One Miranda
One
Miranda
2006
Miranda does not want to be here.
The chairs are hard plastic, no cushions. They’re set up in a circle, for “equality,” and she hates that everyone can see her face and she can see theirs. If the chairs were in rows like a regular classroom, Miranda could focus on the back of someone else’s head instead of the fact that she knows everyone is looking at her. She doesn’t want to be looked at. It’s one of the main reasons she’s taken to wearing hooded sweatshirts and large sunglasses, Anna Wintour–style. They have the added benefit of curbing the headaches brought on by the oppressive, fluorescent lights of Horizons, the expensive Miami rehab center where she’s been sent “for her own good.” Plus, they hide the red eyes and the puffiness brought on by tears and long sleepless nights.
Everything makes Miranda irritable here. She hates the politeness of the staff. Hates the way they enunciate, like they’re talking to children. Hates how loud the clock ticks and how the silverware in the cafeteria is all bent and beat up and the way her skin feels itchy all the time. She has a permanent headache.
“We don’t inquire about people’s personal lives unless they freely share it.” Deirdre, the facilitator with the build of a linebacker and the demeanor of a librarian, has raised her voice. With a start, Miranda realizes that Deirdre is casting a concerned look at her.
“What?” Miranda says.
But it’s Henry, another inpatient with a Jersey accent, who had apparently spoken. “I said, weren’t you Miranda Montana? Back in the day? I’m just saying.” He rubs his nose, fixes her with a squinting look. “If not, you’re a dead ringer for her.”
There’s a silence that stretches thin and taut. They’re not supposed to ask each other direct questions during group share time, but Henry’s one for pushing the envelope. And Miranda knows the others have been giving her sideways glances, surely wondering the same thing.
Fine. So what if they know it’s her? They’re idiots if they haven’t figured out her identity by now. Miranda’s fall from grace was as public as they get, and there were paparazzi in the parking lot the day she arrived at Horizons, no matter how confidential her stay was.
“Yes, Henry,” she snaps. A familiar ache flares at the base of her neck, near her skull. “I still am Miranda Montana.”
Henry snorts. “Yeah. Okay. In the legal sense, I guess.”
The room’s tension works its way into Miranda’s muscles, making her body feel warm and tightly wound. The anger comes even easier these days. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Miranda,” Deirdre cautions.
Henry holds up both his hands. “Don’t mean anything by it. I was just saying how I’m a businessman. Even when my using brought my whole business down, I still wasn’t at rock bottom. Your name is Miranda Montana, sure, but the brand Miranda Montana was your business. I’m trying to make a point. Both of us shot our businesses in the foot. Our reputations.”
Miranda stares at him. “You can’t say that to me.” She turns to Deirdre. “He can’t say that to me, right?”
“Henry, let’s try to keep a constructive dialogue—” Deirdre begins.
“I can say whatever I want,” Henry interrupts. “Look, I’m trying to help you here.”
“I don’t need your help!” Miranda says. Her leg has been bouncing without her realizing it, and now the energy of it propels her to stand. “This is such bullshit—”
“That’s your problem, you know?” Henry says, starting to sound short himself. “That’s everyone’s problem here. You think you don’t need help, that it’s someone else’s fault that you’re in Miami, that it’s not your fault you collapsed on the boardwalk with no underwear on and your dress over your head in the middle of the Santa Monica—”
Two things happen at once, and he never finishes his sentence. First, Miranda crosses the circle in one step and slaps her hand hard across Henry’s face. Second, Deirdre leaps out of her chair and pins Miranda’s arms to her side in one swift movement.
“ Hey !” Deirdre barks. “That is not what we do here!”
Miranda feels Deirdre’s fingers dig into her biceps and tries to shove the facilitator off. Deirdre lets go but places herself between Miranda and Henry as he groans. She fixes Miranda with a frightening glare that is very unlike a librarian.
“You know this, Montana. This is meant to be a safe, constructive space, and you have got to get that temper under control if you’re going to do any healing. You’re going to go to your room and think about what you did. You want to act like a child and throw a tantrum? You get treated like a child, too. Go.”
The heat coursing through Miranda’s body rises to her face, coloring her earlobes and round cheeks in the same way it did when she was younger. As if anyone’s taught her how to be anything but a child. Aware of every eye on her back, Miranda turns for the door, making sure to slam it as hard as she can on her way out.
In her room, Miranda lies face down on her cot with the sheet like a paper towel, trying to ride out the wave of rage overtaking her. But Henry and his stupid face swim before her eyes, exaggerated and mean.
Weren’t you Miranda Montana? Back in the day? Miranda could spit. How could there be a “back in the day” when she was still a teenager, only a few months shy of her nineteenth birthday?
She wonders how many people end up in rehab before their twenty-first.
Henry’s wrong. Miranda can’t be blamed for ending up here. She’s barely an adult in society’s eyes, and didn’t this shit start years ago? Well, whose fault is that? Would they drag a thirteen-year-old into Horizons and demand that she take responsibility for her actions?
