Chapter 16 Amelia Blue
After Georgia died, Naomi boxed up everything that had belonged to her—clothes, books with bent spines in whose margins she’d scribbled, unsigned contracts, forgotten makeup.
I was finishing my senior year at boarding school, and by the time I got home, all traces of my mother were stacked in plastic bins in the garage.
Naomi told me she’d tried to organize everything, but it had proved impossible.
Even when Georgia was alive, Naomi and I had never been able to make sense of how she arranged her belongings.
This past June, when I moved back to the house in Laurel Canyon after graduate school, I opened the boxes and bins for the first time. The contents still smelled like my mother, her unmistakable scent of hair dye and patchouli, sweat and ink wafting from the bins like smoke.
It was almost impossible to distinguish what should have been trash from what was worth keeping, but eventually I found the notebook that’s in my hands now.
I’ve read its pages so many times over the past six months that I can practically recite the contents, but I couldn’t imagine leaving it behind when I came here.
The first page reads, Twelve days sober. My sponsor says I should keep track.
The next day: Someone recognized me at the meeting last night. Up till now, everyone has at least pretended not to. (Pretended is underlined twice.)
I had to read those sentences three times before I understood them, my mother’s words like a song that I couldn’t get out of my head even though I didn’t understand the lyrics, as foreign as the Hebrew prayers Naomi taught me to say at Georgia’s funeral without telling me what they meant.
Finally, I understood: I’d found my mother’s sober diary, written, according to the dates scrawled at the top of each page, over the year before she died. Georgia had a sponsor. She was, apparently, going to AA meetings.
Eighteen days and the house is quiet with Amelia Blue away at school. Sometimes I forget Mom is here, she skulks around like a mouse. Not that any sounds Amelia Blue makes when she comes home are directed toward me. I can’t remember the last time she spoke to me.
I didn’t think she’d noticed when I stopped talking to her. She talked enough for the both of us.
Day 23: Sobriety is sneaky. It holds open the door for all the thoughts you tried to keep outside.
I stare at the page like I think more information will magically appear. But Georgia didn’t bother explaining what thoughts she meant.
Thoughts about me? About my wrong nose, wrong hair, even the wrong disorder? All the reasons Georgia let Naomi raise me rather than doing it herself.
I read the diary for what must be the thousandth time.
It’s a plain spiral notebook, nothing like the journals I kept as a little kid—bound books that Naomi gave me with locks and keys, inspirational quotes on every other page, pictures of teddy bears and puppies dancing across the front covers.
Scattered in between Georgia’s day-by-day count are nonsense words and phrases, like sometimes she ran out of thoughts about sobriety and simply wrote whatever came to mind just to have something to do.
The final entry is dated January 2, 2015. Two weeks before she came here.
Day 203: New Year, still sober.
It’s possible, of course, that the words in the journal aren’t true. Georgia lied like she breathed. No reason to think she didn’t lie to herself, too. We tell ourselves stories in order to live and all that.
I close the diary and scroll through my phone.
But instead of a break from Georgia, my social media feed is full of posts about her, the algorithm encouraged by the rabbit hole I went down last night.
There’s a video of my mother performing at some dive bar in Downtown Manhattan, black tights ripped at the knees, pink lipstick smeared across her face.
Another post shows a series of photos of my parents together with the caption “Is this the most nineties couple ever?” In the comments, people argue whether my parents are nearly as iconic as Kurt and Courtney or Richard and Cindy or Brad and Jen.
Another post, this one from @sonjalovesgeorgia, reads, Big news, #JFG Warriors!!
I glance at the caption, expecting to see news about boycotting Shocking Pink’s reunion tour, but instead there’s this: Has anyone else seen the police report from the last time Georgia was arrested?
Her tox screen was clean! The press lied, but what else is new?
They’ve been telling tales about our girl since she burst on the scene. #boycottshockingpink #justiceforgeorgia
I squint even though the words on the screen are perfectly clear.
The last time Georgia was arrested wasn’t particularly remarkable.
Another drug-fueled brawl (according to the press), another night in lockup, followed by another trip to rehab (here), and another public statement about getting sober and managing the disease of addiction.
Nothing (I thought at the time) that hadn’t happened before.
Even if the contents of the diary are true, she could’ve easily fallen off the wagon by then; the diary’s final page is dated almost a week before the night she was arrested.
Of course, @sonjalovesgeorgia could be lying.
Georgia’s fans have posted plenty of nonsense over the years.
Someone claimed that Georgia wasn’t dead at all, she was in hiding in the French countryside, so that people posted grainy pictures they claimed were her like they’d sighted Bigfoot.
Someone else insisted that my grandmother had murdered Georgia so she could control my trust and the millions that came with it.
Another fan suggested I’d had her killed, and all my stints in treatment were for psychosis, not eating disorders.
I study @sonjalovesgeorgia’s profile, holding my phone like an egg that might crack.
Her hair is dark and parted down the middle, framing her face like curtains.
White ink tattoos snake up and down her arms, and in most of her posts, she’s wearing nineties-era vintage clothing: baby-doll dresses, floral headbands, ripped fishnets with motorcycle boots.
Even though she technically looks nothing like my mother—black hair, aquiline nose, a dimple in her chin—somehow she resembles Georgia more than I do.
Certainly, she’s the sort of daughter Georgia would’ve had fun with, the sort of daughter who’s spent her life publicly defending her hero, begging the rest of the world not to let Shocking Pink perform my mother’s music without my mother there to take center stage.
All my life, I knew these people were crazed fans with absurd conspiracy theories, but then I also knew that Georgia was a basket case whose every move was determined by which substances she happened to be on that day.
I look around the pristine bedroom, as though its right angles and white walls might reveal hints, telling me what’s true and what’s not.
I click on @sonjalovesgeorgia’s most recent post, from two days ago, January 12, 2025.
I’m going dark for a while. I’ll probably be offline ’til after the anniversary, but I promise to give you more before SP goes on tour this spring. Like and follow for more info soon! #boycottshockingpink #justiceforgeorgia #jfg
I sigh. Clearly, @sonjalovesgeorgia is an influencer trying to attract more followers.
I scroll through her feed. Sprinkled between #georgiafan posts are paid advertisements for everything from toothpaste to pumice stones to lip gloss.
Even if she did track down the police report (something that never occurred to me to do), she only did it to excite Georgia’s fans so she can keep selling them moisturizer and sunscreen, no better than the classmates who pretended to be my friend so they could sell a photo to blogs and magazines.
I press my fists into my stomach. It’s nearly midnight, more than two hours till Dr. Mackenzie’s check-in and there’s a bass thump filling the air. Somewhere, someone is playing music too loud. Overloud music was the soundtrack to my childhood, as familiar as a lullaby.
I drop my hand, cross the room, and open the bedroom door. I half expect to see Dr. Mackenzie sleeping on the floor outside my room, but the hallway is empty. I tiptoe toward the kitchen, my belly in knots.