me,” one of them says. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but are you Betty Zhu?”
Ramona watches Betty blink back her shock. “Uh,” she says, and then adjusts her Body by Betty cap. “Yes. I am. I don’t always wear merch for my own gym, I swear! This was a gift.”
The girls laugh along with her. “No shame in self-promo.”
Ramona has to slap a hand over her mouth to keep from cackling.
Despite her distaste for it, Betty’s been no stranger to the press, from nights out with Ramona to reporters dying to know celebs’ workout routines, though she never gives them what they want.
It’s not entirely unusual for her to be recognized.
“This might sound weird,” the girl continues, “but we’re just huge fans of your clients.”
The other girl nods vigorously. They look late teens, maybe early twenties. “We love Ramona Wilder so much. We’ve been thinking about her a lot, and we just—we hope she’s doing okay.”
Betty offers a tight-lipped smile. “I don’t like to talk about my clients, but I can tell you that she’s doing really well. And if she were here right now”—she says this part especially loud while Ramona doubles over laughing—“she’d be so touched that you asked about her.”
They ask for a photo, and Betty obliges before they continue their hike, excitedly passing the phone back and forth. Ramona waits until the coast is clear before she heads back over.
“Holy shit,” Betty says with a shake of her head. “Did that really just happen? Am I one of the anointed ones now?” She grips Ramona’s shoulder, eyes wide. “Will I know when the Illuminati reach out, or are they going to do it in code?”
It takes Ramona another few moments to breathe through her laughter. “Now you know what it’s like.”
“Yeah, and you know what, you can keep it.”
“Nah,” Ramona says, and then spreads her arms wide, tilts her face toward the sun. “Out here, we can both be a couple of nobodies.”