In her twisted position on the bed, Miranda’s ankle begins to ache. It’s an old injury she’d gotten on set, a short fall from a prop balcony that wasn’t built to regulation. She should have sued. She knew that now, and her mother would have done it if she’d been paying any attention to reality, but no one looked out for Miranda back then. No one seemed to think anything else was important except that she ice it and get back on it as quickly as possible, or production schedules would run behind. And she didn’t want that, did she?
Can I give her some Advil? the producer had asked Miranda’s mother.
For some reason, Miranda remembers that her mother was wearing a swishy black corset top that day. It was something new she was trying—something to make her look younger. Miranda thought she looked like Ursula the sea witch.
Sure, whatever you think will help, Bobbie had said, shrugging, uncertainly tugging at the top’s laces.
Whatever it was that she was given, Miranda is pretty sure in hindsight that it hadn’t been Advil. Advil doesn’t make you feel floaty, like your head is a balloon. But in the moment, it was a quick, effective fix.
So no one cared when Miranda’s injury turned out to be a bone fracture that needed surgery, and her mother didn’t scrutinize what she was taking on set. From there it was a short step to self-medicating and figuring out where to get more painkillers after her prescription ran out. All anyone cared about was the production schedule. And why shouldn’t Miranda take what made her feel better? She knew her body best.
Besides, how did they expect her to sing, dance, jump through every hoop since the age of five without that stuff? It was exhausting work. Meds to numb physical pain, champagne to keep things positive—not to mention cocaine to wind down after twelve hours on set, doing the same emotionally taxing scene over and over again, and then to wind up again when you had to be back at it the next day. It was basically standard practice in the industry. Everyone mixed their own cocktails to get through a job. And weren’t you supposed to have a little fun when you were a teenager and had plenty of money to splash around?
Now, for some reason, they were telling her she’d done it all wrong.
Misstepped, overstepped, didn’t hide it well enough. Miranda was just one of the weak ones, apparently, who started letting the facade slip to the public. It was a trickle that turned into a deluge once the supposed TLOYL, Zane, came on the scene, ramping up her partying and acting like a big shot, having her on his arm. A little fun became chaos real quick. Name-calling and screaming matches in clubs, the public humiliations that Henry had so kindly mentioned, Miranda crashing her beloved Porsche on Lincoln Boulevard. And the paparazzi were there to capture every bad decision and wrong move. They ate it up like dogs.
So no, it wasn’t her fault. Not at all.
Miranda takes a deep breath and fishes her phone out from under her pillow, flipping it open. She finds the most recent message that Bobbie sent over two weeks ago, when Miranda realized she was being taken to rehab. Only three words: Sorry. Luv u.
Miranda glares at it, sucks her teeth, and types: Im bettr now. Want 2 come home
She hits “Send,” waits. But five minutes pass, then more, and her phone remains silent. Bobbie is in tough-love mode right now, mandated by her own therapist, and is probably discussing the text in a session this very moment.
And Miranda can’t text the love of her life, because he’s in prison for dealing weed—small-time stuff, but some judge wanted to make an example of rich kids like Zane, and his parents weren’t quite rich or powerful enough to hire the right lawyer.
Miranda cringes at the memory; she’d barely made it to his court appearance, overslept, and showed up hungover in a rumpled blouse. She slipped in the back door just as the judge was reading the sentence, and saw Zane’s shoulders slump in disbelief as he realized he’d be incarcerated. He’d never had great posture, but the movement made Miranda’s heart go a little cold. It was like Zane was getting the wind knocked out of him.
She hurried over to him once the court adjourned, ignoring the dirty look from his parents.
“Babe, I’m so sorry,” Miranda said, throwing her arms around him. “I’ll visit you every day, okay? We’ll figure this out.”
But his body was unyielding, his face dazed. “I’m going to jail, Miranda.”
She pursed her lips, unsure how to answer. His suit jacket, she noticed, was a little too big in the shoulders. He was looking somewhere beyond her.
“How did we end up like this?” he asked. “What were we even doing?”
That rubbed Miranda the wrong way. “Just trying to live our lives. Have fun. Sometimes life likes to take a shit on your fun.”
He frowned, ran his hand through his mess of hair, poorly combed for the occasion. “I don’t know. I need to think. I think you need to think, too.”
Miranda narrowed her eyes at him. “About what ?”
“That ... we’re better than this.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “Or—we could be, someday. You’re more than just some 3AM Girl, and I’m more than a pothead.”
“What are you even talking about?”
Miranda half glared at him; of course she was a 3AM Girl, that was her thing . That was why everyone loved her. She would be boring without it.
But his mother had appeared at his side and shut them both up.
So TLOYL is a no for now. Miranda scrolls through her contacts, looking for someone—anyone—who cares about her. In the F section, Miranda comes upon Sam Free and takes a chance.
