Chapter 31 1958
As the Chateau Marmont conjures up gothic storms that fill the sky with all the rage the three girls inside don’t understand they’re allowed to feel, Flitter reaches for Calliope’s hand. “They’re calling you a goddess. This is your lucky break.” Then, very quietly, “Are you okay?”
Calliope’s response is a shrug, that little lift of the shoulders that disguises the not-okayness in someone’s heart, because to be always not okay is exhausting—and to give into it is deadly.
Flitter’s mouth twists into a bitter smile. “Hollywood made our beds and it isn’t content to just let us lie in them—we have to sleep in them too.” She slings an arm around Calliope’s shoulders. “Just don’t turn into a pill bottle like Marian Monti or a bitch like Lacey Magee.”
The thunder cracks once more.
Flitter and Calliope go back downstairs to join the party that Bob’s throwing to celebrate the movie.
But Calliope’s words—It’s time to learn the price of things—linger in the room as if the Marmont is breathing them out of its lungs.
One dollar is how much Aria earns for an hour of babysitting.
But one dollar isn’t the price of things.
No, the price of things becomes clear to her when she’s walking back to her aunt’s suite and she finds a man waiting outside.
For her.
A man named Bob who says, voice as cordial, as always, “I will never forgive you, my dear.”
He walks away, whistling.
The suite door opens behind her. Miss Devine tugs her inside and then, suddenly and peculiarly, Aria is in her aunt’s arms for the very first time.
Then Miss Devine pushes her away. “Go to your room. Stay there until Monday when Bob leaves for Europe. Pray that he finds someone there to distract him from you.”
Today’s my fifteenth birthday, Aria doesn’t say to her aunt.