Ready 2 rejoin human race , she texts the agent, the first man who signed her. Any projects?
She waits another stretch of eternity, listening to a wheelchair roll by and the nurse’s telephone ring out in the hall. Sam’s probably blocked her number, even though it was her, Miranda, who helped him make it big over the past ten years.
Ten —the number hits her and she slumps back against the wall. Has it really been ten years since she got her actual big break? She started in pageants back in Indiana. Bobbie loved dressing her up, doing her makeup just so, getting involved with the other pageant moms and the whole drama of the thing. Miranda got excited by her mom’s excitement. And it didn’t hurt when they started winning a little money.
Then there were local TV commercials, and people around town started to recognize her; then there were kids’ choirs and musicals in Chicago—Bobbie started homeschooling at that point, and she’d quiz Miranda on her times tables as they made the three-hour drive from South Bend for rehearsals multiple times each week.
And then one day it seemed to Miranda that they just kept driving, all the way to Los Angeles with hardly enough room for Miranda herself among the suitcases and trash bags of clothes that filled the old Chevy.
After a brief interview and audition, Miranda signed with Sam’s agency and was cast in the TV comedy / variety show Kidz Klub . Miranda was the youngest cast member and the best at everything—that’s what they told her at least. And with a screen test and the stroke of a pen—boom, she was a star. The surreal feeling of seeing her own face on lunch boxes, posters, movie trailers that aired between the evening news, became normal. And then necessary.
A knock jars Miranda from her thoughts. Her door opens directly after the warning knock; there’s very little privacy here.
“Montana?” calls the voice of Rick, the facilities manager, a tired-looking guy in his forties with an equally tired dirty-blond goatee. The staff tend to call patients by their last names here, a weird quirk Miranda hates; it makes her feel like they’re trying to be hip high school teachers. Not that she knows what real high school teachers are like—but the staff seem to be ripping off the eighties movies she grew up with.
He even pulls her desk chair out and turns it around when he sits, elbows resting on its back, and Miranda knows he’s about to Get Real with her about Her Behavior.
“What was that in group?” Rick starts out.
What was what? It’s a stupid question, so Miranda stays quiet. He doesn’t seem like he’s expecting an answer, anyway.
“Listen.” Rick pinches the bridge of his nose. “I hate having these conversations. But you know how this works. You don’t want to be here any more than I want you to have to be here. But as a court-mandated patient, you’re required to complete this program as a condition of bail, yada yada. We know this. Don’t we?”
His short hair is spiked up and Miranda sneers, inwardly, at how obvious it is that he’s trying to look younger. Everyone always tries to be younger but punishes her when she acts her age. She can smell the faint chemical scent of his hair gel.
“I want you to complete this program and go out to live a healthy life. You should want to complete it so you don’t face probation. But, Montana—”
“What about Henry?” Miranda snaps. “Did you go have this little talk with him, too?”
“Deirdre is reviewing community guidelines with him. But the only person you should be worrying about is—”
“I’m just trying to figure out where my safe space is. What are the consequences when someone belittles me , comes at my career?”
“You’re on your second infraction, Montana.” Rick looks her in the eyes, and his expression is not optimistic. “Three strikes, you’re out.”
Out in the cold. And into tabloid infamy, it goes without saying.
Miranda looks away, at a spot in the very corner of the otherwise sterile room where a tiny dust bunny is drifting back and forth in the current of the vents. All she wants is to be left alone, in this obscenely overpriced place that’s more Motel 6 than Ritz-Carlton. She realizes, suddenly, that the people she should have texted are the people who were once her only friends in the world: Germaine and Sicily. They never judge her. They’re always there for her. Even if they hardly see each other these days—and while Miranda called to tell them about Horizons when she realized that Bobbie was shipping her off, she realizes she talked about herself the whole time. So she isn’t even sure where her best friends are now or what’s going on in their lives.
Germaine’s parents dragged her back to New York while she studied for some business qualification, but is that where she stayed? Sicily’s parents have her touring a different city practically every week of the year.
Miranda hasn’t been a very good friend.
But Rick is holding out his hand. For a confused moment, she thinks he wants her to shake.
“The phone,” he says. “You’ve lost privileges for a week.”
“Rick, no.” She could cry. And nothing she’s experienced at Horizons so far would be more humiliating than crying in front of this Backstreet Boy wannabe.
“We have to get through to you somehow. No phones for a week, no TV, meals in your room.”
When she still doesn’t make a move, he plucks it right out of her hand and pockets it.
“You—” she starts.
“You can have your recovery journal,” he offers, like he’s being incredibly generous. “And one book a day from the library cart. I’d highly recommend Lose Your Ego, Gain the World . It really turned my life around.”
He has the audacity to smile at her.
And then Miranda is left alone in her room, on her bed, with nothing to do and no one to talk to.
A kid in time-out, yet again.